Category — Poetry

30 Days in a Row

All my significant ex-boyfriends show up.

They want to Tango, they want to Two-step,

they want to play tourist; watch me implode

and I’m so busy driving at horizons

to the airport, weddings, the doctors’ and work

that I am just a shifting gear, a 3rd party observer

in the clockwork of this month.

         Today driving north on I-15

         a Native American man in a cowboy hat

         stared at me at a stop light

         while I sang with the radio

         “Tonight, tonight, tonight…”

         When I caught him, he smiled.

I tell one, I do not feel…

In Love, he cuts me off, sometimes

you have to give something up.

So I bring him to the zoo at his request

which seems tight, claustrophobic,

an exhibit of sorts. He snaps

pictures economically;

only the ones nearest extinction

and one shot of me when I am not looking.

         Yesterday driving down 163

         I saw a dwarf or a midget

         vomiting in the breakdown lane

         ridding himself of curds of brown stuff.

         He wore a softball uniform

         unbuttoned to the beltline.

         I keep wondering if his team won.

Of course, the gorillas make the cut

into the lens for nostalgia or for having been caught.

They draw a constant crowd of admirers,

animated murmurers who point and say,

So much like us! as they slide along

the cultured path, the plexiglass wall.

         In the last 30 days

         I’ve seen two cop cars and one ambulance

         tethered together twice:

         Once heading south on Route 5

         Once northwest on the 101.

         First aid kits for road rage, narcolepsy, or wanderlust?

But the sea lions are more demonstrative

of something I trust:

2 swim-dancing like lovers completely immersed,

1 in the shallows by himself, sleeping it off.

And I know where I am standing only once

when a young boy turns to me

to share a thought then sees who I am

and says, You’re not my… and darts off.

         Both times I kept driving

         but never reached the site

         where pieces lay visible

         picking up luminescent rays of light

         from the moon, the stars, the passing cars

         or their drivers.

I am near the Bengal tiger

and his eyes are closed to the diurnal sun.

In the corner of his cage nearest us

there is a spider and a web

indistinguishable from each other

until the wind picks up speed,

tears through one.

         I looked hard

         for the wreckage not to see blood

         but to see bent steel sculpted

         into something resembling art,

         shards of glass morphed, frozen

         into diamonds in the rough.

         to see a version of love that is

         just a life on course;

         temporary animal, temporary cage,

         lunging forward despite the bars.

Serial Gravity

I want to tell the experts

I know what sucked

the dead birds from sky

spat them

thud thud thud thud thud

black applause,

I want to tell

them how I made

the Earth speed up

towards those birds

like a hand to catch,

to squeeze, to collide.

I want to tell the experts

how I do it, shoot dead fish

to shorelines in bullets of ice,

how I get so full sometimes,

so sick of the noise and fumes

I must hurl clouds and winds

Armageddon style.

I want to make them

understand magnetism,

mortality and fate,

how they are always

intertwined

but they are slow to learn,

I have watched them,

seen the signs.

Even when I’m

compelled to do otherwise

I can’t stop myself,

I churn the waters,

split the sky,

stoke the lightning,

yank them

constantly,

by the eyes,

remind them

to be reminded

of the limits

of time.

Vulnerability

You’d think

every object

permanent,

they way

light strikes,

bounces

off edges,

seemingly

impenetrable

to time’s intent

but it is good

for things

to appear

other than

they are,

not just

to foreshadow

the inevitable

disappointments

that will

morph to

cautionary tales

in hindsight

but to

remind us

what’s possible,

how light

is certain

in every shadow

how light is

always

at the edge,

interjecting,

painting

the air,

all things

and you,

giving

you depth,

height, width,

making you

appear

so solid

you might

actually forget

your soft spots,

your human

skin, your

hologram

roots: your

memory

your fear,

your loves,

your regrets.

About the poet:

Monique Gagnon German holds a B.A. in English Lit. from Northeastern University and a M.A. in English from Northern Arizona University. She has lived all over the US and worked as a Technical Writer and Tech. Pubs. Manager for a decade before taking time off to start a family. She is the happily married wife of an active duty Marine and the mother of two youngsters and many poems. Her poetry has appeared in the anthology, “e, the Emily Dickinson Award Anthology Best Poems of 2001,” and journals such as Ellipsis, California Quarterly, Kalliope, High Grade, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Calyx, The Ledge, and Rosebud.  Her poetry appears in current issues of Assissi and The Sierra Nevada Review.  Upcoming her poetry will appear in Tampa Review, Xenith, and Canary.

A Sonnet on Death or Murder

If you kill and kill and kill again, like in war, or battle or just murder,

No one really cares at all, no one is really around to care.

You get the satisfaction of the blood and gore, and plunder.

But, really, and I’ve heard it said, there is really no one who cares.

Cain caught, and killed Able, the first one: a good lie and his parents would never know.

But they did know. Yet Cain said they did not care at all.

They just sent him away forever and Oh,

He never did come back—If they were appalled

He would later claim “They did not say.”

Did they ever find Able? Cain left him for, and he was, dead.

It’s like today.

I’ve heard it said–

“I killed them, you see.

They meant nothing to me.”

The Sadness of His Birthday

At Mastro’s that night:

Lobster bisque, a bloody mary.

Winter ended, though.

Spring

The cherry blossoms popped

Open; the first one

Of April. The saturated

Pink meaning winter was now done.

The sparrow and robin returned

On choppy flight.

Trilling  their songs at 2 a.m.

When it still seemed like night.

Earth teems and billows

When new shivers.

Old lives raise their

Hoary heads and quiver.

About the poet:

Barbara Sue Mink Spalding lives in Orange County, California. Her poetry has appeared in Carcinogenic Poetry; she can be reached through facebook at http://www.facebook.com/barbarasueminkspalding.

On a Good Day

I’d rather be reading
St Vincent Millay than a bad
Ashbery poem, maybe Blake
rather than Rimbaud.
Somedays
I wonder if the struggle is still there
in the wings.  In
pajamas, the heart
molten in youth, now breaking
out in signs of old age.

But not enough to rhyme.
Some corpse, the poets in their brief
kindnesses have not uncovered,
the mannerisms of the birds,
their true identities,
the theosophic
liberties not yet named.

Birds who fell dead
from the Baghdad skies
from murderous concussions
from aerial attacks. Not St Edna¹s
hope for the planet.
Something
somehow a little cartoonish,
a reversals into mirrors,
the absolute bettered by one.

Chart of the Elements

Erotomania, the effect
of hankering, of harboring
the gynecomania, hunger,
lechery, impetration
and pining, perverse sensate
satyriasis, thirst, velleity
that urges, lust prone,
wishes, feigns to wish for,
yearns and chooses, longing
beyond and before, libido
bound, hopeful, of animus
and amorous, the ardency
of appetite, aspiration,
carnal conflagration,
fancy, favor and conatus
for the truth, cupidity,
conjugal and erotic, flamed
to hot blood, to fits of
worship, adoration and
aphrodisia, and all for
this heat of momentary
crave, covet of the fruit,
feverish anticipation
before prayer for more
to sustain this volition,
sexual and spiritual,
suddenly that pure fervor
for what is only, after all,
animal, human.

Fist

The boy fists
like father fists,
but in the crib,

crib-side, fingers
curled into a stone,
small as wisdom

of hard knocks
as yet unknown,
smaller claw

that cannot climb
so fists at worlds,
sends out a sign

father now
favors, sings drunk,
shows the neighbors

the small gem
aimed at enemies.
Then off to war,

offed in war,
the father’s fist
unopened, home.

The boy finds
fingers, or time
balled in a knot.

About the poet:

George Moore’s fourth collection, Children’s Drawings of the Universe, will be published by Salmon Press in 2012. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, Northwest Review, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. His poetry and essays appear in Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal and Iceland.  He is twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Web and Best of the Net awards, and was a finalist for The Rhysling Poetry Prize, and the Wolfson Poetry Prize.  Moore is on the faculty of the University of Colorado, Boulder. His website is:  http://spot.colorado.edu/~mooreg/Site/About.html.

Fear

I couldn’t wrap my head around

her belly, bulging and white.

The fact of its being was as foreign

as an uncharted moon,

That growth,

that lump swelling inside her

striated skin, a slight creature

thickly cocooned, life

seen through the rosy lens of amniotic fluid.

I couldn’t imagine its—his—coming-done,

his slippery, sucking emergence.

And the first time I saw him, I still

didn’t understand —

head an overripe tomato,

body wrinkled as a damp bulb.

When she held him out for me, the fear

of those clutching fingers and curling toes

shook my arms,

his ruddy skin creased like

tissue paper or an onion’s peel.

How easily he might tear, I thought.

He settled against my chest,

and the striking terror of his soft coddled

body tumbling from me—

but he didn’t,

his puckered face turned inward,

his small limbs creaking in new use,

his body, a waterlogged rose,

weighted with life, opening.

after Summer Evening, by Edward Hopper 

tense, she leans against the white porch,

candied-pink bathing suit

bright in the unforgiving fluorescence.

her feet turn inward, away from the boy—

seated, his leg raised in her direction, one hand

bent against his chest:

resting mindlessly, or perhaps clutching

his heart. his head tilts toward her

in stilted meditation.

His mouth, its slacken lips.

darkness treads on the stark lit scene,

skulking along the edge of the porch like

an abandoned dog, almost slipping

into the cut-out spaces between rigid

limbs. Half of the girl’s face is pared like pale

stone by the sharp light. Her eyes, the windows

of vacant hotels, crude and dark,

gaze emptily downward;

already she is disinclined to listen,

before his mouth has fully torqued

the words he will never say —

or perhaps there is nothing to say,

perhaps the glaring light,

the stagnant darkness,

the taut inconsequence of a summer’s night

hold all that will never be.

Onus

fifteen years and even now it hurts to shower.

I feel the spray of water and think of him,

how the darkness of the lake slid over

his body as weightless as sky, how his limbs

floated, four pale eels,

his hair — the way I used to smooth it back —

twisting like ink,

spilled. spilling. a body splayed,

insensible,

(standing here, in the shower stall,

I see how my body has changed

and I remember where his hands

had been in slimmer days)

and how his chest must have tightened,

his throat clenched,

I think of how he could have wanted such a death,

how he was six miles away

with stones tucked in his pockets,

the absolute weight of a life too heavy,

and I remember where I had been —

at home, asleep while he was sinking.

About the poet: 

Kathleen Keogh is a sophomore at Binghamton University, studying English and Creative Writing. She has won numerous poetry awards from Adelphi University and is currently a poetry editor at Binghamton’s undergraduate literary journal, Ellipsis.

________________________

Cherry blossoms, Washington, D.C. 2012; Valerie Brown photo

A Green Tiger

My nose, a steadfast ostrich,

stone still, yet prepared to accelerate,

and my mouth– a green tiger

drawn by the hand of an incompetent child:

at noon, I order dusk and a crescent moon

from the unhappy waiter,

knowing it will arrive and never arrive.

I leave a large tip without eating a bite.

If the trees are

fucking the bushes behind me, what of it?

How wonderful to be:” beyond the point of no return.”

My heart and its insufficient postage–

and the stamp? Exquisite– the tongue

loving whatever will not reach its destination.

About the poet:

Juan Soler was born in Havana Cuba, and came to live in Union city, New Jersey in 1979, at the age of 7. He has published in both Spanish and English language magazines including Linden Lane, edited by the late Cuban poet Laureate, Herberto Padilla. Soler is currently working on an experimental film on the life of the Cuban chess champion Casablancas.

“WE ARE YOU Project” 

in Poetry and Art

 Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba

Editor’s note: The following poems were read at the recent WE ARE YOU Project International reading that took place April 7, 2012, at Wilmer Jennings Gallery (219 E. 2nd Street, NYC), amid a select exhibition of more than 30 artists who each contributed a single piece they felt best addresses the WE ARE YOU Project theme.

The theme, as described by Dr. Jose Rodeiro in an essay that appears on the Project’s web site  is this:  ”The We Are You Project International represents the first comprehensive 21st Century coast-to-coast exhibition depicting current Latino socio-cultural, political, and economic conditions, reflecting triumphs, achievements, risks and vulnerabilities, confronting and affecting all Latinos “within” as well as “outside” the USA. The primary concerns of this exhibit are: 1). Latino immigration, 2). Latinization, 3). the current Anti-Latino backlash, 4). the rise of Pan-Latino transculturalism, as well as 5). investigating diverse Latino identities in the 21st Century.”

Our thanks to Dr. Rodeiro for helping to collect these poems and secure permissions from the poets for publication in Ragazine.

* * *

Front row (L to R): Pablo Caviedes; Gabriel Navar; Carlos Chavez; Carmen Valle; Carmen D. Lucca; Duda Penteado, and Raul Villarreal. Back Row (L to R): Raphael Montañez Ortíz, Josephine Barreiro, Alan Britt (aka “El Alambre”), Dr. José Rodeiro, and Nelson Álvarez. On the floor: Dr. George Nelson Preston.

* * *

ALAN BRITT (“El Britto”) (aka: “El Alambre” “the Wire”)

Considered one of America’s most published poets, the Cherokee poet Alan Britt teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University. His recent books are Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010),Vegetable Love (2009),Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). Essays recently in The Cultural Review, Clay Palm Review and Arson. Interviews and poetry (selected) recently in Steaua (Romania), Latino Stuff Review and Poet’s Market. Other poems (selected) in Agni, The Bitter Oleander, Bloomsbury Review, Bolts of Silk (Scotland), Christian Science Monitor, Cider Press Review, Cold Mountain Review, Comstock Review, The Cultural Journal, Darkling Magazine, English Journal, Epoch, Fire (UK), Flint Hills Review, Fox Cry Review, Gallerie International (India), Gradiva (Italy), The Great American Poetry Show, Greensboro Review, Hecale (UK), Kansas Quarterly, Karamu, The Kerf, letras.s5.com (Chile), Magyar Naplo (Hungary), Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Midwest Quarterly, The Minnesota Review, Pacific Review, Pedrada Zurda (Ecuador), Puerto del Sol, Queen’s Quarterly (Canada), The Recusant (UK), Revista Solar (Mexico), Rosebud, Second Aeon (Wales), Sou’wester, Square Lake, Strangeroad, Sunstone, Tulane Review, Writers’ Journal, plus the anthologies: Emergency Verse: Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State, by Caparison an imprint of The Recusant, United Kingdom: 2011;The Poet’s Cookbook: 33 American Poets with German Translations, Forest Woods Media Productions/Goerthe Institute, Washington, DC: 2010; American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin: 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008; Fathers: Poems About Fathers,St. Martin’s Press: 1998, and La Adelfa Amarga: Seis Poetas Norteamericanos de Hoy, Ediciones El Santo Oficio, Peru, 2003.

WE ARE YOU

We rise on jaguar wings orbiting

a bronze waist before crossing

the torch of Liberty.

We sling ruthless reds, bruised

golds & tropical greens across

hurricanes chewing the Atlantic

coast off Cuba.

We surface the Amazon

with webbed toes.

Freedom’s eyeglasses fogged we

enter each holy house as though

entering a proverbial hall of mirrors,

aware the moon nursing Manhattan

skyscrapers also splinters the icy peaks

of Peru, ignites Caymans in Columbia,

the Quichua in Ecuador, yucca lightning

in Mexico, plus Bolívar’s bones in Venezuela.

We chase amnesia thermals, sometimes,

but mostly we prefer heirloom tomatoes,

lean meats, exotic spices, multigrains

& a dozen-year-old California Syrah

after an exhausting day of painting our

dreams across a canvas called America.

 © Alan Britt

PABLO CAVIEDES

Born in 1971 in Cotacachi, Ecuador, Caviedes has been exhibiting his work for the past twelve years in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Washington DC, New York, Colombia and various cities of Ecuador. He is known primarily as a visual artist; but, his forays into poetry are always brilliant.  He studied at the Art Institute in Paris and at the College of Plastic Arts In Ecuador under Daniel Reyes. He won the 1994 ¨Paris Prize.¨  In 1998, in Paris, France, he was selected for ¨Emergent Artists of Latin American and the Caribbean¨ exhibition: A new generation of Artist.  In 2002, in Barcelona, Spain, he obtained honorable mention at the Second Biennial International of Painting ¨Vilassar del Mar.¨

In 2004, he exhibited in ¨Art in a Bottle¨ at the Agora Gallery, New York City.  In 2008, he was selected in the 31^st Small Works Art Competition (NYU).  In 2009, he exhibited in Fusion: American Classics Meets Latin American Art, at the Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, Delaware.  Also that year, he was selected for the show: ¨Ecuadorian Contemporary Art¨ at United Nations, New York.   Just recently he showed his art at the group exhibition: ¨Ecuadorian Renaissance,” Queens Museum of Art, New York, and also in the Second Bronx Latin American Art Biennial, New York.

ON THE MAP   

Por las familias divididas,

por los hijos de los sin papeles,

por los que pagan más por menos derechos,

por los que trabajan mucho y consiguen poco,

por los de pocas oportunidades en el país de las oportunidades,

por los explotados y marginados del ayer, de hoy y de siempre,

por los que vinieron por el sueño americano y encontraron pesadillas,

por los expatriados que aguardan su patria para un mañana,

por los que mueren en el intento, y por los que cruzaron ya la frontera,

por los que viven en las sombras a pesar que el sol es para todos.

Por todos y cada uno de ellos….

Queremos un país con rostro más humano.

We are you!

© Pablo Caviedes. New York 2011

ON THE MAP

For the separated families,

For the children of undocumented workers,

For those who pay taxes yet enjoy no rights,

For those who work hard and get nothing in return,

For those who don’t get a break in the land of opportunity,

Fort the exploited and marginalized of yesteryear, today, and forever,

for those who sought the American dream and encountered many nightmares,

for the expatriates who await to regain their motherland in the near future,

for those who died trying and for those who managed to cross the border,

For those who live in the shadows despite the fact that the sun shines

for everybody.

For each and everyone of them…

We want a nation with a human face.

We are you!

© Pablo Caviedes. New York 2011

CARMEN D. LUCCA

Born in Puerto Rico, Carmen D. Lucca is a bilingual poet, author-translator  of the first collection of Julia De Burgos’ poetry. Ms. Lucca, whose poetry has been published in Ireland, Latin America, Puerto Rico and the United States, is listed in the Directory of American Poets & Writers. Her awards include the Palma De Burgos, a Silver Medal from the Academie des Arts, Sciences et Lettres, Paris, France, a 108^th Wing Essential Piece  for her contribution to the National Hispanic Heritage Month events honoring Julia De Burgos at McGuire Air Base, and a Disney Teacher-Award nomination. Ms. Lucca’s most recent poetry book is The Sunset Watcher, a collection of poetic meditations based on her observations of life.

RUMINATIONS ABOUT ARIZONA’S LAW  SB1070

Because Law SB1070 threatens my Fourth Amendment rights,

I won’t  go to Arizona,

I won’t  go to Alabama,

To Utah, I won’t go!

Because I could, with my Latino looks, catch the eyes

Of  despots or state officers with power to harass me,

I won’t go to Alabama,

I won’t go to Arizona,

To Georgia, I won’t go!

Because the terrifying Tea Partiers have joined hands

With the rabid Right Wingers to monger fear across this land.

I won’t go to Arizona

I won’t go to Alabama,

To Indiana, I won’t go!

Because I dread the re- incarnation of the fetid Jim Crow,

And any law resembling the Black Codes of the South

I will not go to Arizona

I will not go to Alabama

Or to Utah …

I will not go to Georgia

I will not go to Indiana

Or to South Carolina.

To those states , inclined to spit on the Bill of my Rights,

I won’t go. I won’t go!

©Carmen D. Lucca

MEDITACIONES SOBRE LA LEY SB1070 EN ARIZONA

Porque la ley SB1070 amenaza mis derechos bajo la Cuarta Enmienda,

No ire a Arizona

No ire a Alabama.

A Arizona no ire!.

Porque  mi presencia Latina podria atraer la atencion

Del despota oficial de policia estatal con poder de hostigar,

No ire a Alabama,

No ire a Arizona,

A Alabama no ire!

Porque los furibundos Festejantes del Te van de la mano

Con los rabiosos de la Extrema Derecha  promoviendo  temor por el pais.

A Alabama no ire,

A Arizona no ire,

No ire. No ire!

Porque me aterra  la re-encarnacion del  fetido Jim Crow,

Y  cualquier ley parecida a los Codigos Negros del Sur,

No ire a Arizona.

A Alabama no ire.

No ire a Utah,

No ire a Georgia,

No ire a Indiana

Ni al Sur de Carolina

A esos estados,  dispuestos a escupir  la Carta de mis Derechos,

No ire. No ire!

© Carmen D. Lucca

GABRIEL NAVAR

Gabriel Navar, a California Latino, has always enjoyed making images not only through drawing and painting, but also with words. He has been writing in a sort of “stream of consciousness”, “automatic writing” approach for many, many years. It was not until the late 1980s-early 1990s, however, that he started to write seriously and began organizing his writings into notebooks. Furthermore, while an undergraduate at Alameda College, in California, he considered majoring in writing. Through high school and into college, his initial influences were writers that include literary giants such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ray Bradbury. When he was encouraged (by his painting instructor, mentor and long-time friend, Mel Ramos) and decided to pursue visual arts (specifically painting) as a major in college at California State University, Hayward (now known as CSU, East Bay), he continued to pursue writing alongside his painting. He went on earn his MFA at San Jose State University (in California) because he had developed a passion for image-making…. It was a great time!

To this day, he continues to create poems that inspire his paintings, and vice versa.

So…  what “triggers” a poem for him? It could be a great number of things including a random word or memory that “pops” into his mind (and resonates, for one reason or another), images from a dream, thoughts that stay with him after having listened to the latest headlines on CNN or public radio, or colors that linger in his mind after having experienced them in the morning or evening sky. Navar has had the great privilege of collaborating with Dr. Paul Basler, Professor of Music, University of Florida, Gainesville, on three sets of song movements (involving Navar’s words, music and choral singing) titled Cantos Alegres, Dias Divinos and Embrace Creation. The poem, song and music collaborations have been published and performed internationally for over 10 years.

a walk with Carmen 

after having completed chores around the house and shutting off the television….

… tired of hearing those news channel talking heads chatter about

Arizona’s then Oklahoma’s then Connecticut’s anti-immigrant rhetoric,

she decides to go for a walk and enjoy the gorgeous gray overcast afternoon…

soft patches of violet-blue slowly poking through like widening eyes in the heavens

reawakening to shower sun-mist…. it’s always majestic

oh yes, what a beautiful Saturday, she thought, walking through sleepy streets,

lawns trimmed, jasmine bushes poked by hummingbirds, blond children chasing one another

while grown-ups gossip amongst themselves, some frowning, some grinning

after having walked for about thirty minutes or so,

she notices screeching sounds emerging from the increasingly darkening sky

now turned into a deafening orange – blinding and hollering…

out of the corner of her eye, a middle-aged, self-entitled man with an unjustified ego

swings a blunt object at a green being….

his thoughts, his words resonate and hardly fade:

“go back to where you came from, alien!”

© Gabriel  Navar  2012

RAPHAEL MONTAÑEZ ORTÍZ

Raphael Ortiz is Director of Visual Arts (Mason Gross, Rutgers University).  He founded and was the first director of the El Museo Del Barrio in New York City in 1969. His sculptures are included in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he has twice been included in the Whitney Biennial. He has created mixed-media ritual performances and installations for museums and galleries in Europe and Canada and throughout the United States. His computer-laser-video works are in numerous museum collections, including the Ludwai Museum in Cologne, Germany, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. His video Dance Number 22 won the Gran Prix at the 1993 Locarno International Video Festival of Switzerland. He is considered one of the USA’s most creative visual artists, performance artists, and poets.

The LIBERTY IN A TEMPEST TEAPOT Poem

(The Emma Lazarus’s “New Colossus” Variation)

THE STATUE THAT ONCE WITH ARM HELD HIGH

LIT THE WAY TO LIBERTY NO LONGER SIGNALS THE WAY

THE WHIRLWINDS OF POLITICS

LIKE A FRANKENSTEIN NOW POSSESS HER

WITH LOWERED ARM AND EXTINQUISHED TORCH

SHE WIELDS THE TEABAG SYMBOL OF THE TEMPEST

THAT LIKE THE EVIL GENIE BECKONED FROM THE TEAPOT

NOW DROWNS OUT THE VOICE OF LIBERTY

A LIBERTY WHOSE GOLDEN VOICE  ONCE SHOUTED

“GIVE ME YOUR TIRED YOUR POOR YOUR HUDDLED MASSES

YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE THE WRETCHED REFUSE OF YOUR

TEEMING SHORE SEND THESE THE HOMELESS TEMPEST TOSSED

TO ME”

DRIVEN BY PHOBIC WINDS THE CROWD OF

FRIGHTENED AND HATEFUL VENTRILOQUIST VOICES

NOW SPEAK FOR HER

SHOUTING PUNISH THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

DEPORT THEM PUNISH THEIR FAMILIES

PUNISH THEIR CHILDREN PUNISH THEIR EMPLOYERS

MAKE IT SO HATEFUL FOR THEM

THEY WILL NOT WANT TO COME TO THE LAND OF THE BRAVE

AND HOME OF THE FREE

© Mr. and Mrs. Raphael Montañez Ortíz

DUDA PENTEADO

Duda Penteado was born in São Paulo in 1968, and studied at FIAM – SP.  Throughout the 1990s, he  exhibited in Brazil, then moved to New York City where he obtained a position at Muriel Studio in Soho, NYC, as an assistant to Sheila Marbain, the inventor of a new “silk monotype” technique, which was employed by many leading contemporary artists.  Active in Brazil and the USA, as well as in Europe throughout the late-1990s and the early 21^st Century, he showed in The Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, N.J.; Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea, Florence, Italy, 2009; Monique Goldstrom Gallery, NYC; The Museum of Art and Origins, Harlem, NYC (NY); BACI-The Brazilian American Cultural Institute, Washington, DC; Museo de Las Americas, Denver, CO; CITYarts 272nd Mural, “Nature is Love on Earth”, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, The St. John’s Recreation Center, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NYC, 2008, 2009; Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ, Kean University, Union, NJ; Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ; Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ; Drew University, Madison, NJ; Middlebury College, Vermont; UFES- Universidade Estadual do Espírito Santo, Vitoria, ES; UNESP-Universidade Estadual Paulista, SP, and SESC – SP.

He was President of the Artist Certification Board, Jersey City, NJ, until 2010. His  awards and recognition from various institutions in the United States include: Urban Artist Fellowship Award, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Goldman Sachs Student Art Project Grant, Jersey City, NJ (2006, 2007, 2008); Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Claremont, CA; Special Guest for Artistic Achievement & Commitment to YMCA Greater, NY-Youth, NYC; American Graphic Design Award, Interactive Multimedia Installation, NYC; Humanitarian Award from the Hudson County Chapter of the American Conference on Diversity, Jersey City, NJ, and received a Kappa Pi International Honorary Art Fraternity Award, Eta Rho Chapter, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ.  Along with Mario Tapia and Dr. Carlos Hernandez, he has been at the helm of the We Are You Project since 2005.   For more about Penteado art and career explore this URL: http://www.dudapenteado.com

WE ARE YOU poem

America, America…
At the turn of the millennium…
Still cries…
Still fights…
Still ignores…
Still sounds… in the four corners of the earth.

America “MADRE” America.

Not longer, white, blue and red …
A new sound…
A new color…
A new brush stroke…
yellow, mahogany, purple, scarlet, gold…
Latino…

No longer only hands of hard labor…
But !!!!!! Lawyers, Judges, Doctors, Educators…
A Senator…
A Governor…
A voice shaping a new culture…

Latino, North America…
America Latina…
We are you…
We are Americans !!!!!!

SOMOS USTEDES

América, América…

En el cambio del milenio…

Todavía llora…

Todavía pelea…

Todavía ignora…

Todavía suena… en las cuatro esquinas de la tierra.

América “MADRE” América.

Ya no, blanco, azul y rojo…

Un nuevo sonido…

Un nuevo color…

Un nuevo toque de pintura…

amarillo, caoba, púrpura, escarlata, dorado…

Latino…

Ya no sólo manos de trabajo duro…

Sino!!!!!! Abogados, Jueces, Médicos, Educadores…

Un Senador…

Un Gobernador…

Una voz moldeando una nueva cultura…

Latino, América del Norte…

América Latina…

Somos ustedes…

Somos Estadounidenses!!!!!!

©  Duda Penteado  2005

GEORGE NELSON PRESTON

George Nelson Preston was born in NYC on December 14^th, 1938, into an art and music family. Preston’s poems have appeared in journals such as Beat Coast East, Black Renaissance Noire, and Dialectical Anthropology. His “Oda a Nelson Mandela” was solicited as the keynote poem at the opening of the Festival Mandela in Santo Domingo 2010.

Dr. Preston earned the Ph. D. in Art History from the Faculty of Pure Science and Philosophy, Columbia University in 1973.   His career in art history and criticism includes installation of the African Hall of the Brooklyn Museum in1968; Curator of the America 500 exhibition for the government of Argentina in 1992, in which he replaced the usual critical catalog essay with Belle Lettre style poems for each work of art. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Florence Biennale; and, he has written several books, articles and reviews on contemporary and African Art. Most recently Preston was on the planning committee for The Primero Encontro AfroAtlantico at the Museu AfroAbrasil in São Paulo in 2011.  Preston is a recipient of the prestigious “Editor’s Choice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry.”

Preston is co-founder of the Museum of Art and Origins, an affiliate of AMAFRO, Salvador da Bahia and Museu Céu Aberto, São Paulo. His career in poetry started with his founding of The Artist’s Studio.  In the book Kerouac and Friends, the photo journalist Fred W. Mc Darrah wrote the following:

“George Nelson Preston had a storefront “Artist’s Studio” at 48 East 3^rd Street where he orchestrated the most important poetry readings ever held in New York. One historic program on Sunday February 15, 1959, included Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Orlovsky, LeRoi Jones, Garcia Villa, [and] Ted Joans.”

Norman Mailer, Paddy Cheyevsky, Seymour Krim, Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara were also frequent readers at the Artist’s Studio.

It Was 1965, Summer and Hot

flashes kinky-curled-up our hair

and Diana just out of London,

lissome –  as in taught – lycurve

dandauburn hair guilded in tremolo sunlight

our newly whet ardor quaking our clothes.

She was touring and heading for the Alamo

with no more moments to linger in Manhattan

where weʼd met on Broadway

right in front of College Walk and I said

“letʼs meet, go down to Mexico.”

And she took off her panties right there,

“Give these to me

when we get down

south of the Border, George.”

So! You think this is cool?

And before the sun was under

the cliffs across Broadway

over Henrik Hudsonʼs River

I was gone from my job

at the embroidery design factory

wayupintheBronx under the L

! And why, I donʼt know why,

! but I thought about this movie I saw in 1966,

! and who the hell was Porfirio Diaz? But anyway…

So! You think this is cool, huh?

So did I —until we saw a statue

of Lord Tlaloc. He had telescopic eyes,

behind them lurked a million lacrimal glands

presumed to turn prayers to abundant rain

and a coronary problem fed by sacrifices

of conch shells, whole jaguars, jade celts, sting ray spines

and woe made of palpitating ripped out human hearts.

” The campesinos ….uh, the line when the hancendero

 asks, “what did you say your name…” and he says,

“Zapata. Emiliano Zapata.” Alright. So the campesinos…

they were the bleakest clothed trees I could imagine.

Sleeves turned inside-out by humanityʼs void

and so we read the ancient way of writing

on the battered parapets of Quetzalcoatlʼs temple at Teotihuacán

and in the chiseled embroidery of Lord Chaacʼs stony poncho

further South at Chihén Itzá and the campesinos

being suitors of bare lives,

they chased the currents of Godʼs tears….

” (gun shots) No, the horse!

! Get the horse! Kill the horse,

! donʼt let the horse escape,

no dejalo escabillerse ….kill his horse…

_________________________

©George Nelson Preston, Atzcapotzalcualco, Mexico and NYC. August, 1965   

CARMEN VALLE

Carmen Valle is the author of nine books of poetry, among them Trashumante, Haiku de Nueva York and Esta Casa Flotante y Abierta. She also published a book of short stories Diarios Robados and a novel Tu Version de las Cosas. She has a doctorate in Latin American Literature and teaches at City Tech (CUNY).

MAPA PARA ENCONTRAR UN ESPEJO*

Anémona, pulpo, dulce tortuga,

desértico lagartijo, taladro en busca de agua

escorpión militante de las dunas,

brizna de hierba, maguey.

Amapola de las carreteras,

gardenia del jardín oculto,

gomera hecho de leche,

árbol de lilas, limonero.

Guayabas, guanábanas goteadas,

liana aviadora en la jungla,

cebra en la planicie,

flamingo y águila suntuosa,

nube ballena antes del aguacero,

cometa escurridizo en tránsito

al planeta inexplorado.

*De “Esta casa flotante y abierta”, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 2004.

© Carmen Valle 2012

Editor’s note:  On March 24th, at the Know Theater in Binghamton, N.Y., a group of poets, writers and kindred spirits came together for a multi-national, multi-lingual session to read and discuss their impressions of life at the beginning of the 21st Century. From about noon Saturday until after ten that evening, dozens of presenters, family, friends and students shared viewpoints, ideas and work, in exchange for the opportunity to be both listened to and heard. This special mid-issue post opens the window on an experience that will not soon be forgotten by its participants. It’s also an invitation to be there when this nucleus of hope that people from all corners can co-exist gracefully blossoms again next spring for a third Binghamton International Literature Festival. 

The following work appeared in the Crossroads program and is published with permission of the organizer (Mario Moroni) and participants. The poem by Diego Trelles Paz appears in another online magazine, and is not available for reprinting. Two original poems you see below were sent scanned in PDF because of the language format (Hakak’s in Persian and Hassanal’s in Bengali). 

POETRY AND FICTION

HASSANAL ABDULLAH/BANGLADESH

WITH A LITTLE CASH

If I have a little cash, I will open an art shop
My modernist call
Will raise echo and journey
To corners of places not reached before.
Let a few days pass by
If I have a little cash, I will wash your
soft feet with spring water.

If I have some money, I will buy the giant sky –

Wandering all day on its floor
Birds will wake me up
And they will again put me easily to asleep.
The world will find my hands in its own
If the crooked line of restlessness
Is wiped away. With some money
I will spend my time listening to the bees.

Faraway conversations:
No longer talking from wire-to-wire
No more wasting of sinew.
Bangladesh, take not of it,
I will rest my head upon your breast
And sleep all night in tranquility
When I have just a little cash.

Translated from Bengali by Nazrul Islam Naz

Hassanal Abdullah, an author of 23 books including 12 collections of poetry, was born in Gopalgonj, Bangladesh. He immigrated to New York in 1990, and earned his Bachelor and Masters in mathematics at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He is now a high school math teacher and the Coordinator of the Union Square Business Academy at Washington Irving High School. He edits a bilingual poetry quarterly, Shabdaguchha. His poetry, in original Bengali text and in English translation, has been published in many countries of the world.  Abdullah has introduced a new way of writing sonnets, where the rhyming scheme is abcdabc efgdefg, with a seven-line stanza pattern. He calls them “Swatantra Sonnets.” A poet of the post-modern era, Hassanal Abdullah, also wrote a 314-page epic, Nakhatra O Manusar Prochhad (Anyana, 2007),  where he illustrated relations between Human Beings and the Universe. His Selected Poems (Anyana, 2010) in Bengali was published in Dhaka. In addition, he translated Charles Baudelaire, Stanley Kunitz, Anna Akmatova, Nicanor Parra, Wislawa Szymborska, Gerald Stern, and many other poets from all over the world into Bengali and 32 Bangladeshi poets into English.

STANLEY H. BARKAN/U.S.A.

NAMING THE BIRDS

Tired of naming cattle & fish,

Adam turned to the birds.

“Raven,” he said;

then “dove,”

prophetically,

these first creatures of the air

who’d be symbols in a later time

of rain and flood and rainbow.

Of the birds who would

sing at dawn and dusk

he had little interest;

so Eve decided to try

her onomastic skill.

“Nightingale,” she whispered.

“Ibis, heron, flamingo,

parrot, peacock, tanager,”

mystery, grace, magnificence

of thought, motion, and design.

It took a woman

to properly name

the birds of Paradise.

Stanley H. Barkan is the editor/publisher of the Cross-Cultural Review Series of World Literature and Art, that has, to date, produced some 400 titles in 50 different languages. His own work has been published in 15 collections, several of them bilingual (Bulgarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Sicilian).  His latest are, Strange Seasons, a poetry and photoart collaboration with Russian artist, Mark Polyakov (2007) and ABC of Fruits and Vegetables (2012), both published by AngoBoy in Sofia, Bulgaria.  He was the 1991 New York City’s Poetry Teacher of the Year (awarded by Poets House and the Board of Education) and the 1996 winner of the Poor Richard’s Award, “The Best of the Small Presses” (awarded by the Small Press Center), for “25 years of high quality publishing.”  In May 2006, he was invited by Peter Thabit Jones, editor of The Seventh Quarry, to be the first solo featured poet at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, Wales.  He lives and works with his artist wife, Bebe, in Merrick, Long Island.

SULTAN CATTO/TURKEY

MAZERETIM NEYDY?

Uyumamıştı. Susuz ve aç olan gözleri

uzun zamandır zerre kadar uyku tatmamışlardı.
Kendini bir Mısır mumyası gibi hisseden kız
iki bin senedir gözleri açık bekliyordu.
Uykusuz geçen saatlerini bir

‘quipu’nun düğümleriyle sayıyordu.
Kafası formullerle dolu, formül batağına dönmüş,
oradan oraya, ellerinde ağırlıklarla,
hislerini kayaların ağırlıklarıyla karşılaştırıyordu.
Geceler avuç içlerinde yanıyordu.
tutkulu ateşler kalbinde parıldıyordu.
Natchez insanlarının topraklarındaki ebediyen yanan
tükenmek bilmeyen ateş gibi.
Ruhundaki şiddetli rüzgarlar

yel değirmenlerini harekete geçirmişti.
Sessizlikle başlayan her şey
şimdi bir boşluğa doğru sürükleniyordu.
Onun için hiç bir anlam ifade etmiyordu büyüyen evren.
Cevaplar, çözümler istiyordu.
Hemen şimdi bir son vermek istiyordu bu genişlemeye.

Vücudundaki damar sayısı kadar olan
altmış iki yerde sabitlenecek şekilde
kozmolojik sürekliliği durdurmuştu.
Akordu bozulmuş, sorunlu bir enstrümandı bugün.

Artık bütün dünyası iki kelimenin arasında öylece asılı duruyordu.
Kendisi, aradaki boşluktu. Dile gelmemiş her şeydi.
Bir kedinin mırıltısıydı. Sıcak bir süttü.
Bir dere kadar okunaksızdı.
Sapsarı lamalar onun altın sarısı otlağında otlanıyorlardı.
İki rakam arasındaki sessizlikti o,

Onları birbirine bağlayan, sorularla dolu, apağır,
yıkılıp altındaki sulara dökülmek üzere olan saydam bir köprüydü.
Rakamlara kollarını açmış bir şekilde kenetlenmişti.
Rakamlar arasındaki aşktı.
Onları bırakıp gitmeden önce kanatlarını açmaya ihtiyacı vardı.
Kanatlarını açmadan önce,

ilk kez uçan bir kuşun ne düşündüğü üzerine kafa yordu.
Tekrarlayan ritmler ve ahenksiz sesler

kafasında uyuşturucu bir duruma sebep oluyordu.
Ruhu dans ediyordu.
Ateşliydi. Yanıyordu.
Vücudunda yüksek derecede,
kimyasal bileşimleri bileşenlerine ayrılıyordu.
Ruhunun dökük duvarlarında asılmış resimlerde yağmur yağıyordu.
Hafif yağmur damlaları yüzüne vurdukça titriyordu.
Gözlerimin önünde çoğalıyordu.
Sağ el bileğinde bir lastik bant vardı,

üzerine hemen ince bir gömlek geçirdi

ve zihnimin derinliklerinden dışarı doğru adım attı.
Bir bahar rüyası gibi zihninde canlanan düşünceler,

dünyasından bir çiğ tanesi gibi, hiç iz bırakmadan

yok olup gidiyordu.
Kanatları açılmaya başlamıştı.
Bir kereviz tohumuydu.
Eczacının biri onu bir sakinleştirici olarak veya

diğer ilaçlarının tadını gizlemek için kullanabilirdi.
Çok soğukkanlıydı.

Hem de çok.
Camdan ruhum yüksek derecelerde erimek yerine

kristal porselene dönüşüyordu.
Bazı muazzam bedenler gibi,
bendeki mevsim değişikliğini etkiliyordu.
Çok soğukkanlıydı.
Aklımı kaybetmek üzereydim.
Parabolik yörüngelerde yaşıyordum.
Yaşadığım dünya gibi ben de 13,7 milyar yıldır uyumamıştım.
Monet’i ressam yapan şey çiçeklerdi.

Peki ya benim mazeretim neydi?

WHAT WAS MY EXCUSE?

She was awake. Her eyes, thirsty and hungry,
had not tasted sleep in a long time.
Feeling like an Egyptian mummy,
she’s been waiting with open eyes for two thousand years.
She was counting the sleepless hours with knotted strings of quipu.
Her head filled with formulas, bed of formulas,
she was walking around with scales in her arms,
weighing her feelings against rocks.
Nights were burning in her palms. Fires were blazing in her heart,
like the perpetual fire forever burning in the temples of the Nachez people.
Prodigious winds in her soul had brought the windmills into motion.
Everything that had begun in silence was now moving towards the void.
Expanding universe was of no use to her. She wanted answers, solutions.
She wanted to put an end to that expansion now. She had mesmerized
the cosmological constant to be fixed to sixty-two places,
corresponding to the number of veins in her body.
She was a complicated instrument out of tune today.
Today her entire universe was suspended between two words.
She was the space in between. She was everything that had gone unsaid.
She was the cat’s murmur. She was the hot milk. She was as blind as a river.
Golden llamas were grazing on her golden grass.
She was the silence between two numbers, the transparent natural bridge tying them,
a bridge heavy with so many questions, about to collapse into waters below.
She was attached to them with extended arms.
She was the love in between.
Before she let go, she needed to grow wings.
Before growing wings, she was pondering, what does a bird flying for the first time think?
Repetitive rhythms and dissonant tones were inducing a hypnotic state in her.
Her soul was dancing.
She was hot. She was burning.
Chemical compounds were breaking up into their constituents
at high temperatures within her body.
It was raining in the pictures hanging on her soul’s peeling walls.
She was trembling as the soft rain was running down her face.
She was multiplying herself in my eyes. A rubber band on her right wrist,
she had just put on a light shirt and stepped out onto my mind’s terrace.
Thoughts that had come like a spring dream were slowly vanishing from her world,
like a morning dew, leaving no trace.
Her wings had started to grow.

She was the celery seed. A pharmacist would have used her as a sedative or
to disguise the flavor of other drugs.  She was cool.
Very cool.
My glass soul, instead of melting, was converting to crystalline ceramic
at high temperatures.
Like certain astronomical bodies, she was affecting the changes of the seasons within me.
She was cool.
I was going nuts. I was living on parabolic paths. Like my universe,
I hadn’t slept in 13.7 billion years.
It was flowers that had made Monet a painter.
What was my excuse?
Translated from Turkish by Neslihan Tok

Sultan Catto is a professor of theoretical physics at the CUNY Graduate School and at the Rockefeller University, and was the Executive Officer of the PhD program at the City University of New York Graduate School. Together with internationally renowned scientists, Nobel Laureates and Fields Medalists in mathematics, he is on several international advisory boards. He has also been writing and giving poetry readings for several years. Some of his poems are published in literary journals, such as Yale Poets, The Seventh Quarry (Wales),  Bhosphorus, (Turkey),   Paterson Literary Review,  and Long Island Sounds  (USA), as well as in anthologies—Noches de Cornelia: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and  (forthcoming in 2012)  bilingually  in Korean Expatriate Literature and Bridging the Water: An International Poetry Anthology.  His first poetry book, Under the Shadows of Your Falling Words, was published bilingually by Editions Godot (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2008

MICHAEL FOLDES/U.S.A.

FROM: “FORT LEE POEMS”

THINGS WITH SHARP EDGES

I woke up this morning and it was Tuesday.

The large pattern of loneliness settled in

On my head and body like a parachute

Snapped tight by four hands, and full of air.

I didn’t want to think about last night.

There are better things to do with money

Than bribe the gendarmes to give you back

Your car. By law it’s a flat fee for everyone,

But it’s a bigger hit to him who don’t have it.

The fog was lifting fast from the valley;

I could clearly hear the traffic on Route 4.

The mountains in the distance my wife

Said I couldn’t see were hidden in mist,

But later, when the sky turned silver, when

Some blue began to show through, they

Appeared, disappointingly dull and serrated,

Shadowy humps on the moveable ledge where

Heaven leaves off and earth begins.
Later on I took a walk around the block,

A quiet, peaceful walk in the park,

The stranger who just moved in

But didn’t really live there, quite yet.

Michael Foldes has a B.A. in anthropology from The Ohio State University. He has been an editor, contributor and publisher of magazines, newspapers and chapbooks since the early 1970s, including a stint as editor and columnist with Gannett’s newspapers in Binghamton, New York, for more than a decade. He is the founder (2004) and managing editor of Ragazine.CC, the online magazine of art, information and entertainment (http://ragazine.cc); was lead editor on the first edition of the PSMA’s “Handbook of Standardized Terminology for the Power Sources Industry”, and, for more than 25 years has worked as a sales executive in the electronics industry. Foldes and his wife Margot have three children. He commutes between metro New York and Greater Binghamton. His book “Sleeping Dogs: A true story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping”, is forthcoming from Split Oak Press, and is available online at Kindle, Nook, Apple and other e-book stores.

MAHMOOD KARIMI-HAKAK/IRAN

TOMORROW

What will happen to you tomorrow?

Tomorrow when my friends and comrades
go with love
to decorate the cold earth
with their warm blood once again,

tomorrow when you paint your face
with blood from “Those who walk the path of love”*
so the eyes of betrayal and ignorance
do not glimpse fear
seeing your pale face,

tomorrow when my country’s dry earth
will be quenched
with the blood of its people,

tomorrow when again the hand of lies, deceit and vanity
stretches out
of the senile, ugly, old man’s sleeve
to squeeze
shamelessly and unabashedly
your msooth, delicate throat

tomorow when in every back alleyway
men, women,young, old,
with heads bent to the ground
weeping tears of lost memories,

tomorrow at dawn without ad oub
from the alleyways of my childhood
blood will flood seeping allt he way to the desert.

Tomorrow
will my brothers and sisters
executed long ago
awaken from twenty years of sleep
to receive your innocent bodies
in their embrace?

English translation by: Mahmood Karimi-Kakak and Bill Wolak 

Mahmood Karimi-Hakak is a poet, author, translator, theatre and film artist who has created 50 stage and screen plays in U.S., Europe and his native Iran. He is the recipient of a number of awards including Outstanding Foreign Film (Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, 1995), Critics’ Choice (Fajr International Theatre Festival, 1999), Fulbright (2009-10) and Raymond Kennedy (2005). His literary credits include five plays, two books of poetry, numerous articles, interviews and translations in both English and Persian, including Your Lover’s Beloved: 51 Ghazals by Hafez and Love Emergencies (both with Bill Wolak). His latest Film, The Glass Wall documents a desired dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli artists. A Professor of Creative Arts at Siena College, Karimi-Hakak has taught at CCNY, SMU and TU as well as at universities in Europe and Iran. mhakak@siena.edu

MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN/U.S.A.

SPIKE HEELS

In the 1950s, I wore spike heels.

They were very high, but I was thin then,

didn’t wobble. I walked through hours

at my job, my high heels twinkly

as Dorothy’s red slippers with pointy toes,

heels in every possible color, sling-backs

and pumps, the clickety-clack of them

on pavement making me feel

as sophisticated as Marilyn Monroe. Older now,

my heels have gone lower and lower,

reduced to sandals with Velcro straps to hold

my triple E-feet. I still watch women

striding in their spike heels, and wish

for one minute that I could go back

to the days when I could walk

with such grace, look with longing

at this marker of beauty, as though

I were still sixteen and not this woman

I’ve become, pounding through life

on confident feet.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). Her latest book is What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980-2009 (Guernica Editions, 2010), and she has a book forthcoming on September 15, 2012, The Place I Call Home (New York Quarterly Press).  She is the Founder /Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is also Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY.  She has published fourteen books of poetry and, with her daughter Jennifer, she is co-editor of four anthologies.

IFEANY A. MENKITI/NIGERIA

Excerpt from:

THEY WILL RISE

the body of Europe

but an elongation

of the body of Africa

and you talk of ancestors

and I say: Lucy is

up there in heaven

smiling at all of us

that this business of the mitochondria,             

it is not a tale by an old wife;                            

and the talk about a deoxy

in a ribonucleic merger

how can it be about an acid

when it has juju written

all over it?

some deep mystery sprung

from the soil of this Africa

& the mystery is not yet done-

how such a knowledge, it belongs

to a class of things not written down;

which it would make no sense

to write down;

the elders, did they not say

that there are things, a da na

ede ede na akwukwo?

things that will break the scribe’s pen

should the scribe insist

on writing them down?

that when we are born

there comes a time

when we see the end

of our earthly days

but that some among us

when they die

they appear to be

merely asleep

hence the meaning of that song:

mmuo-oma m’lolu n’obu ula

a maro-m n’obu onwu—

angel that you thought was asleep

not knowing it was death

Reprinted from Of Altair, the Bright Light

 (Earthwinds Editions. 2005)  by Ifeanyi A. Menkiti

Ifeanyi A. Menkiti was born in Onitsha, Nigeria.  He has taught philosophy at Wellesley College for more than 35 years.  He is the author of four collections of poetry, Affirmations (1971), The Jubilation of Falling Bodies (1978), and Of Altair, the Bright Light (2005), and Before a Common Soil (2007). Other poems have appeared in journals and periodicals, such as the Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, New Directions, The Massachusetts Review, Stony Brook, Southwest Review, and the African journals: Okike, Transition, and Nigeria Magazine.  In 1975, he was honored with a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, followed in 1978 by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.  He is presently the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square, the oldest continuous all poetry bookstore in the United States. This year, 2012, the store celebrates its 85th anniversary, having been founded in 1927.

OSDANY MORALES/CUBA

LA CASA DEL SOL NACIENTE

Billy Bill y Jo-jo crecieron juntos, tomados de la mano —la de ella pequeña, fría y traslúcida como una rana, la de él áspera y pétrea como un pegote de barro seco— mientras atravesaban un interminable campo de trigo. Todas las mañanas veían pasar el tren rumbo a las minas de oro y más tarde lo veían volver en dirección a los pozos de petróleo. Estos destinos, Billy Bill los conocía de oídas: era hijo del barbero del pueblo y en su terraza los clientes melenudos discutían sobre los dos extremos de la línea del tren. Vienen cargados de oro los vagones, le susurraba Billy Bill a Jo-jo cuando en la tarde se tumbaban en la colina a mirar el paso del tren hacia el Norte. Vienen cargados de petróleo los vagones, respondía Jo-jo cuando en la mañana se tumbaban en la colina a mirar el paso del tren hacia el Sur. Ella vivía con su padre en un chalet de madera a un extremo del pueblo, y su ocupación era recoger los huevos de una escuadra de diez ocas que marchaban todo el día con el cuello tieso, escandalizadas por cómo el padre alcohólico trataba a la hija. Jo-jo tenía un solo vestido y al ponerse el sol lo lavaba para que pareciera limpio al siguiente día, de modo que en la noche siempre andaba desnuda. Se cuidaba de no cruzarse con el padre al anochecer y pasaba todo el tiempo encerrada en su habitación, pero una primavera Jo-jo creció, custodiando sus ocas. He crecido, Billy Bill, le dijo al oído mientras despedían los vagones hacia el Sur. He crecido y mi padre me hará su mujer esta misma noche. Entonces Billy Bill con sus manos de barro le sacó el único vestido que le conocía, y Jo-jo comenzó a tantear con sus dedos húmedos los botones huidizos de la ropa de hombre. Sobre los rieles oxidados no cruzaron vagones. Una bandada de aves negras se escurrió por el cielo en silencio. Al llegar al chalet de madera el padre la esperaba, haciendo rodar sobre la mesa una botella vacía. Jo-jo intentó subir la escalera cuando él la siguió, la alcanzó y le rompió el vestido. Ella no gritó, apartó como pudo los brazos del padre y trató de llegar hasta su habitación. Lo más que logró fue abrir la puerta. Detrás de ésta aguardaba Billy Bill. He crecido, Jo-jo, le dijo antes de golpear al padre en el rostro. El borracho rodó escaleras abajo y cuando su cabeza alcanzó la madera del último peldaño murió. He crecido, Jo-jo, ya nadie podrá hacerte daño, dijo Billy Bill antes de arrastrar el cuerpo. Lo repitió por última vez antes de darle sepultura en el patio. Las gotas de lluvia perforaban en el barro y ellos volvieron a revolcarse en el suelo, desnudos y sucios. Las ocas, como paraguas amontonados, se guarecían de los espectros de la madrugada. Me marcharé en el próximo tren, dijo Billy Bill. Vienen cargados de petróleo los vagones, dijo ella. Haré una fortuna y regresaré por ti, Jo-jo. Te esperaré hasta que muera la última de las ocas, Billy Bill. Si no has vuelto para ese entonces quiere decir que no hay fortuna en las minas de oro ni en los pozos de petróleo, y yo iré a buscarte.

Las ocas, una por una, fueron muriendo.

La primera, atragantada con una espiga de trigo.

Una teja del establo cayó sobre la segunda y la mató al instante.

La tercera murió de un infarto que le abrió el corazón en dos mitades.

La cuarta amaneció con el pico surcado de hormigas rojas.

La quinta y la sexta fueron robadas.

La séptima oca puso un huevo negro y pesado como una roca antes de expirar.

La octava quedó atrapada en un mantel tendido, luego de dar tres vueltas ciegas se estranguló.

La novena oca aleteó en un extremo del patio, echó una corta carrera y alzó el vuelo hasta perderse en el cielo sin nubes.

Cuando alrededor del chalet se paseaba una sola oca, una mano de mujer se acerca y acaricia la cabeza del ave como si se apoyara en un bastón. Le extiende el cuello blanco y emplumado sobre el piso de madera de la terraza y lo cercena con un cuchillo de cocina. En la mañana, su silueta a lo lejos atraviesa los campos dorados, rumbo a un tren que no se detiene.

Chocando con varias personas, como si no las viera, un hombre con sombrero de paño y enormes gafas entra en el bar. Se recuesta de medio lado en un tramo vacío de la barra. La canción resulta conocida, pero disimulada tras otra melodía, como descubrir The house of the rising sun en un registro aún más descorazonado. La cantante es una mujer estirada que muestra los pechos a su público, aunque estos no se le ven porque la luz sale del fondo y sólo es posible definir su contorno. También luce un sombrero de paño. Al terminar la canción alguien pide un aplauso para Jo-jo, que es ella. Se quita el sombrero y lo ajusta en sus pechos, de modo que queda suspendido y no deja ver mucho más. Otro grita que devuelva el sombrero a su sitio. Mientras se asoma al borde del escenario, donde le ofrecen billetes que ella permite deslizar en las ligas de sus muslos, responde que volverá a descubrirse cuando alguno sea capaz de adivinar la frase de la noche. Muchos vocean lo primero que les viene a la mente, otros encuentran la oportunidad de blasfemar contra Dios. El hombre de la barra bruñe un arrugado billete de un dólar y apartando a aquellos que ocupan la primera fila se acerca a Jo-jo. Ella le alarga una pierna cuando él exige: En el sombrero. Jo-jo silba: ¡Tenemos un ganador! ¿Cuál es tu nombre, ganador? Billy, dice el hombre. ¡Un aplauso para Billy, el ganador!, grita el mismo que ha pedido un aplauso para Jo-jo. Ella se saca el sombrero y se lo ofrece volteado. Billy, el ganador, suelta su billete, que cae lentamente como una pluma de oca. Mira el busto de Jo-jo y sonríe, y en sus gafas enormes se repiten los pechos de la cantante. Espérame al fondo, dice ella, hoy es tu noche de suerte. Billy, el ganador, sale del bar, echa a andar una camioneta amarilla y da un indeciso rodeo como si tardara en descubrir cuál es el fondo. Frena, por fin, levantando una polvareda con forma de anacrónico caballito de mar que no tarda en disiparse en el paisaje de neumáticos viejos, cajas de cerveza amontonadas, fantasmagóricos cactus sin pareja. Mientras espera improvisa una melodía con los dedos en el volante. Jo-jo asoma por la ventanilla, otra vez lleva los pechos atrapados en el sombrero. Billy, el ganador, se saca el suyo y lo cuelga en la cabeza de Jo-jo. Se quita las gafas y las larga en la guantera. El rostro de Billy, el ganador, hace juego con su camioneta. La barba mal recortada y dispersa, que no alcanza a ocultar las arrugas, una ceja incompleta, se le pueden contar más de doce cicatrices. ¿A quién le has prestado tu cara?, dice Jo-jo. Es el viento de la carretera. Vienes de muy lejos entonces. Vengo de cerca, pero hago el mismo recorrido varias veces al día. Billy, el ganador, dice ella, hace unos años llegué a este sitio buscando a un hombre como tú. Jo-jo, la cantante, tu historia me interesa menos que la posición de tu sombrero. Sube, te llevo hasta el pueblo. Todavía me quedan dos rondas de canciones tristes esta noche. ¿Sabes cuánto vale el sombrero que ahora cuelga en tu cabeza? No más que mis gemelas. Sólo son un par de tetas, Jo-jo, la cantante, no las sobrevalores, y tampoco les llames gemelas, las encontrarías bastante diferentes si pudieras observarlas desde otro ángulo. Vamos, prometo pasar el detector de mentiras durante el viaje y así sabrás si soy o no tu hombre. Iluminada por el único reflector que funciona, Jo-jo cruza por delante de la camioneta amarilla. Billy, el ganador, la ve sostener los dos sombreros como si paseara sobre una cuerda floja y cada uno le ofreciera equilibrio. La camioneta, trémula, avanza con su luz tuerta lijando la carretera. Cuando era joven, dice Jo-jo, vine hasta aquí detrás de un hombre. ¿Qué te hace pensar que puedo ser yo? No digo que seas tú, suelo premiar a todos los Billy que encuentro a mi paso. Pero Billy no es mi verdadero nombre, Jo-jo, la cantante. Me llamo William Moss, y créeme que hace un buen tiempo que no pronuncio ese nombre completo. Jo-jo aparta una lágrima mirando la oscuridad de su ventanilla donde palpita un viento devastador. ¿Cómo llegaste a este sitio, William Moss, alias Billy, el ganador? En tren, Jo-jo, como todo el mundo. ¿Creías que aquí estaban las minas de oro? Nunca oí hablar de eso, vine porque a los quince años un tren me envió de una sacudida. Pues yo llegué siguiendo al hombre que mató a mi padre. Me costó poco tiempo enterarme de que podía ganar algo en el bar, allí me bautizaron con el nombre de Jo-jo, como muchas otras Jo-jo que estuvieron antes y otras que estarán cuando mis gemelas cumplan su misión en este mundo. ¿Y cómo te llamas, Jo-jo? Kim, Kim Jones. Es un bonito nombre, Kim Jones. Lo es. Me encantaba usarlo antes. Y a este hombre, a Billy, ¿para qué lo buscas? Creo que para matarlo. Yo puedo ayudarte a buscarlo. Y qué pide a cambio, Billy, el ganador. Que me ayudes a dar con una mujer que dejé atrás, cuando era joven. Suena bastante parejo. Lo es, Jo-jo, la cantante, es muy parejo. Ambos miran la carretera, que parece no tener fin.

Vienen cargados de oro los vagones, Jo-jo.

Vienen cargados de petróleo los vagones, Billy Bill.

_____________________________

THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN

Billy Bill and Jo-Jo grew up together, holding hands (hers were small, cold and translucent like a frog; his, rough and stony like a clump of dry mud) as they walked through an endless wheat field. Every morning they would watch the train on its way to the gold mine and later watch it go back towards the oil well. Billy Bill had heard of these destinations —he was the son of the town’s barber and in his deck the long haired costumers discussed the two ends of the train line. They come back filled with gold, the wagons do, Billy Bill would whisper into Jo-Jo’s ear when in the afternoon they lay down on the hill to watch the passing of the train going North. They come back filled with oil, the wagons do, Jo-Jo would answer when in the morning they lay down on the hill to watch the passing of the train going South. She lived with her father in a wooden cottage at one end of the town, and her occupation consisted of picking up the eggs from a squad of geese that marched all day with their necks stiff, shocked at the way the alcoholic father treated his daughter. Jo-Jo had only one dress and when the sun set she would wash it so that it would seem clean the next day, therefore she was always naked at night. She took good care not to meet her father at nightfall and kept herself locked in her room, but one spring Jo-Jo grew up, watching over her geese. I’ve grown Billy Bill, she whispered into his ear while they waved the wagons goodbye heading South. I’ve grown and my father will make me his woman this very night. Then Billy Bill, using his muddy hands, tore the only dress he knew of hers, and Jo-Jo began to feel with her humid fingers the elusive buttons of men’s clothing. No wagon passed over the rusty rails. A flock of black birds slipped away in silence. When she got back to the wooden cottage her father was waiting for her, rolling an empty bottle on the table. Jo-Jo tried to climb the stairs when he followed her, caught her and split her dress. She did not scream, but moved away as best she could from her father’s arms and tried to reach her room. She only got as far as opening the door. Behind it awaited Billy Bill. I’ve grown, Jo-Jo, he said to her before hitting the father in the face. The drunkard rolled down the stairs, and when his head hit the wood of the last step he died. I’ve grown, Jo-Jo, no one will be able to harm you now, said Billy Bill before dragging the body. He repeated this one last time before burying it in the yard. Drops of rain perforated the mud and again they rolled around in the ground, naked and dirty. The geese, like piled up umbrellas, took shelter from the daybreak specters. I’ll leave on the next train, said Billy Bill. They come filled with oil, the wagons do, she said.  I’ll make a fortune and come back for you, Jo-Jo. I’ll wait for you until the last one of the geese dies, Billy Bill. If you haven’t returned by then, it means that there’s no fortune in the gold mines nor in the oil wells, and I’ll go find you.

The geese began to die, one by one.

The first choked on an ear of wheat.

A tile from the stable fell on the second one and killed it instantly.

The third died of a heart attack and its heart was split into two halves.

The fourth was found with its beak furrowed with red ants.

The fifth and the sixth were stolen.

The seventh laid a black egg, heavy as a rock, before expiring.

The eighth was caught in a hanging tablecloth —after three blind spins it strangled itself.

The ninth goose flapped its wings at one end of the yard, ran a short race and took off until it disappeared in the cloudless sky.

When a single goose paced up and down the cottage, a female hand approaches and caresses the bird’s head as if it were leaning on a cane. It extends the white feathered neck on the deck’s wooden floor and cuts it off with a kitchen knife. In the morning, its silhouette traverses the golden fields in the distance, heading for a train that does not stop.

Bumping into several people, as if he were incapable of seeing them, a man with a cloth hat and an enormous pair of glasses walks into the bar. He leans halfway over an empty stretch of the bar. The song turns out to be familiar, but concealed behind a different tune, like discovering The House of the Rising Sun in an even more disheartened register. The singer is a tight woman who shows her breasts to the audience, although they can’t see them because the light is coming from the back and it is only possible to define their outline. She also wears a cloth hat. When the song ends someone shouts for a round of applause for Jo-Jo, which is her name. She takes the hat off and puts it on her breasts, so that the hat is left suspended and does not reveal much more. Someone else shouts that she return the hat to its original place. While she leans on the edge of the stage, where she is offered bills that she allows to be slipped in her garters, she answers that she will uncover herself again when one of them is able to find out tonight’s phrase. Many shout whatever comes to their minds; others find an opportunity to blaspheme against God. The man at the bar burnishes a crumpled dollar bill, and moving aside those in the front row, approaches Jo-Jo. She holds out a leg when he demands: In the hat. She whistles: We have a winner! What’s your name, winner? Billy, the man says. A round of applause for Billy the Winner!, shouts the same guy that asked for a round of applause for Jo-Jo. She takes off the hat and offers it to him turned around. Billy the Winner lets go of his bill, which falls slowly like a goose feather. He looks at Jo-Jo’s bust and smiles, and in his enormous glasses the singer’s breasts are duplicated. Wait for me at the back, she says, tonight’s your lucky night. Billy the Winner comes out of the bar, starts a yellow pickup truck, and makes an indecisive detour, as if he were taking a long time finding out where the back might be. At last he brakes, raising a cloud of dust that has the shape of an anachronistic seahorse that doesn’t take long to dissipate into the landscape of old tires, piled up cases of beer, phantasmagoric coupleless cactus. While he waits he improvises a tune with his fingers on the wheel. Jo-Jo appears at the window, again the breasts caught in the hat. Billy the Winner takes off his, and hangs it on Jo-Jo’s head. He takes off the glasses and puts them in the glove compartment. Billy the Winner’s face matches his pickup truck. The poorly trimmed and scattered beard, not enough to conceal the wrinkles; an incomplete eye brow; more than twelve scars to be counted. Who have you been lending your face to? says Jo-Jo. It is the wind from the highway. You’ve come a long way, then. I come from around, but I cover the same route several times a day. Billy the Winner, she says, a few years ago I came to this place looking for a man like you. Jo-Jo the Singer, I’m less interested in your story than I am in the position of your hat. Come on in, I’ll drive you into town. No, I still have two rounds of sad songs left tonight. The hat that hangs on your head, you know how much it’s worth? No more than my twins. They’re just a couple of tits, Jo-Jo the Singer, don’t overestimate them, and don’t call them twins either, you would find them quite different if you could observe them from another angle. Come on, I promise to pass the lie detector along the way and then you’ll know if I’m your man or not. Lit up by the only working headlight, Jo-Jo crosses in front of the yellow pickup truck. Billy the Winner sees her hold the two hats as if she were walking on a tightrope and each one offered her equilibrium. The pickup truck, trembling, advances with its one-eyed light, sanding down the highway. When I was young, says Jo-Jo, I came all the way here looking for a man. What makes you think that it can be me? I’m not saying it’s you, I usually reward all the Billies I find in my path. But Billy’s not my real name, Jo-Jo the Singer. My name is William Moss, and believe me when I tell you that it’s been a long time since I last pronounced that name fully. Jo-Jo removes a tear looking at the darkness of her window, where a devastating wind throbs. How did you get to this place, William Moss, aka Billy the Winner? On a train, Jo-Jo, like everyone else. Did you think that the gold mines were here? Never heard of that, I came here because when I was fifteen a train jerked me out. Well I got here following the man that killed my father. It took me little time to find out that I could earn something at the bar, where they gave me the name of Jo-Jo, like so many other Jo-Jo’s that were before me, and others that will be when my twins have carried out their mission in this world.  And what’s your name, Jo-Jo? Kim, Kim Jones. That’s a pretty name, Kim Jones. It is. I loved to use it back then. And this man, this Billy, why are you looking him for him? To kill him, I think. I can help you find him. And what does Billy the Winner ask in return. That you help me find a woman that I left behind when I was young. Sounds fair enough. It is, Jo-Jo the singer; it’s quite fair. They both looked at the highway, which seemed endless.

They come filled with gold, the wagons do, Jo-Jo.

They come filled with oil, the wagons do, Billy Bill.

Translated from Spanish by Francisco Díaz Klaassen

Osdany Morales (Nueva Paz, 1981) is a Cuban author. His first book, a collection of short stories, Minucionas puertas estrechas (Ediciones Unión, 2007), earned the David award. In 2008 he won the International Prize for Fiction Casa de Teatro, in the Dominican Republic. In the fall of 2011 he finished his second book, Papyrus, which recently was awarded with the prestigious Alejo Carpentier Award 2012, in Cuba. His fiction works have been included in anthologies about new Cuban literature, such as Maneras de narrar (2006), Los que cuentan (2008) and La fiamma in boca (2009). His stories have appeared in magazines El Cuentero (Cuba), El Perro (Mexico) and Quimera (Spain). Currently, supported by a Banco de Santander Fellowship, he is doing an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU.

MARIO MORONI/ITALY

SALUTARE UN PADRE

A volte il silenzio parla, pronuncia cose enormi, perfino qui dall’altra parte dell’Atlantico, in scene che sembrano familiari, ma che invece vanno guardate con gran riverenza, solennità. Come quando vènti leggeri rifiutano di tacere e riportano indietro lineamenti delle cose, delle mani. La vita di un uomo è segnata da linee confuse, gesti degli anni, ed ancora silenzi, altri silenzi, gesti tracciati nell’aria, anche qui dall’altra parte dell’Atlantico.

Non c’è mai abbastanza tempo per salutare un padre. Non bastano cartoline ed altri messaggi, non bastano le parole appena pronunciate, non bastano anni ed anni. Il semplice congedo è solo un attimo, è lo sprazzo mattutino, ma non basta, nemmeno quello basta. Soprattutto dopo il ventisette settembre, dopo che i pensieri sono andati e la bocca si chiude. La morte è un abbandono? E’ una forma di partenza? Qualcuno se lo chiede, anzi tutti se lo chiedono, anche se non lo ammettono. E’ una dispersione della materia, un ritorno alla terra? Anzi, è un allontanamento, ma da dove e per dove? Ma no, per molti invece è la fine di un inseguimento.

Prima o poi il silenzio ci raggiunge, ci tocca. Sai come avviene? Te lo confesso: c’e’ un mucchio di gente che parla in tono familiare, traffico intorno, rumore delle cose. Poi poco a poco si spengono le luci, si abbassano i volumi, il silenzio s’avvicina, arriva da lontano, da qualche punto che abbiamo lasciato indietro, nascosto. Poco a poco ci raggiunge, infine ci tocca. E’ lì che nasce un profondo rispetto per il silenzio, perché è la fase ultima, l’ultimo stadio: in silenzio e al buio, è la condizione più vicina a quella della morte. La vita è chiaroscuri, solarità, luci varie, intermittenti, alti e bassi, passioni e delusioni, ronzii, ma la morte, la morte no, è solo silenzio nel buio.

Ora la scena cambia, in una stanza, al buio, il silenzio è rotto da una voce, da due voci. Le due voci si cercano, s’intuiscono, un’aria calma nell’assenza di respiro. Ritornano luoghi amati, sfiorati dalle dita, ora un segnale:

Prima voce: “Verso l’unica morte si va instancabili, fatti per morire.”

Seconda voce:” Sì, programmati per morire, anzi nati per il preciso scopo di morire.”

Prima voce: “Sì, è buffo, verso l’unica morte possibile.”

Seconda voce: “E qual è l’unica morte possibile?”

Prima voce: “Ma è la morte stessa, ce n’è una sola, o sbaglio?”
Seconda voce: “Allora la vita è un progressivo allontanamento dalle cose della vita in direzione della morte?”

Prima voce: “Certo, ma ce ne sono di cose da vedere durante il tragitto, che poi è una lenta declinazione, sì che ce ne sono: suoni, voci di madri e gesti riflessi sull’acqua, azioni bloccate in una serie di fotografie, quelle del mare, della vacanza. Migliaia di foto che imprigionano il passato, è l’unico modo per non farlo scappare, tranne che poi le foto ingialliscono, come quelle dei vent’anni, le foto di gruppo, quelle dei parenti.”
Seconda voce: “Sì, le foto di gruppo, quelle della scuola, siamo vivi lì, guardiamo al futuro, anzi sembriamo volerci arrivare al più presto, quasi correre verso il futuro”.

Prima voce: “Certo rimangono vaghi ricordi, come quelli degli errori commessi, ma anche versi come questi:

danzare con i vestiti nuovi

danzare sul mare di sera

danzare, danzare e sognare

Seconda voce: “Che cosa sono, da dove vengono?”

Prima voce: “Sono canti, cantilene, cantari, cantate, in attesa di giovani donne. Senti, una volta a Bruxelles, con un dente cariato, al freddo, ho visto un’alba strana, alle otto di mattina era ancora buio, poi poco a poco è nata una luce. Era l’inverno nordico. Ma a che serve ricordarlo?”

Seconda voce: “Ma sì, a che serve? Ma allora a che serve tutto il resto, i destini incrociati, l’orgoglio giovanile, se poi ci si allontana, leggermente, ogni giorno di più, stabilmente, sai qual è l’unica cosa certa in tutta questa storia?

Prima voce: “No, qual è?”
Seconda voce: “E’ che il tempo passa, questo è certo, e continua a passare, come dire: trascorre, bella parola, sembra come in una vacanza: trascorrere giorni lieti in vacanza.”

Prima voce: “Ora è tardi, cambiamo scena, non so dove sei esattamente, ma ti sento stanco.”

Seconda voce: “Sì, spostiamoci da qui”.

Ora la scena è quella di un viaggio, viaggio attraverso varie lingue, forse paesi mai visti, in anni lontani. Ma senza bocca per chiamare, senza lingua per parlare. E’ un viaggio per mare? E’ un viaggio per terra? Senza occhi per vedere, senza orecchie per sentire. Che viaggio è? Che ora è? Me lo chiedo, se lo chiedono, nel corso dei vari destini, delle varie destinazioni. Partenze in anticipo, in orario, in ritardo, mezzi di trasporto appena arrivati, appena partiti. A volte si è in anticipo, a volte in ritardo, sulle cose, sugli sguardi degli altri, negli appuntamenti. Ma a volte si è in orario, ecco è quello il momento che segna l’equilibrio. Si è in orario con gli sguardi degli altri, si è arrivati al momento giusto: un figlio che guarda negli occhi suo padre, un padre che guarda negli occhi suo figlio. Si è appena in tempo per certi appuntamenti. Si è soli senza saperlo, si è in compagnia senza saperlo. Si parte sempre, alla fine, prima o poi. Una partenza è in attesa per tutti, chiuso ogni gesto, chiusa ogni memoria. Abbiamo avuto un padre, siamo diventati padri, i nostri figli diventeranno padri e madri, i figli dei loro figli diventeranno padri e madri. Sempre presenti, partiti per sempre.

___________________________________

FAREWELL TO A FATHER

Sometimes silence speaks, pronounces vast things, even here on the other side of the Atlantic, in scenes that seem familiar, but instead need to be viewed with great reverence, solemnity. As when light winds refuse to be hushed and bring back the outlines of things, of hands. A man’s life is marked by muddled lines, the years’ gestures, silences and more silences, gestures traced in the air, even here on the other side of the Atlantic.

There is never enough time to say good-bye to one’s father. Postcards and other messages aren’t enough, the words just spoken aren’t enough, years and years aren’t enough. The simple good-bye takes only a moment, it’s a morning cloudburst, but it’s not enough, not even that. Especially after September the twenty-seventh, after the thoughts have flown and the mouth closes. Is death a desertion? Is it a leave-taking? Someone wonders, indeed everyone wonders, even if they don’t admit it. Is it a dispersal of matter, a return to earth? It is, rather, a departure, but from where and to where? But no, for many it’s the end of a hunt.

Sooner or later silence reaches us, touches us. Do you know how it happens? I confess: a lot of people speak in familiar tones, traffic around them, the sounds of things. Then little by little the lights go out, the volume is lowered, silence draws near, arrives from far off, from some place we left behind, hidden. Little by little it reaches us, finally touches us. A deep respect for silence is born there, because it’s the last phase, the last stage: in silence and dark our condition is closest to death. Life is chiaroscuros, sunshine, changing lights, intermittent, high and low, passions and delusions, rumblings, but death, no, it’s only silence and darkness.

Now the scene changes to a room, in the dark, the silence is broken by a voice, by two voices. The two voices look for each other, intuit each other, a still air in the absence of breath. Beloved places come back, brushed by fingertips, then a signal:

First Voice: “Toward one death we go tirelessly, born to die.”

Second Voice: “Yes, born to die, even born for the very purpose of dying.”

First Voice: “Yes, it’s funny, toward the one possible death.”

Second Voice: “And what is the one possible death?”

First Voice: “It’s death itself, there is only one, isn’t there?”

Second Voice: “Then life is a progressive departure from living things in the direction of death?

First Voice: “Sure, but there are things to see on the trip, which is a slow path downward, yes, there are things to see: sounds, mothers’ voices, and gestures reflected in water, actions caught in a series of snapshots, scenes of the beach, of vacations. Thousands of photos imprisoning the past is the one way to keep it from getting away, except that the photos yellow, like those of one’s twenties, the group photos, one’s relatives.”

Second Voice: “Yes, the group photos, the school photos, we’re alive in them, we look toward the future, we seem to want to get there as fast as possible, almost running toward the future.”

First Voice: “Vague memories are left, like those of mistakes we made, but even verses like these:

dancing in new clothes

dancing on the sea in the evening

dancing, dancing and dreaming”
Second Voice: “What are they, where do they come from?”

First Voice: “They’re songs, lullabies, sung waiting for young women. Listen, once in Bruxelles, with an aching tooth, I saw a strange dawn, at eight in the morning it was still dark, then little by little the light was born. It was the northern winter. But what use is remembering it?”

Second Voice: “Yes, what use? But then what use is the rest, the crossed destinies, the youthful pride, if then everything goes off, lightly, further and further each day, steadily, do you know the only sure thing in this whole story?”

First Voice: “No, what is it?”

Second Voice: “That time passes, that’s for sure, and keeps passing, that is to say, elapses, nice word, like a vacation: happy days elapsed on vacation.”

First Voice: “Now it’s late, let’s change the scene; I don’t know where you are exactly, but you sound tired.”

Second Voice: “Yes, let’s get out of here.”

Now the scene is that of a journey, a trip through various languages, perhaps countries never seen, in distant years. But without a mouth for crying out, a tongue for speaking. Is it a sea voyage? Is it a land voyage? Without eyes for seeing, without ears for listening. What journey is it? What time is it? I wonder, they wonder, in the course of their various destinies, their various destinations. Early departures, on-time ones, late ones, the means of transport having just arrived, just departed. Sometimes we’re early, sometimes late, for things, for others’ gazes, for appointments. But sometimes we’re on time, okay, that’s the moment that signs the balance. We’re on time for the others’ gazes, we arrived at the right moment: a son who looks in his father’s eyes, a father who looks in his son’s eyes. We arrive just in time for some appointments. We are alone without knowing it, we are together without knowing it. We always leave in the end, sooner or later. A departure awaited by everyone, every gesture turned off, every memory closed. We had a father, we became fathers, our children become fathers and mothers, their children will become fathers and mothers. Having always arrived, always departed.

Translated from Italian by Olivia Holmes

Mario Moroni was born in Italy in 1955. He moved to the United States in 1989. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Memphis, Colby College, he currently teaches Italian at Binghamton University.  Mario Moroni has published seven volumes of poetry, one of poetic prose, and a DVD of poems, images, and electronic music in collaboration with composer Jon Hallstrom. In 1989 he was awarded the Lorenzo Montano prize for poetry. His poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies of contemporary poetry. As a critic, Mario Moroni has published three volumes and has co-edited three collections of essays on modern and contemporary Italian and European literature and culture.

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DIEGO TRELLES PAZ/PERU

Diego Trelles Paz was born in Lima, Perú, in 1977. He is the author of a short story collection, Hudson, el redentor [Hudson, the Redemeer] (Lima, 2001), and a novel, El círculo de los escritores asesinos [The Circle of the Murderous Writers] (Barcelona, 2005). His stories and articles have appeared in N+1, The White Review, Paterson Literary Review, Revista ñ, Babelia, Sibila, among others. He is a professor in Binghamton University, SUNY, and the editor of El futuro no es nuestro [The Future Is Not Ours] (2009) an anthology of short stories by young Latin American writers that has been published in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Panama, Hungary, Peru, and will be released in USA by University of Rochester’s Open Letter in 2012.

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VANTZETI VASSILEV/BULGARIA

ПЪТУВАНИЯ до БИНГАМТЪН

Когато ми казаха, че ще пътувам до Бингамтън,  на лицето ми грейна самодоволна усмивка. Ами да, аз бях посещавал градчето често. Или казано възторжено: „Аз съм горд спонсор на двама колежани на СУНИ!” От тези няколко пътувания първото и последното се откройват релефно спрямо останалите.

Бях сам родител на двама сина и пътувах с по-възрастния към щатския колеж в Бингамтън. Имахме само една кола. От къде пари за втора? Само преди година бях получил гражданство. Синът ми бе в първата десетка на „Уолтър Панас Скул” и бе получил 4 стипендии, но само една от тях, на СиБа Гайги му донесе 1500 долара. Бе приет и в Ню Йорк Университи и Фордам, но парите ми не стигаха, затова срещу разочарования му поглед изрекох най- силния си аргумент, с който разполагах: „Универитетът в Бингамтън е сред първите 10 от щатските в Америка! Виж, АйБиЕм е основана тука!”, а когато паркирахме в студенсткото градче възкликнах: ”Защо не мога да се върна в студентските години и да бъда тук!”. АрЕйа, студентка от по-горен курс, като разбра, че съм родител и ще се шляйкам безцелно из кемпъса, ме покани да вляза на подготвителната лекция, която изнасяше на новодошлите. Бях единственият родител. „Редът е такъв, изискванията са такива!”- редеше приспивателно АрЕйката, но когато от устата й се отрони думата „секс”, дрямката ми се изпари.

Наострих уши. „На таблото до вратата на моя офис има три презерватива: бял, син и розов! Не се смущавайте, елате и си поискайте, когато ви дотрябват! Не е задължително! Безопасният секс е препоръчителен!” Почуствах се неловко. Погледнах боязливо около мен: децата, да, наистина, те всичките можеха да бъдат мои деца, слушаха безразлично. „Правете секс само в собствените си стаи! Виждате ли скамейката на терасата отсреща?”- пръстът й сочеше една от терасите, разположени срещу офиса й. „Миналата година двойка студенти правиха представление! Изхвърлиха ги веднага!” Изби ме студена пот. Ставаше въпрос за …орал секс.

Неволно се върнах в мойта младост. Такъв кемпъс нямахме. Преподаваха ни в сгради на бивши казарми. АрЕй? Какво пък е това? В тийн-годините баща ми упорито ми натрапваше „Половият въпрос” на д-р Август Форел, където професорът настойчиво съветваше да не мастурбираме. После добави: „Има леки жени, които може да ти лепнат някоя венерическа болест!” И накрая оформи родителския си съвет по сексуалните въпроси:” Търси твоята любов! Не лъжи момичетата! Но не бързай да се жениш преди да си завършил!” Едно поколение разлика, през която през вратите на тайнството бе нахълтала публичност.

Нарекох това пътуване :”предпазители в три цвята като национален флаг”.   Пътувах няколко пъти годишно до Бингамтън, първо заради моя син, после и за друг студент, който спонсорирах. Последното ми пътуване нарекох :”Няколко метра тоалетна хартия”. Не бе за добро и бе спешно. Сега ще ви разкажа защо.

Моят студент се бе озовал в затвора. Светкавично прекосяване на щата със стипчивия привкус на неприятно преживяване в устата, справка в полицията, копие от рапорта на полицията на ареста, бърза ориентация в адвокатския биснес на града, наемане на препоръчания адвокат, плащане на сумата за да бъде освободен под гаранция, пътуване до затвора и освобождаване!

В студентската му квартира изслушахме разказа му. Предишната вечер се бе отбил в някакъв бар, бе ударил няколко уискита на гладен стомах и прибирайки се по пътя към дома си, бе ритнал порта на частен дом. „Портата”- казваше полицейския рапорт – „е сериозно повредена и собствениците искат обезщетение от 3,000 долара.” Освен това нарушителят много често споменавал майка си. Много от детайлите не помнеше. Припомняше ги полицейският рапорт. Накрая, сконфузено, но с хитра усмивка извади малко роло тоалетна хартия. Разви го бавно. Разделени от перфорацията на страници, подобно на книга, отделните късове бяха запълнени със ситни букви, сякаш човекът, който бе ги изписал се бе стремял да не пропилее и най-малкото пространство. Затворът, условията, полицаите, охраната, разпитите, черното момче в съседната килия, затворено невинно. Всичко това бе записано на тия няколко ярда тоалетна хартия. Може би началото на една писателска кариера.

Адвокатът ни получи хонорара си, но остана разочарован, че не можа да разбере от полицейския рапорт защо клиентът му бе споменавал думата „майка”. Попита ме няколко пъти. Отговорих му, че моят студент не си спомня, но бях отгатнал, че той е крещял:”Мамка Ви капиталистическа!” Беше левичар. С оскъдните средства с които живееше, аз бих станал и ултра левичар.

Отидох да видя портата. Аз бих я поправил и за 200 долара.

И двамата ми студента завършиха успешно. Вторият се придвижва от ляво на дясно и е някъде по средата. Няма да се изненадам, ако някой ден прочета заглавие: „Записки от затвора върху тоалетна хартия”.

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TRAVELS TO BINGHAMTON

When I was told that I would be traveling to Binghamton a smug smile came to my face. Oh yes, I had visited it often. Or to say it more enthusiastically: “I’m the proud sponsor of two college students of SUNY!”. Of these few trips the first and last separate themselves drastically from the rest. I myself, a single parent of two sons, was traveling with the older one to the campus of SUNY. We only had one car. Where would we get the money for a second one? I had just become a citizen a year before. My son was in the top ten graduates of Walter Panas High School and was the recipient of four scholarships, but only one of them, gave him $1,500. He was admitted by NYU and Fordham, but since I didn’t have enough money, I could only answer the look on his face, filled with disappointment, with the strongest argument I could come up with: “Binghamton is one of the top ten in The States! Look, even IBM was founded here.” And when we parked in the lot of the campus, I exclaimed: ”If only I could return to my college years and be here!” The resident assistant (RA), a student in an upper class, who discovered that I was the only parent and that I would walk around aimlessly on campus, invited me to participate in the lecture for freshmen that she was holding for them. “These are the rules, those are the requirements” uttered the RA-girl in a lulling voice.  But, when the word “sex” came out of her mouth, my nap was disrupted. I pricked up my ears. “On the board, next to the door of my office, there are three condoms—a white one, a blue one, and a pink one. Don’t be embarrassed, come and ask for one when you need it. It’s not required! Safe sex is to be recommended!” I felt weird. I looked around me uneasily— the kids were listening with indifference. “Have sex only in your own rooms! Do you see the bench on the terrace over there?”— her finger was pointing to one of the terraces across from her office. “Last year a couple gave a show. They were thrown out immediately!”. I broke out in cold sweat . . . they were having oral sex.

Without meaning to, I went back to my youth. We didn’t have such a campus. They used to teach us in a former army barracks. Resident Assistant—What the hell is that? In my teens my father used to persistently push “The Topic of Sex” of Dr. August Forell, in which the Professor insisted in recommending that we should not masturbate. Then he added: “There are slutty women who can gift you with a venereal disease.” Afterwards, he formulated his parental advice on the topic of sex: “Look for your true love. Don’t fool girls. However, don’t rush to get married before you graduate.”

A generational difference, during which the doors of secrecy had opened to the eye of the public.

I called this trip “Condoms in Three Colors as a National Flag.”  I traveled a few times a year to Binghamton, at first because of my son, then for a student, whom I already mentioned, whom I sponsored. I called my last trip “A Few Yards of Toilet Paper.” It wasn’t something positive, but it was urgent. I will now tell you why.

My student found himself in prison. Crossing the state like lightning, with a bad taste in the mouth, caused by an unpleasant experience, an inquiry in the police station, a copy of the police report of the arrest, a quick orientation of the available lawyers in the city, hiring of the recommended attorney, payment of the bail money so he could be freed under a guarantee, traveling to the prison, and finally getting him free.

We heard his story in his student apartment. He had gone to a bar the night before, had a couple of whiskeys on an empty stomach, and on his way home had kicked in the door of a private home. The police report said: ”The door is badly damaged and the owners are asking for retribution of $3,000. In addition, the perpetrator mentioned his mother very often. He didn’t remember many details. The police report was reminding him of some of them. At the end, embarrassed, but with a sly smile he took out a small roll of toilet paper. He unrolled it slowly. The separate sheets were full of small letters, as if the guy who had written them, had tried not to waste even the smallest space. The jail, the conditions, the policemen, the guard, the questioning, the black guy in the next cell who was put in jail even though innocent, all of these was written on these few yards of toilet paper. It was perhaps the beginning of a writer’s career.

The attorney got his fees, but he was disappointed that he couldn’t figure out from the police report why his client had been mentioning the word “mother.” He asked me a few times. I told him that my student didn’t remember, but I had guessed that he had been screaming, “You capitalist mother!”  He was a leftist. If I lived on the limited means that he was living on, I would have become an extreme leftist!

I went to see the door. I could fix it for $200.

Both of my students graduated successfully. The second one moved from the left to the right and now is in the middle. I wouldn’t be surprised if some day I would read “Notes From Prison on a Toilet Paper.”

Translated from Bulgarian by the author

Vantzeti Vassilev, born in 1945 in Radomir, Bulgaria. He earned a PhD in chemical engineering in Sofia. He immigrated in 1988 and has lived in New York since 1989. He worked for the New York Department of Environmental Protection. He is the author of  The Seeds of Fear (1991), a novel based on autobiographical data describing life in Bulgaria for the past 50 years and the absurdities that result from totalitarian society. A portion of the novel describes the lives of prisoners held without sentence in Belene, the infamous concentration camp in Bulgaria. These stories were told firsthand to the author by the prisoners. The novel was presented at the 20th Annual International Arts Festival 1991 of Cross-Cultural Communications in  New York. His second novel, The Trains of Roma, was published in 2006. The book was presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2009. His third book, Short Stories from NYPL, was published in 2011.

JOE WEIL/U.S.A.

ACADEMIA

You are nothing

you are

nothing you

are

nothing if not that bright glint

of semen

or is that  seagull on the horizon?

Distinguished by the sibilants of excellence:

the bright ivory tusk that gores you

brings you down to mix the blood of your thigh

with the dust or is that some other story?

Oh yes. You were digressing.

It is another story: it will not fit in with the works published section

it comes out of the sun and makes you squint, makes you

vomit up your dead, as if you were a sea of

qualifying adjectives:

They will tell you this poem is too obscure.

You are angry. You never meant to be. There is

the grey man – over there

he is mistranslated, and the red woman over there

who is misread, and every one is guarded

as if the boar were already prowling the quad

it’s eloquent achievements skewered high up

on its tusks.

Joe Weil is currently a lecturer in the creative writing department at Binghamton University. He has published three full-length books of poetry as well as three chap books, the latest of which is The Plumber’s Apprentice, New York Quarterly press. He is also active as an editor (formerly editor of Ragazine, currently of MAggy), and promoter of poetry. For a year he was publisher of Monk books and produced three chaps, one by the Pulitzer Prize winner, Mark Strand. Weil has a book of poems and photographs done with his friend, the artist Marco Munoz, as well as an e book of sonnets. After a long break, he has begun to compose music again.

__________________________

Crossroads included a special event, so to speak, the reading of Stanley Kunitz’s poem “The Layers” in English, and then in several translations. Among the translations was one by Dr. John Smelcer in the native Ahtna, a disappearing native Alaskan language. Both the English original and Smelcer’s translation are reprinted here. Many thanks to “the other Stanley” (Barkan) for facilitating the multi-lingual reading of the poem.

THE LAYERS

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz

Nen’tah Dzi

Stanley Kunitz’s “The Layers” translated into

 the Ahtna Athabaskan language of Alaska

by John E. Smelcer

Sii ghayaał dez’aan,

sedze’ eldaan’,

‘eł sii cic’uunen,

hwna eldaan’ ‘ida’

sii ‘estayteltaen stadelnen.

Sii ‘aen cit’aa’ak’e,

daak ‘aen sił’aa

tse tiye’ niłkanazilae

xuk’a t’uu yuuł,

sii ‘aen kayax kudghił’iitden

niłyihghatses ts’en yabaaghe

‘eł kon’ c’et’

c’aa kuk’tl’aa ninesk’ae,

k’edze’ tsiin ceyiige’

t’ak k’e ts’enla’ des.

Sii tsii gha denaey

yii sii gheli ts’aat,

‘eł denaey nadestaan!

Xaa c’asule’ ciz’aani uts’e kat’aen

ye dghos’itkay stadelnen?

Łts’ii niyaan

kon’ laedze’ ‘iita latsiin,

uyiits’ kulaele da’a k’edze’,

ts’iic unaen ghizet.

Sii nakeltaen, sii nakeltaen,

neniic uyighiyaa duuhwk’etle,

kae łaltsicdze’ tiye’

ndaa sii daetl’,

‘eł ‘aal ts’es k’e ten caax.

Yii tets t’uut’,

hwna yanlaey na’aay

‘el sii ghayaał tah tlaegge’,

yanlaey naes zaegge’ yanihwdinitaan:

“Ikae zdaa nen’tah dzi, c’eye’ ke’ łaets.”

Sii hwyaa lae ts’aan,

cu gutse eldaan’

yii giligak cu’ts’endze’

lae da’a stsesi.

Sii c’eye’ tl’aa cu’ts’endze’.

 _____________________

R to L: Weil, Abdullah, Barkan, Moroni, Karimi-Hakak, Gillan, Foldes, Catto & Vassilev. Not pictured: Trelles Paz, Morales & Menkiti. (Petr Savrda Photo).

Father, Flying

In the front hall
two men,
colored bars on their chests;
one fidgets with his cap
at his side
as if he’s about
to offer flowers.

Facing them,
the father feels himself disappear
into fog.

* * *

He dreams he’s flying
low across the desert;
he passes over
his son’s crib in the sand,
ladder to his tree house.
“Hey,” he calls out,
“hey.”

In the Charcoal Drawing

after William Flynn

a Victorian chair
has its right arm in a sling;
the left arm, an exposed humerus.

Instead of a leg,
a swollen stump, a peg
that seems to be inching
across the floor.

The sides of the hollow
back, strung together
like a cat’s cradle;
hundreds of  tiny circles
mired in black smoke.

The chair is also seatless;
no place for a body
to rest.

About the poet:

Carol Dine received a grant from the Barbara Deming/Money for Women Fund.  Her book Van Gogh in Poems was published in 2009 by the Bitter Oleander Press. Her memoir, Places in the Bone (Rutgers University Press, 2005) deals with the redemptive power of art. Recent poems appear in Aesthetica Creative Arts Annual (UK), Boulevard, Salamander, and the anthology Bending Toward Justice: Poems Against War. She teaches writing at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design, Boston.

 ……………………………………………………………………………………….

  ……………………………………………………………………………………….

The Lunar Enthusiast

You went to Texas by magic accident.
You woke up, it was mysteriously balmy.
I was alone in November, watching
new day carve crows from darkness.
Maybe this is what love is — waiting
alone in the ill-limned dining area,
filing intent down to zero.  Probably
not.  My sweater dries on the door.
It’s wool so it holds everything longer

than it should.  The navy thing looks
like I vacuumed a human out of it—
looks almost wearable again.  Later,
maybe our faces will talk at each other
from glowing screens.  There’s something
in illumination when what you love
becomes TV — changing colors of fruit
jarred for winter.  Later, you’ll see
a face purse its lips in the flattened

zone of here, sneaking a look at breasts
in the reading lamp of there.  I’ll mention
the hummingbirds I’ve noticed recently
at work — how each hovers a moment
by the oleander in its commute wherever.
I’ll be trying to describe how I think
of Futurity.  Lines will run through
branches of lanky trees, visible against
a sheet of stars—reach indeterminate.

Excuse Me, Miss Universe

Tending anything is a chore.
Moving one’s hair when bored
is like drapery for selfhood.
Succulents wag in the drab

yard where we hide garbage.
I have no clue where this wind’s
conceived — Pacific or sage desert,
maybe.  Months of you as ash

and the world is jumbled imagery.
None of your adroit grace, despite
life spare of erudition, the trees
shifting and shitting openly wherever.

I belabor my letters with ghosts’
grammar, the way bubbles find
mother air and join her silent medium.
I think of a body in the vacuum.

Unanswerable Quietude, you are
suppler than I remembered.  When
I lie down in your vast machine,
it so readily accepts my form.

About the poet:

Evan Hansen lives in San Francisco, California.  He works for a living.  He has poems in the current Cimarron Review and the forthcoming Burnside Review, among other publications.  He is in the process of assembling a first collection of poems.

Neon

The music pounds like
Shots fired from a gun,
One followed
By another.
I can feel the vibrations through my entire
Body.
The music ls so loud they can probably hear it down
the block
No one can hear anything else.
This is what I love most
the anonymityof it all.
It’s the only place that I can easily
Be accepted; the place where
No one bothers to understand.

Cold, Wet and Temporary

Snowflakes
So beautiful, so delicate.
Temporary.
They’ll all melt, someday.
Nothing can stop it.
But they’re pretty in the meantime.
Let’s just enjoy them now, okay?
Don’t argue.
Just forget about the future.
We’ll love them now.
And forget they’re doomed.
Our cold, wet, and temporary friends.

Brilliant Blue Sky

Sunlight streams through the window,
Falling pale yellow on the
Cool
Linoleum floor.
Air buzzes with conversation,
Brisk teachers addressing surly students,
Vapid giggling girls doing their damndest
To remain so.
The sky is brilliant blue (the tired adage),
Blemished not by cloud,
But blessed not by bee,
Nor bird, nor tree.
There’s a subtle
Gentleness in the beauty of the land,
Blanketed by the warmth from above,
Radiant as the face I love most.

About the poet:

Carly Gove is an eccentric 14-year-old from Port Republic, N. J.  She enjoys science, writing, art and music. She hopes to someday become a scientist or writer, but mostly to always learn more. 

The saint’s rose

I went to the Saint of Maglavit
to ask for news about you.

Instead of answers, he gave me a wild rose
to keep in holy water.

If the rose dried,
I’d know you were in the desert.

If the rose made roots,
I’d know you were in the ground.

If the rose lost its petals,
I’d know your soul was free.

For eight years, I wove fields of wool
with roses that bloomed in bleeding nights

and they didn’t dry,
didn’t make roots,
didn’t lose their petals.

All this time, I kept the saint’s rose
on the windowsills of enemies and friends
and waited for news about you.

The day the rose’s petals fell,
I knew you were coming home.

Words around my neck

Tell me, grandma, everything you know,
so I can be your mouth when you’re gone.

I’ll be one with you.
Your brown eyes will be mine,

your hair, your nails, your breath,
all mine.

I’ll wear your words around my neck
on a silver chain with a filigree heart.

I’ll keep the necklace
on the table next to me at night,

next to the stained mirror
that has seen it all.

The chain will give a faint glint
and start speaking

when the moon will muster
enough courage to stand witness.

The Convoy of the Sacrificed

 After the group of sculptures Cortegiul Sacrificatilor by Aurel Vlad,

     on display in the yard of former Sighet political prison, Romania

They bear witness.

They stand in rain or scorching heat,

naked, bald, huge arms raised

as if to shield their heads from blows,

or to surrender,

or implore.

They look old.

Eighteen men and women

in a group called a lot:

a large family—my father’s?—

or close friends accused of conspiracy,

or strangers sentenced together.

They face the wall

that separates gray hell from hell

and none of them looks to the sky,

to its cataclysms of clouds.

Some heads are bowed

as if they pray for us

or for their lives.

Some point in front of them

behind the wall,

to the future, us,

to me—

but nothing is there,

just bricks and mortar,

school children

and tourists taking pictures.

Bones protrude,

bellies stuck to ribs,

empty holes for eyes,

mouths open with no tongues.

But they move their lips,

they speak,

can you hear them?

They bring a message from the mass graves.

They come from history to testify,

to name the names,

carrying an era’s weight of sand,

asking for nothing.

They teach us nothing.

No lesson here

about forgiveness or faith,

about survival,

loss or fear.

Blood dries on them like rain,

wounds close

until no trace is left,

no trace.

They march in silence

to the wall.

Forgetfulness

kills them again.

About the poet:

Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in 5 a.m., Cutthroat, Word Riot, Ascent, Meridian, Mudfish, Harpur Palate, Exquisite Corpse, The Fourth River, Ezra, Zoland Poetry, among others. She is the author of two poetry collections: Eternity’s Orthography (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and To Part Is to Die a Little, forthcoming from Červená Barva Press. She recently co-edited and co-translated The Vanishing Point That Whistles, an Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry, forthcoming from Talisman Publishing House (2011). Serea lives in New Jersey and works in New York for a major publishing company. 

PORCELAIN SOAP

Porcelain wings soap suspenders
and the like. St. Paul required
a Jesus jump-start
to save him from the flames.
AC/DC cables, some say.
Ah, but the factory
serving martyrs on dinner plates,
delicious martyrs, succulent
to the marrow.

Porcelain wings suspenders soap
plus nothing of the kind. Fire
comes from the East. Smoke
from the West. Tattered souls
all over.

Porcelain soap suspenders wings
and the like
plus nothing of the kind
plus a dash of cinnamon
pungent parrot
redyellowblue
feathers extinct,
off the charts,
plus the lead,
the lead,
plus the lead,
the lead,
plus the lead,
the lead…

IMMORAL WARS

Alas, when will we
consecrate the battleground
with mercy?

Wax or wane?

The longer we wait,
the longer the world will take
to forgive us.

MANIFEST DESTINY

Molasses? Well, I don’t mind
If I do,
dripping from her thoughts.

Molasses between my knees
like a pendulum
dripping to be free.

Molasses, ah yes, molasses,
good ‘ol black strap
shielding us from the briar patch,
the gallows, the electric chair
and the omnipresent needle
injecting justice into four-way, pedestrian crosswalks
not yet designated for tan and whitewashed deer
fleeing four-bedroom, three-bath, split-level Colonials.

Three bathrooms are a convenience,
no doubt.

But put yourself for one nanosecond
into the hooves of one tan and whitewashed deer
leading her only daughter around dusk
across treacherous Goucher Boulevard.

Now, I ask you: How many
bathrooms does it take
to change a light bulb?

About the poet:
In September 2011 Alan Britt read poems from his book Alone with the Terrible Universe at New Jersey City University’s Ten Year 9/11 Commemoration in Jersey City, NJ. His poem, “September 11, 2001,” appeared in International Gallerie: Poetry in Art/Art in Poetry Issue, v13 No.2 (India): 2010. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

How To Feel Life

The basement stairwell is dark, no ghosts in the corner where I go to smell my mother

in an old black file cabinet that holds her life, lost that February day as snow wisps floated

across the highway, cold angels promising to lay a coat by midnight.

I carry her keys, on a golden chain with a large brass C, insert one at the cabinet top,

wait for the welcome pop of the lock, metal against metal, it’s open.

The top drawer — bank files, an old business ledger, a stained satin book with raised pink

flowers, Our Baby’s First Year, my sister’s history in great detail down to the final ounce

in her bottle, mine beneath, jotted afterthoughts seven years later.

The third drawer — the death drawer, funeral guest book, cemetery plot papers, two glass

cylinders, seven-day mourning candles, one for her, one for Dad, empty save for burnt wicks.

The bottom drawer — jewelry, safe from intruders, my pearls, her pearls, my gold, her gold,

bracelets, earrings, filigree pins, all hidden under the death drawer.

I savor the second drawer, slide the hinge, pull it open, there it is. Her makeup case, red leather

(Red is life, she said, tie a red ribbon on your babies’ cribs). I unsnap it, inhale her stale

sweetness, pull open lipstick, remembering the sound she’d make as she smacked ruby lips

together, mwah, mwah, and then paah! she’d open her mouth, forming a wordless O

as if surprised. In a plastic container, pressed powder, a cracked circle. She’d reach over,

pat my nose with the soft pad. Why is your nose red? she’d ask, clogging my pores to bring on

next week’s rash. Put on some lipstick, she’d tell me then, you look pale, tired, you should rest.

Eye cream, blue to match her new polyester pantsuit, pants for a lady who’d always skirted up

for her man, her love who’d slipped away on another winter night.

She’d pull out the red leather bag at lunch, shared tuna at the diner, sugared pancakes at IHOP,

Kosher corned beef at the deli, I’ll take my half home, eat it later, she’d tell me as she prepared

her face to reenter her lonely apartment when I’d leave to ply the highway home.

I close my eyes, take another whiff, snap the clasp, lay it in the drawer of scents.

Next week I’ll return to feel her around me, hear her words, nice girls don’t shave their legs, 

stay away from Palisades Park, don’t let a boy touch your body, your nose is red, your lips 

are pale, you need rest you need rest you need rest.

I pull the key from the lock, push in the oval — click — and climb the stairs toward my life,

vow to change the bulb on the wall before my next visit to the place where I go

to smell my mother.

About the poet:

Gail Fishman Gerwin’s memoir Sugar and Sand received 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist designation, and she earned four consecutive Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards honorable mentions. Her poetry appears in journals including Paterson Literary Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Caduceus, Calyx, The American Voice in Poetry, and Lips.

Custard Apple

This is that fruit
That miracle
Hanging like an emblem over many a shadowland.
It looks a bit like a green-colored grenade
Or, at times, like a heart too—
Interior filled up with the tantalizing smell of gunpowder,
And its taste—inexplicable!

The place where we used to live in childhood, there was a haunted house nearby, full of ancient trees and creepers and moss. One evening, starting up from his siesta and in the manner of a detective protagonist, my grandfather took me with him to that house. A forlorn place swaying in the breeze. From among a cluster of trees he pointed to me one. It was an ordinary tree with a few fruits hanging from it, which looked like grenades to me. It was the mewa. Custard-apple mewa. My grandfather said — These are fruits of paradise. The only heavenly fruit allowed to be exhibited on earth. Look at them closely and keep it quiet. No sooner had he said this than our bodies shuddered like fire-crackers. Engulfing me along with my thrills, my grandfather’s pox-spotted fair body and dusk-colored long beard blew in the sporadic draft.

The sun is setting on the other bank of the clear-streamed Harabati. On that horizon, a distant banana plantation begins to appear. A guerrilla boy emerges from the plants and wanders all alone as if in a fairytale—
Without his cohorts, cut off from his group forever,
Whirling about and always getting lost,
A guerrilla boy all by himself
With a custard apple in his right hand, a grenade in his left,
On the left ear a little ring, a Kalashnikov hanging from the shoulder,
Wearing a steel-colored jacket, a bullet necklace on the neck
With his heart in the middle—all kept in place with a lot of pins.

In the distant, sunset-smeared banana plantation, an outlandish guerrilla boy.
Talks nimbly—in precise terrorist terms.

There is neither other language nor idiom among the vegetation than this—
And against terror—frequent, wonderful little acts of terror…
Having accomplished each one of them, cupping his hands he drinks water
And whirling about and getting continuously lost
This guerrilla boy becomes a solitary terror artist.

And this is that fruit
That miracle
Hanging like an emblem in many a shadowy land
The sunset-polished, dismal grenade fruit
With the tantalizing smell of gunpowder inside,
And a taste—inexplicable!

The grenade, on the other hand, is a wonderful earthly fruit,
A bit tangy, but still a delicious earthly fruit,
Hanging like an emblem in many a sunny land,
Full of the addictive smell of an exotic fruit inside.
This evening the mingled smell of custard apples and grenades are driving alien forests insane.
An outlandish guerrilla boy
With a custard apple in his right hand, a grenade in his left,
And his heart in the middle. Thus balancing the fruits
He staggers across that perilous bridge on the road to heaven,
Knocks at heaven’s gate with news of a yet more exotic, symbolic, earthly fruit…
A long way behind him, the queued up pilgrims of virtue wait for their turn,
They are an alarmingly long way behind…

This is that fruit
That miracle
Hanging in many sunny lands of the earth like an emblem.

Custard Apple in Original Bengali – ‘Ataphal’

[Ataphal; Translated from original Bengali by Subrata Augustine Gomes, poet, writer, translator]

About the poet:

Masud Khan (b. 1959) is a poet, writer, and translator who emerged as an important poet in the 1980s, mostly supported by counter-cultural little magazines. Over the past two decades or more his poetry and essays have featured in magazines in Bangladesh, India, USA, UK, Belgium, Romania, Malaysia and Canada. Sajjad Sharif writes about Masud - The poetic language he uses is also multifarious – “tatsama” (Sanskrit root) words are often paired up with vernacular or colonial English, a constant slippage of nouns and adjectives shining up old-fashined sentences. In the end, language sets up like trap a network of sound.” Masud Khan’s poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (Norton Anthology, New York/London), and Padma Meghna Jamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh by Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature. Presently a resident of Toronto, Canada, Masud Khan works as an electrical engineer.

[ Extracted from the Kaurab, a literary webzine & reprinted with permission:

http://www.kaurab.com/english/bengali_poetry/masud.html]

Ground Bound

Everyone on the train swallows at the same time,

bonded by blocked passages.  Some passengers

read passages from books.  Was a book

originally named a book for its form?

Its particular material way of being bonded to itself?

Or is a book defined merely by the specific words,

their specific order, no matter their means of being presented?

You know why I must ask this question.

I wonder if this man’s O will bond to my B.

Hopefully not.

I desire certain molecular relationships not to get too serious.

We met today, let’s leave it at that.

Please, no odious bonds.

Don’t follow me home, my body

wishing for magic wands.

When you board it’s a risk you take, proximity,

the collision of clothing articles,

flesh coverings, flesh itself,

its natural perfumes bored to stench.

She could look it up and tell you with faux ease, but instead

she’ll admit not knowing the definition of the word particle.

How small is its unit?  In what instances is it used?

Light?  Water?  Sound?  Skin?

The last leg has a cramp and prays for relief, to bond

with a companion before bonding with Earth.

The Theatre

I’ll meet you right in front of the theatre.

It might rain later right in front of the theatre.

So I’ll look at the sky and imagine

it’s raining right now right in front of the theatre.

I like to be prepared.  I’m over it

before it ever happened right in front of the theatre.

It doesn’t seem like the people are watching

the show right in front of the theatre.

Answer your phone and entertain your older sister

for 15 minutes right in front of the theatre.

Sure, kick a pebble while you’re waiting,

but don’t spit right in front of the theatre.

How do fashionable young women wear their hair these days

while waiting to underdose right in front of the theatre?

I’ll meet you right in front of the theatre.

If you eat my face and leave a gaping hole

my public appearances will be much more

highly requested right in front of the theatre.

You can smoke a cigarette and feel

even worse right in front of the theatre.

The smoke will fall in and the smoke will fall out,

just like the ants in the sauerkraut,

(the song your grandfather sang), right in front of the theatre.

Maybe he’s assembling one of those 5,000 piece puzzles

he loves to occupy himself with right in front of the theatre.

You think you saw a man hover

above the street right in front of the theatre.

Actually, you’re not sure you really saw

him at all right in front of the theatre.

Was it your uncle looking for 1/9 of an eye

belonging to a jigsaw unicorn to ride

into some future thinning cloud right in front of the theatre?

No, you’re not high right in front of the theatre.

You’re low enough to see slow death checking itself out

in a tiny mirror right in front of the theatre.

How do fashionable young women avoid harnessing

their dissatisfaction to their faces these days while

thinking insensitive thoughts right in front of the theatre?

Wait for your mustache to grow back right in front of the theatre.

Stand in an invisible bathroom line right in front of the theatre.

Will you choose chains, or will your prop be hot steam

seeping out of the pothole right in front of the theatre?

This is all too dramatic for me, you say

right in front of the theatre.

Toil

Each generation throbs

in a particular way,

but always a capacity for

making believe.

Each has trod and tripped

on the universe.

A garment

ripped

seamlessly.

The whole is not the half of it.

Who we are

is what we remember

with intensity.

Each longing to be

its better self.

To finally be

a mere monster,

set loose

in its own home,

which from so far away

has appeared

this whole time to be

a diorama.

About the poet:

Jillian Brall received her Master’s in Creative Writing in 2009 from The New School. Alongside Gregory Crosby, she is co-creator/co-editor of the online poetry and art journal, Lyre Lyre. Poems have recently appeared in The Best American Poetry Blog, Praxilla Journal, Connotation Press, Esque, The Tower Journal, The Portable Boog Reader, Unshod Quills, and Ping Pong Magazine. She is also a musician and visual artist, focused on painting, collage, photography and video art.

The Afternoon of a Town Supervisor

These nymphs that I would perpetuate:

           so clear

           And light, that it floats in the air

           Heavy with leafy slumbers.

            Did I love a dream?

                 From The Afternoon of a Faun—Stéphane Mallarmé

  Reclined on his lawn chair in the garden,

  an improbable, pearly airship slips in

  through his hot droopy lids; it hovers

  in an emerald sky just above his front yard’s

  temperate trees, now grown swollen

  into a thick, grasping jungle where

  a seething tiger crouches, waits to wreak

  vengeance on the neighbors, while a dowager

  angel in a Dior evening gown, her hair

  blown one way, her gown the other,

  in no wind at all, plucks a harp above his four

  bedroom, three bath, Dutch Colonial home.

  Suddenly roused by the tiger roar

  of the cardiologist’s Toro rider mower

  next door, he is not puzzled  by the sudden

  absence of the airship, or saddened

  that the  trees are skinny again, with no teeth,

  and that the sky is empty and pale blue.

  He is content with his senses. A plain

  thirst now lifts him from his chair.

  He goes to the fridge, plucks

  from a bunch of cool white grapes —

                                the store-bought kind — thick-skinned,

                                that when held to the sun do not shine,

  and from which wine is never made.

God Plays a Buddhist Joke on Allen Ginsberg

Spectacular attacks! Mass casualties! Symbolic targets!

How strange the FBI speaks.

I feel that I’m trapped in an Allen Ginsberg poem.

We thought Ginsberg was dead but maybe he’s already been reincarnated

As a (latent) gay copywriter for the feds.

It could be possible.

Allen the New Jersey Buddhist would be a perfect target for God’s

Queer sense of irony.

I can see Ginzy there, in a windowless office deep in the bowels

Of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, furiously keying a laptop,

Next to the cold storage room for John Edgar’s furs,

Crinkling his nose at the strong odor of mothballs.

He churns out text furiously, page after page, terse press releases

Filled with hyperbolic language about

The War On Terrorism, Multiple National Threats,

Whether We Should Detain the Dalai Lama, and

The Hidden Menace of Japanimation.

Occasionally, the old Allen’s rebel spirit leaks through

Into the tight confines of the present life of his soul.

Osama! Oh sandwich! Oh, balls! he types, then abruptly stops.

Why did I write that, his now self-censoring brain thinks.

Should I turn myself in, put myself on report?

Then he thinks of the trim, crew-cut young special agent in pressed pants

Who periodically visits the building to drop off paper work.

He wonders why his thoughts so often turn idly to the image of this handsome youth.

He pulls his tie tighter around his neck,

Makes a mental note to see the staff psychologist next week, and

Returns to his patriotic work.

Crime and Self-Punishment

I should have known when I first thought to do the crime

That eventually I’d catch myself.

It wouldn’t be hard.

I’d leave a trail even I could follow.

Big, deep footprints,

Fingerprints found everywhere

Clear and sharp on greasy window glass,

And lots of threatening letters

Tied up in neat bundles.

When I finally cornered myself,

I’d stand there defiant,

Shouting, I don’t need a lawyer,

I’ll defend myself!

I would give myself a choice.

Would I seek a jury of my many moods,

Or that small, persistent voice of my internal magistrate?

Well, I don’t trust juries anyway.

After all, what would I do if the trial ran long and

I wanted to get home to eat but couldn’t?

I might send myself up the river,

All because of a delayed dinner.

I might tragically miscarry myself,

Lock myself away for years.

So I elected to risk the possible wrath

Of my merciless conscience.

The trial began badly:

I made a brilliant and damning

Opening prosecutorial statement.

“I will show this court,”

I said into the looking-glass,

“Why I should be made to live in dire guilt for years to come,

“Why I have not been harsh enough to behave responsibly,

“Why I am a menace to myself,

“Why I should make an example of myself…”

Against such an opening

My defense was brave but feeble.

I swore to tell the truth,

The whole truth,

Nothing but the truth,

I couldn’t lie to myself.

The end was a foregone conclusion:

Whap! the gavel fell

And I stood to receive my sentence:

Life without parole.

Lentil Soup

Lentil soup is brackish,

Turbid, brown, mysterious.

You lift your soup spoon

Out of the murk,

And ladle up what looks like

The tops of many skulls

Tossed away after trepannings.

The spinach yields the lentils

Reluctantly — it clings stubbornly

To the stainless steel,

While the brown stock is viscous

And opaque; it could conceal

Crocodiles and piranha.

The taste is earthy — your lips

Withdraw instinctively, pause,

Sample again, and like.

It feels like you’re swallowing

A swamp, frogs and all,

Yet it sits well on the stomach

And nourishes.

About the poet:

Dwyer Jones, when he isn’t writing poetry and essays, is a medical editor who lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, with his wife, the artist Loring Hughes, and their two cockatiels, Freddie and Frances.