Category — Poetry

Swimming In the Whispering

1.

I was not going to be long,
I promised.
I promised and hoped to die.
I swore on a name no one would say lightly,
without feeling dread.
The same fear one has of drowning,
arms tired of flailing, giving into the undertow,
going under currents, into something
so dark, we do not speak of it.

2.

I went out into the beginning of darkness.
This is before the owls are ready
and the moon is not in ascension.

I went out into the beginning of things,
a screen door swinging behind me
as an afterthought.

Out,
where things are never ready
and I was not ready either.

3.

I went into that night-sweat, frosted echo,
into the heartbeat of loss, into things
whispered, things barely beginning
and barely ending, and barely neither,

at the hour when things are closing,
doors are bolted and lights of regret are turned on,
where the trajectory of meteor showers
follows loss, follows the wrenching sun,

where night holds wind against its will,
where the sun is in the given-up. Into this
is where I was headed, without light,
without knowing where I was going,

or how to come back,  and  not really caring.
I had turned out the light as I left,
locking the way behind me,
leaving the sound of the closing door far behind.

4.

I could have gone to the broken limestone quarry.
There things are blasted into stillness
and reduced into less than themselves.
I could have headed to the smoke station at the peak
with its ladders to Cooper Hawks
and into the streams of cloud cover.

I could have found the headquarters of tenderness, or
gone into remembrance or forgetfulness.
I could have found buoys of walnuts,
or climbed into the dazzlingness.

But, it was solid night as I left,
when no one in their right mind would go
without anything. And I left empty-handed.

5.

I went into the hibiscus moon, into
the eggplant-colored night.

I went out, realizing, I forgot something.
Then I decided it did not matter.

If I was intended to find my way, I would;
If not, then who would care?

When we walk out of the language of ourselves,
what are we looking for? Then what?

Will someone search for us in the sensuous longing?
Into the Whispers?

There are only so many words to step out of.
Only so much drowning in air.

About the poet:

Martin Willitts, Jr., was nominated for two Best of The Net awards and his 5th Pushcart award. He has three new chapbooks: “The Girl Who Sang Forth Horses” (Pudding House Publications, 2010), “Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for Cezanne” (Finishing Line Press, 2010), “True Simplicity” (Poets Wear Prada Press, 2011).

-30-

Domestic Ops

On another swollen summer night,

stricken by the shadows of agents

strumming sullen adagio banjos

on the street outside our avocado

split-level ranch, she sets traps

for the maturing apocalypse. I must

study Mandarin and speed chess

down at the local community center,

tonal syllables and ivory gambits.

His job is to roll out a nylon mat

five times per day and comb the dog

for bugs and fingerprints. Our sister

learns to dazzle with sinuous displays

of flaming nunchaku and cymbals.

All of us have to hunt for and gather

nutritious wild plants from vacant

residential lots in the neighborhood.

We ask her why again, leery of specters.

She opens the back of the record player,

spinning the turntable at 78 rpm

with a bloody-cuticled index finger.

Out pops four dull sapphire capsules,

one for each secret molar compartment.

About the Poet:

Born in Flint, MI, raised in the Detroit area, and ripening in California since the fall of 1992, John F. Buckley lives and works in Orange County with his wife, teaching at local colleges and chasing the poetic dragon. His work has been published in a few places, one of which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize.

___________________________________________

View larger photos from the gallery please enter the FS button.

……………………………………………

IDA MUSEMIC, Photographer

Ida Musemic’s eye sees what’s common, while her mind and emotions realize what makes the common special.  Her photographic gift is in capturing sequences of events that echo the staccato of time passing: a clip here, an instant there, the space between a blank the viewer fills in as ‘obvious’.  Musemic’s work is on display at the 12×12 International Art Show through January 9, 2011, Jeanne D’Arc Studio · 253 West 24th Street · New York. For gallery hours, schedule a viewing with the curator, Stella Lilling · 212.924.3605.

More of Musemic’s work appears on her website: http://www.idamusemic.com.

For thePHOTOGRAPHYspot submissions, please see guidelines at ragazine.cc/submissions/

Micah Tower has his MFA from Hunter College. He teaches at Trinity Western University, has written film and music reviews for Slant and Patrol, and his poetry has appeared in publications such as Paterson Literary Review, Gulf Stream and, previously, in Ragazine. He enjoys making his own yogurt and blogging on http://www.thethepoetry.com.

©2011 chuckhauptphoto

Chuck Haupt is photo editor of Ragazine. You can visit his blog at www.chuckhaupt.com/blog.

For thePHOTOGRAPHYspot submissions, please see guidelines at ragazine.cc/submissions/

The Songs of Maldoror translated by R J Dent

—-

An extract from The Songs of Maldoror

by Le Comte de Lautréamont

Translated by R J Dent and illustrated by Salvador Dalí

VII

The corsair with the golden hair has received Mervyn’s reply. Across that
singular page he follows the trace of the intellectual unease of its writer
abandoned to the weak powers of his own suggestion. He would have done
better to consult his parents, before responding to the offer of an unknown
friendship. No benefit will result from his being involved as the main actor in
this equivocal intrigue. But after all, that’s how he wanted it. At the specified
hour, Mervyn, from the door of his house, goes straight ahead, following the
Boulevard Sebastopol to the Saint-Michel fountain. He takes the Quai des
Grands-Augustins and crosses the Quai Conti; as he walks along the Quai
Malaquais, he sees, walking parallel to him and moving in the same direction
along the Quai du Louvre, an individual carrying a sack under his arm who
appears to be scrutinising him closely. The morning mists have lifted. The two
passers-by simultaneously arrive on the Pont du Carrousel from opposite
sides. Although they have never seen each other, they recognise each other!
Truly it was touching to see these two beings, separated by age, bring their
souls close through an immensity of feelings. At least that would have been
the view of those who paused in front of the spectacle, which many – even
the mathematically-minded – would have found moving. Mervyn, his face
covered in tears, was thinking to meet, at the entrance of a life, so to speak,
a precious support in future adversities. Be assured that Maldoror said
nothing. This is what he did: he unfolded the sack he was carrying, opened
its mouth wide, and seizing the youth by his head, pushed his whole body in
the rough sacking envelope. With his handkerchief, he tied up the end that
had served as way of introduction. As Mervyn was uttering loud and piercing
cries, he picked up the sack like a bag of linen and smashed it repeatedly
against the parapet of the bridge. Then the victim, aware that his bones were
breaking, became silent. A unique scene no novelist will ever find again! A
butcher was passing, sitting on the meat in his cart. An individual runs up to
him, urging him to stop, and says: “There’s a dog in this sack; it has rabies:
Put it down as quickly as you can.” The butcher is happy to oblige. As the
individual walks away, he sees a young girl in rags holding out her hand.
What heights of audacity and impiety can he reach? He gives her alms! Tell
me if you want me to escort you through the door of a distant
slaughterhouse, a few hours later. The butcher has returned and as he
throws his burden onto the ground, he has said to his friends: “Let’s hurry up
and kill this rabid dog.” There are four of them, and each picks up the
hammer he normally uses. And yet they are hesitant because the sack is
moving violently. “What’s this emotion that grips me?” one of them shouted,
slowly lowering his arm. “This dog is whimpering with pain like a child,” said
another, “you’d think it knows the fate that awaits it.” “They usually do,” said
the third, “even when they are not sick, as in this case; their master only has
to stay away from home for a few days and they start howling in a way that’s
horrible to hear.” “Stop!… stop!…” the fourth shouted, before all their arms
were raised in unison to resolutely strike the sack. “Stop, I tell you, there’s a
fact here that has escaped us. Who told you that this cloth sack contains a
dog? I want to make sure.” Then, despite the taunts of his companions, he
untied the bundle, and pulled out one after the other the limbs of Mervyn! He
was almost suffocated by the discomfort of this position. He fainted when he
saw the light again. After a few moments he gave undoubted signs of life. His
rescuer said: “In future, learn to use caution in all of your dealings. You
almost found out for yourself that it is pointless practising non-observance of
this law.” The butchers fled. Mervyn, heavy-hearted and full of grim
forebodings, returns home and locks himself in his room. Do I need to dwell
on this stanza? Ah, who would not deplore the events consummated above!
Let us wait until the end for an even harsher judgement. The dénouement is
going to be precipitated, and in these kinds of stories, where a passion of
whatever kind is given, and fears no obstacle as it makes its way, there is no
reason for diluting in a godet the shellac of four hundred banal pages. What
can be said in half a dozen stanzas must be said, and then, silence.

VIII

To construct mechanically the brain of a somniferous tale, it is not enough to
dissect nonsense and powerfully brutalize the reader’s intelligence with
renewed doses, so as to paralyse his faculties for the rest of his life, by the
infallible law of fatigue; one must, besides, with the use of a good
mesmerizing fluid, ingeniously make him somnambulistically unable to move,
forcing him to close his eyes against his nature by the fixity of your own
stare. I mean – and I to say this not to make myself better understand, but
only to develop my thoughts that simultaneously interest and irritate you by
their most penetrating harmony – that I do not think it is necessary, to
achieve the proposed goal, to invent a poetry entirely outside the usual laws
of nature, the pernicious breath of which seems to unsettle even absolute
truths, but to bring about a similar result (consistent, moreover, with the rules
of aesthetics, if one thinks about it) is not as easy as one imagines: that is
what I wanted to say. That is why I will make every effort to do so! If death
arrests the fantastic thinness of my two long arms on my shoulders, used in
the lugubrious crushing of my literary gypsum, I at least want the reader, in
mourning, to be able to say: “One must give him his due. He has cretinised
me considerably. What would he not have done if he’d lived longer? He was
the best professor of hypnotism that I ever knew!” These few touching words
will be carved on the marble of my tombstone, and my ancestors’ spirits will
be content! – I continue! Once there was a fish’s tail which moved about at
the bottom of a hole, next to a down-at-heel boot. It would not be natural to
wonder: “Where is the fish? I only see the tail moving.” Precisely – for one
would implicitly acknowledge not having seen the fish, because in truth it was
not really there. The rain had left a few drops of water in the bottom of this
funnel dug in the sand. As for the down-at-heel boot, some have since
thought it was left there after being voluntary abandoned. The great crab, by
divine power, was reborn from its resolved atoms. He pulled the fish’s tail
from the well and he promised to re-unite it with its lost body, if it announced
to the Creator his representative’s powerlessness to dominate the raging
waves of the Maldororean Sea. He lent it two albatross wings, and the fish’s
tail took off. But it flew up to the renegade’s residence, to tell him what was
happening and to betray the great crab. But the latter guessed the spy’s plan,
and before the third day had reached its end, it pierced the fish’s tail with a
poisoned arrow. The spy’s gullet uttered a feeble sigh and gave up its last
breath before hitting the ground. Then an ancient beam, on the highest point
of a castle, drew itself to its full height, then sprang back on itself and cried
loudly for vengeance. But the Almighty, changed into a rhinoceros, told him
that this death was deserved. The beam calmed down and went back to its
place at the heart of the manor and resumed its horizontal position, and
recalled the startled spiders so that they could continue, as in the past, to
spin their webs in its corners. The man with lips of sulphur learned of his
ally’s weakness, which is why he commanded the crowned madman to burn
the beam and reduce it to ashes. Aghone executed this harsh order. “Since,
according to you, the time is ripe,” he exclaimed, “I have gone and recovered
the ring that I had buried under the stone, and I’ve attached it to the end of
the rope. Here is the bundle.” And he presented a thick coiled rope, sixty
metres long. His master asked him what the fourteen daggers were doing. He
said they remained faithful and stood ready for any event, if necessary. The
criminal nodded his head in satisfaction. He showed surprise, and even
concern when Aghone said that he had seen a cock split a candelabra in two
with its beak, look closely at each part in turn, and exclaim as it frantically
beat its wings: “It is not as far as one thinks from the Rue de la Paix to the
Place de Panthéon. Soon you will see lamentable proof of this!” The great
crab, mounted on a fiery horse, rode at full speed towards the reef – witness
of the flinging of the stick by a tattooed arm; the reef which had provided
sanctuary on the first day of his descent to earth. A caravan of pilgrims was
on its way to visit this place, thenceforth consecrated by an august death. He
hoped to reach it, to urgently ask for help against the plot that was being
prepared, of which he had knowledge. You will see a few lines further on with
the help of my icy silence that he did not arrive in time to tell them what a
ragman, hidden behind the scaffolding adjoining a house under construction
had recounted to them: namely, on the day the Carrousel bridge was still
covered with the wet dew of the night, he saw with horror the horizon of his
thought confusedly expand in concentric circles at the morning spectacle of
an icosahedric sack rhythmically pounded against the limestone parapet!
Before he elicits their compassion with the memory of this episode, they will
do well to destroy the seed of hope within themselves... To shake yourself
free of your laziness, put the resources of good will to use, walk beside me
and do not lose sight of that madman, his head crowned with a chamber-pot,
and with a stick in his hand which he uses to drive along in front of him one
that you would have difficulty recognizing, unless I took care to warn you and
recall to your ear that the word is pronounced Mervyn. How he has changed!
With his hands tied behind his back he walks straight ahead as if he were
going to the scaffold, and yet he is guilty of no crime. They have arrived at
the circular enclosure of the Place Vendôme. On the entablature of the
massive column leaning against the square balustrade more than fifty meters
above the ground, a man has uncoiled and thrown a rope which falls to the
ground a few paces from Aghone. With practice, one can do a thing quickly,
but I can say that the latter did not take very long to tie Mervyn’s feet to the |
end of the rope. The rhinoceros had learned of what was going to happen.
Covered with sweat, it appeared breathing heavily at the corner of the Rue
Castiglione. It did not even have the satisfaction of joining the fight. The
individual, who was examining the area from the top of the column, loaded
his revolver, took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. The commodore, who
had been begging in the streets since the day when what he believed to be
his son’s madness had begun, and his mother, who was known as the
daughter of snow because of her extreme pallor, pushed forward and used
their chests to protect the rhinoceros. Useless care. The bullet punched
through its hide like a drill; one would have thought, with all the appearance
of logic, that death would inevitably occur. But we knew that this pachyderm
had been imbued with the substance of the Lord. He withdrew, grieving. If it
were not fully proven that he was often too good to one of his creatures, I
would pity the man on the column! The latter, with a flick of the wrist, pulled
back towards him the rope, which was now weighted as described. Put out of
the perpendicular, its oscillations swing Mervyn, head down. His hands
suddenly snatch up a long garland of immortelles that join the two
consecutive corners of the base, against which he beats his forehead. He
carries into the air with him that which was not a fixed point. After piling at
his feet a large part of the rope in the shape of superposed ellipses, so that
Mervyn remains suspended halfway up the bronze obelisk, the escaped
convict with his right hand moves the youth into an accelerated movement of
uniform rotation, in a plane parallel to the column’s axis, and with his left
hand gathers up the winding coils of rope which lie at his feet. The sling
whistles through space, the body of Mervyn follows it everywhere, always
kept away from the centre by centrifugal force, always keeping a mobile and
equidistant position in an aerial circumference independent of matter. The
civilized savage gradually lets out the rope to the far end, which he holds with
a firm metacarpal bone, which has a strong but inaccurate resemblance to a
steel bar. He starts to run around the balustrade, holding on to the rail with
one hand. This manoeuvre has the effect of changing the original plane of the
rope’s revolution, and increases its already considerable tensile force.
Thereafter it turns majestically on a horizontal plane, after having passed
successively and imperceptibly through several oblique planes. The right
angle formed by the column and the vegetal string has equal sides! The
renegade’s arm and the murderous instrument merge in linear unity, like the
atomistic elements of a ray of light penetrating a dark room. The theorems of
mechanics allow me to speak thus; alas! we know that one force added to
another force generates a resultant consisting of the sum of the two original
forces! Who is to say that the linear rope would not already have broken but
for the strength of the athlete, but for good quality of the hemp? The corsair
with the golden hair at the same time suddenly arrests his own momentum by
opening his hand and letting go of the rope. The recoil of this operation,
totally opposite to the previous ones, causes the balustrade’s joints to creak.
Mervyn, followed by the rope, is like a comet trailing behind it its blazing tail.
The iron ring of the running knot, gleaming in the sunlight, itself helps to
complete the illusion. In the course of his parabola, the condemned youth
cleaves the atmosphere right to the left bank, passes it by virtue of the
driving force which I suppose to be infinite, and his body hits the dome of the
Pantheon, while the rope partly coils around the upper wall of the immense
cupola. On its spherical and convex surface, which resembles an orange only
in shape, one can at any hour of the day see a dried skeleton hanging there.
When the wind moves it, they say that the students of the Latin Quarter,
fearing a similar fate, say a short prayer: these are insignificant rumours
which one is not obliged to believe, and are only fit for frightening little
children. It holds in its clenched hands a sort of large ribbon of old yellow
flowers. The distance must be taken into account, and nobody, despite the
evidence of good eyesight, can categorically state that they really are those
immortelles I have spoken of, and which were snatched from a grandiose
pedestal during a one-sided struggle that took place near the Nouvel Opera.
It is nevertheless true that the hangings draped in the shape of a crescent
moon do not receive any further expression of their definitive symmetry from
a quaternary number: go and see for yourself if you do not believe me.

Salvador Dali, Signed Portrait, Valerie Brown photo, 1976

The French, which follows:

VII

Le corsaire aux cheveux d’or, a recu la reponse de Mervyn. Il suit dans

 cette page singuliere la trace des troubles intellectuels de celui qui

l’ecrivit, abandonne aux faibles forces de sa propres suggestion.

Celui-ci aurait beaucoup mieux fait de consulter ses parents, avant de

repondre a l’amitie de l’inconnu. Aucun benefice ne resultera pour lui

de se meler, comme principal acteur, a cette equivoque intrigue. Mais,

enfin, il l’a voulu. A l’heure indiquee, Mervyn, de la porte de sa

maison, est alle droit devant lui, en suivant le boulevard Sebastopol,

jusqu’a la fontaine Saint-Michel. Il prend le quai des Grands-Augustins

et traverse le quai Conti; au moment ou il passe sur le quai Malaquais,

il voit marcher sur le quai du Louvre, parallelement a sa propre

direction, un individu, porteur d’un sac sous le bras, et qui parait

l’examiner avec attention. Les vapeurs du matin se sont dissipees.

Les deux passants debouchent en meme temps de chaque cote du pont du

Carrousel. Quoiqu’ils ne se fussent jamais vus, ils se reconnurent!

Vrai, c’etait touchant de voir ces deux etres, separes par l’age,

rapprocher leurs ames par la grandeur des sentiments. Du moins, c’eut

ete l’opinion de ceux qui se seraient arretes devant ce spectacle, que

plus d’un, meme avec un esprit mathematique, aurait trouve emouvant.

Mervyn, le visage en pleurs, reflechissait qu’il rencontrait, pour ainsi

dire a l’entree de la vie, un soutien precieux dans les futures

adversites. Soyez persuade que l’autre ne disait rien. Voici ce qu’il

fit: il deplia le sac qu’il portait, degagea l’ouverture, et, saisissant

l’adolescent par la tete, il fit passer le corps entier dans l’enveloppe

de toile. Il noua, avec son mouchoir, l’extremite qui servait

d’introduction. Comme Mervyn poussait des cris aigus, il enleva le sac,

ainsi qu’un paquet de linges, et en frappa, a plusieurs reprises, le

parapet du pont. Alors, le patient, s’etant apercu du craquement de ses

os, se tut. Scene unique, qu’aucun romancier ne retrouvera! Un boucher

passait, assis sur la viande de sa charrette. Un individu court a lui,

l’engage a s’arreter, et lui dit: “Voici un chien, enferme dans ce sac;

il a la gale: abattez-le au plus vite.” L’interpelle se montre

complaisant. L’interrupteur, en s’eloignant, apercoit une jeune fille en

haillons qui lui tend la main. Jusqu’ou va donc le comble de l’audace et

de l’impiete? Il lui donne l’aumone! Dites-moi si vous voulez que je

vous introduise, quelques heures plus tard, a la porte d’un abattoir

recule. Le boucher est revenu, et a dit a ses camarades, en jetant a

terre un fardeau: “Depechons-nous de tuer ce chien galeux.” Ils sont

quatre, et chacun saisit le marteau accoutume. Et, cependant, ils

hesitaient, parce que le sac remuait avec force.” Quelle emotion

s’empare de moi?” cria l’un d’eux en abaissant lentement son bras.

“Ce chien pousse, comme un enfant, des gemissements de douleur, dit

un autre; on dirait qu’il comprend le sort qui l’attend.” “C’est leur

habitude, repondit un troisieme; meme quand il ne sont pas malades,

comme c’est le cas ici, il suffit que leur maitre reste quelques jours

absent du logis, pour qu’ils se mettent a faire entendre des hurlements

qui, veritablement, sont penibles a supporter.” “Arretez!… arretez!…

cria le quatrieme, avant que tous les bras se fussent leves en cadence

pour frapper resolument, cette fois, sur le sac. Arretez, vous dis-je;

il y a ici un fait qui nous echappe. Qui vous dit que cette toile

renferme un chien? Je veux m’en assurer.” Alors, malgre les railleries

de ses compagnons, il denoua le paquet et en retira l’un apres l’autre

les membres de Mervyn! Il etait presque etouffe par la gene de cette

position. Il s’evanouit en revoyant la lumiere. Quelques moments apres,

il donna des signes indubitables d’existence. Le sauveur dit: “Apprenez,

une autre fois, a mettre de la prudence jusque dans votre metier. Vous

avez failli remarquer, par vous-memes, qu’il ne sert de rien de

pratiquer l’inobservance de cette loi.” Les bouchers s’enfuirent.

Mervyn, le coeur serre et plein de pressentiments funestes, rentre chez

soi et s’enferme dans sa chambre. Ai-je besoin d’insister sur cette

strophe? Eh! qui n’en deplorera les evenements consommes! Attendons la

fin pour porter un jugement encore plus severe. Le denoument va se

precipiter; et, dans ces sortes de recits, ou une passion, de quelque

genre qu’elle soit, etant donnee, celle-ci ne craint aucun obstacle pour

se frayer un passage, il n’y a pas lieu de delayer dans un godet la

gomme laque de quatre cents pages banales. Ce qui peut etre dit dans une

demi-douzaine de strophes, il faut le dire, et puis se taire.

VIII

Pour construire mecaniquement la cervelle d’un conte somnifere, il ne

suffit pas de dissequer des betises et abrutir puissamment a doses

renouvelees l’intelligence du lecteur, de maniere a rendre ses facultes

paralytiques pour le reste de sa vie, par la loi infaillible de la

fatigue; il faut, en outre, avec du bon fluide magnetique, le mettre

ingenieusement dans l’impossibilite somnambulique de se mouvoir, en le

forcant a obscurcir ses yeux contre son naturel par la fixite des

votres. Je veux dire, afin de ne pas me faire mieux comprendre, mais

seulement pour developper ma pensee qui interesse et agace en meme temps

par une harmonie des plus penetrantes, que je ne crois pas qu’il soit

necessaire, pour arriver au but que l’on se propose, d’inventer une

poesie tout a fait en dehors de la marche ordinaire de la nature, et

dont le souffle pernicieux semble bouleverser meme les verites absolues;

mais, amener un pareil resultat (conforme, du reste, aux regles de

l’esthetique, si l’on y reflechit bien), cela n’est pas aussi facile

qu’on le pense: voila ce que je voulais dire. C’est pourquoi je ferai

tous mes efforts pour y parvenir! Si la mort arrete la maigreur

fantastique des deux bras longs de mes epaules, employes a l’ecrasement

lugubre de mon gypse litteraire, je veux au moins que le lecteur en

deuil puisse se dire: “Il faut lui rendre justice. Il m’a beaucoup

cretinise. Que n’aurait-t-il pas fait, s’il eut pu vivre davantage!

c’est le meilleur professeur d’hypnotisme que je connaisse!” On gravera

ces quelques mots touchants sur le marbre de ma tombe, et mes manes

seront satisfaits!–Je continue! Il y avait une queue de poisson qui

remuait au fond d’un trou, a cote d’une botte eculee. Il n’etait pas

naturel de se demander: “Ou est le poisson? Je ne vois que la queue qui

remue.” Car, puisque, precisement, on avouait implicitement ne pas

apercevoir le poisson, c’est qu’en realite il n’y etait pas. La pluie

avait laisse quelques gouttes d’eau au fond de cet entonnoir, creuse

dans le sable. Quant a la botte eculee, quelques-uns ont pense depuis

qu’elle provenait de quelque abandon volontaire. Le crabe tourteau, par

la puissance divine, devait renaitre de ses atomes resolus. Il tira du

puits la queue de poisson et lui promit de la rattacher a son corps

perdu, si elle annoncait au Createur l’impuissance de son mandataire a

dominer les vagues en fureur de mer maldororienne. Il lui preta deux

ailes d’albatros, et la queue de poisson prit son essor. Mais elle

s’envola vers la demeure du renegat, pour lui raconter ce qui se passait

et trahir le crabe tourteau. Celui-ci devina le projet de l’espion, et,

avant que le troisieme jour fut parvenu a sa fin, il perca la queue du

poisson d’une fleche envenimee. Le gosier de l’espion poussa une faible

exclamation, qui rendit le dernier soupir avant de toucher la terre.

Alors, une poutre seculaire, placee sur le comble d’un chateau, se

releva de toute sa hauteur, en bondissant sur elle-meme, et demanda

vengeance a grands cris. Mais le Tout-Puissant, change en rhinoceros,

lui apprit que cette mort etait meritee. La poutre s’apaisa, alla se

placer au fond du manoir, reprit sa position horizontale, et rappela les

araignees effarouchees, afin qu’elles continuassent, comme par le passe,

a tisser leur toile a ses coins. L’homme aux levres de soufre apprit la

faiblesse de son alliee; c’est pourquoi, il commanda au fou couronne de

bruler la poutre et de la reduire en cendres. Aghone executa cet ordre

severe. “Puisque, d’apres vous, le moment est venu, s’ecria-t-il, j’ai

ete reprendre l’anneau que j’avais enterre sous la pierre, et je l’ai

attache a un des bouts du cable. Voici le paquet.” Et il presenta une

corde epaisse, enroulee sur elle-meme, de soixante metres de longueur.

Son maitre lui demanda ce que faisaient les quatorze poignards. Il

repondit qu’ils restaient fideles et se tenaient prets a tout evenement,

si c’etait necessaire. Le forcat inclina sa tete en signe de

satisfaction. Il montra de la surprise, et meme de l’inquietude, quand

Aghone ajouta qu’il avait vu un coq fendre avec son bec un candelabre en

deux, plonger tour a tour le regard dans chacune des parties, et

s’ecrier, en battant ses ailes d’un mouvement frenetique: “Il n’y a pas

si loin qu’on le pense depuis la rue de la Paix jusqu’a la place du

Pantheon. Bientot, on en verra la preuve lamentable!” Le crabe tourteau,

monte sur un cheval fougueux, courait a toute bride vers la direction de

l’ecueil, le temoin du lancement du baton par un bras tatoue, l’asile du

premier jour de sa descente sur la terre. Une caravane de pelerins etait

en marche pour visiter cet endroit, desormais consacre par une mort

auguste. Il esperait l’atteindre, pour lui demander des secours

pressants contre la trame qui se preparait, et dont il avait eu

connaissance. Vous verrez quelques lignes plus loin, a l’aide de mon

silence glacial, qu’il n’arriva pas a temps, pour leur raconter ce que

lui avait rapporte un chiffonnier, cache derriere l’echafaudage voisin

d’une maison en construction, le jour ou le pont du Carrousel, encore

empreint de l’humide rosee de la nuit, apercut avec horreur l’horizon de

sa pensee s’elargir confusement en cercles concentriques, a l’apparition

matinale du rythmyque petrissage d’un sac icosaedre, contre son parapet

calcaire! Avant qu’il stimule leur compassion, par le souvenir de cet

episode, ils feront bien de detruire en eux la semence de l’espoir …

Pour rompre votre paresse, mettez en usage les ressources d’une bonne

volonte, marchez a cote de moi et ne perdez pas de vue ce fou, la tete

surmontee d’un vase de nuit, qui pousse, devant lui, la main armee d’un

baton, celui que vous auriez de la peine a reconnaitre, si je ne prenais

soin de vous avertir, et de rappeler a votre oreille le mot qui se

prononce Mervyn. Comme il est change! Les mains liees derriere le dos,

il marche devant lui, comme s’il allait a l’echafaud, et, cependant, il

n’est coupable d’aucun forfait. Ils sont arrives dans l’enceinte

circulaire de la place Vendome. Sur l’entablement de la colonne massive,

appuye contre la balustrade carree, a plus de cinquante metres de

hauteur du sol, un homme a lance et deroule un cable, qui tombe jusqu’a

terre, a quelques pas d’Aghone. Avec de l’habitude, on fait vite une

chose; mais, je puis dire que celui-ci n’employa pas beaucoup de temps

pour attacher les pieds de Mervyn a l’extremite de la corde. Le

rhinoceros avait appris ce qui allait arriver. Couvert de sueur, il

apparut haletant, au coin de la rue Castiglione. Il n’eut meme pas la

satisfaction d’entreprendre le combat. L’individu, qui examinait les

alentours du haut de la colonne, arma son revolver, visa avec soin et

pressa la detente. Le commodore qui mendiait par les rues depuis le jour

ou avait commence ce qu’il croyait etre la folie de son fils et la mere,

qu’on avait appelee _la fille de neige_, a cause de son extreme paleur,

porterent en avant leur poitrine pour proteger le rhinoceros. Inutile

soin. La balle troua sa peau, comme une vrille; l’on aurait pu croire,

avec une apparence de logique, que la mort devait infailliblement

apparaitre. Mais nous savions que, dans ce pachyderme, s’etait

introduite la substance du Seigneur. Il se retira avec chagrin. S’il

n’etait pas bien prouve qu’il ne fut trop bon pour une de ses creatures,

je plaindrais l’homme de la colonne! Celui-ci, d’un coup sec de poignet,

ramene a soi la corde ainsi lestee. Placee hors de la normale, ses

oscillations balancent Mervyn, dont la tete regarde le bas. Il saisit

vivement, avec ses mains, une longue guirlande d’immortelles, qui reunit

deux angles consecutifs de la base, contre laquelle il cogne son front.

Il emporte avec lui, dans les airs, ce qui n’etait pas un point fixe.

Apres avoir amoncele a ses pieds, sous forme d’ellipses superposees, une

grande partie du cable, de maniere que Mervyn reste suspendu a moitie

hauteur de l’obelisque de bronze, le forcat evade fait prendre, de la

main droite, a l’adolescent, un mouvement accelere de rotation uniforme,

dans un plan parallele de l’axe de la colonne, et ramasse, de la main

gauche, les enroulements serpentins du cordage, qui gisent a ses pieds.

La fronde siffle dans l’espace; le corps de Mervyn la suit partout,

toujours eloigne du centre par la force centrifuge, toujours gardant sa

position mobile et equidistante, dans une circonference aerienne,

independante de la matiere. Le sauvage civilise lache peu a peu, jusqu’a

l’autre bout, qu’il retient avec un metacarpe ferme, ce qui ressemble a

tort a une barre d’acier. Il se met a courir autour de la balustrade, en

se tenant a la rampe par une main. Cette manoeuvre a pour effet de

changer le plan primitif de la revolution du cable, et d’augmenter sa

force de tension, deja si considerable. Dorenavant, il tourne

majestueusement dans un plan horizontal, apres avoir successivement

passe, par une marche insensible, a travers plusieurs plans obliques.

L’angle droit forme par la colonne et le fil vegetal a ses cotes egaux!

Le bras du renegat et l’instrument meurtrier sont confondus dans l’unite

lineaire, comme les elements atomistiques d’un rayon de lumiere

penetrant dans la chambre noire. Les theoremes de la mecanique me

permettent de parler ainsi; helas! on sait qu’une force, ajoutee a une

autre force, engendre une resultante composee des deux forces

primitives! Qui oserait pretendre que le cordage lineaire se serait deja

rompu, sans la vigueur de l’athlete, sans la bonne qualite du chanvre?

Le corsaire au cheveux d’or, brusquement et en meme temps, arrete sa

vitesse acquise, ouvre la main et lache le cable. Le contre-coup de

cette operation, si contraire aux precedentes, fait craquer la

balustrade dans ses joints. Mervyn, suivi de la corde, ressemble a une

comete trainant apres elle sa queue flamboyante. L’anneau de fer du

noeud coulant, miroitant aux rayons du soleil, engage a completer

soi-meme l’illusion. Dans le parcours de sa parabole, le damne a mort

fend l’atmosphere jusqu’a la rive gauche, la depasse en vertu de la

force d’impulsion que je suppose infinie, et son corps va frapper le

dome du Pantheon, tandis que la corde etreint, en partie, de ses replis,

la paroi superieure de l’immense coupole. C’est sur sa superficie

spherique et convexe, qui ne ressemble a une orange que pour la forme,

qu’on voit a toute heure du jour, un squelette desseche, reste suspendu.

Quand le vent le balance, l’on raconte que les etudiants du quartier

Latin, dans la crainte d’un pareil sort, font une courte priere: ce sont

des bruits insignifiants auxquels on n’est point tenu de croire, et

propres seulement a faire peur aux petits enfants. Il tient entre ses

mains crispees, comme un grand ruban de vieilles fleurs jaunes. Il

faut tenir compte de la distance, et nul ne peut affirmer, malgre

l’attestation de sa bonne vue, que ce soient la, reellement, ces

immortelles dont je vous ai parle, et qu’une lutte inegale, engagee pres

du nouvel Opera, vit detacher d’un piedestal grandiose. Il n’en est pas

moins vrai que les draperies en forme de croissant de lune n’y recoivent

plus l’expression de leur symetrie definitive dans le nombre quaternaire:

allez-y voir vous-meme, si vous ne voulez pas me croire.

About the Translator:

R J Dent is a poet, novelist, translator, blogger, essayist, short story writer, researcher and Creative Writing tutor. His latest book is an English translation of Le Comte de Lautréamont’s surrealist classic, The Songs of Maldoror, published in 2011 by the University of Chicago Press/Solar Books. Prior to this he published a novel, Myth (2006), a poetry collection, Moonstone Silhouettes (2009), and an English translation of Charles Baudelaire’s decadent classic,The Flowers of Evil (2009).  He is currently writing a book about Emily Dickinson and studying for a PhD at Sussex University.

Details of R J Dent’s work can be found at www.rjdent.com

An excerpt from The Songs of Maldoror
by Le Comte de Lautréamont
Translated by R. J. Dent (© R J Dent 2010)
with Illustrations by Salvador Dalí
and a new Foreword by Paul Éluard
ISBN: 9780982046487
Publisher: Solar Books
Format: Paperback, 264 pages, 22 half-tones, 5 1/2 x 8 ½
Price: $16.95

R J Dent’s translation of Le Comte de Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror is now available from:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=bio&isbn=9780982046487

from:

http://www.solarbooks.org/solar-titles/maldoror.html

and from:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Songs-Maldoror-Solar-Books-Nocturnal/dp/0982046480/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289143240&sr=1-1

Fragile Trifles

Don’t disturb the dream’s last fragment
or blame the morning’s entrance.

If you’re humming or you’re hungry,
don’t rush to conclusions.

Don’t assume the bird sitting in sand
is wounded.

We’re all misguided at dawn,
not sure we’re still alive;

the flowers that bloomed in the spring, tra la,
dead without a half-life,

are more certain to return than you are.
And even if you’ve only seen

the whale’s arc or the pelican’s dive,
it’s enough to scissor your fingers like Spock

giving the Kabbalists’ blessing.
Really.  It’s enough.

About the Poet

Florence Weinberger is the author of four published collections of poetry, The Invisible Telling Its Shape, Breathing Like a Jew, Carnal Fragrance, and Sacred Graffiti (Tebot Bach, 2010).  Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Another Chicago Magazine, Antietam Review and Spillway.

—__________________________________________

thePHOTOGRAPHYspot

©2010 chuckhauptphoto

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got as a young photographer was perspective. Shoot high, shoot low. How about shooting deep into the clusters of tiny white flowers of Queen Anne’s Lace?

Chuck Haupt is photo editor of Ragazine. You can visit his blog at www.chuckhaupt.com/blog.

For thePHOTOGRAPHYspot submissions, please see guidelines at ragazine.cc/submissions/

By Way of Explanation

Because I’ve never had Madeleines
with lime-blossom tea,
because my memory is voluntary,
because I am the third person,
because we never stopped
speaking in italics,
because I wanted to make you apologize.

Because I cannot pace myself,
because I am watching your ghost
walk around the kitchen,
because I painted my toenails
blue this morning,
because James said “The trail
of the human serpent is over everything,”
because I buried its skin
underneath the floorboards.

Because lightning was the accidental
origin of life,
because I turn around
when I shouldn’t,
because I am a vowel
caught in the middle,
because you cannot say it,
because of the moment’s prime meridian,
happily defunct.

Because you are impossible,
because I had no paper,
because I wrote my biography on a lampshade,
because the idea had windows
disproportionate to its doors,
because we tried to warn each other,
because there are poems everywhere and they are still
only poems.

About the Poet

Katie Hogan is a senior at Binghamton University, majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and Global Culture. After graduating, she hopes to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry.

THE AMERICAN JITTERBUG

The step goes like this in six-eight rhythm:  right-toe-
Heel, left-toe-heel, both toes, right heel, and twirl and twirl.
This is the American Jitterbug.  To feel
The swing of it, bend your knees slightly, like a girl

Curtsying, but don’t curtsy all the way.  There is
No royalty in this dance straight out of Harlem ,
Only slick hipsters and the saxophone soul-kissed.
The boys throw girls in the air, gather their harems

By flinging women skyward, catching them ably,
Then tossing them between their thighs American-
Style.  The American Jitterbug – Oh, baby,
Let your backbone slip.  Improvise.  Don’t make a plan

Or box-step your way around Roseland’s big wood floor
Like some European stuck in neutral.  Vroom-vroom
It like the motors we invented.  Just score
Like a Yankee passing third in the Bronx .  Ballroom

Is too pinched for this continent, too tea-and-punch.
Tango sacrifices all for love, not moolah,
So it is not our dance.  Merengue shakes too much,
But we are fearless optimists. The lambada

Is bull.  This is the American Jitterbug.
We dance like there were no steps, and yet we keep time.
Cut the waltz schmaltz.  Cut the etiquette.  Cut a rug.
Tell the truth by spinning.  Your strut croons the end rhyme.

About the Poet:

Anne Babson  is recipient of  the Columbia Journal Prize and the Artisan Journal contest. Her work has appeared in The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Ilya’s Honey, Bridges, Barrow Street, Connecticut Review, and elsewhere. She was included in an anthology of the best contemporary American poets, Seeds of Fire: Poetry from the Other US (2008, Smokestack Books).  She sits on the Literary Committee of the National Arts Club.

Stumbling Around in the Light

I can tell by the way it wobbles
across the lawn, mid-afternoon,
something isn’t right.

Fat Head the cat knows it too
and keeps back, pretending to lick a paw
each time the opossum stumbles.

When it collapses, I step outside
as far as the side porch then stop short,
should it jump up rabid and biting.

Maybe it is just looking for water
or a patch of tall grass
to die in, I tell myself.

But what if the kids next door
frighten it by accident?
There is a shovel nearby in the shed.

But wouldn’t it be best to let it be?
Besides, it might be harder to get rid of
dead than alive.

Maybe it isn’t dying at all,
just sleepwalking,
stumbling around in the light

looking for a place safe and shaded
or at least as far away from daytime atrocities
as possible. Maybe it isn’t any more deadly

or closer to death than I am. Maybe I
have been playing opossum all my life,
pretending, even now, to be alive.

About the poet:

John Smith has published poetry in the New York Quarterly, The Literary Review, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, New Jersey Audubon, and elsewhere. He lives in Frenchtown, N.J.

Mental Additions

What we would do
with an extra room -

entertain weekend guests
focus on our crafts
make room for your office
exercise magazine quality
organization

close the door
before company arrives
the stacks of get-to-laters
in denial

*

Two Perspectives

we vacuum
tuck away magazines, books, remote controls
fluff pillows
light candles
dust surfaces
add music
hide laundry, toiletries, all signs of the living

they see
cat-scratched couch corners
paint-chipped kitchen ceiling
seventies bathroom tiles
a double chin in a family photograph
streaks lingering from a quick window clean

*

You know you want to look

His:
toothbrush leaned against recycled take-out cup
deodorant barely capped
hairbrush buried alongside mishmash of odds
and ends
disposable razor, still good
for tomorrow

Hers:
toothbrush
toothpaste
floss
fine-tooth comb
detangling gel
sea salt scrub
moisturizer
gloss
misty body spritzer
nail file
polish

About the Poet:

Lori A. May is the author of four books, including stains: early poems. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Rattle, Two Review and Writer’s Digest, among others, as well as anthologies including Van Gogh’s Ear. More information is available online at www.loriamay.com.

Avocado

My crotch feels warm before I know to hold it in. The wet blankets will soon be colder than they were last night.  The snores of those who sleep are muffled by heavy fabric. I get out of bed and I don’t mind the jeans and jacket so much anymore, how denim clings to bed sheets, how nylon slides away. I am hungry and the aroma of the avocado makes me almost myopic. This morning, though, the avocado is harder than I remembered it. Spoons are always dull. The cold of the kitchen walls stretches the skin so that I feel like the tips of my fingers are coming undone. The knuckles tighten and I think of my youngish aunt who moves with a walker. Maybe the body dies not all at once but in pieces. The tortilla for the avocado taco blackens over the stove burner but my fingers don’t burn when I touch the part that smolders. I place my hands close to the flame – blue with an orange center – and soon the scent of burnt hair, fine like ice crystals, fills the space before me. I no longer think of the avocado exposed to the air, blackening.  My hands ache something new like my next birthday, but I don’t cry and I wish my father could see me. Later that morning something on TV will mention an overnight freeze, damage to the citrus orchards my father tended to in the night. Within a year he will be out of work, will leave far in search of orchards green instead of ice burnt. I will promise to him that I will no longer wet my bed. I won’t cry. Instead, I will hand him an avocado and tell him to cut it open on a warm day.

Sorrow

© Steve Bromberg

There is a place beyond this place

The world has
extended its carpet
so you may walk upon it,
it’s warm arms  reach
out to embrace you,
lure you toward
the floating island,
the outback of cloud.

With your foot extending
from your rolled-up pants,
you touch the edge
of the known.

Water and sky.
Feet and sand.Cloud and hill.
Hand and rock.
In the end
everything is one.

In some small way
you meet this fact each day.
when you breathe the air
rotating from India,
taste rain imported
from the Andaman Sea,
and look out over
the tempting beautiful
nothing of everything
in that place beyond.

The Introduction of If and Then

When Black met White, there was a definite|
moment of tension, and Black lit a cigarette
and strutted around the courtyard several times
until it realized how much better White
made it feel about itself,  how it helped with self esteem.

Either was asked what it thought about Or
and it took awhile, almost a week,
but Either finally admitted it needed Or
when it came to a fork in the road
or when the first snows came rushing in
breathlessly, bleaching the lawn
and there were decisions to be made about the cattle.

If was tentative when it first encountered Then
but If finally realized it needed Then
to answer those big dark questions that come in the night,
to lie beside it, to make the biggest promises,
and, of course, for science projects.

The Purpose of Money

1.
So much of the time it is like pollen
floating into, out of a life,
away from a city,
toward the coast,
back to the mountains,
up to the moon,
planting a flag there and leaving behind
expensive junk.
And the thing is
it doesn’t care, money,
where it lands or evacuates,
it has no pulse,
no four chambered heart.

There are those who have wondered
if it is mammalian or reptilian.
To them we must point out:
It does not bear its young live.

2.
Once, in a small city in Spain,
a woman wanted to help her brother.
He needed work,
to get it he would need boots
and to get boots for him
she would need a maid’s uniform,
pink and aproned and starched clean.
To get that she would need
twenty seven pesetas.
She had nobody to go to for them
but that same brother,
the one who needed work.
3.
The world has broken open for the lack of it,
it has collapsed and peeled back
and then, attaining it, empired and colonialized
gone war mongering, invented new diseases.
Despite this clear pattern, the begging
and brutalizing, we continue
to  wrap our days in it,
then regurgitate at the end,
we swallow it and spit
and repeat cycle,
repeat cycle
our wallets filling and emptying
like the womb of an orthodox woman,
as many times as is humanly possible
until the yearning,
becomes a fabric we sleep in,
it becomes flannel,
or it becomes silk,
so much a part of us we can no longer tell
where our skin ends and our money begins.

4.
A man who won the lottery last week
decided to give it all to a library
near his home so they could buy
computers that the people there
could use to search for work.
He was interviewed by a newspaper reporter
whom he told he knew it, instinctively,
what he would do,
it was like it had been stitched
onto his bones at birth:
the purpose of money.

Supply and Demand

1.

When you are tired
of the vagaries of highways,
the vanities of buildings,
jetstreams that criss-cross
the cerulean sky

When you weary
of the politics of hurricanes,
the beached whale’s
solemn eye

The waltzing of the presidents,
the parry of governments,
the closed gates
of the shoelace factory

Remember this:
it is just a matter of give and take,
yearn and satisfy, want and have.
It is simple, really, the world.

There is a rule.
The patter of rain desires the sea.
The smallest wave
desires the beach.

Northerners want bananas,
Southerners want steel.
And all of us want larger hard drives
to hold the names of all things.

This is the message of the economist.
Something as clever
as Velcro, or bubble wrap or a new kind of tea
strainer can bring the world
and its minions  right to your door.

II.

In the country of potatoes
there are no leeks:

In the country of leeks
there are no potatoes.

Nobody in either country
can make soup.
The economist explains
to his daughter.

He has a smoker’s cough,
it sounds like a sputtering tractor,
his skin has grown tallow
and he often belches.

But he still knows the truth
about things: the two countries,
of potato and leek.
There is need
and there is have.
“Value is determined only by need.”

“You could own a diamond mine
and starve,” he explains,
“You could own an oil well
and die of thirst.”

“But what,” asks the daughter,
“if you own a small carrot and chicken farm
next to a lake, an apple orchard
and a field of wild strawberries
and then some horses come
and they carry you to the top of a hill
nearby where there are orange trees
and peanut bushes?

You would have
everything you need and want.”

The economist
finally clears his throat,
nodding, looking into
the placid fresh brown eyes
of the girl. She is the supply truck
of his heart. The answer to
his questions.
And he, the answer of hers.

About the poet:

Elizabeth Cohen is the author of two books of poetry – Impossible Furniture and Mother Love- and a memoir, The Family on Beartown Road. She teaches poetry at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh.

About the Photographer:
Steve Bromberg is a freelance photographer on one of the greatest adventures of his life. He is currently working in China. Home base for the next few months is Wuxi in Jiangsu Provence — a stone’s throw from the north to Shanghai.

The photo-inspired poem is one of several collaborative efforts under way between Cohen and Bromberg.

In the Minds of Guilty Porcupines

In the minds of guilty porcupines,
Dentist-chair torture lingers
Only those moments
When stolen music functions
To fracture cerebral processes.

Tart misses, no longer surprised,
To go steady with hard water adventurers,
Dare not reinforce
Rearview mirror laws, especially
When writing prenuptials.

Such women are wont
To adjust the better moments
Of life’s genius highways;
Their smiles are regularly drilled until
Perfection steps out for coffee.

Ladies like that accept horse patrols
Supersede motorcades, while
Function’s old-fashioned form
Drives the bypass ordinarily reserved
For mental illness’ sexual policies.

More singular rhetoric’ll never
Grace magazine covers, political summits,
But further temporary schisms, which
Diplomatically wave strictures on
Focused self-promotion.

Rather, spiny resistance
Must suffice if redefining systems
Convenient to exactitudes.
Political gibberish’s lexicon
Otherwise leaves little room;
Hostile, crepuscule species suffer.

Ephemerids

Ms. Alfred, Buffaloberry’s cat,
Could be relied upon to be limp,
Joking all the while
About being “a Jewish Mother.”

Feline helpings of soup,
Chicken, vegetables, bread,
Plied upon unsuspecting guests
Otherwise sate most comers.

Heaping plates hold,
Steamed plus boiled delicacies,
Morph prey species into
Vapid volunteers, who fill bellies.

Jewels, travels, plus dead animals’ skins
Evoke an unwillingness to study law,
Practice medicine, or remain all but
Barren per competitive careers.

Provisional divisions evolve
Beyond familiar tails, pointy ears,
Sharp responses or soothed consciousness;
Prefabricated intellectual submission delights.

Hence, it’s familial feline stuff
That attends weddings, graduations, other
Celebrations decked in gender-bias’
Soft ego touch.

Courting men means bothering
Among electronic appliances,
Land grant universities,
And answering machines.

Better to flick wet tissues,
Their wadded hillocks covering carpets,
Than to clamor, a loud,
About social justice.

As a result, it’s small wonder
When domesticated fry distance
Themselves from norms, paw-sing,
All the while, to accommodate cultural nuance.

About the poet:

While tumbling around the Middle East with her hibernaculum of imaginary hedgehogs, KJ Hannah Greenberg has been collecting comfortable vessels into which to put her words. Along the way, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry and was found guilty of trying to make a match between “balderdash” and “xylophone.”

Names Were Changed to Protect…
(or, The Things My Grandfathers Did to Survive)

1. John

They all called him Johnny K, anyway.
All but the many who heard

Kanciewicz

And told him to get out,
Stay out and never come back.

So he cleaved a couple of syllables
For the sake of a job

Any job

Railroad bull or driving a suicide load
Across the mountains to keep himself

And his orphaned brothers and sisters
And later his two daughters and wife

And then me

Alive.

2. Lutz

If he hadn’t been Herr Doktor,
Would he have had the nerve

To insist on a fair exchange
Of a vowel for the umlaut

The Ellis Island clerk
Was going to take anyway

When the alternative was spelled

Dachau?

Inventory

I think Matthew, the tax collector,
was Jesus’ staff statistician.
Why else would he think we’d care that
“the very hairs of our head are all numbered.”

And this makes me think of my pastor, John Fischer,
who sermonizes that I should think this inventory
comforting, but semi-heathen that I am,
find myself saddled
with a high-definition image of God as
an obsessive compulsive savant,
like the guy Dustin Hoffman portrayed in “Rainman.”

And this makes me think of Lenny,
the kid from my neighborhood,
who when we were growing up,
was most politely referred to as “retarded”.

Lenny could rattle off the age
of every person we knew in common.
If this conversation was happening now
he’d tell me, “I 52, you 50, Mike 49, Dennis 50, Stewie 50, Richard 46, etc.”
and seems hardwired to know
exactly when each of our odometers turns over
to another year.
So, although I’ve never shared
a birthday celebration with him,
he will wake up the morning of August 13
and instinctively add another tick mark
to the inventory of my mortality.

And thinking of Lenny makes me think
of what I’ve recently learned
is known as the “euphemism treadmill”,
the evolution… or de-evolution as two of my favorite Georges…
Orwell and Carlin… saw it, of language.
For example, forty years ago Lenny was mentally retarded.
He knew this, seemed accepting of it
and placed himself on the pecking order of others
in his situation.

He’d say, “You know Louis Nelson?
I a retart, but he really a retart.”
Today I’m told that Lenny and Louis are not retarded,
but at last check are referred to as
developmentally challenged… developmentally special… developmentally delayed…
or whatever else they’ve been redubbed since I typed this. 

And thinking of the euphemism treadmill
makes me think of Sherman Alexie,
who, to use the politically correct euphemism,
is a Native American novelist and poet.
I haven’t seen Lenny recently
to ask what he thinks about his change of semantic status,
but as Sherman says, “Indians call each other Indians.
Native American is a guilty white liberal thing.”

And of course, you, dear listener or reader, whichever the case may be,
may be thinking to yourself,
“he should have paid more attention
to hairs number 417, 2,392, 4,798, 303, etc.,
blah, blah, blah,
ha ha ha,
because they seem to have gone missing.”
And I reply yes,
I like to think of them as becoming,
what was referred to when I was in the retail business as shrink;
another euphemism,
this one referring to the stuff that was
stolen, broken or had otherwise disappeared
from the shelves without being paid for.

And this makes me think that I should let you,
dear listener or reader, know that I,
even in polite company,
refer to myself as bald.

And all this makes me think of the poet Bob McKenty,
because on one Saturday afternoon Lenny appeared in my back yard
and after he reliably related the ages of everyone he assumed we both knew,
he too wondered, in his case aloud,
“I 36, you 34, I have hair, why you no have hair?”
After he left I mulled this while stripping a chair
I’d eventually refinish and began
composing a poem,
well, more a rant, called “Bad Hair Day”
which was quickly published by McKenty,
our contemporary Ogden Nash,
who normally publishes nothing
that is not strictly metrical and rhymed,
but found it funny enough to immortalize anyway.

And so, for this poem of sorts,
I think I’d like to thank Lenny and Bob and Matthew and Sherman and George and George and John and Dustin
and most importantly, a perhaps obsessive and savant-like
God.

Amen

The Optometrics of Love

Thank you for being the one
who never looked
through lenses distorted
by the residue
of former boyfriends,
spouses and lovers
and saw
me. 

About the Poet:

Tony Gruenewald is the production manager of Edison Literary Review. His collection, The Secret History of New Jersey, was published by Northwind in 2009. To find out more, visit tonygruenewald.com.

After Messalina

Death, that old whore
who gladly takes on all comers
will happily accommodate you
for the small price of your soul.
She will do you up good,
make sure you have no complaints,
and send you off into the night
completely satisfied.

Though you may be relieved
to be done when finished,
and you may not have wanted to come
in the first place,
since you have no choice
it’s best you take her hand
and follow her up those wornout stairs,
under the pulsing neon sign,
just as a thousand others
have done so tonight.

For she is used to reluctance
in all its forms. You
have nothing she hasn’t seen before
and will not see again.

When you’re spent
and have pulled those soiled bills
from your pocket,
just be sure you’ve paid in full.
To ensure your proper passage
leave every last sou on her bed.
She will appreciate the payment
for a job well done
and will send you
to the place prepared,
as advertised.   

Mrs. Mathers

Mrs. Mathers died last night,
her fragile hold gave way.
I had seen her just last week.
She seemed to be okay,
but who knows at eighty-three?

She was sharp until the end,
her mind steeped in the mysteries she had read.
I saw these books arrive by mail,
they piled up in the lobby.
Some wait for her now.
They will not get her perusal.

Her penetrating eye could see through me,
she was nobody’s fool.
Once in the elevator I asked
what she was reading.
“Chandler,” she replied.
Her answer left no room
for further inquiry,
though the way she looked
at the elevator door told me
she was not intimidated by The Big Sleep,
nor anything else likely to come her way.

I will miss her cold, clear gaze
and the slight tell
that lingered on her face.
She took us all in
as something she’d seen before.
Still, I counted her as a friend.
Her daughters will now likely sell,
and a young couple with a baby
or maybe a corgi
will take her place.
This seems to be the trend.  

Rob Mustard is a former English teacher, and retired professional photographer. His photographs appear in the May-June 2010 issue of ragazine.cc (See Archives). He and his wife Deborah live in El Segundo, California.

Dark Room

On the other hand, I am certain
that you are no stranger to dark rooms.
You can’t be unfamiliar
with the barely visible shapes of beasts
breathing like the inertia of absent light
that turn their anatomies inside out
into other shapes of other beasts
in a constant regeneration of malformations
in the roar of silence that sounds like desert sand.
There is an indefinite space
that is the extension of the mind
in the landscape of where thoughts traverse
along the surface of illusory clouds
into impossible geographies that don’t exist on the map
and someone’s late aunt lives there
with her unacknowledged autobiographies.
Sometimes in a dark room
it is irrelevant that we are human.
There is a time that circles the periphery of time
where someone crawls into bed beside you
who isn’t even there
and makes love to you like a summer rain
in the dream of San Francisco
or a flower growing on the electric moon
blooming into the soundless decibels of starlight —
shining like unsleeping eyes in the dark
where invisibility does not have a conceptual center
and morning is an unlived century
that only knows this story by association
of everything it is not.

Egg, Cartoon, and Temple

The preliminary images that slipped from the chaos of the unconscious
before I entered a full blown dream last night
were like a cinematic tableau of disconnections.
First, you were in the kitchen having just boiled an egg for yourself,
and you were peeling it, angry about something,
so you salted it with an excess of salt
and then stuffed the entire egg into your mouth
and prepared for bed.
And then, I was an expertly drawn cartoon in 19^th century dress
wearing spectacles and carrying a parasol
when I attempted to stop a young girl, also a cartoon in 19^th century dress
from stumbling into moving traffic.
And the suspense accelerated into the question of her survival
before the image escaped the frame of my mind
into the darkness of aborted dream scenarios.
And then there were pillars in a temple
and the green light from the only window spilled onto the perfect marble
of the floor and the walls, without the hollow sound
of the clicking shoes of women amongst the echoes
of that colossal and sanctified structure,
without any repenting followers bowing to pray,
without the specific context of situation or circumstance,
like it merely existed as a structure
because of the way time begins to mourn for itself
after we are all too familiar with the genocides of its history.

Rumi’s Field

Just for tonight, let’s say that you are Magellan
and I am the earth, with all the discoverable
geographies of my body.
Say the ordered choreography of the planets
never orbited to the infrequent side of the sun
and my thighs were vast continents
interrupted by the deaf ocean between them.
Say you navigate that ocean
like a novice explorer in his unvarnished youth
before he knows too much for his own good.
What if those anthologies you are reading
with such diligence and compassion
reach out and take hold of you with their terrible claws
and you drown in Moore’s paradox
between mortality and eternity
and her footnoted phrases
as though we were prescient angels
susceptible to literary hazards of love.
Or let’s say the morality of my body
was Rumi’s field beyond right and wrong
which blurs like the sky into the sea
and I am the ghost of a mother you have imagined
weeping at the airport, and we reconcile with the
obscured texts of our pasts, and sleep like train stations
when the trains aren’t running, and forget everything
when the cold dawn chills us with its cruel light.

Smoke and Snow

Inside the mind there are roads that snake into a chimera.
Their conceptual frameworks never seek destinations
but question their own questions
like terrible children who don’t comprehend the sky.
Their philosophies have the integrity of the foundations
of structures that disassemble and then rise from their ashes
like great birds exploding into hysterical flight.
The archeological excursion into the depths of subconscious
is a perilous venture.  I dig and dig and wind up
emerging with darkness and more darkness
that folds into itself like a lover bowing
to bury his head in the clemency of my thighs
with pinholes of light piercing it like stars
in some distinct recollection of a November
when a man stood like a superimposition
of a god-like figure against the city in the twilight
smelling like smoke and snow
that filled my breath like something splitting
without disrupting the center
inside the perfect stillness of its concentric whole.

About the Poet:

Emily Vogel is the assistant poetry editor of ragazine.cc. Her biography appears on the “About Us” page.

THE GENIUS

All week I work on building the humongous contraption in my front yard. I build it out of a hundred things: the engine from a ’56 Chevy, an espresso machine, various farm equipment, a conveyor belt, two propane refrigerators, a well pump, a hot water heater with shotgun holes for ventilation, a Remington typewriter, a rusted catalytic convertor, the stained grass bag from a broken lawnmower, six wind-up alarm clocks, a fire hydrant, a vacuum cleaner, a panini press, and the internal workings of a VCR. The monstrosity looks like the Everlasting Gobstopper machine in Willy Wonka. But I think it’s beautiful. Whenever people stop to ask me what I’m doing, I tell them I’m working on my next big mistake.

About the author:
Smelcer is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently including The Binghamton Poems, selected and edited by John Updike. His poems appear in hundreds of magazines.