BlazeVOX

BlazeVOX
An.online.journal.of.voice
A compendium
BlazeVOX Vol. 3 : 2k5
BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York
BlazeVOX An.online.journal.of.voice A compendium
Copyright © 2007
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Geoffrey Gatza
First Edition
Volume Title ISBN ISBN 13

BlazeVOX Vol. 1 : 2k1; 2k2 & 2k3 1-934289-47-7 978-1-934289-47-1
BlazeVOX Vol. 2 : 2k4 1-934289-48-5 978-1-934289-48-8
BlazeVOX Vol. 3 : 2k5 1-934289-49-3 978-1-934289-49-5
BlazeVOX Vol. 4 : 2k6 1-934289-50-7 978-1-934289-50-1
BlazeVOX [books]
14 Tremaine Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org
publisher of weird little books
BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
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BlazeVOX
An.online.journal.of.voice
A compendium
BlazeVOX Vol. 3 : 2k5

BlazeVOX 2K5 an.online.journal.of.voice
blazevox.org
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Table of Contents
Bald Spitting Elephants............................................................................................. 7
Paul A Green ........................................................................................................... 15
Michael S. Begnal ................................................................................................... 23
Justin Vicari............................................................................................................. 29
DAVIDE TRAME................................................................................................... 35
Ashok Niyogi .......................................................................................................... 39
Marie Kazalia .......................................................................................................... 43
Christopher Barnes .................................................................................................. 47
Jennifer Firestone .................................................................................................... 51
Joel Van Noord........................................................................................................ 53
Michelle Greenblatt................................................................................................. 55
Pat Lawrence ........................................................................................................... 61
Rosemarie Crisafi .................................................................................................... 63
Rich Murphy ........................................................................................................... 69
Geoffrey Gatza ........................................................................................................ 75
Rochelle Ratner ....................................................................................................... 79
Buffalo Focus | Ted Pelton................................................................................ 85
Colin Searle ........................................................................................................... 101
Ak-Uh.................................................................................................................... 105
Randy Prunty......................................................................................................... 123
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BlazeVOX 2K5
an.online.journal.of.voice
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BlazeVOX 2K5 an.online.journal.of.voice
blazevox.org
Bald Spitting Elephants
A Letter From The Editor
The fingers of your thoughts are molding

your face ceaselessly. Charles Reznikoff
Our mission, after five years is still

very hard to pin down. We represent
neither a group of writers nor one mode
of writing. We enjoy innovative works of
literature in what ever format that it
chooses to find itself.
We wish to promote new style, emerging

voices and provide an outlet for these
artists to express their artistic visions. This
sounds good, and in turn we will try to live up to these standards and will do
whatever is humanly possible. Please forgive us in advance for our flaws.
Many of our authors say that they find it difficult to publish their kind of work.
This is as true as it is not. We are not the only venue for such odd bits of text, there
are several online and if you are looking for others please visit the links page and
visit the extended family you may have never knew you were related to :-)
We have chosen Ezra Pound as our Editor-in-Chief and it is by his methods we

strive to keep things new. It is our century and we look to this, as Creeley once
noted, what else is one to do, make it old? So we are here and after five years we
have seen many journals come and go, blogs come up from groundbreaking
listservs, good friends die and good friends experience births … war, injustice and
seemingly limitless stupidity come into power. We have seen many things, good and
bad, and I am sure things will get worse before they get better.
Our poetic voices are irrelevant in today’s political arena. This is not surprising, as
all voices of dissent are dismissed as soon as they gain any momentum. So with that,
we shall practice our poetry in the time that we have. Even through the darkest of
times, the best minds blaze forward!
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We want more readers! We hope that you are enjoying this journal and
please send us an email to let us know how we are doing and how we can better
serve your needs. We can only be as good as you demand us to be. Please show us
the way!
We are aligned heart and soul with BlazeVOX [ books ] www.starcherone.com We

are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and your generosity to BlazeVOX [books] will
be run considered a tax-deductible charitable donation. However, your book
purchases make all this happen. So please buy someone’s book and make a poet’s
mom happy.
New Format!
Our past format had been a large issue of poetry coming out twice a year. As we
grew so did our ability to provide larger and larger amounts of good poetry.
However, to assemble such a thing is no longer feasible. There is never enough time,
and such things require large amounts of uninterrupted time. So we are going to
adapt to our new environments. We have purchased several new technologies that
will make it easier to have several small issues appear through out the year. As of
now, our goal is to have a new issue come out every three weeks with a close look
at 3 to 5 poets’ works. There will be no themes, I believe. But if there is it will be a
light hearted and appropriate.
Print-On-Demand Books
We are still publishing and have several books in the wings ready to come out.
These titles are superb works and are sure to resound through-out our poetry
community. Most of our new titles are still available for adoption so please find out
what you can do to bring a good text into the world.
We are going to be changing our methods for some of our books. We currently use
Cafepress.com to produce our books. This is a wonderful method as it takes no
money to have a professional looking book available in a true, when you purchase it
they make it, POD book. However, this is very expensive and it has a hefty
shipping and handling fees associated with it. So for now it will do.
In the near future we will be doing short runs of our POD books and have them for
sale from our website and have them shipped from our offices in Buffalo, NY. This
will reduce a lot of waste and streamline our production. These in turn will further
reduce costs. So if you see a paypal link, your purchase will be coming from us and
not Cafepress.com.
Please stay turned for new developments …
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Blogoscope
Yes, we finally broke down and got ourselves a blog. And I have to swallow my
pride and say that I was wrong and the bloggers have it. My original concerns over
blogs being insulated forms of narcissism have become true as they are not true. The
format has evolved far beyond the wonderful listservs which I still consider myself a
member. Even though I am guilty of being a simple lurker in the shadows, I am still
there. Once blogs gained the technology to allow for comments and expanded to
easy to use personal online spaces – how can anyone resist in loving them. I read
Silliman’s blog religiously and find myself the better informed for it. I will not claim
that our minor effort will emulate Mr. Silliman’s excellent effort, it will serve as a
posting board for updated information in BlazeVOXland. We shall post
announcements and upcoming readings, parties and post images of silliness and
maybe even a one of Kent Johnson. But all in all, it will serve as an easy way for me
to bridge the gaps of being a working man.
Electronic books
Yes of course we still have e-books!

Check them out. Our list will increase
in the coming year and we now offer
text in two formats Adobe PDF and
Microsoft Reader. If you haven’t
updated your reader software in a
while you may want to do this.
Adobe PDF is now on version 7.0 and
Microsoft reader is on 2.0. Both are
great programs and can be taken with
you on your mobile computer, palm pilot or blackberry.
If you need to get a new reader please go to
Adobe PDF Reader :

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Where the hell have you been?

It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check
up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't
buy. -George H. Lorimer, editor (1868-1937)
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In general things have been a fine, although I have found it increasingly difficult to
find a balance between poetry, work, family and failing old computers. I did take on
more than I could really do and I did burn out. It was a hard thing to publish as
many books as I did in one season but I think I know what my schedule now allows
and how to best achieve a future goals. For an in-depth look please visit the blog
http://blazevox.org/blog/index.php?title=delicate_libations_on_becoming_incom
muni&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
If you have sent materials to us and have not heard back. We have them and are
carefully going through the wonderful items in our box. If you wish, please send us
a note to inquire about your work. However you will all receive a positive letter
from us shortly.
Buffalo Focus:
Every issue we will try to explore a new Buffalo poet. There is a lot going on here in
Buffalo and I think it is important to engage some of that energy and bring you a
sample of our home. Slated to appear are, Ethan Paquin, Ted Pelton, Mike Kelleher,
Jasmine Ten Feathers, Yang Zi Tu, and Jonathan Skinner.
Want to donate?
BlazeVOX [ books ] is proud to support the community and ask that you consider
supporting our work. 100% of your contribution goes towards active literary
initiatives.
BlazeVOX [ books ] is working with Starcherone Books, a 501( C )3 Public Charity.
If you would like to support us with a tax-deductible contribution, you may donate
today using one of the methods below.
Adopt a book Program
Please consider adopting a book. Your payment of $300 will insure that the book
you choose to adopt will come into the world as a healthy new text. This pays for
all of the costs of printing, author fees, and promotion of the book. Your name will
appear, if you so desire, as the sponsor of this text and you will also receive 10
copies of the book.
Books still available for adoption:
Here Comes Everybody edited by Lance Phillips

I Wear a Fig Leaf Over My Penis by Geoffrey Gatza
Sidewalk Portrait by Richard Henry
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Donate by Credit Card
please go to our web site and use the PayPal link
Donate by Check
Please make your check payable to BlazeVOX [ books ], :
BlazeVOX [ books ]
PO Box 303
Buffalo, NY 14201
Thank you for your support and helping to make our work possible. Your support
to BlazeVOX [ books ] contributes to literature as a living art.
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BlazeVOX 2K5
an.online.journal.of.voice
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Paul A Green
BRAIN GUN
Brains grow up
in this domed tank
they swell grand

grand against the scaffold beam
of the usual dimensions
that strong triad

emitted from monad
but then
brains hang in time
over niggling vertigo

this time/that time
that flow
that washes my fingertips away
in vitro
like vitriol
we’re maimed numb glossy

as mass roars at energy
through space ahead of us
only hope
to avoid slow death
domed fate
brain dwindling
like nuclear mushroom
in backwards time blast
or crushed in wall of death centrifuge hedonism
apply paranioa to nature!

the phantom attacks!
with brain gun!
the machine!
15
with grand design
the electrics charge
shrugging through the glia

under dark museum glass
snowing mauve sparks I remember
under dark museum glass
at speed light is/when

consciousness critical fusion speed
fifty per second
mashed harpsichords tingle still
and memory - remember?

serpentine with molecules
wrestles entropy
(so words hit fire burst

30 phonemes per second per second
expansion
through
and through)
16
THE CONCLUSION
The square has been disused for a decade. The stone beasts, concave
fountains on cracked pedestals, the crooked fractured bollards - all buried.
beneath a layer of fine grey snow. Grains of grey snow have been falling for
months. Visibility is poor.
We have started clearing the central piazza with heavy earth-moving

equipment and the customary napalm jets. The men have complained
about the unusually mucous snow which furs the windscreen blades and
seeps into their cabins, or clogs their valve controls. They’ve also been
disturbed by the findings in the strata below the snow -face.
Apart from wrecked street furnishings, crushed dentures and shards of

bone, they’ve encountered lumps of deep-frozen tissue speckled with
metal fragments and curious flattened rubbery objects, like inflatable
insects. These surfaces are also treacherous. A flame-thrower operator
lost his footing, with unfortunate results .
But I have ordered the men to wipe their visors and trudge on. I have no
choice. Visibility is poor. One must not lose control.
Our main objective must still be locating the Chambers. The Chambers
offer ascent. They encapsulate a kind of salvation.
I keep telling the men, the wretched lumpen men in their barely protective
uniforms, what we are looking for. “They’re like booths, “ I shout.
“Cylindrical. About two to three metres high. Domed. Finished in a dark
marble-like material..” The men look for humps in the grey snow. I look
for transcendance. A conclusion.
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SLOW LEARNING MAN
(Respect to Muddy Waters)
I'm the slow learning man

I'm a sleep-walking man
I'm your teacher man

I'm the classified man
I'm an inside man

I'm an unsound man
I'm a no-confidence man

I'm the slow-motion man
Was an analogue man

now I'm digitised, man
I'm a monologue man

back-catalogue man
I'm some part-time man

I'm a multi-tasking man
I'm a new and used man

I'm a quite impossible man
I'm a modular man

I'm a plug-and-play man
I'm a freeze-dried man

I'm a vacuum-formed man
I'm a little green man

A little-used bluesman
I'm almost a permitted man

I'm a bad committee man
I'm a reformatted man

once I was a saved man
I'm the overloaded man

I'm a bar-coded man
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I'm a hard-drinking man
an all-night slinking man
I'm a morphing man

almost sub-human
Now I'm Pan the Man

a thelemic man
I'm an intertextual man

your inflatable man
I'm this heterosexual man

a not quite new man
I'm a fairly random man

a really cack handyman
I'm a mandible man

deeply bugged up, old man
I'm a hyperreal man

a daytime serial man
I'm a teleported man

an over-distorted man
I'm a cosmic man

I'm a comic bookman
I'm a viral man

I'm a hot-wired man
I'm an unverifiable man

almost everyman
I'm a post-modernist man

I'm a last-past-the-postman
I'm the replicated man

a teleported man
I'm a quantised man

a quickfiring man
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a hazchem early-warning man
an interim report man
a nuclear familial survival man

a defenestrated man
I'm the pixellated man

a pustular man
that fire-eating man

the zip-farting man
an undergrowth man
some grown-over man
the abominable no-man

I'm the untitled man
a midnighter wolfman Jack-man

a confirmed hot bottom man
the manikin man

the mediated man
the mutated man

the rain-dancing man
the fire-breathing man

the unlimited man
the corrected man

the holy rolling man
the gut-busting man

I'm the web-fisted wonderman
I'm a begotten man

I'm a forgotten man
yo urbanised hit-man
the inserted man

the man in the menage
oh smooth'n'hairy man
I'm the smiling pubic man
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I dreadwatch beetleman
yeah phatic man
the sleep-torquing man

a quasi-erectile man
the final syllable man

all-night boogie man
I'm the dead letter man

a slow fading man
Paul A. Green has written radio drama and features (inc Ritual of the Stifling Air
for BBC, The Dream Laboratory for CBC Canada, Power/Play! for Capital Radio,
The Mouthpiece for Resonance FM), arts and literary journalism, rock lyrics, as
well as devising theatre/performance pieces for Bristol Playwrights Company, The
Department of Enjoyment, and Pyrotheatrix.. Various fiction projects include The
Qliphoth, The Dream Depository, Beneath the Pleasure Zones and 666. Work in
progress involves scripts for radio, television and film. He is the UK correspondent
for Culture Court.
http://www.qbsaul.demon.co.uk/
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Michael S. Begnal
Mountain
rises above shedding water, wash of early spring,

another ascent where our forerunners have tread,
original humans of here,
own shod feet treading rocks loose in the dirt of
“home”
the feeling of being out in silent wilderness
the summit,
the sky strangely shimmering,
the town revealed from it as misplaced with distance,
plan of streets indiscernible to the retina’s rods and cones,
instead there are more mountains on the blue horizon,
seriate ridges stretching out in parallel
and we inhabit merely one of numerous valleys
somewhere underneath, 1ƍ down, perhaps arrowheads
no mountain lions / Puma concolor
a clearing of
total change is always there waiting

and you take into you repercussions of
death hanging over like dead tree limb
of previous winter
the summit ground still brown with old leaves,

new buds on branches,
inevitable fall
23
Dithyramb
Marijuana through a Lime Coke can,

to put on a Philadelphia A’s hat
& walk to a Uni-Mart via alleys,
with a silver shiny car following
suddenly delay & turn
up the alley (“evasive action”)
past a porch Every day is guy day...
No way! Yes way!
breeze blowing slightly,

to wear a t-shirt in the night
—is it already early July?—
summers are fragile now,
TV light flickering blue from a back window
& in the store

I am on a small color TV
in blue hat & green t-shirt
—under the threats—

you have to affect a swagger in your walk
to transmit no meekness around the corner,
meet aggression with unconcern &
be ready to smash someone
in the face
because nothing matters now besides

the sensation of being alive
at this very moment, it really doesn’t
(someone following me)

past a porch They come here,
they lead a minimal existence, & send
everything extra back home, & it sucks,
because that $$ should be going back
into our system!
concerned about power & hierarchical
trying to influence each other
& I cannot save them
crunch of gravel under Puma sneakers
24
Blood or Fire
And the people were all against you,

at least as much as when you were a foreigner,
the importance of experience
of suffering together in a dark basement
and the way they were set against each other,

what a sad thing to call home,
a thousand cuts
like broken beer bottles on a concrete floor/
fear stalks “the scene”
and then the double-o,

half-glimpsed faces encircled you,
projected back a history you could not recognize,
the shock of that,
how it was different from the expectation:
as a stylized “big lie” delivered
in a certain locality’s impenetrable dialect,
the distance to anyone next table,
a balkanization,
almost political
the season turned deranged,
the animals, antagonized in their ditches,
tree leaves bright-reddened and fell—blood or fire,
the mountain ridges were walls of fire
but at night were dark as clouds
25
In the Stadium
In the stadium of white stone

cracked blocks of sun
faces are brown and lined

of the men eating tacos in the stands,
some take pills when no one is looking
hard working in the taxi office 12 hours a day,

it’s hard sitting in these faulty seats of wood
which date to Roman times, or before,
the peanut vendors never come around
the colossal stadium

has gathered the people
announcer (drunk) crackles over the loudspeaker,

you peer through an arch on the mezzanine
and view its space
the stadium at night—

floodlights shoot into the black sky,
cathedral columns rising in circle
so when you look up, the whole crowd one mass,
as in its womb,
enwrapped in its warmth familial,
you see a passage, or a canal
you rise through it,
up,
up,
up,
to birth
26
Snow
You weren’t ready for the snow, were you?

how it distorts the nature of reality
so you realize “life is change”
like you were always told
—but not liking change sometimes—
or the symbol of snow as a malaise,

a misfortune that has befallen the town,
the whole state,
retribution for some collective wrong,
this crap that has appeared,
that covers everything,
impoverishing everything
(the old Twilight Zone episode,
the darkness of the town’s racism),
and not a new snow, it’s been there for months
somehow there were voices through the air

as there might be in summer
(male early 20s drunk on a Tues. night)
(a dog’s, a girl’s scream also drunk, stock)
(not threatened)
the wind blows up the shovelled sidewalks

and you freeze
you had earlier wanted to incorporate the image of

a lone flower on the steppe,
but it just wasn’t happening
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Fluffy
The powdered scent of hair,

flesh to lip,
becomes tautened,
and inside swollen moist like after rain,
time wilts and willows,

residue builds sweet on the tongue
colors come
and the fireflies light up the night
in SWARMS
BIO:
Michael S. Begnal (b. 1966, U.S.A.)

poetry collection, The Lakes of Coma (www.sixgallerypress.com
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Justin Vicari
LISTENING TO THE DISTANCE
Hard to explain what I’m doing here, in the bruising wind off the river this evening,
as summer goes down for the count. A matted, bankrupt bird hops onto a bench
and looks around. Nearby, a trellis supports strange vines pushing out swollen
mutant flowers. They drag their heads along the ground like trumpets whom
enervated angels can’t lift and let flag at end of day.
Nature, as if for the last time, as if it would never be here again for my
sunken eyes to drink and grow vigorous, in the middle of the chilly city.
I feel the numbness of the river wind. I see the birds who mutely peck
leavings in the sparse grass, and the fallen flowers, crushed against concrete, to the
distant bellowing of heaven’s horns.
29
A VOICE
She tells me a lot, her voice a ghost in the mouth of a gypsy.

She tells me, but only if I listen.
Her lips as cold as a bust of Athena.
My eyes are circled so black it’s like kohl.
I’m not sleeping enough, listening to songs
of loss and regret,
not getting enough done.
I watch the ice drops condense on the air conditioner
whose breath throbs heavy, as if with lust
or impatience. A voice,
a single white flame of truth
always in danger of being extinguished.
30
WELDON KEES
They lie in wait for anyone

who strays too far:
belly on belly, the frogs
pyramid and teem
the outskirts, croaking fetid wind

where swamp begins. He saw this
coming plague,
and survived a palsied hand of years, a name
not yet deleted from the lists,

invited by rote to soirees
where the gnawed knucklebones stared,
hoping he’d play the gin-pickled poet,
tied in the corner like a rabid poodle.

Those stares always tipped the bet
against him.
One of those lime-rind nights,
he found the mirage of “Robinson”

shipwrecked on the rocks,
among the smudged thumbs of the dawn edition,
the dazed ones whistling down taxicabs
in the rain on Fifth Avenue,

squinting for Albertine in the backseat. . .
And when did it happen that even his mustache
ran away? They found the empty sedan
like a dusty barnacle encrusting that bridge.

Chased? Afraid? An entire life
set down in the moveable type
of the grave?
31
LAND OF A THOUSAND DANCES
T’aint no sin to take off your skin

And dance around in your bones. . .
Don’t know why you don’t stay a little longer.
--William S. Burroughs
We do the dances we were taught.

Still the dead won’t stay down,
martyrs in their endless file, Saint
Sebastian at the urinal.
Whip scars, casualty statistics:

we keep dancing. A-bomb bop,
Dallas stomp, electric chair boogaloo,
the only moves we know.
I strip away my inherited guilts

which bear no resemblance to me,
I trade in God for another miracle.
In champagne rain the satin rose
petals dew, on my table by the lamp.

Inside the crypt of my shirt pocket
the roseheaded matchsticks bloom:
souls short-lived, fiery, the fire
and reward of karma. Music

and fire: world without end.
These ardors are good for the heart,
murder on the complexion.
I rearrange my chemistry, blue

strobe breaks my breath’s shallow
beat into resurrections, mirror
reflections. I believe the slave’s
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seductive dance with veils, wounds,
change by moments -- I was taught,
too, to get what I want. Crewcut
jitterbug, tensed-spine alert
up and down wordless muscle,

Frankenstein straitjacket polka --
you say there’s nothing new,
you have seen and done all that.
I am teaching myself something new.

Upright porous sack
leaking my nectars and sweats
I unzip slip-knot vertebrae,
my blood pumps out its silt,

graveyard shift in its refinery.
Calling the tribes to assembly
with a mouthful of curses and boasts --
Oh yes. Kiss me there.

A mouthful of kisses and boasts!
200 years with blood on its canines,
we’ve never heard such compelling
evidence, such coursing tide

in drumbeat cadence. Swear
by new ears, new legs kicking,
I raise my arm, in whole recast
the real American tongue.
I have recently won poetry prizes from Third Coast and New
Millennium Writings, and I am the author of a fiction chapbook, "In
a Garden of Eden" (Plan B Press, 2005). My work also appears or is
scheduled to appear in Poetry Motel, Slant, Spillway, Black Rock &
Sage, and other reviews. My translations of the Algerian poet Jean
Senac are appearing in Buckle &, Visions International, and
currently online at Lodestar Quarterly. I am a reader/editorial
assistant for the online journal Lily.
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DAVIDE TRAME
CRICKETS
The grinding sound of a secret

at our window,
a secret too quiet to be inquired;
we face the rhythm of its countenance
in the weightless dark,
it stands and hovers at the same time
and we look for cheekbones on the pomegranate flowers
and let the sun-drenched stones rest;
we have let ourselves get lost
somewhere over there
in the looming breath of leaves and stalks,
there’s an absence we cherish
with the dissolved consistency of our day,
we know now we can only listen at last
and ask nothing
and fly,
because we need to fly
to reach the vibrant
unbounded stillness of sleep.
35
BASHO
Neat gaze, naked like

the very heart of his being
when he decided to set off
leaving all he had behind.
A start from scratch, hard
and just painful at first.
But what you know you also need
at the bottom of yourself.
You sense his eyes now
watching this lush June grass field,
stalks waving from the train window,
a stretch of green you know well
but with a newness in the sunlight,
a breath you couldn’t expect,
a luminous gust
scraping your silence,
exposing the veins
of the farthest and closest heart.
36
HOME
The pigeon taps the cat’s bowl

with a rhythm that comes close, very close,
from the balcony to your table,
it makes you nod at once and acknowledge
the seconds’ clearness in the silence.
It’s only here after all
that you can really taste
the roots of the floor
adhering barefoot to its soul,
even if you felt the same
walking on that Paestum street,
arcs and bricks
so suddenly at one with your gaze and skin,
squared blocks so worn and warm
on the soles of your feet,
the expanded breath of a cradle
like the tap on a bowl lulling you to sleep.
And you want to believe all will continue,
dust on your speckled floor welcoming the air
shifted for ages by your barefoot steps,
dust listening to the nearness of a tapping beak
among walls now with maybe no roof,
the sunlight of a hot noon hushing
some passing stranger’s talk, steps
shuffling in the slow fluttering of banana leaves.
37
SKERRIES
Wind. On the beach our sweaters blown into,

we were tasting the swollen dizziness of clouds
inebriated by tingling wind chimes,
the boats’ masts gossiping in the gusts.
We walked for ages in a day
of soft strand and scattered sunlit surf pools,
the air flashing on, what stays with us
is that streaming openness of the sky’s throat
and the familiar seaside’s aftermath:
the tide coming in while we were leaving,
the palm of a hand spreading vast
with a luminous quietness and we
going back to the city in its wake,
everything dangling on the bus,
sky and strand with their huge
dregs of drunkenness in our mind’s eye
gaily bruised and hushed by the beach’s
stretched breath.
Bio:
I am an Italian teacher of English writing poems exclusively in

English since 1993, they have been published in around one hundred
literary magazines since 1999, in U.K, U.S. and elsewhere. Recently
in “Poetry New Zealand” , “New Contrast” (South Africa). Nimrod
(U.S.). I live in Venice-Italy. Thank you for your attention. Best
regards, Davide Trame.
38
Ashok Niyogi
TODAY
On this sunny day in California,

When lawns are being mown,
Car metal glints on the freeway
In the parking lot outside Macys,
Blackbirds are out for tidbits,
Trees feel obligated to bring forth
Green leaves,
I eat fresh plucked strawberries
>From a Murano bowl.
Work is worship,
Matrons are airing their pregnant bellies
>From second floor balconies,
The shadow people slink past
Warehouse doors,
As birds sing at them
In disdain,
Insects pollinate flowers on dividers.
It seems easy to float away,

Routinely above the daily routine,
Cheesecakes and coffee
After an afternoon nap,
At twilight Jack Kerouac,
And vintage people in vintage cars,
At stop signs
On the way back.
39
UNDERSTANDING BALANCE
It is so complicated…
The dialectics of conflict,
If at all,
Between the Great American Chain Store,
And the Outlet Mall.
Machete
Between Hutu and Tutsi,
Mass murder in Darfor,
This is easy to comprehend
The severing of limb, the rivers of blood,
This is absolute, this is concrete.
Decimation is easier explained.

The subtlety lies in corn on the cob,
Barbecue and television for the soul.
The huge headed pot bellied

Rickety child,
Has but to have enough strength
To lift his hand
And chase away the fly,
>From his rheumy eye.
The infections and allergies

And river flies at summer camp
Are more difficult to control.
That is why, there is a lot to learn,

>From fly-fishing,
Or hunting elk and moose,
Winging other nuclear nations
On the loose.
But much more important

Is the vibrant pulse-beat
Of the suburban shopping mall,
Festooned with the Chinese dragon
Wearing Indonesian Reebok shoes.
Whose?
40
PARKED
solitude is contraindicated
in circumstances of developed penury.
sitting in a car,
staring at a star,
preserve rage,
at minimum wage,
in the apartment,
virtual cockroaches climb
an overflowing garbage bin.
baby
in pregnant belly,
hip-hop,
spiced beef mince,
weak kitchen exhaust,
where is Faust?
my community sings under a Banyan tree,

in the hot season overripe mangoes are free,
then,
there will be dancing in the rain.
take me home
sweet mother goddess,
take me home
dear elephant god,
in the Bay Area

the rent is steep,
I must sleep.
Ashok Niyogi was born in Calcutta in 1955. He was schooled all over
India in Irish Christian Brothers'Schools and graduated with Honors
in Economics from Presidency College. Ashok spent 30 years in the
world of International Commerce,15 in East Europe and Russia and
the CIS. His
work has taken him all over the world and he now divides his time
between California where his two daughters live, Russia and India.
Ashok has two books of poetry in India - 'Crossroads' and
'Reflections in the Dark' (both from A-4 Publications) and one book
of poems from the USA - 'Tentatively' (iUniverse).
41
42
Marie Kazalia
The Old West is a Dangerous Place for someone like--
the way I dress, my independence ( as a female),

my long black coat a flag
waving at every asshole redneck.
I slept curled up on two seats both footrests up--
my two black coats for blankets. I can't sleep this first night
I thought--but dozed off around midnight. (I'd started the day at 5:30 a.m.)
Woke every hour--at Salt Lake, at Provo Utah.
Got about 6 hours sleep, total. At nine I brushed my hair,
put on clean tights( in the bathroom) & makeup
got a cup of coffee.
The second day on board, departure from San Francisco
just crossed the Utah border into Colorado.
Both women and men on the train made comments
on my vintage coat, they liked it, "It's adorable."
But then that old asshole, "god, is it Halloween," he'd said
extremely loud. A little earlier he'd bored me with some
news story about a woman who'd spilled a cup of
hot coffee on her chest at McDonalds, then sued for
millions of dollars..."Remember that?" he'd asked,
signaling his limited experiences and assumptions--
breathing his breathy drunken stench all over me
first thing in the morning. I'd tried to put him off with
politeness--that didn't work. I'd already given myself
that talk inside my head, about practicing manners now,
out here in the world again.
"Hey Zorro!" the old fuck called out at me--loud.
I pass him ignoring his remark--there was only ten minutes
to locate the fruit stand
in the middle of the Grand Junction station platform--
wait in line, buy something and get back on the train.
A banana for fifty cents-- a lot cheaper than Amtrak food
I was tired of...already. (fresher)
After the fruit stand, I stepped into a little station shop
that had candy bars and a display case of fake turquoise
jewelry. I bought peanut butter cups, and on my way out
noticed a sign *Free Coffee* -- pouring myself a cup
when the old asshole came up behind me...
"Hey, Zorro. Why don't you have your mask on?"
"I do." I told him, walking away leaving him puzzled.
43
Back in my seat, train moving again
he stealths up, bends close in over my shoulder
"you have nice handwriting..." he breathes all over
one side of my neck, placing his hand on my arm.
I turn my page over. When he's gone take up my
writing again--squiggling & jerky black juicy ink
flow in abrupt unintended directions as the train car rocks
swerves and balances. He's right up on my neck again,
his hand patting the shoulder of my velvet coat...
"I wasn't spying on you..." he said.
Don't know where he went after that--
I open a book, read the first few brief chapters of
Maggy Cassady--he won't interrupt me when
I'm reading, I thought. Damn, I feel hungry
(even after the banana and peanut butter cups)
nothing much to do on this train. I descend the
stairs to the subterranean snack lounge--
he won't find me down here. But then there's the other
annoying guy--kept talking to me--saying things--
trying to start a conversation, but polite, not too pushy--
he's drinking Coronas down there--I sat off in a corner
eating a hot pepperoni pizza--he glanced back in my direction
then turned, that's when I noticed his oval bald spot
combed over with long hair--maybe he's the kind of guy
who'd gotten lucky a few times just hanging around
in bars minding his manners with the ladies--
till one just in the right mood, neediness--at that necessary
level of intoxication...
I hurried past, swishing my long coat and dress back up
the narrow stairs--so much of my life avoiding
people I know and the ones I don't care to...
I'm the only woman on the train wearing a dress.
All those unworked wide slack asses
making their way up the aisle
in pale denim topped by nylon windbreakers--
red neck women ( god, I despise that lack of style)
To have no style makes them proud, feel
right, American--good about themselves and
yet that old fuck's woman, a faded beauty
in everyday overalls cringing under
his aggressive thumb.
I felt sorry for her--and yet he's the man
she'd chosen.
My mask--pretending--letting them all see
what they wanted, while concealing
the foul-mouthed, hardened, street-wizened
woman just leaving the end of ten years
ghetto living--entered in 1995 after
44
traveling around the world. I reminded myself
to put my best manners forward --- I could see
in my imagination shocked looks on the faces of
women on this train, if what I really thought came out
of my mouth. Why waste it on them anyway.
I'm riding to Chicago where I'll get off and never see
these people again--
I am not out to change their thinking...
they can give me something--material
for my writing--buy me a meal--I'm the "dude"--
the "city slicker"
be cool I tell myself
read a book--
look out the windows...at the scenery.
I even sat in the observation car for a while
thru remote Colorado--canyons, river
Bald eagles, deer, elk...lots of animal tracks
in the snow. That second day, ate as little as
possible--rice crispies for breakfast--
dinner of eggplant ravioli--snow peaked mountain
scenery thru dining car window.
In Denver I got off and hurried along the long platform
to the huge old station building--just to use
a non-swaying toilet. Then returned to my seat as
new passengers poured on and I nearly have to give
up half my sleeping space---read some more--
now only 9 p.m. -- getting tired again
want to turn off the overhead reading light
before someone figures out I have 2 seats--
strange people talking so loud on cell phones
in ways totally unacceptable in San Francisco--
all these rednecks and non-creative types
I'm starting to feel so out of place & scared
at what irrevocable thing I've done to myself
yet thankful to have escaped that ghetto shit hole--
The older redneck guys invoke their authority
as elder with the young 20ish redneck type boys
"Are you two boyfriend and girlfriend or just friends?"
I hear the meaty voice in seats behind me
& the dutiful response..."we've known each other since
kids in school..." The girl had been singing outloud
just before, to the recorded song only she could hear
thru her headphones..."there ain't no covercharge...
boys and girls know how to get-down on the farm..."
More deep-voiced questions..."going to work or going
to school?" The word culinary in the reply. The young guy
liked to cook with his father grilling meats & veggies
while the mother worked on the desserts...
45
"What do you cook best?"
The young guy made thought sounds with his voice
then answers...chicken with lemon...
and orange the girl interjected then praised his
fancy mixed together vegetables too
The old redneck told them..."my wife cooks
pork chops with onion & then adds a can of
mushroom soup! That is so-o-o-o good!"
Geez. That stale old recipe of cream of mushroom
canned soup white trash sauce secret
those rednecks all thought so highly original...
Fuck! I think it's been published a jillion times
in Readers Digest or someplace...
Embarrassed silence from the young man chef.
That gap that makes communication unnecessary--
futile even--impossible without insults.
Same with that distance between poet/performer me
in long vintage black and that rude crude old
asshole redneck who called me Zorro so many times
I'd spent my evening thoughts planning on
going to one of the train conductors
to complain of sexual harassment...
but by morning most of the passengers had detrained
in Nebraska, where they belonged. The absence of my
redneck terrorizer & his strangely staring wife
left a nice calm emptiness in all the train cars
as I warily moved toward a cup of coffee.
He had definitely gotten off. The train crossed on a bridge
over the Mississippi. I started feeling better--calm,
more positive. That wasteland before and after the gorgeous Rockies--
that dusty dead area that bred his sort,
long behind me--I'd escaped. I'd been so out of place
in that neck of the woods. Flashing now on the dudes
emerging from stage coaches of the old west
in ruffled shirt fronts--locals firing bullets at their feet
raucous laughter of the low-life drunks,
until the hero intervenes.
I'm *the dude* the *city slicker*
the wild west redneck that had so oddly filled this train
for a day and night feels uncomfortable
too near the Mississippi River borderland
the *East* beyond--my hero, space and time
the continued push eastward toward more intellect,
style, civilization--things I feel comfortable with...
I'd be in Chicago by 4 p.m.
5 hours to kill there before boarding the last train
at ten...
46
Christopher Barnes
Who Bayoneted The Brigadier?
Peep behind the curtain –

he nips a peeve of dandruff
weathering the storm
on his Controller’s bowler
shrinking from the corpse
fizzling in acid.
The burden of his song

is an uncracked nut;
he games to stop the mouths
of Sabotage Section denials.
47
The Tate
Let us transform ourselves again.

Pine planks have stopped sawing,
the grime survives. Gallery doors cling.
Listen in with me a while

to the cagey bearings hung
in the smudge-brush triptych: Three Figures In A Room.
As a premier clear dribbles of faeces,

envisage the loo-bowl and loyal subject
as one, the coincidence of impetus in their guts.
The stutter of paint is performance, it’s gamble
absorbs the very plunge of the cistern. Hear
the waves drumming through the troughs
of the long narrow room.
Would you be staggered if the second was nonchalant?

A little disgruntled, somewhat unfunny?
As it may be he is bothering a heart-to-heart
or sweeping his eye over I Love Lucy
on the tangerine valves of bakelite.
There’s a scuffle in his liver, gurgling,
a fly-spotted destiny on his face.
The pleading of the third will ruffle him up.

Being is shoddy. He cracks at tense repose,
a full-size grizzly on a slinky stool.
We track his wince, see the grit in his muscle,
hold an ear, standing quiet
prickling for clues.
48
When You’re Young And In Love
On the drophead coupe’s audiofrequency

a Bluegrass dout harmonizes
“we don’t smoke marijuana in Muskokie”.
“Dock, dock,” the sky’s voice drops.

On a whiskey-sour night
paranoia stomps
waist-deep over Highway 61.
We’ve been to a sit-in rebel-rouse

after a tub-thumping at County Hall
and have a Hillbilly truck-wagon on our butt.
Left, the parkway’s a furry skull.

I shoot the bottle to Betty,
mess with the tuner
and spark up the last reefer.
In 1998 Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 he
read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'.
Christmas 2001 he debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading
of my poems. Each year he has read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing
festival and workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection LOVEBITES
published by Chanticleer Press.
49
50
Jennifer Firestone
It’s a new government step up get your eats. My face chocolate-covered would you care for butter
on your breasts. We’re on the sides and fire creeps we are rooting new man with rules, place them
down
command, word is out.
Who’s in the group of invisible raise your hand. Are you old, four-legged, do you live in another
world?
***
The screen depicts reality: here’s how some love here’s how some rage.
The cowboy torch passed one rough hand to another horses neck to neck.
Lasso colors and put in pocket. Kick a bull in its balls. Spit out wad jeans go a’flapping. Wild ones
here we come.
We barely talk about prospering land that is even a little dying. The birds call green but with a loss.
If your face touched you may go straight under, they’d poke a flag and say one lost life.
***
Take your tins and glass shuffle. Take broom smashing things with tails, waving high when asked.
Roping sections saying this is my land, taking steps back waving a fan jumping a wind breeze quick
to the steps behind the wood of it back to a beverage that’s boiled.
51
***
Hot, waving down tenants alarming them of day soaked with premonitions white flashes took off
clothes. Residents heard gunshots motorcycles roared. Artists at one place sideswiped to another.
Skin, carrier pouches, messages to transfer.
***
I will vote I will give money. The ship is directing I must get to the hot lights, not look at what’s
below water not feel unsteady metal push my feet. Because he came from without money he can talk
to poor. The farmers gather and he says values. The other one stands aside remarkable for
confidence.
Are all artists out to play door opened for tea and cakes. Is their hair hot. Are they down the red
tube, artists come find me.
Jennifer Firestone lives in Brooklyn and teaches poetry at Hunter College and at
Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. An excerpt from her
manuscript Holiday was published as a chapbook by Sona Books in June 2004, and
she is currently editing a book in progress of epistolary dialogues between well
known, contemporary poets called Letters To Young Poets: Conversations about
Poetics, Politics and Community. Her own poems are published in LUNGFULL!,
Canwehaveourballback, 14 Hills, Diner, Karamu, The Cortland Review,
Connecticut Poetry Review, Tin Lustre Mobile, Sugar Mule, Feminist Studies,
Sidereality, Madison Review, Interim, Poetry Salzburg Review, Phoebe, and others.
52
Joel Van Noord
Have you been to East Lansing
Awkward,
Yet determined to lounge in the room and not be the most awkward.
At least there was always one kid with lopsided hair who saved
everyone, a typical Jesus usually named Mike.
We were all experts in porn. All with girlfriends out buying beer
and red label vodka for themselves.
Just beginning to get nasty. Half knowing that love is only what
you’re able to hold on to.
The rest of the half still pretending not to be virgins. Pretending

to know conversations.
As if the one girl they’d found their way into and pumped three
times counted.
We didn’t have to talk about that. But Mike usually brought it up

to dig his way from the basement.
Through the crevasse he’d fallen, unable to climb out, rappelling
farther and farther in search of light. One day he’d be gone and
we’d notice and talk about it between the 3rd and 4th beer.
Leaving it after that initial, awkward, letdown.
Things will never end right.
I’m sure many people have said that.

5 words all common. In some arrangement it’s had to have happened
solely by probability. Given all that’s spoken and thought.
I don’t know about death. I can’t think about it with meaning.

Friends have seriously toyed with drugs looking for a sliver of
that light.
Love, the longer lived, only becomes painful.
With identities turned fragile as a crustacean desiccating on a

beach.
Tossed indifferently upon the beach.
53
Endurance to love wears and the beauty fades. Yet it’s the only
thing made un-awkward. The only thing comfortable in any true
meaning.
Our room we share. It’ll end, then begin again in another breath.
That’s one way to think. Nietzsche with a paragraph led me around
my college campus with a quirky smile because I thought he was
right.
Just patterns moving about with capacity to think.

Bound to repeat the exact same thing and everything else.
Merely because of the word infinite.
In the room.
I love her.
I’ve loved her and so has he.
My best friend.
He once asked me if it was alright, in the parking lot of a mid

sized city in Michigan. Looked at me after we rafted a West
Virginia river in the rain. Dude man, he said and then popped the
question. A hand on my shoulder as he looked up and into my eyes.
Leaving his question than saying, dude man, again.
Just say something, if you mind. Dude. Man.
54
Michelle Greenblatt
Plexiglas
we walked straight thru the morning, cold for April; I thought

it might have been easier, maybe I wouldn't have to take all those
drugs,
but I did, then the panic set in around 1 p.m. (I woke a little late
today)-I wondered, passing from guitar to dead guitar, the modulation
a little shaky-of course, then again there was little or no response coming
from me unless you wanted to count my relentless to desire to talk
about rhythm & rhythm was all I cared about the night after "the incident"
behind the gas station with the man & the gun concerning me not you me
the unconfirmed knock-off of a tragedy now even I wouldn't

mind hearing some sort of sermon or
suffocation; suffocation more assuredly an attempt to unscrew the Plexiglas

doorclamp from each window shutter of my eye, blinking open & shut
the unmemory
55
The Screaming of the Scene
loud in my eyes: the screaming of the scene under

the roof of the roofless house we drank the black
wine & I asked have you ever risen in the night
& become suddenly safe, acceptable? A distinction. the brick flaking. the sewer
over / flowing, an archetype of number 1, the dismissal of number 2, the cause
of number 3, & so forth. So I’ve been called crazy, & worse. Flame in the hole
in the sky—the hole no one predicted—the hole really perhaps in my eye. To
know
a war, to know love, I walk in midnight circles around the refrigerator, around
the furniture, trying to figure out which way the wires are pointing. burning
my hair. armor the walls against the living room/kitchen scene in case
someone wants to suck
our skin. in case someone wants to question our virginity. I have not yet chosen
a “way out” in case the walls get knocked down or in case the scene
starts screaming any louder—or if the roof of the roofless house caves in—maybe
it is all the black wine getting to my head, but I really think someone has set
me on fire—just alive enough to record the screaming of the scene.
56
To Entertain Timelessness
So that every night there is a conditional in which the moon pools so she scrapes,
she scrapes. left with the choices of no letters she alphabetizes the divisors. she
was sitting in central park, central park florida, mendacious clouds say no rain but
she woke this morning: her 22 year old bones, old old bones told her thunderstorm,
lightning, proliferate unlife & unmatter at a decelerating rate. she’s a virgin, at
least in this business. no one’s arms can cry harder.
to entertain timelessness one must saunter in skinless & that is just the beginning.
take one photograph, saunter in w/sardonic eyeholes; sally back to the door—don’t
forget you have just begun. the topography of the place may look simple; it is not,
so back to the scraping.
she would decline a razor for a butter knife. without persistence you may not
notice she is already in her second skin, the passage was easier than she thought it
would be, certainly not what she thought it would be, a distinct reminder of the
personal resounding passage into absolutes w/no absolute guarantee.
the second step to entertainment comes w/no instruction manual; these have been
lost for centuries. anyway, they were full of gainsay & only told one how to stay
saporous before being examined, while on the platter.
she beseeches the algesia, leave me alone, leave me. feelings, flaws. also blue,
cleaving indoors with an axe, tunneling a path thru an already torn hole. what a
joke. she says. but so much of a joke becomes unfunny when false becomes true
& true becomes truthless.
the final step is stab yourself in the stomach stretched out before the glazing. it
saves time some work & pity if you are already dead before they gut you.
57
Truth for Precision
as the mind turns the body over such finite details as the color of blue, a material
is needed
to substitute. Here: here is my hand, here is a photograph, capitalize
the events
of my life at will, a commonplace here, a common place
there; substitute word for breakdown or breakdown for word, measures given for
use
of every day cup for 8 oz, embedded,
buries the truth for precision
a nightmare coming from the fire bursts its way thru smoke—I’ll try & stop now.
Who drinks coffee mid-noon 83 degree day no shade but I? 1/3 less sugar apple
juice on the side. so if I get thirsty.
holding hands with a scalpel is what makes me feel the most comfortable. the
needle with thorns. he may—he may only—knock on my window the hottest
nights when
tinted history glass of my heart is melting from the memory of a
man’s hand dropping from mine
eternally
& burying the truth for precision
we went hunting. in the middle of the torrent, stones cracking this way & that,
reminding me, oddly, of a car trip I took at the age of 9 to a cemetery. during this
car trip
the impetus of the moment I realized I was going to die,
for the first time, I think.
& as the mind turns the body over in such finite details hair, fingernail, bone, a
moment
is needed to intervene in the crisis of the road
the mind is ticketing for jay-walking
so I say, here are my eyes, here are my photographs, capitalize whichever moments
of my life you will, a common place here for a commonplace there, substitute
anything just
don’t take that scalpel out of my hand.
58
The Dropping
it can’t be measured. (what it does.) plastered on “but you

& I—we live in the house of descendingly pointed
upwards” where we swim blueishly side-twisted towards 1/3

of me giving out & 9/10 of the law being possession of yr body
so sorry I did all that stupid shit it’s just that I got bored
waiting for all yr different eyes to stop dilating & sorry
it is not as lovely to be yr soot as it was to be yr body or even

yr object to hold then drop then hold again tho
what it does can’t be measured. (the dropping.) still I would

prefer it to introducing the hand further into the vortices
of declension, slaking the thirst of the fingers, the thirst

to calculate the equally legitimate alchemy of so sorry
I did all that stupid shit I was just bored waiting for you
to come home from fucking
Michelle Greenblatt is 23 & lives near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Her work can be
found in AUGHT, X-stream(present & upcoming), Frank Parker's
www.frankshome.org, Jim Leftwich's site for textimagepoetry
http://jimleftwichtextimagepoem.blogspot.com, & upcoming in Word for Word as
well. Michelle's her first book, brain:storm, is being published by Thomas Lowe
Taylor's anabasis press, set to go to press by the end 2005. You can always drop her
a line at www.coldermoon@msn.com
59
60
Pat Lawrence
Wire Train
I wasn’t sorrowful watching the runs in the window stocking from the silly rain that
kept pounding from dawn to dusk, and as the clouds ran away from me, to be
replaced by more, darker, lifeless bigger brothers that frowned at me. The night
before, the day before, the week before had taken it all out of me, and left me a
husk of pliable features, ones that could be picked up with coat hangars or
marionette strings or tongue depressors, and moved into comical or fearsome
masks. But the dancing hands whose inelegant incarnation I seemed to be were on
break, holding a coffee cup or twisting a piece of brown hair absent-mindedly in a
deceptively-gendered non-chalance, their own puppeteer staring at the bikini
calendar on the wall of the employee lounge, then realizing he looks like a pervert,
and looking away.
The sun came out the next morning after my uneasy sleep, the whole fiery thing
had passed in the night, as it usually does, and things were pungent and wet—the
smell dandelion milk all over my nostrils, sour and rich, and streaks of mud were
on the edges of the concrete steps where people scraped their shoes before going
into their apartments. The frizz of the overhead wires tunneling the sky towards the
other end of the line ratcheted the animals into a state of confused directionless
agitation, and me too. No other choice, we ran with the telephone clicks and
whines in the aura expanded by the humidity and followed those phone calls
forever, forever, forever.
Pat Lawrence is the editor of the on-line journal The Fifteen Project, as well as the
Six Gallery Press imprint Replenishment. He is currently editing Raymond
Federman's More Loose Shoes and Smelly Socks for release this fall, and, next
year, he will be moving to New York to pursue his masters at New York
University.
61
62
Rosemarie Crisafi
Ascension of Mallards
Beyond the boat mooring, mallards, a dozen or so, tip into water,
bills first, tails in air, dabbling, making music of their
upending turning, returning) standing on one end creating with
their flock an undercurrent, felt but unseen, liquid uncoiling as
in slow motion.
The quay creaks with incoming berth.

Where anchors drop, the Hudson thrusts onto the platform (long
tongues) a mouth parted slightly, passive, accepting the river
(and its noisy foragers),
spilling over with ease.
The end is sudden --- springing straight up from water to air.

Glossy green heads and white collars rise, until lost in gray,
leaving only homage to fowl.
Still, the river goes and comes.

If the ducks never return,
it means nothing.
63
Holes in the Atlantic
Far from shore I thrash in salt.
On my back, a black sheet tugs,

a cape of stars.
Before a flaccid sun dissolves

into brine,
waves' green portholes,
changing windows,
let me pass.
64
Hologram
Seeing has been my life,

Sooner or later I would look upon the dead.
Air is a resin through which to view.
I see you (although you are no longer here):

a collapsed biology,
an indefinable conversion from person.
The shadow of an arrow angles in the ground.
To say "transformation" is incorrect.
This is not the change I know,

This is an utterly different physics.
The most awful death is to die far away from home.

Dear, if you were not here, you could not be seen.
Who would I question?
Mementos: photographs, letters. perhaps your favorite boots would

be laid out for burial.
At least I have you here

absent).
Not you: an eddy of light and dark
so I can make a final farewell,

so you remain in my gaze a while longer.
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Compassion
Recalling mother's gift, brittle

swans,
two tiny glass cygnets,
soap bubbles blown from strands
of optic fibers
threaded with what is transparent
reflecting all that courses through,
so light is not lost.
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Heirloom
The instant you leaned towards me on the bed Your tenderness with
me
The heirloom quilt beneath my back

The fibers
I nest in the cotton of your family
The
colored triangles fuse with the curves of your face The mystery of
a thousand pyramids
I call upon my parents

Their affliction How
uncontrollable those bias seams How

in a trapezoid despair cannot escape
67
68
Rich Murphy
Singing the Blurs
All this energy out of focus

falls to pieces that we swear by;
seeing is relieving.
Each ledge of land each of us owns
is like no other. We squat
on our honest crags hoarding a point of view.
"You dirty son of a bitch,
get your hands off my pine tree.
And that gem of a beast, I found.
If I lie, take my car."
But it may be natural

when rain threatens for human beings
to construct jigsaw puzzles --
the puddles could become scenic.
So many insights and perspectives
dropping from the sky draw
the electricity out of the planetary particle
and the static, the likenesses are
all we have to our names:
"I vow to always love you." However,
before we pretend that the sun rises

or breaks through clouds,
a witness must experience the reading
of clarity (do you follow me) to remind
and perhaps infect a friendship with like like like
and so this breath: during this busy day of walls of suns
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The Monkey Tree
The monkey tree has no roots but at its end, it is planted. If you will, call it Will. Its
limbs swing as though they were Tarzans and create a wind that dusts its trunk and
twists jungle stories and song. The earth of the Earth makes room for the bulls that
sleep in the monkey tree’s shadow, and empty spaces carry the birds that the
monkey tree dreams about in its leaves. Its bark is toothy. And though its heart is
pulp, its vision is knotty. A sap runs through it, and various species of primates
suddenly appear on the tips of tendrils as though they were inventions (each worth
a million dollars).
The family is now ripe to wake to its luxurious history, but has sown its route into a
poet’s feat.
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Immaculate Conceptions: Song
The sun tosses halos and wreaths

at the heads of poets and athletes
and then exposes itself and half
of the Earth. Daphne stands one
of many Dots crafting wooden rings

to stay alive. Shading herself
from the carnival creature, she holds
her breath all day, and each evening
her radiation bears the peace that permits

victims criminal acts. With a thin bark,
Dionysis in brilliant wise guy regalia
ignites the moon. His bite is a progeny
of wolves, and his whim splits women

within a light beam’s reach. Conscious
of everything that arrives and leaves,
she empathizes with the routes of the limbs
in time. A planet’s nests of nerve endings hatch:

The Poplar sisters, the jammed women jarred
again and again by men, and the cosmopolitan
eves dammed by orchard walls.
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Playing with Matches
The sun’s rays are gathered the night

before and used as magic wands
in plumbing’s dark corner of outer space.
Or lumberjacks splinter the eternal

flame into slivers of future and box
them in a drawer for the palms of hands.
The lamp posts and logs for cabins are one

when the utopian town requires glue.
The tough toothpicks shim

the corners of mouths to strike
up proposals of marriage to girls.
The cool head on a stick figure 1

has the potential for brilliance.
A sulfur spark illuminates

with incense the kitchen’s altar.
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7
Sulphur balls serve as hors d’oeuvres

to the meal of tobacco.
8
The friction of the weather and our
not even naked bodies ignites
so many variations on an idea.
9
Satan dances along a struck stick,
a fuse.
10
Firefighters are sleeping miles
away as dull kids in a bedroom
practice poor parenting.
11
The spent miniature torch is flicked
to the gutter where the drunk,
continuing his romance, has
his liver eaten out.
Rich Murphy bio:
My poems have appeared in such journals as Rolling Stone, Poetry Magazine (where I was featured
poet), Grand Street, New Letters, Negative Capability, Confrontation Magazine, Slant Journal,
Barrelhouse Review, West 47 (Ireland), Aesthetica Review (England), Alligator Juniper, New Delta
Review, Full Circle Journal, Fulcrum, Salamander, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Entelechy:
Mind and Culture, Red China, and MiPoesias. You may also read, or listen to me read, poems in the
current issue of Inertia Magazine (www.inertiamagazine.com). My essay “Vanishing Artist:
American Poet and Differend” was published in Fulcrum: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics and
again in The International Journal of the Humanities.
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74
Geoffrey Gatza
Hortense Hippopotamus
For Jim Carney
A great many things may happen between the cup and the upper lip.
At 2PM she rises up from her armchair and cable News network
and places a kettle on the stove. She imagines that she can balance
an egg on her nose, tries three times then bends down to clean up
the sticky mess. The 3 yolks in the white blob made a face at her,
well a squished face as the eyes we’re a bit out of sorts, but the egg
man did make for an interesting bit of afternoon company and so

she poured tea for two and then set out a red gingham dish towel
and a plate of cookies on the floor next to her new friend and then
began to tell Mr. Eggs of her two sons off in the Army, a daughter
who lives in a large pond at the park and has an excellent supply
of food and friendly neighbors. Mr. Eggs hadn’t touched her tea
or any of her special raisin cookies that, at one time was the toast
of Elmwood elementary, but no matter she thought, he looks not
well and maybe he won’t mind if I eat the last cookie on the plate.
She could always get more but didn’t want him to think she didn’t
watch her figure. But how silly she was being, Mr. Eggs is a kind
man and would never entertain such a foolish opinion of her. And
so she warmed their cups and then, getting herself off of the floor,
tipped her hand to her head to say ta, and then using a kitchen rag
cleaned up Mr. Eggs, then placed the dishes into the sink, cleaned
and then walked back to her armchair, television and her live news.
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Ursula Orangutan
It is good to be orangutan, not because every orangutan can be great, but

because a few orangutan have and without the shining achievements of
these few orangutans, what manner of apples would we be eating today?
To some, that thought seems humiliating,

threatening and must not even be endured.
We would tell tales of great builders, doctors and farmers, of the generosity
of the old, wisdoms of great leaders, and awe over the strength of those few
exceptional apes who shown us the heights to which we occasionally ascend.

threatening and should not be overheard.
Most orangutans are not extraordinary and only a very few are extremely gifted.
But it is to these exceptionally talented orangutans that the rest of us owe many
of the great achievements of our ten thousand years of society throughout South
Asia ranging from right here in this kitchen all the way into southeastern China.
It is my recognition of their greatness, my admission of the immeasurable

superiority
of their talent, that redeems, liberates, and inspires my own, unenviable mediocrity.
On the ancient islands of Borneo and Sumatra we expected our heroes to be
different.

threatening and to never be countenanced.
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Fredric Squirrel
Soon the sun will set in such a way to declare

the great gathering is presently drawing near.
Black and white photos of ginger torqued maple trees;

one can really feel the flight crashing all around them
conveying the gray swaying spirit of autumn.
The end is always drawing near. You can feel it in the bones,
In new shoes. In a small room cats on open window sills

watching birds and neighbors argue over twigs and trash
Someone sitting across the way

handling a tarnished steel guitar
in their old body with old ideas,
waiting
to die.
I wish to dance through evergreens eating well and

never dwell on what might come, only on what does.
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78
Rochelle Ratner
THANKSGIVING 2004: TALKING TURKEY
Splat! Through the windshield. She didn't even see the turkey coming. Just like she
didn't see the wild turkeys near the farm. Her father pointed them out to her.
Twenty-two pounds. It was always exactly twenty-two pounds. Purchased with her
mother's stolen credit card. This time at least she's wide awake as the car thrusts
forward. For once in her life she's in control.
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THE GOOD OLD DAYS
April showers bring May flowers. With wild iris twined in her hair, he falls in love
with her. They wed in June and she carries a wildflower bouquet. It's over a month
since she's showered now, but the flowers mask that. Baby follows baby follows
baby and she smells of milk and he, too, wants to suck her breasts. Until the
children grow. Until the milk smells sour. Until they all have odors and he's unable
to smell himself. April showers, at least, wash off some surface dirt. They summer
in a beach town. They take a bar of soap down to the ocean, but it quickly sinks
away from them. Outside their guesthouse the shower says only three minutes.
After that they turn the cold water on. As soon as they scream he abandons them.
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SAFE HOME
So she calls from Bally's to say she got home safe and the echo of slots in the
background she attributes to the ice maker in the Hotpoint door – cheap old
machine, eats up electricity. Really it will be after two a.m. before they get home,
another hour looking for a parking space, the garages all closed or full by then, she
ends up on the wrong side with an $80 ticket and it serves her right, she supposes.
Her mother's still alive but no longer drives. There's the house with its own garage
they seldom have the depth perception to park in, why does she have to leave, or if
she must then best set out early and beat the traffic. The next time they gamble will
be when he's in the hospital, unconscious; once he's home it doesn't cross their
minds.
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HIS DEATH
She doesn't want to hear it, not now, not in the summer when she's staying focused,
so she goes off in the car somewhere, anywhere, for dinner, shopping for food,
shopping for poison, and she gets back and of course the message waits. She goes
back to work, writes about him this time, sleeps on it, and in the morning it's
pouring rain and she sees from her study window that she left the car window open,
the window nearest the house, of course on the passenger side.
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ARRIVING HOME
Goldfish arriving home in a plastic bag have lost their crispness. She doesn't even
bother frying them. Give them to the frogs, for god's sake, toss them at those
croaking tongues that keep her up all night now that the new refrigerator's silent
and standing before her empty-handed. I bought fish for you, she whispers. Alright
already, how about frogs' legs? But she cooks nothing. She tosses the empty bag
into the trash of the garbage can just moments before her bubble bursts.
Rochelle Ratner's books include two novels: Bobby's Girl (Coffee House Press,
1986) and The Lion's Share (Coffee House Press, 1991) and sixteen poetry books,
including House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003) and Beggars at the Wall
(Ikon, October 2005). An anthology she edited, Bearing Life: Women's Writings on
Childlessness, was published in January 2000 by The Feminist Press. She lives in
New York City, where she is Executive Editor of American Book Review and
reviews regularly for Library Journal. More information and links to her writing on
the Internet can be found on her homepage: www.rochelleratner.com.
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84
Buffalo Focus | Ted Pelton
Jack Slazy, Ma Scrazy

an excerpt from the novel Malcolm and Jack (and other Famous American
Criminals)
1945
Jack walks into a Detroit blues bar.
It’s crowded. He doesn’t see any other white men.
This is guitar music, not his usual thing. Usually he goes for a tenorman
who just blows. But these are crazy sounds he’s been hearing down here, down in
the Black Bottom, coming back from his job in the ball bearing factory. Wild
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wailings in the workingman’s night of something deep and soulful you can’t just pass
by.
One time when he got on a boat bound for Europe it went down the coast
first and good thing, the bosun was a big queer who wanted to make him, he was
absolutely sure of it, so while he'd intended (again) to go to Paris and perhaps search
out his long lost Breton ancestors he ended up jumping ship in North Carolina
where he looked up and had a drink with Thomas Wolfe's brother, an aging man in
the white suit of a Southern gentleman. The next day, looking around that part of
the country, at the rolling meadows and white fences of plantations, never having
been South, he heard the deep blues singing of a black man walking who knows
where. Jack fell in behind him and followed on dusty dirt roads some three or four
miles. It was a long trip to be making on foot but the man didn't seem to be in any
hurry, and it blew Jack's mind. Jack raced everywhere; everyone in New York
raced everywhere; even back in Lowell, where no one had any particular place to
get to (and did they have any more to get to in New York?) everybody was always
late for somewhere, going someplace else, hustling, even drinking their beers in a
hurry. Everyone in the Northeast raced everywhere. But this music itself was slow,
not the frenetic speed of be-bop always riding with the tis-ta-ta-tis of the high-hat
cymbal but a deep down singing which came as if out of a cave or the hollow of the
depths of a human soul, and even when the tempo made it fast the music itself was
deep, like a cavern formed in rock by the constant eroding drip of pain year after
year. The man's song never seemed to get anywhere; there was no part of it you
could call the beginning middle or end, though sometimes it did seem as if a new
song had begun, a new tune being sung, but the borders between songs were never
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quite clear. Nor was he ashamed of being heard. Unselfconsciousness. The
meandering of a man free to feel and express himself, without looking to see what
others thought about it or him. Had Jack ever felt as free in his life, to simply do as
he wanted, when he wanted, without thinking about how someone else would look
at him? The man would sometimes stop singing, but then he'd just continue on
again with the same song when he started up again: where he stopped and started
actually singing did not correspond to where the songs began and ended; as likely as
not the man would stop upon seeing a rabbit scamper off into woods as he
approached or to nod to a hand in the field he was passing by. The first hand they
passed also nodded to Jack, and Jack back to the hand, worrying at the same time
that the singing man in front of him would in this way be apprised of Jack's
presence and turn around, but Jack then knew that the man in front of him knew of
his presence and still didn't turn around. Never did, all while Jack followed. Nor
was it fear or lack of fellow-feeling that prevented him, Jack felt. Jack saw in his
mind two pieces of wood drifting downriver lazily.
He tried to make out words. But the words were bent to the purposes of
the song and its singing and became more purely music than any attempt at
speaking or singing words. The feeling in these utterances came through in the
sound of the voice, the pacing, the cries and murmurs. Jack now wasn't thinking
only of the man and his song but also, and perhaps more, about what he would say
about the man and following him when he got to his notebook or his typewriter; in
other words -- and this was now true of everything Jack did -- he did not simply
observe and experience walking behind the man listening to his song, but at the
same time spun his own tune in his mind in response, a response that frequently
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entirely obliterated that to which he was listening in favor of the music he was
creating within his own mind. Nor was this a process of which Jack was
unconscious; he realized, more than once, that he was no longer listening to the man
but pretending to listen and instead listening to himself describe how he was
listening to the man, selecting phrases for when later he might be able to write it all
down. So he began to think about the act of this pretending, his recreation of what
he was experiencing even as he experienced it, and then realized, to his even greater
dismay, that now he was no closer to the man singing and the experience of
listening, but at a second remove even more distant. "Listen to the man," he said to
himself, in just these words, seeing even the quotation marks around them as he
reprimanded himself, imagining reprimanding himself and the necessity of gaining
entrance to the authentic . . . .
With all of these self-conscious movings of mind on this lazy day, it was no
surprise that the beginnings and endings of songs were ungraspable; and while the
day and its movement were lazy, and he was now in the lazy South, it takes more
than one day to adjust yourself to a new rhythm, so while lazing along imagining
himself adjusting to the rhythms of a Southern black man's lazy blues song while
travelling nowhere at all, Jack was simultaneously speeding along in his mind in his
work and determining how the lazy experience would fit into it and become part of
his larger project which in turn was an extension of his ambition to devote his life
to writing and be aware of everything around him and record it all or as much as
possible and the speed of reactions and vocabulary and insight needed to reach such
a massive goal and undertaking and spinning as a result all manner of plots around
the man, around himself, around the landscape. The fields were largely empty,
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except for cattle and occasional horses. But they held thousand-soldier battles,
Army officers on mounted charges, death, labor, fields of black men and women
with hair tied in rags, a little pickaninny boy walking beside him dressed in only a
sack asking for candy, elaborate Gone With the Wind plantation houses entertaining
men with oiled mustaches calling on pretty Southern belles in satin gowns in huge
ballrooms with buffed maple, no, cherry floors, and garden terraces blooming with
fragrant magnolias, and then the same houses falling board by board into ruin or set
afire by rough men at war who'd lost everything themselves and now were resolved
in hearts rusted by hatred to destroy everything in their path, led by Sherman,
who'd already had them rip up rail lines, chop down weather vanes, wreck water
wheels, cripple horses, drown livestock, take iron bars to chandeliers, pocket
jewelry, fuck whomever they wanted, white or black.
As by the same process, right now, throwing aside a drained pint bottle and
entering a Detroit blues bar, Jack finds himself walking down a road in North
Carolina.
He comes forward into a crowd, which half-parts before him. Men look at
him, some surprised, others laughing, poking each other in the ribs, two or three
smiling his way as if to say glad you're here. Each face is almost familiar to him.
Then he sees someone he's sure he knows. Not personally, but he's seen him
around. In New York, maybe Greenwich Village. A tall, light-skinned man with
distinctive red-orange hair, in baggy lavender pants cinched at the ankles and a
matching oversized jacket too loud for this workingman's bar where everyone else is
in short-sleeves and dungarees. He's loudly regaling a small group, waving arms to
make up for words drowned in this veil of sound, making great theatre out of
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continually checking a pocket watch attached to a long chain that loops eighteen
inches down and back from his beltloop to his jacket pocket. The jam breaks and
the song goes back into blues verses, deeply intoned but fuzzed nearly out of
recognition through the amplifier. Jack edges closer. This group is near the bar, so
he's going in that direction anyway.
"Don't you brothers Lindy-hop? What is all this noise? You brothers call
this music? Where's the dancing? I hear this guy singing about fucking but I know
a lot more of it actually happens when you get them bitches working up their blood
with a good Lindy-hop."
A young man, maybe a couple years younger than Jack. Jack keeps trying to
catch his eye. The man of course sees Jack -- it's impossible not to in a place like
this, where a white man would be crazy to go.
"You brothers would do well to catch my act in Harlem sometime. Now
that's music. And in between, you got me dancing licks onstage to make the girls
drip honey. Hey, here's one -- what's the difference between your sister and a U-
Boat? Give up? Troop ships sometimes escape U-Boats."
Jack bellies to the bar. The bartender comes over. They shout to be heard.
"Hey, man, what's this music called?"
"Nothing but the blues."
Jack isn't sure what he's said, but doesn't want to fight the crushing sound.
"Gimme a bourbon, neat. Hey, wait a second." Jack checks his money supply.
"Send that guy over there one from me, too."
"You got it."
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The man pours one for Jack in a thin stream from the pointed tip of a
labelless bottle, then moves a few feet over and pours another for the man whose
voice has no problem being heard above the din. He keeps talking, reaches over for
the glass and makes more theatre out of drinking it, holding the glass at arm's length
directly overhead, tilting his neck backward, opening his mouth wide and with a
quick flip of the wrist upending the glass. The whiskey pellets down on his face, a
third of it splashing of his face but two-thirds going right down his throat. "Warms
my belly," he says, slapping his stomach which even through the layers of clothing
creates a thin smack of muscle on muscle.
Jack leans over and pokes his head through the group. He must be drunk.
"Hey, don't I know you?"
The tall man looks at him off-handedly. "Ever been to the Lobster Pond in
New York?"
This isn't it, but Jack doesn't have a better answer. "Yeah, I think so."
"Aw, you'd know it if you'd been there. I'm the Master of Ceremonies and
everybody knows me, Detroit Red."
The others smile at Jack. They're rubes. One is fancied up a little with a
larger than usual feather in his hat.
"What do I owe for the drink, Daddy-O?" says Red to Jack. He pulls his
arm out from behind his back and twirls a large gold coin in the air between his
fingers. Jack can't tell what it is -- it's slightly bigger than a dollar. Red grins wide
and, the men parting away from Jack slightly, he allows his hand to glide across the
air, the coin flipping around like a moth, light winking off its spinning edges. "Do
you think this is enough?" Red's eyes watch the play of the coin in his hand, past
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Jack's face and up over his head, whereupon Malcolm closes his hand in a backward
fist then opens it for all to see. The coin has disappeared. "Aw, man," he says to
Jack in mock anger, "You weren't fast enough!"
The twirling coin flutters to Jack's stomach -- where it meets the bourbon
and a sudden anxiousness about where he's wandered to in his night-long ramble
when he should be at work -- and boils up into his head. Suddenly he can't breath.
He's cold from sweat but at the same time finds the closeness of bodies suffocating
him in dense, muggy fog in which he feels himself turning over and over. He has to
puke. He falls slightly against the bar, manages to turn around, makes his way out
the door.
"Blew that man's conk right off the stem," says Red.
They don't meet again for another year, until just after the end of the war.
* *
Most of Malcolm's family lived in and around Lansing. His mother no
longer lived there. She was in Kalamazoo.
First there'd been Wilbert, a good, quiet, responsible boy. Then came Hilda,
who always helped her momma with the cooking, the wash, the tidying up and the
babies. Then the three rambunctious ones -- Philbert, Malcolm and Reginald.
Philbert was good at boxing and Malcolm was the one he practiced on, but that
made Malcolm quick-witted. Reggie used to tag along with Philbert and Malcolm
like a hungry little puppy dog. Finally came the little ones -- Yvonne and Wesley
and Robert. So much government issue food the kids thought Not to Be Sold was a
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brand name and considered fried ketchup bread a delicacy. So little luck in that
family, rabbits could rub their own feet and get away.
As things got to be too much for Momma, the sour-grease-cooking smell
became a visible yellow tar on the walls and windowsills, and dust and animal hair
matted there. Kids with same size feet fought for warm shoes once the snow came.
Ice zig-zagged on the insides of windows in the morning. Wilbert never came home
except to sleep and pour some water over his head before going out to his other
job. "Such a good boy, I'm sorry, Wilbert," Momma would say to herself when the
clouds broke in her mind and the world was clear for a moment. Then the wind
would shift back the other way. "Social workers came in, pushed me over and stole
the coal for the stove and broke its door, so that any heavy walking might spill hot
coals and torch the whole place. Social workers got me with this child here, cause I
ain't been with no man since my Earlie died. Social workers saw Earlie kill that
rabbit with his bare hands and throw it at my feet and roused the klan to meet him
at the railroad tracks. Social workers secretly mix pork into the food they give us so
I end up having to throw half of it out. Social workers put sugar in the engine of
that old car which was just brand new yesterday afternoon when the sun shone and
the crickets buzzed and they got too loud and we ended up with the sheriff out
here banging on the door. Now every day is cold and cloudy and I don't have a
husband anymore to keep me warm at night. That's what social workers do."
Finally, social workers detonated a bomb under the house that sent
everything and everyone flying off every which way.
Philbert was even more alarmed when Malcolm came back in dark
gabardine than when he used to come back in purple and yellow with a hubcap-
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sized hat on his head that had to be tied to his collar by a string in the back for fear
it would blow away. Malcolm told Mrs. Swerlin, his old foster ma, that he was now
in international finance. The only hipster part left in him were fingernails neatly
manicured and coated with transparent polish so that they shined like his teeth. He
kept an emery board in his pocket to keep them free of nicotine stains.
Time was, Philbert would have punched Malcolm out, the way he kept
fucking up and covering his trail in shit. Now he told him to quit smoking
cigarettes and eating pork.
"Pork? You wearing the same monkey collar as Momma's old preacher?"
"Hadn't thought of that. Maybe Momma knew something after all. But no,
brother, I've found the black man's natural religion, the one that the white man's
lies have kept us from for 600 years."
"Back up forty-five feet else your spiel gonna dig my heel, bro. The God rap
goes back in the pocket of your slack. I'm skinned for that noise."
"Will you stop acting the fool for one minute? This is serious. Hilda and I
are driving out later in the week to see her, and I think it would be good if you
came."
"All she care, I could be the Yellow Kid and you could be Old Black Sam
the Sham, she wouldn't collar us from some floor mechanics. Sides, I got places to
go, people to see, legit. Got my spotters peeled for gone talent."
"Running a game?"
"Naw, ease up. Shoe talent, to lay down sand and make it jump. Do me
right, I ain't down for that shit. This is strictly uptown. I'm slinging a show back in
the Apple, at some strong digs. If it works out, I'll be able to sell out to Hollywood
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by next year, two years tops, and then I'll have the life of Jack the Bear, no more of
the slave. Gotta find me some real fresh Susie-Qs, keep costs low to start, see if
they're in New York already they've already been discovered and command the big
bucks. But Detroit, you see, that's an untapped market. Plenty of talent there just
waiting for someone to hook them up."
That's about when the old Philbert would have punched him out. The
gangster threads and the line of shit would have pushed him past where he could
listen anymore. But he'd learned patience and self-discipline, as well as how to
speak the language of liberation.
"I'm not telling you this to disapprove, but to help save your life, brother.
There are many lies in the world, but there's one big lie, and revealing that lie means
finding out who you are and who your people are, like I found out who I am. You
think you are free, going here and there, but you are in the shackles of the race of
white devils. Only you can deliver yourself from bondage, and you can do it only
by following the Honorable Elijah Muhammad."
"I've been gone longer than I thought! You've turned into one of those
crazy religious niggers!"
Philbert felt chemicals rush across his back, filling up the muscles in his
arms. While not budging an inch, his body seemed to swell larger. His voice, while
backed by anger, was cold and restrained:
"I am not a nigger."
Malcolm, who’d whistled "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" with guns
pointed at him, found this impressive enough to shut his face.
95
Philbert had always been good at boxing and Malcolm was the one he'd
practiced on. But that made Malcolm quick-witted.
All Philbert and Hilda and Aunts Ella and Sassie could wish for was that
Malcolm get slapped in jail before someone got tired of his mouth, his trickeration
and his lies and shot him. And that he wouldn't take Reggie down with him.
His mother didn't care one way or the other. She was in Kalamazoo.
She, Louise, played checkers sometimes and often crocheted, listening to
Jack Benny or Amos and Andy in the community room. Or she'd sit and stare at a
blank white wall, pharmaceuticals running laps through her blood. She had been a
pretty woman in her time, had what they called high yellow coloring, and her
bearing was upright and regal. Her voice carried the musical cadences of her native
Grenada. Her light skin contrasted with long, silky black hair, and as a child she'd
been nicknamed Pocohontas. She liked the name, because it told of another
princess who'd lost everything to the hands of robbers, save her dignity. She was
educated, and tried to pass some of that on to the children, the desire to learn, to
find out about the world. She read to the oldest ones when they were quite small,
and all of them had done well in school at one time or another, which shows you
they had the potential.
Now a dream kept recurring for her. It was strange, it referred to no one
she knew personally, yet kept coming back, again and again, perhaps because it
bound up many things she knew in one shorthand image or composite world. Or
maybe as it was a message from some vast beyond, an attempt on behalf of some
great intelligence beyond the clouds to tell her something. At times, as she came in
and out of consciousness, moored to nothing except the confinements of physical
96
space and thus able herself to drift away, she entered the world of her creation to
such an extent that it became as real as anything in her life. The clouds and fog
would burn off to find her on a large island plantation, like where she'd grown up
but also different. The master was an old, grey-haired white man in a wheelchair,
who would be rolled out on the large portico each morning to get his air. He'd
been a very kindly old man, cheerful enough to call everyone over to him each
Friday afternoon to sing him songs as the sun went down. Her old aunts had even
told her of a time when the old man had been hearty and hale and worked the fields
side by side with his hired hands. He paid them, which made him an exception,
and made all his workers the envy of laborers for miles around. Or so she'd been
told, anyway. The Friday singalongs had happened when she was a girl and pleased
her to no end -- she had a fine, deep voice, even as a child, which blended with the
others in gospel chorus so sweetly that in short order she'd been allowed to solo,
with the rest of the singers backing her. But after a time, the old man was too weak
even for this, and all they saw of him was when he was wheeled onto the broad
portico. This glimpse was distant -- by this time they'd already be out in the fields.
Once verdant and lush, the crops were having trouble. Vegetables and cotton
hardly grew at all, and got ravaged by weevils, while weeds grew overnight to your
waist. The soil parched open in cracks, aching for rain. None came. The fogs
descending seemed deprived of moisture, or at least of enough to sustain life. The
overseer, who now had no one looking over his own shoulder, blamed the workers
for the poor yield. But it wasn't their fault -- the land itself seemed to be turning
barren. When she was close enough to the main house to see the old man's face
when he was brought out in the morning, his jaw had gone slack and a line of drool
97
fell onto his shirt. He had shrunken within his own clothes, which now appeared
several sizes too big for him. "Eyes front!" snapped the overseer, who tolerated no
looking away from the work and used any excuse to blame them for the
plantation's new troubles. He was a knotty-muscled, fireplug of a man, whose face
was marred by a large, red birthmark, which ran from the left side of his forehead
and spread diagonally across one eye to surround half his mouth. Over time, the
birthmark seemed to grow larger and more hideous, sprouting ugly, crooked hairs,
and every time she saw him she was reminded of the pirate ships and limbs
replaced by sharp metal hooks she'd heard stories about. The money paid them by
the new man, a young one who needed to get outdoors more, such was the pallor of
his skin, was now taxed to supplement equipment purchases, so they received only
half of what they had in the past. Meanwhile, the prices of cloth and small items of
necessity had risen steadily and the meals they were provided grew smaller and
smaller. Oatmeal that had once clung to a spoon turned upside down now ran off
before you could get it to your mouth. They got no better meat than was being
given to the dogs.
"Master must not be being told what's really going on," someone would say
at night from his bedclothes in a dark room where twenty slept on straw ticks and
tried not to sneeze, for one sneeze would get everyone going.
"Master's dead. He can still get his eyes open, but he can't speak a lick."
"No, he ain't. He always told us he'd take care of us as long as he was alive."
"That's what I'm saying. We ain't be being taken care of because he's dead."
Her mind moved to the old patriarch's bedroom. His bed was a four-poster
with a billowy cotton canopy and veils on each side to keep out mosquitoes. Daily,
98
new freshly picked flowers were set in a vase atop an expansive mahogany table,
inlaid with pinstripe swirls of yellow oak. Around this table were beautiful
straight-backed chairs of the same mahogany frames, with plump cushions on the
back and seats covered by shiny red velvet that had never been sat on. One
hundred gold tacks pinned the material into each chair at tiny, perfect intervals, the
material tucked perfectly even at the rounded joints. They were the most beautiful
things Louise had ever seen, and she never thought of them without her eyes
starting to tear a little. But the tears never forced her to stop thinking about the
chairs either. Their beauty made her sad, but also comforted her and even elevated
her spirit. She didn't know where or when in her life she had actually seen these
beautiful chairs.
The man himself had shrunken in size, but his weight had settled into the
chair, and getting him out of it was an effort that required three men, brutally
muscular all, who approached the task so gingerly they seemed to believe that if
they pulled directly on either of his arms his body would pull apart like rotten fruit.
They got him upright, then another came forward, fell to his knees, and as the
others slipped the suspenders off the man's shoulders, pulled the man's trousers
open and slipped both these and his undergarment down to his knees. The man's
genitals appeared, three shriveled walnuts. The attendants lowered the man to a
sitting position in their arms and carried him to his bed, two maids in black cotton
with white aprons pulling aside the veils, another from the opposite side turning
back the sheets. They sat him at the edge. A piece of shiny, coated canvas lay atop
the mattress pad and after one on the maids sprinkled talc over it, the men arranged
themselves on opposite sides and shifted him onto it. Throughout all of this, the
99
man's expression never changed. His eyes were the faded blue of the confederate
army, glistened over with fluid. His hair only spoke of what he once had been. A
white thatch, finer than his hair had been in his youth, it still had enough stiffness
for a few strands to stick up. This the maid covered with a tasseled nightcap.
Louise came to. She blinked her eyes. Around her were the other people in
the home, all gowned in hospital white, most older than her, a few younger,
slumped in easy chairs or standing, walking around in isolated circles. The voice of
the president warbled from the radio.
100
Colin Searle
Gutter box
pink fleshings,
moist clamour, exquisitely-modelled limbs,
circus sideshow
and fake museum,
stench lies in the streets,
asphyxiation, the air inlets

partly blocked,
several quarts of brown fluid,
kiss her cut

mouth,
bony pigmeat.
101
Fetish Hut
on the rug
bring me rice and papayas
naked
except for a small strip
of cloth;
beads curiously carved,

bamboo combs in her hair.
along the ceiling

I noticed long cone-like objects
tapering to a point,
dripping with perspiration,

green flowers.
powdered insects, a gold foil

package;
granular lumps of dried

tree sap
the ashes of calcined bones,
fermented banana drink,

lick it, in crude form
my deposits.
a swarm of locusts inside me,

dripping at the opening
that is damp
102
Glasshouse
Skin birds
are great masses of

red coral, waltzers of meat,
dizzying.
Specimen-boxes glitter in the sunlight

showering the room:
’we don’t like coconut juice, just limes and milk,’
say the little voices.
In the spinney
the cries
of woodpeckers in jewelled robes
melt like iced-lollies.
Someone is waiting outside

holding a flower-pot
wrapped in green paper:
bright yellow poppies are growing round each other,

clinging like a family of traumatics.
Any female animal that could suckle my little infants:

I would fill her with brandy
and immunity,
yet now,
in the insect-room,
the exotic creatures dead in bejewelled coffins,
are more silent than silence,
even the breeze is soundless:

the flapping silk curtain
ripped on a rusty nail.
103
Pool of Idols
The waves rush up
onto the beach

where we alone,
walk barefoot:
pools of seawater
abandoned in thin hollows
chilling our bodies,
& your eyes clinging to me

like razored kittiwakes,
& your sacred little lips of cold chrome

reflecting the silences back.
I live in England and have been writing poetry since I was 16 (I am now 43). I am
very poor at sending out my poems for publication but have been published in
several small press magazines in UK (including 'Purple Patch', 'The Arcadian', 'Dial
174', ' Moonstone', 'Various Artists', 'Chiron', and some other that I forget the name
of). I won the Jazzclaw Poet of the Year competition in 2002 (the writers of the top
10 selected poems are then judged by each other anonymously using a points
system) and subsequently had a volume of poetry published by Jazzclaw
104
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121
A short bio :
My name is Sungyon, Hong, and Ak-Uh is my pen name. I am a twenty

years old boy in Korea. I am in the Peking university preparatory
course and will enroll in June next year.
About Experimental poems
I am interested in intellectual inventions at powerful imagination

rather than linguistic aesthetics of poems. I don't think that the
beutiful flow of texts at linguistic level is the unique mean to
poets.
Composition at idea level is also an important axe of poem. That is
the reason why peoply say that mathematics is also an poem of
formal language. I want to find a suitable combination of idea and
word.
The below are some examples that I was trying to solve when I
decided to be a poet.
1 Writing continuous texts( removing the discreteness of

literatures)
2 Theoretical construction of new sensory organ and new arts that

can be enjoyed through that organ 3Poem and Music in a high
dimensional time space
122
Randy Prunty
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123
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125
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127
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128
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129
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133
Yes But No Statistical and Patsy Trump-Hogg, CPA
Just Lamps and Etc
Randy, a Bio is the easiest thing in the world to write. You can
include things like your course work at GSU, the school you work
at, where and what you coach, your cycling, your love for the arts,
your writings and publishing or venues you recited at and of course
your foot fetish. [you forgot to mention: I’m part of the Atlanta
Poets Group.]
134
135
136
BlazeVOX 2K5 an.online.journal.of.voice blazevox.org
Buffalo\focus : Ed Taylor
ADAM DREAMING
Label maker. That’s god.

Maxi with wings.
Early times bourbon, a catcher on rye, a pitcher with jug ears.

A dream team.
“International paper puts the tree in tree frog,” the announcer reads.
Then strike three; caught with a snake in your hand.
Next stop Cannibalopolis, father-son holy roast with aristocrats,

inbred as setters.
A bipolar wife’s by your side. Her name is Dawn

& she’s a knockout.
Put up your dukes.

“I FELL IN LOVE AT A MARTHA STEWART STORE”
tv commercial, 4:55 a.m.
I am awake. Carefully monitor vital signs: whiskey and rain in a paper cup,
on the back deck in a replica Senators cap & Balenciaga gown.
Does she know I jumped center on the only losing Harlem Globetrotters
team, in Vienna 1899, when Egon Schiele and some Austrian academics painted the
floor with us, in a floral pattern she might go for?
Is that her rumbling overhead, B-52s, or a Wisconsin couple keeping kids in
cages? The eternal question: what would Martha do? I gas up the tractor and drive
to town. At 5 mph, should take a lifetime & I will get the senior discount.
The air, full of fruit flies–the grapes on a plate since Martha went wrong,
dust on the stuff, awaiting her touch.
I am a moldy mattress wrapped in plastic, huffing kerosene, its carbon rings
clipping the curtain on the shower rod of my heart, which keeps feelings from
soaking her laid-out clothes.
Now huzzah: her free white hand snips a ribbon to open the road to clean
living. Trucks snort crossing to the interior, where all’s quiet on front and sides.
They stamp and trumpet, dump fitted sheets. The bridge on which they leave is
frilly.
Martha, you win. “Uncle,” I say, among the dried flowers, a perfect partner
for the living room’s puce.
ICTHYOSTEGA
first four-legged creature in the world, from fossils in eastern Greenland
9/11/05
Everyone here in cave city is pale. All the houses are coal black. At evening
we sit outside to watch their eyes open and close. Our street is a fish, silversided.
Doors let their tongues hang but neighbors do not talk.
Whispers of fossils filter up. We claw at the ground, earth in teeth, but not
fast enough.
Meanwhile something gleaming struggles from dark water onto the slick
bank, born above us.
METAPHYSICAL STILL LIFE
A scientist, old brass, a painting, hay.

The coarse tongue of river
fills a mouth. At the zoo the otter
and sea lion dry as smoke. Some
Bathsheba in a sun dress. Tree
branch, antler. Crows in a black eye
of cloud closing.
SANTAYANA
What a relief–the door’s teeth marks are only Moholy-Nagy, Tiger of the
Tiber, a Hungarian neighbor. Let me know when you’re finished with the piano
This is an outpost, a corner of the yard. I huddle with rabbits. I have a
baby’s fear, or am I weaving a movie on the soft white wind rippling, a story about
Turkey and persecution and spongy tongues in light syrup?
I had a dream last night. It was huge, bent my hook, left me gasping on the
bank. Hello, reconciliation commission? Do you take this torturer to be your
lawful salted ice holder to a warm mouth of wound. Lips in all kinds of places.
Where they’ll stop, nobody knows.
It is Monday, that I know because the bible tells me so, and furthermore, the
Pharisees won’t always be around to protect us. Who knows when the Baltimore
Ravens could swoop in, leaving only a boy with a book, reading history as if his life
depended on it.
THE BIG TENT
September 2005
Divide, do not unite; win a prize. Offer sugared pennants.

Guess weight & fate. Spin until dizzy in blinding light.
Bleating & shrieks rise like fireworks.
Time & menu: Jurassic on a stick. Now something

crawls the midway backwards: a torn dress, empty
by the Cinderella ride to the long hall, the corn palace,
where the dead harvest stares from glass, & animals
lie under flies.
The freaks close their robes, open smokes.

It is finished here. Pull up stakes, leave the holes behind.
Donald Wellman: Prolog pages
Madrid, Andalucía, Tangier, … July 2003 – July 2004
Previously
1
I can only guess how she feels. I will never know from her words.
Dimly, I hope that what I imagine to feel nice might also feel nice to another who has
feelings similar to mine, but my ability to achieve the necessary level of auto-
affect has been diminished by insufficient exercise.
If something or someone with properties similar to those of a machine had been wanted,
then the impossibility of truly sharing might have been circumvented;
but, at the time, who dared to ask?
So I fled to the opposite end of all earthly lands:
…………………………
2
The young age of your heart, poet, is not a shore
that the sea charges with its ragged surf,
teeth of love that nibble the edges of the land,
roaring sweetly at human limbs.
No. Esa luz que en el mundo

no es ceniza última.
luz que nunca se abate como polvo en los labios,
eres tú, poeta, cuya mano y no la luna
yo vi en los cielos una noche brillando.
A strong breast that lays itself upon the ocean

breathes like the immense celestial tide
and opens its outspread arms and beats them,
caressing the far limits of the earth.
Translation and quotation from “El Poeta” in Sombra del Paraiso by Vincente Aleixandre. The
coast here is Aleixandre’s native Málaga.
Ensaladas
Asparagus salad in a savory vinaigrette (white as once so tender in youth,

awaiting reunion then, with one I loved).
Now navigate the Plaza Mayor,
its inviting tables and handsome waiters.
Murals of pink-skinned youth in leafy glades
either side the shield of the municipal corporation.
The near view absorbs the eye
Cold cider from Asturias and a "revuelta con gulas."
My instruction until now

has been “to dance sitting down.”
(a large brown bear in that image)
My baroque juxtapositions, assorted, folded
laundry in a suitcase, phrases and images,
furniture.
Ensalada, a musical form, mixing folk and art traditions, often mixing the meters of
madrigals with homophonic forms. The practice, as developed by Matheo Flecha, draws
on the work of Jannequin. Hybrid forms, now in the postcolonial period, characterize the
borderlands (Texas and Mexico, Morocco and Andalucía) or cosmopolitan centers
where different populations mingle (New York, Madrid). How does a visitor who is not an
exile participate? His nasal monotones, his imagined flights of soprano pitch. A taste for
seafood. Wheels within wheels within wheels. Apparently purposeful traffic sets the
pace. Leaving the shelter of the arcades, he follows, anticipating a vista that he might
not otherwise have encountered.
Madrid
A warren of calles, an abruption of plazas.
… because I have my notebook open, and so I am writing

Handsome is as handsome does in wig or frock coat,
18th century men enjoyed sexual privilege.
The bo-peeps showed their petticoats.
On the Plaza Santa Ana, three young people

ask to share my table.
The waiter shoos them off
Are they thieves, well-known to him?
In “Perspectivas Imperiales,” Edward Said comments upon the arrogance of empire so

palpable in the foreign policy and military interventions of the United States in Palestine
and Iraq.’
El Almanaque, 26 Julio 2003.
Requiescat, 25 September 2003.
To remain invisible among the beech trees and holm oaks appears the wisest course
[Machado’s “negra encina campesina”].
At their leisure, did the philosophical men of 18th century France and Spain
dress in turban and pantaloons?
Who dares to call the gods our play things
as someone might make reference to statuettes
or bric-a-brac
and not acknowledge the opposite?
The gods do not impress us with their morality,
dismembering their offspring,
transforming mortals into beasts
in their lust for hybrid procreation,
their pleasure in administering famine, death, old age,
indiscriminate in destruction.
As once in Havana, revealed itself

to have many hands with which to swat at flies,
but not the stomach of a god.
Requiescat 17 July 2003.

Celia Cruz, la Guarachera de Cuba.
…because he writes in his notebook
«This one here is a stranger whose eyes scan the room and in turn he writes without
stopping. He can’t be a spy because spies work with greater secrecy. He wants to walk,
unperceived and alone. He undertakes to denounce the stranger who sits in the shadows.
He asks if it is the custom to serve the tea so hot. At the first sip he burned his tongue,
gave a small cry and made a stupid face. He could be a poet or writer. They told him that
this “café where merchants gather” is famous because the best poets of Baghdad meet
here to read their compositions. He hopes that a place with this famous and creative
ambience will inspire him. Why not? He must come from a cold country because he
sweats so much and looks at the ceiling fan with desperation, yet without electricity the
wheel doesn’t turn. What things and in what language does he write in his little notebook.
Surely his thoughts might be a good subject for the pronouncements and debate that will
occur in the gathering here this afternoon.»
Mario Vargas Llosa, reporting from Baghdad for El Pais Seminal, 27 July 2003.
....................................
Donald Wellman bio:
Publication history: http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/pubs.htm
Full text of Prolog pages:

http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/Spain/PrologPages.doc
Joel Bettridge : From Presocratic Blues
Editor:
Senator Pericles’s motion on the floor yesterday was right on it. Why do we need
to call one number for city streets and another number for roads even just a few
meters outside the town limits to report potholes? How do you know which
street is under which jurisdiction when the town limits have never officially been
established? Why can't we call one number to report all potholes and have the
information channeled to the appropriate government entity? And please, no
study to figure out who to take reports down from city and country residence.
Whatever happened to preventive maintenance anyhow? We deserve better!We

need results and accountability for our taxes. It amazes me how people in this
city can request large enterprises to open here when our thoroughfares are such
an eyesore. The road leading up the hill is disgusting, and the top is enough to
jar your teeth out; along with that the neighborhood at the bottom is filled with
the vacant establishments that used to support this city, buildings that I am sure I
don’t need to remind you are at this point gutted or heaps of rubble. Our city
needs to clean itself up in every respect.
Sincerely,
Archelaus
D
ear Sir
Threats and accusations will do you little good. The racket coming from your
backyard at such uncivilized hours was of an order of magnitude even
unrecordable on Charles .FiRchter’s and Beno Gutenberg’s scale of energy
measurement, and as such only the Blessed iVrgin could bear it with grace. And
so, while I am not the one who poisoned your dog, I am glad it’s dead.
Heraclitus
D
ear Priestess
Enclosed your will find a check for one thousand handfuls of grain. It is for the
building fund. Your vision for the new temple is to be commended. Number,
you have understood, has two proper kinds, odd and even, and a third from both
mixed together, the even-odd. Would that the godly and the godly-by-way-of-
what-they-think-of-as-earthly-things understood this as you do. o Fr the entirely
ungodly it does not matter. But Nature in the world-order was fitted together
out of substances which are unlimited and out of substances which are limiting,
and it will take some time for people to sort it out in ways that will not lead them
to want to do harm to each other. o Fr now please keep my gift anonymous as
our countrymen are unable to know the difference between these differences, and
most who come to me think I am a godless man and it would not be good for my
pocketbook or professional standing if this got out. I don’t really need the tax
break anyway.
Philolaus
Joel Bettridge teaches at the University of Redlands, and he is

currently editing a collection of essays on Ronald Johnson for
the National Poetry Foundation's Life and Work series. He has
poems and essays in recent or forthcoming issues of the
Colorado Review, Jacket, Pom2, QUE, Sagetrieb, Chicago Review
and Mandorla.
Joseph Hughes: Graze
I thought that I saw purity and harmony without a vicious nature but she is
hollow now. A great amount of effort was necessary to ensure that she had
distanced herself far from me; they think that I am some kind of heretic with tangled
ideas. I am not concerned. I only desire that second in life where all is there to
envelop, like that little ghost that sings every night. That deep, sinuous sort of line.
That hollow line ending in a quiver. Like a moth caught in a soft, floating web.
I am sure that there is only a bit of time left now but I can’t think too clearly
about that. I will not cry when I have to go. My father told me that those who give
their lives will be happy, much happier than I may ever be.
A few hours at the least. I have some time in front of me.
When I was young they asked the children about devotion. The man in
charge had a calm smile that was not frightening. I left early with the older kids.
They seemed to have more answers. I think that it was all intended to forge a path,
to help us find our way home. I couldn’t find a place in that retreat. I tried but
could not carve a niche. That is better left to those in charge. They have conducted
those procedures hundreds of times.
This, she said, may have been my downfall. The core of this spiral. I loved
hearing things like that. She gave life to my ideas. She seemed like she had never
experienced that spring-like energy, that flood of life that is so overwhelming that
one cannot keep from smiling. The endless flow of light that showers resolve
among every misguided notion. Every unrealized dream.
At those times I felt like a prophet. A caesarian prophet with words

sometimes like flowers.
She did not understand most of what I had said but she continued to listen.
She would never feel that way.
Sometimes I would present a look more hostile to make her think that I
knew something that she could not understand. That was the picture that stayed
with me, the time that I saw her last. In a field like a painting with some strange
daisies that felt like fingers pulling me closer and closer to her. It was in the books
by then; I wanted so badly to see those lavender plots with the sunflowers behind
them. They seem so soft but they will not let you go. I am a heretic at times.
The one that sits across from me now, he sits at that table every day. I
thought that he could guide me through this. I should know not to look for
answers from men like myself. He has only books and reads with fluency the ideas
of others but has nothing within himself. He seems to carry with him a stench.
One that he has not created and one that he cannot destroy. He rattles something
of Heisenberg. He has been talking for hours. Someone who should not have a
tongue, someone that sleeps for only an hour or two then feels a headache coming
on, one that will engulf him and send him to the border of the world. He simply
wants to breathe in the day, like he did when he had hope inside of him. When he
was small. And blissful.
I think that it is Provence with the wisps of purple. It looks that way if my
vision is blurry.
There seems to be less time now. I feel a bit of nausea but it passes quickly.
It was that April; she talked endlessly about vineyards and she was something so soft
in velour. She wanted so badly to have some rolling spring dinner parties, with
songs that she would play on the piano, Chopin, always in a nocturnal tone,
something always dark. She really wanted to be passionate but I could tell within
seconds that she was empty. That look that she had hiding somewhere, it had to be
that of a soul like mine. I loved her more than I had ever loved anyone. And that is
a story to be told, one without end, one that is a cycle. Like the sun that comes in
and tells us that we are awake.
She was empty but she drew me in like that morning sun and I had no
control, simply a sentimental view of life and a clear understanding. This prevented
me from changing that which had been written. Like the prophets said in school as
they crept underground. In cells. Like little mystical leeches. They crept in and
toppled the house where my brothers and sisters lived. Autumn will always evolve
like that. With smoke and fire and the thought that God may not always hear us.
That was the necessary evil. It had been written.
She told me that she would take me in and we would live like peasants.
Some horrible storybook that she had been reading. She thought that I would
immortalize her in an artistic fashion but I have not an ounce of clarity when dealing
with such matters. If she was left as she appeared initially, as nothing more than a
desire, I could then send her to the heavens. But she was only a siren. A moth that
flew upon suspicious air.
The man that sits at the table is looking at me now because he knows that it
could have been his child. I can’t smile right now. I can’t make it right for him. I
am only here for a few more hours. Struggling with something that he will have to
expel. It is his idea. Behind what looks like a thick blue mist I can see him
sometimes, or maybe a reflection; his face haunts me and I want to tell him that I
cannot cause any more pain because I have no reason. I just want to smile and let
him know that he is safe. It is this life that makes me want to sleep. So they may
safely graze.
*****
“And there I am going to have delphinium. They are particular but worth
the trouble. In front I think some poppies. If I can find the soft orange kind. The
spring will be beautiful. This won’t last forever. I felt it in the breeze last night. It
was full of that moist, mossy scent.”
“Why do you spend so much time out here?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to paint, or sing, create something

beautiful. This is all I have. This is the only thing that I can care about.”
“Have you tried anything else?”
“I used to try. I would sit with these little ideas and they were full of color
and life but I never captured anything close to what I wanted to convey. Because
they were rendered too densely. I lost that light, that clarity. Until the ideas
became diffused. I only wanted simplicity at that point. Which led me to this
garden. I have never known something so delicately simple and so overwhelmingly
brilliant.”
“You have created more than you will ever know. Something that is far from
simple.”
*****
Not much time now. With that I can feel her touch and the listless expression
that welcomed me when I saw her lying on the lawn. I remember her this way
sometimes. Her dress was moving hypnotically through the grass, providing a
sanctuary in the waves and a flow, a smooth grey flow that could only nurture. I
lost myself in the coarse fabric and we laughed for hours like children caught in the
rain, like fervent little angels caught in a storm of familiar joy. Something like
narcissus pulled me to her and I felt that I would never love her as I did at that
moment. The spring it arrives with demons and we all know what follows. To
detach in that moment would have been impossible. I could only see as far as the
end of that field. She had a smile that would not let me forget. Not for a second.
She would certainly speak about this. She had little concept of the truth. I had
been forceful. She had always been full of ridiculous stories. That is why she
smiled, as if she had known before I did it. Always telling stories to anyone with the
patience to listen.
Now I am called and I know that I will not cry. There is something so
comfortable about the evening and it is this comfort that will carry me away. I am
nothing if not receptive and I am looking for moths in the garden. I have seen one
that flies at night and its path is precise and linear. I will follow forever this song
because I know that it will lead me into the arms of a green, maternal ghost, one
that fosters the simple force of adoration, one that will nurture and never suggest
that I am alone. In the springtime I found love; in the springtime I fell asleep and
dreamed of its return.
Joseph Hughes lives happily in a quiet piece of Cincinnati where he

constantly strives to balance an automated occupational life with
thoughts of the vivid life-to-be. He has been writing since an early
age and occasionally stumbles upon something that avoids the recycling
process. His current list of credentials is overshadowed by his
current list of plans but he is slowly tipping the scales in favor of
the former. He blames it on the roses, which are not such horrible
things.
Lily Hoang : Butterfly Effect
Butterfly Effect
A discontented fractal has caused a volcano to erupt in Sydney, Australia. The mystical
reverberations in the opera house are destroyed.
A physicist in Los Alamos begins living on a twenty-six hour day. He figures that it’s more logical,
but logic is never the question to be solved. His experiment will fail. He will never solve the mystery
of time and will subsequently die a disappointed man.
The g-string on Perlman’s Stradivarius pops at that exact moment. He is performing Tzigane by
Ravel to a group of high school students.
Anthropologists in Africa disturb the primate habitat. Although they do not realize the commotion
they are causing, the monkeys do and stage a revolt.
A rich man in China takes on his sixth concubine. He mail-ordered her from Russia. She left her
country for a new life, perhaps a better life. Russia is not the most luxurious place to live, but then
again, neither is China. She had lived within brown sticks and constantly bled from splinters.
Fortunately for her, he never saw her picture. He received a barren, paraplegic woman who spoke
no Chinese. Their relationship was not successful. He had hoped she would bear his children,
starting an entirely new race for the Chinese people.
People consider the Stradivarius to be the most impeccably built instrument. It produces a tone so
amazing it could revive a dead man. Simply listening to it, one could climax. That is the depth of its
passion.
A twenty-year old American backpacks through Europe. In Madrid, his wallet is stolen. It was a gift
from his girlfriend for Christmas. He remembers the feel of the wallet on his skin. It had a reptilian
quality to the touch, like a tanned snake bathing for hours in the hot jungle sun. He regrets his
carelessness. He tries to remember what the wallet felt like, but already, the memory has vanished.
He can remember it no better than he can remember her fucking him until he came. It’s only been a
month, and he is embarrassed by his uncaring memory.
When he learned that she was not fertile, he ordered his third mistress, his favorite, to execute the
whore from Russia. Unfortunately, woman number three was near-sighted and accidentally shot him
in the groin. He will not be producing the new race for his country.
France decides that the United States has made a mockery of liberty. They demand their statue back.
The divided states do not know how to react. Their princess cannot be taken away. They will fight
for her as they fought for freedom.

A Mexican woman swimming across the Rio Grande is raped by an American police officer. He
would later brag to his friends about the situation. He claimed that she was wanted to fuck because
she thought he was hot. If he had understood Spanish, he might have known that she had
contracted AIDS. She was begging him not to rape her because she did not want the guilt of his
death on her head. His ignorance became her greatest fault. He would regret his actions.
American prisons have become too full. The president decides that it would be the country’s best
interest to send the meddlesome inmates to Antarctica. The plans for the construction of this
improved form of exile begin. Rumors leak out about the president’s plan. The prisoners unite and
destroy the prison facilities in thirteen cities. Their effort is futile, and the president decides to
punish the men by using the most cruel method of execution: death by hanging.
The monkeys ransack a small hut filled with bananas and other foods. The people are left with
nothing.
The Sydney Opera House is considered one of the seven wonders of the world. Its architecture
creates perfect reverberations. The lava is not prejudiced. It swallows the opera house as it would a
homeless woman’s paper bag.
A twelve-year old in India gets his first taste of cocaine. It is bittersweet. He thinks he is getting high
until a friend of his informs him he is sniffing baking soda. Twenty years later, he will be arrested for
manufacturing cocaine. Twenty years later, it would be the real thing.
She falls at the exact moment as the eruption in Sydney.

God calls on a girl in Georgetown. Hallucinogenic drugs reveal his message. Her name is Mary; she
will become the New Mary and birth the second-coming of the Messiah. She has been a lax
Methodist her entire life; however, she cannot question the revelations from God. After the first
fictional tri-mester, she vomits blood. Her fever is so high she begins to hallucinate again. She
reaches to touch the wet paint on the wall. Her pudgy hands stretch beyond the red to feel the
confines of her new home. The sign outside reads Texas State Mental Hospital.
On the black market on an alley in St. Louis, a girl is bought. She is consumed as if she was a beef-
saturated French fry. As their relations intensify, he has a cardiac arrest.
There are no volcanoes in Sydney.
He used to trap butterflies to watch their wings flap in struggle. The pattern of the eyes on their
paper-thin wings seemed to look at him the way a lover would.
They say that a butterfly flapping its wings in America could change the weather in China; there is
simply no way that this could be true.
Lily Hoang is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame. Her
work has appeared in Square One and Invisible Insurrection.
PETER JAY SHIPPY: seven poems from ALPHAVILLE
22
Quince rows
segue to umbilical, vascular
willows, xenial yuccas–

zygotic zogos.
Your xi-shaped wisteria

vamps upward
toward sunlight,
rethreading quintessence.
Pools of nervous
maple leaves
knell, juddering
into helpless
glaucous folds.
Each day cans beauty.
23
April?–Aunt Bereft.
Crocus drifts
edge forward. Grass

has industrial
jealousies, kamikaze
leanings, making
numerical order
providence.
Quern rocks
slough tow-flax.
Umbelliferous vines
wind XS yetis.
Zamzummims?
Zombie yentas!
24
Xiphisternum wielding
vibrists up-end
the soft Rach-

maninoff. Quartets
pissed on Novocain
may lose
kopeck juice
in Herzegovina, going
for euphoria–dead cat

bounce–as after
brunch caesuras
deaccession
encomium
from gracile haiku.
25
I’m jumpy.
Keeping lookout
means not observing

Peter Quince record
surf tunes using viola

with xylophone.
You’re zero zero.

You’re xenophobic.
We vaporetto, until
tony Sicilians rush
Q-ships, portside.
Onomastic numen Mafioso
look kewpie
(joining in huggermuggery).
26
Goldfinger fingers
ermine, daring
Connery’s Bond
as a body contractor
digs excavating finks.

Green Hornet’s
id jeopardizes
Kato’s Lee.
Martial Nazarenes
once poxed
Queensbury’s rules
starting trouble
under Vampirella’s
wranglers. X Y Z!
27
Zambonis yaw,
X-ing west via
ultima Thule, sailing

Rimbaud Quai, parsing
old Norse moments.

Laity killers jump ice,
haunting gangster friezes.

Eunoia descends,
crowning Bök’s
articulable antelope.
Brünnhilde calls down

elegant funk, gob-
smacking
hang-dogged Icelanders
28
Jell-O knees
lend mobocracies
naff off powers.

Q-tip racketeer’s sense
tense under-the-table
variables.
When X-Box
yoo-hoos zing
Zealand’s yobs, X-man

Werewolf vituperates
Übermensch talk show

ranters. Quip
pipsqueaks! Only neocortexes

model love.
BlazeVOX 2k6:
anonlinejournalofvoice
Fall 2005 – Winter 2006
BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York
Copyright © 2006
Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the
publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed by CafePress.com in the United States of America
Cover art by Larry Fauntleroy

Book design by Geoffrey Gatza
First Edition
Troubles are usually brooms and shovels that smooth the road to the good man's
fortune; and many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not
that it brings abundance to drive away hunger.
A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who
sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.
St Basil
Winter 2006
November Update
Bonfire Night 2005
Buffalo FOCUSes :
Kevin Thurston
Ted Pelton
Ed Taylor
Winter 2006 ~ Table of Contents
Allen Itz ..............................................................................................................................3
Adam Fieled......................................................................................................................11
P.L. George ......................................................................................................................17
Andy Martrich ..................................................................................................................23
Colin James ......................................................................................................................27
Corey Habbas...................................................................................................................33
James Davies.....................................................................................................................37
James Grinwis...................................................................................................................43
Kenji Siratori.....................................................................................................................47
Megan A. Volpert ............................................................................................................49
Michelle Greenblatt .........................................................................................................53
Nancy Graham .................................................................................................................59
Sarah Parry........................................................................................................................61
Phillip Henry Christopher...............................................................................................63
Shishir Gupta....................................................................................................................70
Nicholas Manning............................................................................................................72
Gianina Opris ...................................................................................................................78

2
Allen Itz
shadows
a woman in red
stands quiet and still
before a red wall
becomes like a shadow

on the wall
while, I standing
as it passes,
become a shadow
on the parade of daily life
3
afternoon at Starbucks
i. the girl with a small mouth and long brown hair
threw back here hair

with a flip of her head
and smiled
little mouth a bow

drawn tight
like a knot
on a pink and white tie
or a kitten
that curls like a ball
when you tickle
her belly
ii. summer light
sun streams all around

through floor to ceiling windows
a black man
in a chalk white hat
passes
shadow
and searing flash
glide
through the room of bright
iii. duet
an old man,
silver hair curling
on the nape of his neck
sits under a green umbrella
in shorts and plaid shirt
4
starched to razor sharpness
studying a score unfolded
on a music stand before him,
huming along as he reads
he doesn't see the younger woman

who stands behind him, reading
over his shoulder, lips moving
toe tapping on the courtyard bricks,
keeping time
iv. enjoy, enjoy
hand in hand they stroll

carefree, young,
sure that day
will always follow night
I whisper
as they pass,
enjoy, enjoy
this bright
wonderous day,
let the shinning sun
of your life
reflect itself on mine
v. two fat men hugging
two fat men hug,

friends parting,
reaching, with great delicacy,
over their substantial bellies
to reaffirm histories
not forgotten, futures
not foresaken
5
Pat McCormick, R.I.P.
everyone dies
heros and comics

and villianous creeps
evryone
Uncle Lester
Aunt Hester
and Fester
the Travis Park
Molester
everybody
e v e r b o d y
presidents and thieves

busboys and the once upon a time
flings
of spoiled rich kings
of tiny nations with lots of oil
and large armies with fat generals
popped and debecked and braided
in Gilbert and Sullivan uniforms
Ronald Reagan died
didn't like him much

but now that he's dead
who cares who didn't like him
and William Golden,

crackerbarrel philosopher
and newspaper publisher
with puffy white hair
and hornrim glasses
and a big smile that looked
out at you from the back
of his latest book of essays
6
liked him a lot but
it didn't do him any good
he died anyway
all of these people
good ones and bad ones,

sweet smelling and sour,
the vile and the saintly
and all the rest in-between
dead, everyone
and you, too, someday,

so don't be thinking
you have some kind of
get out of death free card
I'm really sorry about that
because it makes it harder

for me to believe
I'll be the exception
that proves
the rule
7
Benny McGruder
Benny McGruder
is not
a Certified
Public
Accountant.
He does not have

a wife named Phyllis
two kids, a mortgage
and a pet
named Flea.
Benny McGruder
is not
five foot nine
with bandy legs
and a 40 inch waist.
He does not play golf

on week-ends
with old high school friends
named Tubs,
Squeel and
Bartholomew.
Benny McGruder
does not take a bus
every weekday
to his office
at Franklin and Bean.
He does not masturbate

at night
in the bathroom
after Phyllis
has gone to bed.
8
And he does not weep
in the morning
in the shower
with his cheek pressed
hard against
the cold
wet
tile.
Benny McGruder
is not
what he seems.
Desired by women,
admired by men,
feared by those
he might cross,
Benny McGruder
is a powerful man,
a man of presence,
A rough man,
a tough man,
a mean
motherfucker
man.
Someday you will know

about Benny McGruder.
Benny McGruder
is a man
who will matter.
Someday.
bio
Allen Itz is a native South Texan, moving slowly over the years from a small town on the border
in deep South Texas to San Antonio and the Texas hill country. He began as a writer in the late
1960's, published a few poems, then quit writing for nearly 30 years. He returned to poetry
when he retired several years ago and has since published more than 200 poems in various on-
line and print literary journals and has recently released his first book, "Seven Beats a Second"
Go to Allen's website at www.7beats.com for information on the art, poetry and music that make
up his Seven Beats Project.
9
10
Adam Fieled
Loose Canon
shots ricocheted at borders
coated walls absorbed friction-lit brigades

sensitive machines registered red hits
sleep fell on specifics regardless

universals fried sausages
not much could be spoken of remorse
second skirmish sent forces scattering

shards of green glass littered forest floors
irreplaceable antiques wiped their eyes

on the cuffs of the loosest canon
I didn’t expect immolation to arrive so soon
11
Legs
senseless propositions
seem ruddy-cheeked in sky-backed night

exhaust-fume dense from windowless space
you’re black-hewn then, from spider-webbed heat

(rubbed, boned over propulsions)
clouded lights prove unstable, shoot themselves off

damp felt ends of feeling….
a state of affairs untouched by contraction

simulacrum of finite regression
puddles and spoon-handles confuse themselves
12
Call
leaves and pavement fastened to my phone
you cast a salt-harbored spell from Boston

crabbing in a scuttle beneath me
born of phonological effluvia

caressed vowels ‘twixt your tongue and teeth
taste of buttered lobsters sans bibs

I moseyed, street streaked black, benighted,
tired, decompressed to nothingness…

sullen street-light scintillations
picked meat in your consonants

pavement gave way to gravy
my phone had an orgasm and gave out
13
Blog-balls
Stomach-stormed, the keyboard’s an ink-

gun, letter-loaded. You want to pierce the skin,
tattoo me. I’ve got a space on my left upper-
arm. I’ve wanted a dragon there, but your teeth-
ink-marks will do. Get some fire-water in you;
you’ll feel wetter, heady for the hunt. Now, you’ve
spotted an opening, gaping like a moon-crater.
Stick it in, every inch of it. Bind me by my
blog-balls, so you see— it’s good to thrust.
It’ll be even better w/ you on the bottom.
14
Nowhere Man
What can he be but what he already is?
Don’t cry for his non-existent ideology.

He doesn’t. He thinks of it at odd moments,
between contented sips of whiskey, NPR
blaring like Wagner, when the moon
makes him feel what he’s lacking—
the fire inside, the knotted tension,
clotted arteries, blotted wounds,
sodden innocence. He’s as tender
as a calf, simple as a lark, quiet
as a cat. All he thinks about is tail.
What can he “is” but what he’s already been?
adam fieled is a poet, critic, and musician currently based in philly. he has work in or forthcoming in
jacket, rain taxi, nth position, many mountains moving, luzmag, argotist, great works, te_a_tro, hutt,
starfish, boog city, and edits the blog-journals pfs post (www.artrecess.blogspot.com) and stoning the
devil (www.adamfieled.blogspot.com). his albums include "darkyr sooner", "ardent" and "raw rainy
fog".
15
16
P.L. George
IMPLOSION OF A POET
I first met Becky while traveling with my friends’ band, Headroom, to Dallas for
a show in Deep Ellum. She was working in a CD store in Norman, and she was
Jeremys’ latest screw, and he had arranged to pick her up on the way. We had passed
four fat joints between us, and I was catatonic, laughing mostly about Mike the
drummers’ new mowhawk and that engine kept cutting out every ten miles or so.
Stoned or sober, Becky’s voice was that of a baby doll groupie, the kind that I’d
seen a million times after a show that would hang around bands and try to hook up
with local celebrities that were never going anywhere.
Daniel, the lead singer, had arranged for his sister to take our stoned and broke
asses in to her suburban Fort Worth home which was the cleanest I’d ever seen. But
Becky surprised me. She was the first girl I knew who became bored with Jeremy after
getting past his guitar and his eternal supply of weed. Out on the patio, we talked
about Nietzsche and art, and how the world didn’t understand anything. She was an
immigrant, brought to Oklahoma at the age of three and spoke impeccable German. I
told her I wrote and hung out at Galileo’s, a bar and local coffee house that hosted
poetry nights in the arts district of Oklahoma City. I had never read there, but liked the
17
atmosphere. We exchange numbers and she told me she had a poet friend that she
thought I should meet. He became the reason I never respected anyone calling himself
a poet again.
After two solid days and nights of beer saturation in Dallas, she called, and I met
her at Galileo’s on Wednesday for open mic night. He was there, the poet, or so he like
to be called. Steven stands about 5’9, waif frame, reminding one of femininity with
brown, slightly thinning, hair. He first jumped on me as he rolled his own cigarettes
and licked the papers with his tongue. He asked me what poets I liked. I said the Beats
and as far as poets were concerned, I thought Ginsberg and Whitman were mystics.
“What else?” he replied with a little condescension in his voice. I was early in
my writing, but had won a short story contest in Arkansas, but I was still in a little awe
of people that read at this whole coffee house scene, and the ones that had the balls to
get up at the mic. “What else?” he said again.
I said Rimbaud. And he stopped me and corrected me cold, “It’s Rimbo.”
I drew back in my hole, and he took over the conversation, going down the list
of what translations of poets he had read and that I needed to read more. I told him
that doing a lot of reading fucked up my inner voice. He dismissed that, and by the
time we had exchanged numbers, I crawled out of the bar with barely my balls.
Two weeks passed, and Becky called again for an invite to her twenty-third
birthday party at Galileo’s. I’d just gotten about five rejections in the mail from pretty
obscure lit journals, but I reluctantly said yes, though I wasn’t up for any celebration.
And Steven was there, sitting obscurely in the corner with about ten bottles tipped over
18
in front of him on the table. He targeted me when I approached the table, slurring
every other word.
“I want to show you some of my poems.” He had dyed his hair in a jet-black
Goth color, and hung a rolled cigarette from the corner of his mouth. I starved for
writers in this city, and Headroom’s after parties of weed and forty year old strippers
were beginning to lose their luster. Maybe he’d be good to give me a critique on my
writing, and mine on his.
We tipped some more back and through the fourth Jagermeister we decided to
hang out more. I gave him ten of my stories from the back seat of my car, two of which
had gotten published and thought they were on fire. I called him four days later to hear
an outside voice and get away from my inner one. He never answered. I called Becky,
and she told me what went down. Steven was in jail. He was hooked on pills and had
broken into his neighbor’s house and nearly got shot. He’d be out on bond in a week.
I didn’t care. I wanted to hear what he thought of my writing, seeking validation.
Out of the blue, on a Wednesday, I believe, he called and asked if I’d come and
pick him up down at County. I did, and he was broke, so I said I’d treat him to a cup
of coffee.
“So what did you think of my stories?” I asked him. He rolled that creepy little
cigarette of his and fired it. “It’s shitty,” he said.
“Well, let me see some of yours.”
“I’ll type some up.” That was the last thing he said to me for a while.
Six weeks had passed. We met by accident out at Hawaiian Don’s bar, and his
sister was buying him one of the big, tropical drinks that came in sizes like fish bowls.
19
After the place was swarming and I had been through my fifth beer, I came up to him
and wrapped my arm around his sister.
“So,” I said, “when are you going to show me your work?”
“Next week. I’ll meet you at Galileo’s at nine o’clock.”
That night was long, and my recollection was blurry, only remembering that I’d
pissed in the hallway of a girl I picked up and her screaming and kicking me out. That,
and I slept on her porch until the sun came up.
So a week passed, and I made it to Galileo’s early, putting my name on the list
to read then scratching it off. He showed up like he promised with three pages in his
hand and a confident smile.
“I’m gonna read these tonight,” he said when he handed them to me and
walked to the list to write his name.
The first went like this.
We enter through wombs
And exit through tombs.
And at the bottom he wrote, “Submit” in quotations to Paris Review, Atlantic
Monthly, Harpers, etc.
The second was this.
Kill today! kill tomorrow!
Watch it all die, become a
Spectator, and do nothing about it.
In pen was inked “Good” and “Send to Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly, The
New Yorker,” etc.
20
The third I didn’t even bother to read. When he came back, he took his seat
and rolled that shitty little cigarette and asked me what I thought.
“I don’t know, their pretty short,” I told him.
“That’s how most of mine are,” he said.
After sitting in awkward silence for about ten minutes, I excused myself to the
bathroom. I threw his poems in the toilet and pried open the window in the stall, and
went home.
I never talked to a poet again.
work can be found at oraculartree.com., slowtrains.com, cerebralcatalyst.com, foliate oak at

the university of arkansas, reddirtreview.org, absolute literary anthology, crybloxsome.com,
admit2.net, and soon to be in bathouse.com at eastern michigan university and
63channels.com. I'm looking for a publisher for a book of short stories, both fiction and non
fiction. Anyone interested email me at dharmadweller@cox.net .....thanks P.L.
21
22
Andy Martrich
I.
a man tries to sell me a set of steak knives

he says i need them in the winter
in the summer you can't hide anything
winter comes and everyone wears coats
what they conceal you can't know

he holds tight to my shirt sleeve.
down the block a bit

a rat the size of a turkey carries
a half eaten egg sandwich
i give the man my last dollar for a steak knife

he tells me that one day
he will help me like I helped him
you won't always be there i say
back at my apartment
i wash the steak knife in hot water
and boil to white the calluses hanging on my hands
i think about the size of that rat
back home in pennsylvania

a rafter of turkeys in the road
with trailing poults
crosses slow.
23
II.
tucked into the ground

a skeleton key that opens
every backyard gate
on the block
to mr. keller’s garden

where grapevine wrapped
around the wine cellar
window
rotting wooden frames

chipping beige paint flakes
we pried apart the rest
sliding underneath
keller turned suspicious

when he heard reclusive clatter
over television drone and
low volume
he saw our purple lips

a shattered black bottle between us
shared and dripping
bloody red
to thievery and punishment

was our most recent contribution
to understanding our
shivering hands
24
III.
the tree is a square

the sign, an ill yellow post-it note
in which case, the signifier
is signified
whatever enunciation, it is improper

hanging askew
there to denounce any sort of action
as authoritative
underneath it in manhattan’s cubicle

written in virtuality
on a monitor
the newest of third dimension models
but a tree is still a square

and semiotics is cut down.
25
IV. (a cinquain)
reading
a.e. housman
touched by the Last Poems
that drove men in canada to
their graves.
Bio:
Andy Martrich is from Emmaus, PA but currently lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY. Aside from
writing poetry, he enjoys writing songs and playing the musical saw. His poems have appeared in
JAAM, Contrary Magazine, Barcid-Homily, Muse Apprentice Guild, Can We Have Our Ball Back,
American Dissident and other magazines. A chapbook "I think we should lay here..." came out in 2003
with Foothills Publishing.
26
Colin James
IT IS FORBIDDEN TO THROW STONES AT THE POLYTECHNIC
Commandos
dangling ropes
explain themselves
in unapologetic art.
Look under any bridge,
I guarantee
her back will arch.
27
AUNT MARGIE THE ROCK-HOUND
Tumbling watermellon quartz.

The talk is courteous
and sand vamps the room.
We picnic as rural trackers.
The food's metronome diet
goes down swell.
Multitasking Margie,
she puts just enough butter
in her sandwich
to entice a Viking.
28
HARBOURING THE ANALYTICAL
Remember when we saw those shapes

by the side of the road?
We thought they were men
bending over.
They turned out to be
air ducts.
Later,I had to go back
and apologize
to them all individually.
29
THE WING TAKES A VACATION
Chest pains near the V

then Gibralter beckoned.
A small place,
the sum of its parts.
Mornings on the veranda.
Coffee beneath the jet streams's
eccentric behavior.
Keeping an eye out for the neighbors
a view that knows no compromise,
still gossips
little asides to the wind.
30
HOMILIES OF A LUNATIC
There were less trees

and the people started dying.
More metaphors for
the soul to embellish.
It wasn't until
the annimals became perturbed
and the nonrhythmic windmills,
arms flailing,
consistent with prudence.
Bio:
Colin James recently has had poems published in the print journals T88 and
LUNATIC CHAMELOEN. I have some forthcoming in another print journal, THE
HAZMAT REVIEW. More importantly, it is my son's sixth birthday tomorrow.
[sent 2/2/06 ed.] I read him T.S Elliot before we get his bus. "Let us go
then you and I...." He thinks i'm crazy and is probably right....
31
32
Corey Habbas
Brother
The peninsula, like an island, is Andros

coming down, His owl wings arcing
in a bridge over ocean from the cliff.
His moon eye that peers soft looks

of dream at lovers, is the temptation of vulnerable sleep.
There she is in His bright shadow coaxing you away.
On the rim of the port, the Raki flows at Papadakis,

and never what intoxicates her. They eat a month
of crescents, the butter of Malaga Cove that melts
the night into indigestible syrup.
Muscular men bring it back up into the air

with clapping and their joyful heels beating the floor.
All you can see is her spirit in talons. All you hear
are dishes breaking and the cries
of other men’s festive passion. Your sorrow
becomes the delicate glitter of Italian lights.
As you stand near the cliffside you can see them

lassoing the peacocks with a road-blocking constellation.
Its steady glow produces the mirage of plumes that stretch

a path out over a sea where one wave-polished woman
equates to an ocean of virgins.
As you bypass the rocky shoreline of suicidal lovers,

which had once been the tall cliffs of a brave boy,
falling off, trusting to be pushed back by a gale,
a lýra sings for the peacocks and the dancing men,
persuading you of the democracy in dying.
33
Stow Away
Herman is the California

desert’s leathered face,
cupped in the basin’s Joshua fingers.
He had ridden a cargo ship over

Badwater from Sweden, and it delivered him
onto slopes formed from the milk of volcanoes
without pity typically given to a city beggar.
A boy will endure the worst beatings

from a man as long as he can stay
beside a mother who loves her boy
as the dirty damn strangers pick apart
his mother’s blouse with vulture fingers.
He washes his hands with kerosene.

Kerosene is the soap and water of the desert.
The old rocks hide Herman
from the city; the pile on land
without a cross. The etched
womb of the valley stirs
with the wind of native spirits,
but Herman feels at home.
He lives like she’s dead, under

a mourning rainshadow, and he tries
not to notice granite slopes
pushing up through the creosote bush.
Instead, he admires her dress

sewn from blue-lace agate,
harvests her endogenous eggs-
the hollow cavities fertilized with crystal-
and when the rock hounds have all but taken her,
and their trails are marked by poppies lit with sunfire,
Herman smells her sage sigh.
The adopted son

who never took a bride because
of how, in the desert, that kind of thing
can betray a man.
When he dies
he becomes a protected specimen
etched as if her tattoo’s ink had bled a new river
and the wind carries its gift-
the rare dress of nubile snow.
34
On not Playing to Win
I lost the game in our empty closet

I have no worries,
for my Gumby plays Twister
on a bag of Wonder Bread.
Don’t Call on Me
Oh, Trina. I’m in the dark

and you have me. The cap of
“Sizzling-Plum-Sunday” came off
and now I’m all marked up with the color
of your lips because of the swing of your hips
against your purse.
My buttons have chipped your studded nails

since you picked me up from the snow
from where the husband left me for lost, but
Leroy ratted you out

after a few drinks and a few calls from the wife.
From all that talk, that’s what I’ve learned about the art
of breaking down. No matter how much battery.
I’ve gone from lost to stolen. Been blocked.

Drained, I gave the forest my call trail,
but the witch’s oven doesn’t even work around here.
Like in any prison where a woman is warden, I wish

for just one call before you yank my SIMM card.
I would tell him, “Don’t come to the apartment.
Leroy and I passed out, and you’ll be all alone with her.”
Bio
Corey Habbas lives in Minnesota, and has written poetry that has recently appeared in Outsider Ink,
Pemmican Press, Underground Window and PoetryMagazine.com. She holds a B.S. in Information
Systems from California State University of Redlands. She grew up in Southern California.
35
36
James Davies
How many men did L and P believe had done this?
According to L, The Master said: There are seven men who have done this
According to P, The Master said: There are eight men who have done this
According to M, P was right
According to K, L was right
According to Z both P and L were right
According to H neither P nor L were right
According to K, P was wrong
According to M, L was wrong
According to Z neither P nor L were wrong
According to H both P and L were wrong
According to M how many men did L and P believe had done this?
According to K how many men did L and P believe had done this?
According to Z how many men did L and P believe had done this?
According to H how many men did L and P believe had done this?
37
Another…
Another day. The shopkeeper puts out yet another magazine.

His greedy eyes examine for the merest hint of nipple.
Blinks then then he gets back to shelving.
Some hours later P. calls in to collect his paper. On leaving

Distracted by some magazines he collides with the beautiful Princess Z.
Picking up his paper he scuttles out in embarrassment.
38
Alison moves her pot plants into the sun
Jim home from a hidden bay he knows

laughing at the soaking he got
off with his mac! wet clothes under that

wet clothes under that.
Sip garden sip - sip Cinzano!

Tap barefoot tap - sip Cinzano!
Alison’s clippings! Jim’s clippings! Wind’s clippings!

Jim laughs at Alison. Alison laughs back at Jim.
39
James’ Big Days Out
a. She took me to the garden centre
b. I followed him into the church and he followed me into the church
e. I took joy whenever she played the piano or didn’t
g. She presented me with raw carrot and sild for tea
i. With an owl-like face he chuckled in the meat section
k. The first thing he did was to choose what to break
l. The Midland Bank want their money back
m. Everything, everything I heard last night I immediately forgot
n. She said she liked to read Virginia Woolf, but she didn’t
o. You cannot change the world [applause]
p. Even though he had come first in the race he could never quantifiably be called the best
q. Her body looks like a rock down there, at the bottom of the cliff
qq. I wanted to see the Wickerman but I had to make do with the Iron Horse
s. She talked about sunlight, linen, workwear, healthcare
t. Cardiff was like all the Christmas’s I’d ever known
40
u. He stood on the platform waving; his hand mechanical
v. His shoulders slumped; a terrible whatness in his eyes
w. I carried on to Westminster Bridge
Bio
James Davies has written in Clacton, Exeter, Copenhagen and Manchester. For a living he teaches
English at Abbey College in Manchester and sometimes on the Creative Writing programme at Bolton
University. He is editor of Matchbox (www.matchbox.org.uk), an associate editor of Parameter
Magazine (www.parametermagazine.org) as well as being on the advisory board of Poets and Players
(www.poetsandplayers.co.uk). His work has appeared in magazines including: Lamport Court,
Scarecrow, Aesthetica and Embryo.
41
42
James Grinwis
THE STUDY OF SMALL WORDS
The meaning and function

of light in each.
The near plunge, the boy
who always holds back.
From time to time
I look for new words
and feel the sensation
of discovery. If I invent
my own, it’s not the same
as seeing what’s been.
Still, I go on pretending
to invent. Lumpster. Divinoid.
Somnabulaut. Drop off car
for Joe. In the middle of
the wide field.
A proving ground of sorts.

Sousaphone. Warrior-hood.
Attracting all the bears, the sound.
Her foot in some leaves.
Her foot snared by the tongs
of a bug. Cornetist. Monster
fig. Creature of endless desire.
Everywhere I wish you. At all
times and manners. A plate
crashed into an ironing board.
Cues of cause and effect.
Laugh of the oblong torch
in the hand of dart frog.
Barking frog. The ground
is moist and you sink
right in. -ology is the study
of. -oid is possessing of a form.
43
*
Chihuahua bird. Amoeba ferret,

who’s heart was a hard,
pebble-like cord. She swallowed it
and carried it around in her gullet
where it quivered and throbbed
gently. The amoeba ferret
continued to claw heartlessly.
Where were we going this time?
asked a member of our group.
Didn’t seem clear
anywhere. All sides of the compass
pointed back to the center of zero.
I clutched the root
for survival as the Chihuahua bird
veered into the canopy.
My orange canopy. Lambent
arc. Devouring restlessness.
Shoulder of the disjointed fuse.
Interior with ladykiller.

Interior with fox terrier.
Unprobed fathom of the next
century. Untaught
lesson of green.We sit
inside our little hut which is snug
and has a cow wearing an old
tire by the door.
My nephew’s a handsome man.
Someday he’ll be tamed
by she who makes docile
all that she strokes.
The self-domesticated wolves
sit around the fire in the yard.
They yawn and toss
peanut shells back and forth
but they’re mostly tired, lulled
by the warmth of the flames.
44
Ogler, cokebird, toreador.
Show your bird-like fist.
My next son I will name Orville.
There’s a lot of rain this weekend,
think I’ll hike down to the coffeehouse
and make it new. Everybody speaking
about making it new.
Storm control. Quivering,
fire-thatched bird. Holding
the tongue in. Apprentice of.
The hat in an aspect of glory.
The thumb in an aspect of war.
Laying the aspect book
upon the aspect shelf.
How are thee. Thee seem fine,
swishing through the corridors
of the fish farm. Get thee
to a place far away.
Find a lost and
pretty thing.
Like the biology of cubes

in the kingdom of the
hog-nosed snake.
Xerox of the dismal swamp.
Xerography as study
of forms. At the bottom
of the sky as dot.
Bio :
James Grinwis is working on a futuristic novella involving a quest for Robert

Frost's preserved, gilded head, around which wobbles an unusual political
conspiracy. His work has appeared recently in American Poetry Review, Conjunctions,
Backwards City, Spork, Bird Dog, Sleepingfish, Born Magazine, and elsewhere.
45
46
Kenji Siratori
"abnormal living body of a chemical=anthropoid-modem=heart of the hybrid

corpse mechanism that turned on technojunkies' ill-treatment to the terror
abolition world-codemaniacs of the chromosomal aberration that was
controlled FUCKNAMLOAD****the acidHUMANIX infectious disease archive of the
biocapturism nerve cells nightmare-script of a clone boy to the super-
genomewarable to the feeling replicant living body junk of her digital=vamp
cold-blooded disease animals reptilian=HUB ultra=machinary tragedy-ROM
system to the brain universe of the hyperreal HIV=scanner form murder game
of the dogs@tera DNA=channel of the drug fetus of the trash sense is
debugged!
"terror fear=cytoplasm gene-dub of the drug fetus of the trash sense is

debugged to the paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator
corpse feti=streaming of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM::data=mutant of
her abolition world-codemaniacs feeling replicant ecstasy system of the
acidHUMANIX infectious disease archive_body encoder that BDSM plays a
chemical=anthropoid to the brain universe that was processed noise hunting
for the grotesque WEB to the genomics strategy circuit of the biocapturism
nerve cells mass of flesh-modules of the hyperreal HIV=scanners that turned
on the ill-treatment of the corpse city reptilian=HUB of a clone
boy=joints....
"I turn on ill-treatment to the DNA=channels of the biocapturism nerve

cells abolition world-codemaniacs that was processed the data=mutant of her
ultra=machinary tragedy-ROM creature system corpse feti=streaming of a
clone boy****the gene-dub to the paradise apparatus of the human body pill
cruel emulator that compressed the abnormal living body of a
chemical=anthropoid-brain universe of the terror fear=cytoplasm that was
controlled the acidHUMANIX infectious disease of the soul/gram made of
retro-ADAM@trash sense of drug fetus feeling replicant of the hyperreal
HIV=scanner form tera of dogs were installed to the
reptilian=HUB_modem=heart that hung up non-resettable murder game.
"reptilian=HUB_modem that crashed to the paradise apparatus of the human

body pill cruel emulator murder-gimmick of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM
chemical=anthropoid=cardiac covered that mass of flesh-module hunting for
the grotesque WEB=joints acidHUMANIX infectious disease archive of the
biocapturism nerve cells to the brain universe of the ultra=machinary
tragedy-ROM creature system that was processed the technojunkies'
data=mutant nightmare-script of a clone boy is debugged to a hybrid corpse
mechanism insanity medium of the hyperreal HIV=scanners that was send back
out to the feeling replicant living body junk@digital=vamp cold-blooded
disease animals era respiration-byte of the corpse city is aspirated acid.
"genomics strategy circuit reptilian=HUB of her ultra=machinary tragedy-ROM

creature system to the abolition world-codemaniacs feeling
replicant_processed the data=mutant of the drug fetus of the trash sense is
47
installed::nightmare-script of a clone boy body encoder of the terror
fear=cytoplasm that the technojunkies' digital=vamped the insanity medium
of the hyperreal HIV=scanners DNA=channel of the corpse city that turns on
the brain universe of the hybrid corpse mechanism gene-dub of a
chemical=anthropoid to the acidHUMANIX infectious disease archive of the
biocapturism nerve cells ill-treatment guerrilla.
"era respiration-byte is send back out to the paradise apparatus of the

human body pill cruel emulator that compressed the mass of flesh-module of
the ultra=machinary tragedy-ROM creature system murder-gimmick of a
chemical=anthropoid acidHUMANIX infectious disease of the soul/gram made of
retro-ADAM hunting for the grotesque WEB terror fear=cytoplasm gene-dub of
the drug fetus of the trash sense to the feeling replicant living body
junk@digital=vamp cold-blooded disease animals=joints....the
reptilian=HUB_modem that hung up the brain universe of the hyperreal
HIV=scanner form murder game of the dogs of tera technojunkies=covered
cardiac body encoder to FUCKNAMLOAD.
"hunting for the grotesque WEB to the biocapturism nerve cells

chemical=anthropoid brain universe of the terror fear=cytoplasm that was
debugged reptilian=HUB of the drug fetus of the trash sense=joints the
paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator corpse
feti=streaming of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM to the abolition world-
codemaniacs that was processed the data=mutant of her ultra=machinary
tragedy-ROM creature system DNA=channel****I rape the modem=heart of the
hybrid corpse mechanism that turned on technojunkies' ill-treatment to the
disillusionment-module of the living body junk feeling replicant murder-
gimmick of a clone boy.
Kenji Siratori: a Japanese cyberpunk writer who is currently bombarding the

internet with wave upon wave of highly experimental, uncompromising,
progressive, intense prose. His is a writing style that not only breaks
with tradition, it severs all cords, and can only really be compared to the
kind of experimental writing techniques employed by the Surrealists,
William Burroughs and Antonin Artaud. Embracing the image mayhem of the
digital age, his relentless prose is nonsensical and extreme, avant-garde
and confused, with precedence given to twisted imagery, pace and
experimentation over linear narrative and character development. With
unparalleled stylistic terrorism, he unleashes his literary attack. An
unprovoked assault on the senses. Blood Electric (Creation Books) was
acclaimed by David Bowie. http://www.kenjisiratori.com
48
Megan A. Volpert
ink tokes
there are books that plot and other books that simply plod
coming to the inconclusive in their own sweet time
lounging steadily against the drudgery of rising and falling actions
to prefer instead the continuously climactic comatose state of having no climax at all
tantric baby
the kind of books that forget to call the morning after
but you’ll remember each of them as the one
because you can’t recall a single specific detail
just the general feeling of having had your world rocked
reread those books if you run into them again
they’re different every time because they don’t care
nihilists baby
49
anne waldman in glass
the nightingale came to me a half-dead legend goldmine

one should not ask any god questions that begin with why
and she sang that in my longing i was no longer learning
in her uneasiness she went behind a strong trunk podium

perhaps i want to know how they gave it to her so freely
reasons in their hearts for which they begged her to take it
every question posed to the poet bears a too hot kernel

the way the windows face in the room of never grieve
but my ears are sensitive to some versions of the truth
not all clocks keep pace and hers will soon wind down
she misses all the tick adrenaline tock flush flush flush
and remembers a time when she could not sing sing sing
i am a hummingbird with no feet

you will think i do not need them
but that was also my mistake before
50
customs
is the purpose of your visit personal or business

medical pausing on one side
marking business as in none of his
have you anything to declare
i have come here to die blinking on one side
stamping passport he will remember at tea
on behalf of french customs bienvenue a paris
merci shuffling forward on sore feet
my companion turns away stifling laughter

they are french je t’accuse he can take it
at the border elle reponds there is no joke
51
and i was not inclined toward inspiration without her
i have been wandering the streets of new orleans

so many glimmering more green yet less ephemeral than she
was a city with thousands
in a momentary flutter of prickly little conscience
this ethereal trickster turned back to reassure me
hopping sparkling through the window
because though a fraud she has done her work beautifully

who i simply could not coax to stay
grown suddenly tired of being always charming
a little green fairy flecked with ambition
to regretfully unveil that she was an imposter
it was then the muse alighted on my brow
and carried the glass all away

with blood that had thinned unto water
until i became as a great flesh jug one marked god
the grains closed every wound
while my blood played
wore the shards for a crown
all three i broke
one marked good one marked evil one marked pretty
filled with the fine white sands of time
i dreamt three glass jugs came into my possession
Megan A. Volpert is a performance poet from Chicago currently tempting fate at

graduate school in Baton Rouge. Her recent publications include Columbia Poetry
Review, Defenestration Magazine and Nth Position. She prefers making art in response
to art, and never drinks coffee. More details at madelynhatter.com
52
Michelle Greenblatt
8:46 p.m.
squirming kinesis
only exhales
a green idea
(this is not a song not a song not a song)
I am gathering
(they tear bloody like birth)
black cats for the tea party

it is 8:46 p.m.
and you speak slowly
(rinsing off exact time

with tiny self-sharpening flowers)
the parentheses speak no truths

(other than the ones we clot with razor to ice)
(the parentheses speak no truths

other than the unmagical)
night has come.
we are drenched
with putrescence
and violets.
10.14-15.2005
53
Dream 10.8.2005
road, sea,
roar, I remember my dream —sun falls thru
the sky’s protoplasm.
I peel it back, grin
behind the prison of clouds that shadow the land
so blue. (I am stained
with flowers.) The daylight serene
between
sneezes, gently opening and closing its eyes. someone
knocks
at my flowerdoor, keeps knocking and knocking. whoisit,
I ask, but (dear god) only the portrait of the ocean hanging
around the doorframe says anything to me.
I see
a dirty child holding a flower and clean
her off. The tree-echoes
back it couldn’t happen, we had no
history. road, sea,
roar, I remember my dream—walk the boulevard, turning snowy
and you would
will you
follow me?
10.8.2005
54
Persephone Drives South
NEVER ought not to repeated

although
the road (I-95) (South) she traveled
down once a week for nearly
a year did nothing to help her justify the salt
in her cup & once reaching US-1 (make a left)
she held her breath
in her left hand
wondered what to punch with her right, fist cracking
the pomegranate seed.
7.13.2005
55
[Fractured]
dead mosquitoes on the edge of summer, suppose we had no

money what would we buy perfection masturbates to the
spawn of jars meticulously mating with when & whenif the
ground’s electrons beckon lightning I try to tell myself it is
not necessary to think cruelty has a conscience I try to tell
you it is not necessary to think I am conscious while we
fuck—not my best but not my worst(I am afraid)—
try leaving no stain when the door is jammed if a life can be
changed like this grain by grain I will bomb your tongue
until it is crumbs of my old school my old best friend the
silence of the day right here fractured.
9.17.2005
56
hearing the shadows grow over the colorless garden
as I have done before, hearing the light pour over a knife, hearing the shadows grow over the
colorless garden, I am coming to that before me (you), white (pages) the edges of our home.
quick kiss me. use electronics. I see your reaction (green) as if standing in front your mirror.
More time…you slam your body against the three-walled peninsula. only your two eyes
remain.
11.12.2005
Bio:
Michelle Greenblatt is the new co-poetry editor of AND PER SE AND, formerly known as
"mprsnd". Her first book brain:storm, went to press this January. She has been published or
will be published in these magazines: Xerolage, Moria, Blackbox, Naked Sunfish, Fire,
AUGHT, X-stream, Shampoo, Word for/ Word, Admit Two, The Argotist Online, The
Anemone Sidecar, & Generator Press. Her third chapbook (X-press(ed)) will appear in
January as well. michelle.greenblatt@gmail.com
57
58
Nancy Graham
Gathering to Watch the Birds
In the courtyard, groups of people

gathered to look at the bards.
A red one looked similar to a cardinal,
but with white flecks on the wings.
See, this skin’s sensitive.
I don’t know, something but it was ok.
A courtyard subgroup, meeting in
the courtyard anyway, has to determine
a time for Linda to make up for missing
all the Bible days. You don’t care?
Linda doesn’t care. Let’s just keep it on Wednesday.
When the birds began to arrive, the red one worked
so diligently to get me over there.
A huge white one.
It may have hurt when he hit you but it’s good
to notice when you stop hurting.
We’re all spending the night here together, ok?
A huge white one, felt uncomfortably white even though
This is North Woods.

You need a cross-section of the pickles, huh?
Dinner is almost over, anyway.
Did you read Journey to the End of the Road?
I’m talking to, from this website, I’m not sure who.
Remember the bookmarks.
The white one in the back, this is a new one that you aren’t using, Dad.
It’s back, fluffy back to me, fluffy fluffy back of the white owl.
Guardians would just love it.
She never needed to have her cheetah brushed, that
I can remember.
59
It’s probably the source of the black mold problem.
The courtyard groups of people gathered
to look at the bard. Even if I was registering
the most electable. I was reading the front page
about Ken Foster. I was reading and writing next
to a feeder, out the window.
I’m not saying anything I haven’t said a thousand
times, but there’s something that’s different near here.
Space consideration, is it?
Please don’t constrain your e.
In the courtyard, groups of people gathered
to look at the rain. Or maybe, like Robin
said, they need to tell people what they know,
and what they know sucks. In the courtyard groups
of people gathered to look at the earthling birds.
I walk away. I rose and ran up a spiral staircase into the woods.
There were groups of people with partners.
Gathered to watch, oh, it’s good inspiration. You can read
with me now: one, two, three.
When the birds arrived, Dadu thought I wouldn’t want to
choose to look at them. That’s nice. The courtyard wraps
the studio around your roots. Were these roots ever a feature
of the landscape around here?
The pretty pod crow situation was fierce.
When she and I rose and ran up a spiral staircase, I knew,
really, that April best described her. Put it out of my plan, there’s nothing
Backyard people gathered to look at the birds, which stood out.

I was reading and writing, all the way into Albany.
Underground
In the courtyard, groups of people are open to them.
Groups of people who
Wanna play but be sure they both have beads. Wanna
hike where people can go visit hiking, no phone calls.
We’re encountering people who say it’s apparently not enough.
60
Sarah Parry
Out of Orbit
The moon cries a river tonight,

A pool of glistening stars at its side.
Your scent lingers like a skunk’s spray,
The Milky Way is my blanket of warmth.
A book is my bedtime buddy,
I am a lonesome planet faraway.
I feel like I’m losing contact,
No astronaut to conquer my contours.
“Soup For One” and Net Dating,

A shooting star kisses the sky Goodnight.
Horoscopes spur me on daily,
Wishing on a star - I’ll find him.
My life eclipsed of ecstasy,
A guiding star shines in the curtain cracks.
The Zodiac can’t cure my pain,
The telescope left on the shelf.
All Chick - Lit drones on about love,

You were the meteor who melted my view.
Clubs on a Friday are all hype,
Bright lights to hide the hollow shells.
Gazing out of the taxi, at the Plough,
My lost constellation shall return to me,
My rocket ship shall port one day,
Someone shall polish my stars, they shall shine.
61
Idyll: Our Derelict Garden
Our domesticated house cats roam in the tall, over-grown grass,

Acting out their inner ambition to be tigres: a cat with status.
For father is too busy to chop down the long tresses and take
Their strength and imaginary status away.
A TV, once blessed with all eyes upon it retires, sat on the soil
Nursing it’s broken, worn - out tube.
Mountains of black, rubbish bags tower with neglect,

Fit to burst, as they wait patiently for their dump destiny.
I sit and watch our rockery, gaze out and appreciate the neglected.
For we all get old and lose appearance but that does not mean
Inspiration is not there.
I may not be blessed with bird baths and immaculate flower beds,
Yet I am not frightened of raw nature and absorb what I have.
62
Phillip Henry Christopher
Wolf
Wolf howls
alone
in the wild
back country
fur bristled
against the cold
pursuing wind
dead winter
hungry for meat
teeth shining
light reflected
by the moon
still and silent
frozen sky
December
Wolf prowls
inch by inch
deep forests
dead brown wood
ears pricked listens
dry branch cracks
miles away
across hollow
snow bound tundra
echo through
burnt pine
Wolf howls
alone
in the wild
void between
starvation
and spring
clear crisp
piercing howl
savage
profane
alone
bold
defiant
Wolf prowls
inch by inch
63
quick strident
breath vapors
crystal air
sharp pants
nostrils flare
draw cold into
hot chest
heart pounding
powerful
hollow
snow bound
tundra
Wolf howls
alone
in the wild
hot red eyes
flaming ravenous
back country
steam rising
hot tongue
behind sound
lone wail
wilderness night
cold echo
icy wasteland
moonlight
still and silent
frozen sky
December
64
Reflections on A Volkswagen Ad/What the Thunder Said
Who wants to be
a VW cruisin¹
to the ³da da da² song,
as if the total
lack of a life
gives space
to be?
Great Forest Upanisad &

the thunder said
³Da is damyata;
be self-controlled!
Da is patta;
give!
Da is dayadhram;
be compassionate!²
and the thunder
repeats,
³Da - Da - Da!²
In quiet total
lack of a life
teachings.
65
a busy insect
a busy insect
flitting about the surface
of a sunlit pond,
unaware of the sun
but warmed by its rays,
full of lesser bugs.
a single thought...
a single thought
hurled at the sky
shatters into
a dozen fragments
refracting a single
thought
Diamond Dust*
I want to see diamond dust,

to walk through crystaline fog
and feel the floating freeze
on my smiling face,
to look back at the
body print tunnel
suspended in time
and witness the near past
as an echo in arctic cold.
*Fog in the Antarctic is so cold that it freezes in the air. The movement of a person walking through the
crystaline fog leaves a visible tunnel in the outline of the body behind.
66
Following The Impulse is Serious Business
following the impulse

is serious business
following the impulse

is serious
the impulse
is serious
the impulse
is
the impulse
impulse
In My Shorts
In my shorts,
purple ale,
raspberries
tv down low,
white sock feet up
coffee table,
soft light, telly glow
green red like
factory town sky,
crimson stain
pine tree snow.
Thick Air
West of Chicago on Manheim

a jetliner sits suspended,
hovering in thick rippling 99 degree air
above O¹Hare
67
Miles of Highway
Miles of highway
a million miles of highway
along the riverside
a long rolling riverside
green and yellow
red leaf woods
blue upstate sky
steel bridges
steel bridges
and railroad cars
a clickety-clack
clickety-clack
all night long
all night long
all the long night long...
October Dawn
Pale mist apparation

over titanium frost
polite midwest farms
manicured fields and
postage stamp woods
Eastward I-70
October dawn...
On Market Street
On market
street
ground beef must

compete
with better
meat
choice prime to
pig¹s feet
68
She said...
She said,
³I like my meat
lean and rare,
juicy and no fat.
I like my men
thin and raw,
hard and no flab.²
I said,
³I¹m a vegetarian.²
Silence (Bodega Bay)
Mist settles slowly predawn thoughts,

slumbering while darkness holds.
Fog rolls across unlit horizons,
shimmering with distant moon glow
like streams of starlight brilliance
on a rippled tide,
deep as an ocean night.
Silence, only silence...
Phillip Henry Christopher

Phillip Henry Christopher spent his childhood in Paris, France, Biloxi, Mississippi and Swanton, Vermont, before
landing in the steel mill town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the smokestack shadows of blue
collar America.
Christopher has previously published in New York Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, Gargoyle, The Haight
Ashbury Literary Review, Blue Collar Journal, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Argotist Online and Cokefish. He is
a regular contributor to Ya¹Sou! Online. Within the coming year new work will be featured in Lullwater Review,
Blue Beat Jacket, Indented Pillow, Hazmat Review and Cokefish.
Currently living in Indianapolis, Christopher is a solo acoustic guitarist and songwriter. As ³Philadelphia Phil² he
performs original blues songs and poems wherever and whenever he can. Between gigs, he is attempting to publish
a host of poems and short stories, and a novel completed early in 2005.
Both the writer and the musician can be reached at <urbanosmusic@sbcglobal.net>.
69
Shishir Gupta
Naught
He was sitting just there,

Suddenly she came shouting shrill,
Its time and you have to leave,
He reluctantly took his manila, collected his glasses,
And made for the door,
He hiked himself on a bus,
And landed at the Tube,
Wading through the passenger crowd,
He found his tube and boarded it,
Tube ran and ran real fast,
But he just sat their thinking naught,
He was programmed for minutes,
Till tube stopped at his destination,
It did so soon enough,
And he got up in robot like fashion,
And got out of the passenger crowd,
He now boarded a bus,
And got moving to work place,
Landing there he just entered the gates,
He had little applets written in his brain,
To acknowledge in greeting,
Other colleagues and friends,
He nodded along,
Till his place came,
He simply sank in the cushy chair,
and sat there thinking naught,
a guy came and then another,
a few others followed,
some had work, some reported to him,
while to some other he did,
most of them had papers to exchange,
he had some papers,
others he got out of the computer,
70
towards evening his day of work ended,
he had reasons to get angry,
but he did not,
he had reasons to be happy,
but he did not ,
he had several reasons to be several states,
but he did not,
he just sat there and thought naught,
With limp gestures he picked up his manila and glasses,
And moved to the tube,
Tube took him back the same way it had brought,
He again just sat there and thought naught,
He was home and sank in an armchair to relax,
He sipped the coffee and soon supped,
But he still thought just naught,
It was about the same when he watched soaps and sundry on smaller tube,
He still thought naught,
When he did fall sleep his brain stopped thinking even naught,
Till he got up next morning,
And got opportunity to think naught again.
Bio:
A poet given to uncovering inner crevices of human psyche.In particular the mores and
practices that we have established since we set up our present civilization needed to be
altered for the better in the fast changing global scenario.However that has not been the
case.I write poetry to emphasize such aspects.In fact my majority messages deal with
creating a new philosophy of life.I love like minded people whether poet or not.Essential to
such a new philosophy is fairness in all things we do.Fairness is a standard as is accepted
by the process of voting in all life matters.However sometimes I love to dwell deep into
human emotions and miseries as well.I would really appreciate if a few of my poems are
"read and understood" rather than "all of my poems are read skimpy manner".Reader's
pleasure is assured to be multiplied several times when former approach to reading my
poetry is adopted.And a reader who reads a few of my poems and understands their
intended meaning is bound to take on others for much deeper understanding.I am a banker
by profession and reside in India.I have a keen desire to be in Europe and America to
understand people and cultures from a closer angle.
71
Nicholas Manning
love poem 102
we are deeper
from all * things : deeper
and further . . . the glistening core ? the still
implied leaves * which never can
console me : for you
are far * from
the world
and deep within me your image
I cannot carry : I cannot weigh in a simple absence
your touch . . . your silence resembling
and in every childish dream
a thought
(of you) : promised bonheur . . . as behind
the glass as colder café * windows :
desire : rain-streaked : auburn
-curling *
by lips
to some new happiness
real ? or this false memory an Idol
to my love ? as may I hope from
you delivery * to the(n) dying
world ? or but continu-
ance in a frozen time
of * my past * life
and the memory
of deeper
things ?
72
underneath
beyond *
the ranges are ranges (still) :
under the pallid * breasts to knot
a russet muscles : fibre
veins
to * string
a tout . . . yet too
a leaf which in the roughage
lives * invader . . . by
the heart to swathe
an * ageless
melody :
the initial percussion
which with the wet in veins
is wrapped : an inner profusion
too original obscurity * preliminary
to our lives’ limits : which though
the night with new light is
this inner * heart
dwells
dark
73
argument in defence of abstraction
what *
is further from
the real ? that this mark
is in its object * anchored ? rancoured
to the vital day : for how confine *
the many gleaming sides
of the thing ?
say
this shaft of Light is long
this one * close to
its origins . . .
the spatial fallacy ! as though a many
perspectives were not so * made
out of the self (-same) turning
infinitesimal
point . . .
O * plural world ! * O
infinite leaves ! a language false : a language true
when both are but the changing * shades
of a one * same water : shimmering
still * shaded * lit
and endless
74
love poem 96
your image
is as a white blinding * rose :
pose * upon the glittering
water (-lily)
which fills my mind * yet secretly sabotage
my every desire . . . for you flee (for)
the slightest sound : adoring
rustle ! too ardent
words . . . until all is lost : of a sudden
so * when still I may have held you
and but my eager élan
ignore . . . lost . . .
the broken *
flower
not even yet ever * made :
but in my mind a petals of pure possibility
proud * born . . . thorn of my still will
to love ! nothing more : no * too
violent shore . . . or but one
last chance ? O too fragile
thing : delicate will I
now be : too many
words so * said :
if you are not
to me now
dead
75
love poem 104
why *
wait we : beloved ?
let these same rains fall and these same
ebb evenings envelop a city
which knows us (only)
apart . . . when hold
you ? you
-r tender proximity * to a closeness
(in the so awaited hours) of the new and eternal
sanctuary : your regard . . . within
your world-warming
brea(s)t(h)s . . .
each day
a death : for we are
the sad opacity
of our future
spectres ?
yet let the weeks
pass by . . . the seasons
change * and the overwhelming scent and touch of dust
bold-blind both my eyes and thy fair * aspect ?
making the wan world (’s) poor potential
white ? . . . for what world
do you contain ?
an error
in possession ? some
alterity to this ? or the simple perfection
(in these ageless avenues) of time’s
dead * as * knowing
implements ?
76
apricot
seed *
in a black ball to bury
down the honey mush to slush . . .
to seep a syrup
rich *
in orange gleam a globule
sun . . . -rise where now the rotten
auburn bleeds * a new dawn . . . rose-
fingered
fibres * round the brown * stone
spiralled : the ridgèd core
whose centre tight
secretes * no
eluding
light
Bio:
Nicholas Manning is a Paris-based poet who graduated from the University of

Queensland in Brisbane, Australia with a B.A in Comparative Literature and French. He
was a recipient of a scholarship to the Ecole normale supérieure, where he is currently
working towards a PhD dissertation on the subject of rhetoric in contemporary French
and American Poetry. His poems have appeared, or are soon to appear, in the following
literary journals: Free Verse, Fascicle, MiPOesias, eratio, Stylus, Aught, Shampoo,
Dusie, Manifold, The Rose & Thorn, Snow Monkey, Blue Fifth Review, Cipher
Journal, Fire, Centoria, Imago.
77
Gianina Opris
MIA
[the poem which is not one]
JOSE-PHINE
She is awakened by the sound of the laughing sea-gulls. She rests in bed hugging a
pillow - looking around and finding the image of Madame Butterfly and her almond shaped
eyes {blue hands}. Golden butterflies.
“My dog’s name is ...” This thought interrupts her. “When my family moved to
Denver. We had to leave my dog. Then we found out ... he is dead. When we went back to
Mexico. They had killed him. He was dead. I cried. My little sister cried too. I cry.”
“How do you feel about this story?” She remembers asking the children she was
working with that morning. Poor Beautiful Girl. She doesn’t forget these meaningful stories.
They are a part of her everyday. Delete. No she can’t delete memories.
She is not exactly like the woman trapped in a wheel chair. She has long dark black
hair. Frog eyes with long eye lashes and uneven eyebrows. Always in the company of her
skinny cat. Her hair is never combed and her ear is painted in white enamel like a “C” but
backwards.
“Do angles comb their hair?”
Pour Josephine
78
____________________________
WING AND HAND-OUT
There she is at the park near the lake by the green benches. By the runners jogging
by. It’s the statue of an angel with a broken wing. The tall trees above the statue’s body
provide a magical shade. A lavender landscape. Her right arm is standing up tall and strong.
Her hand makes a fist. “Why those sad eyes looking down to the ground?” Dear Dog gets
excited. She moves to the left corner of the bench. Sits alert. Waits as if ready to pray. The
angel’s upper left top wing is broken. A flat cut out. Or unfinished. Her left hand is taken.
She struggles to see this type of woman. This angle of stone. One side of her being
emerges strengthened and the other doesn’t. It’s cut out. Surviving. Quiet
now................She shines.
____________________________
Song:
“To be sung
Urgently, sweetly, with bliss, and sometimes with desperation.”
For Carole Maso
When she shuts her eyes she reaches for a purple flower with the silver button in the
center. She finds it in a box. She looks at the photograph frame with the skinny winter trees
and the cold. Snow – white. The boulevard around the one story house with the roof covered
with March snow. The road with two people and a dog. A boy. A mother. A Labrador.
79
____________________________
She writes a note.

A letter.
A union SPARKLES.
Preparation
Days
/P/
To
{pretty women}
Learn: stones could give birth
Generation
Permission
Paz: Peace
Cosmos ... where’ r u ...?
Working ants.
Waxy taste!
O
......................................................................................................................................................
......................................................................................................................................................
............... Shonagon [ Dear Shonagon]
Thank You.
____________________________
WEARING WATER
“Now where are you?” turning around. “Death... where is your hat? Your fire?
Your tail?” “Why did you come here today?” “Do you need a lesson about Victory or do
you want me to comb your hair?” “Are you in need of a new hat?” “Are you going to
respond...or not?” “ARE YOU HERE TO TAKE THIS SHADOW?” She closes her eyes.
Death intrigues her. Death is a seed now. This body of water is loving lavender.
The death’s skull contains great substance now. The Icaco plants don’t die even though the
darlings are dying on the street on IC -20/20 near Estes. She starts a chant ~~~
“Why do some people have sight but can’t see the beauty in patience”
“Men. Men –beheaded”
80
“The purple babies who live in the land need to be revived later next spring”
“She doesn’t want to wear her silver necklace with the coca leaf pendant from Perú to a
bloody wedding”
“Can you read letters?”
“Clean the book shelves like no other”
“Read E. Bishop & dry peach roses in May”
“I need a bicycle” the death sings ~~~ “My feet are not running fast enough” she
seems to hear in panic. “Death doesn’t know me. No one does” she has trouble hearing
now. Later alone she sits on the floor by a chair and sings ~~~ “I am cleaning ... cleaning
a body with an encounter –this body becomes what it truly is.” A fluid of love ~~~ always
taking her away from her practices and filling her up with poetry.
____________________________
Biography
Gianina Opris currently resides in Denver Colorado after originally moving from Lima,
Perú. She is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Creative Writing at Naropa University.
She has been published in various journals, including Bombay Gin, and has received an
honorable mention at Columbine Poets in Colorado. Gianina was selected for the 2004
international poetry exhibition in NW Cultural Council in Barrington, Illinois. Gianina is a
second grade school teacher in the Denver Public Schools. She is part of a performing poetry
group known as The Invisible.
81
82
Buffalo Focus // Kevin Thurston
AUTHENTICITY
Auto-signature, inappropriate.
Door Hinge Parts
I. Work Changes
Taint
Hesitation Conversation
Thanks al
3 poems, 3 ways
AUTHENTICITY
for buck downs
smoking a hot dog

eating a joint
listening to circa 81
in my pickup
(i’m a ranger)
Auto-signature, inappropriate.
My grandmother died.
Happy lending!
She worked very hard all of her life.
a record label primarily interested in contemporary writing, poetics and the political
First-generation American, what was once common, is rare.
Door Hinge Parts
For Justin Sirois
Do you really? I mean really, come on now, really? Door hinges usually don’t go bad.
(Question of Nature, then. However, has it been scientifically proven?)
However:
Hinge Pins
Brushings
What’ll it be? The usual?
Yes, and be on guard. Your door will drop-down when you open it.
Or.
You will have to lift up your door.
(A good latch, a good successful latch. From a nice latch family.)
Is this the case? Really the case? Come on now, really?
Replace:
Hinge Pins
Brushings
Each requires one pin and two brushings. You may have to cut the pin.
I. Work Changes
A. Smoking
B. American made vehicle
a. Ford
i. Pick-up
C. Poor lunch choices
D. Avoid language
a. Trickery
i. Puns
ii. Insults
b. Opinions
i. Listen to the ridiculous
1. Do not comment
taint
the wet force

of hershey paint
IJDDVQ XSPOH FS]VN
FS]VN
FS]VNFS]VNFS]VN
VHIVHIVHI
JNFBOJNFBOJNFBO
JNFBO
VNN FSS XFMM TFF
SVCCFBSE ZFBI CVU TDSBUDICFMMZ
PLBZPLBZ MJGUmOHFS BI SSS
NNN DPDL FII INNN
DIVDLMF DPVHI JOCSFBUI VI

valid?
thanks, al
for those just joining
today I got my
ass kicked
@ work
lost 15 hours
of productivity
one
in my department
was courted
& broke up with
5 car salespeople
turned down a job this
& discoverd
my people
(properly so-called)
holdback info
is
for spite
i'm building a statue of you
to see you more often
i have a little tear i hold
and my nose is burning
but
i have a private office
and
am bringing home bacon, bread, eggs, milk, yogurt, morning fruit and
produce we simply throw away week after week
This is a pretty depressing love poem. This is the day that we don't have
anymore car insurance.
can I take you out on a date tonight?

Sure...You need to drop off a check for 162.00 at Briceland Agency.
LOVE
I establish a statue of you
They see frequent
I have little tear, which I hold
and my nose burns
but
I have a private office
and
in the morning, main bacon gets, Bread, Eggs, Milk, Yogurt, Morning fruit and
We throw simply away week to product after week
This is a pretty depressing love poem. This is the day, which we do not have
more autoinsurance.
can I take out you to a date this evening?

Surely...They must fall away from an examination on 162.00 at the Briceland agency.
LOVE
I estabeleço a statue of you
They see frequent
I control little to tear, which I arrest
and my burnings of the nose
but
I have a confidential office
and
in the morning, the main bacon starts, Bread, Eggs, Milk, Yogurt, Fruit of morning and
We after play the simply absent week for the product the week
This is a poem compressing pretty of the love. This is the day, which we do not have
more autoinsurance.
can I remove it a date to it this night?

Certainly...They must fall moved away from an examination in 162.00 in the agency of
Briceland.
LOVE
Kevin Thurston
Kevin Thurston focuses on text in any and all forms.
his work has appeared in the journal of experimental fiction, the lost
and found times, the shattered wig review, fHole (which 'AUTHENTICITY' first appeared in) and
his chapbook, o outbreak, was released by furniture_press. he has performed, or had his work
performed, at the manhattan theatre source, current gallery, soundlab, spare room and the district
of columbia art center among others.
also active in art objects and mail-art, kevin produces the assemblage d r a f t i n g and has co-
curated events with ric royer and just buffalo literary center. lately he's been doing interviews and
book reviews—go figure. feel free to contact him, kevin dot thurston at gmail dot com.
------------------------------------------------
with the exception of 'hesitation conversation' & 'dada supreme' every piece in this little collection
that Geoffrey was nice enough to ask for was written at work. these little breaks are not to avoid
work, they come into my head in spite of work. work is a very controlled environment. the other
pieces 'hesitation conversaton' and 'dada supreme' are different in tone and tenor because they
are free of work and meant to be performed (the former is meant for broadcast, the latter is a
stencil).
BlazeVOX 2k5
November Update
Bonfire Night 2005
+ Lily Hoang : Butterfly Effect

+ Peter Jay Shippy: seven poems from ALPHAVILLE
+ Joel Bettridge : From Presocratic Blues
+ Joseph Hughes: Graze
+ Donald Wellman: Prolog Pages, Madrid,
Andalucía, Tangier, … July 2003 — July 2004
+ Gunpowder Plot's 400th Anniversary Nov. 5, 1605 – Nov. 5, 2005
To celebrate our war on terror, here is a fun poem of
the most notorious attempted acts of terrorism
Penny for a Guy?

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot;
There is no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy, guy, stick him on high,
Hang him on a gibbet and there let him die.
Spoeak, man, speak; that shall be done;
He has oil on his head and tar on his bum.
Now give us something to buy a match
So we can fire his greasy thach
Ladies and gentlemen you'll never get far
If you don't put a penny in the old guy's hat.
If you haven't a penny a halfpenny will do;
If you haven't a halfpenny, God bless you.
Holler boys, holler, make the bells ring;
Holler, boys, holler and God save the Queen.
Hip, hip, horray, for gunpowder plot
Will never be forgot
So long as frumenty's cooked in a pot.
So holler boys, holler, Old Guy will burn bright
Time men get tight on Bonfire Night.
Lily Hoang : Butterfly Effect
Butterfly Effect
A discontented fractal has caused a volcano to erupt in Sydney, Australia. The mystical
reverberations in the opera house are destroyed.
A physicist in Los Alamos begins living on a twenty-six hour day. He figures that it’s more logical,
but logic is never the question to be solved. His experiment will fail. He will never solve the mystery
of time and will subsequently die a disappointed man.
The g-string on Perlman’s Stradivarius pops at that exact moment. He is performing Tzigane by
Ravel to a group of high school students.
Anthropologists in Africa disturb the primate habitat. Although they do not realize the commotion
they are causing, the monkeys do and stage a revolt.
A rich man in China takes on his sixth concubine. He mail-ordered her from Russia. She left her
country for a new life, perhaps a better life. Russia is not the most luxurious place to live, but then
again, neither is China. She had lived within brown sticks and constantly bled from splinters.
Fortunately for her, he never saw her picture. He received a barren, paraplegic woman who spoke
no Chinese. Their relationship was not successful. He had hoped she would bear his children,
starting an entirely new race for the Chinese people.
People consider the Stradivarius to be the most impeccably built instrument. It produces a tone so
amazing it could revive a dead man. Simply listening to it, one could climax. That is the depth of its
passion.
A twenty-year old American backpacks through Europe. In Madrid, his wallet is stolen. It was a gift
from his girlfriend for Christmas. He remembers the feel of the wallet on his skin. It had a reptilian
quality to the touch, like a tanned snake bathing for hours in the hot jungle sun. He regrets his
carelessness. He tries to remember what the wallet felt like, but already, the memory has vanished.
He can remember it no better than he can remember her fucking him until he came. It’s only been a
month, and he is embarrassed by his uncaring memory.
When he learned that she was not fertile, he ordered his third mistress, his favorite, to execute the
whore from Russia. Unfortunately, woman number three was near-sighted and accidentally shot him
in the groin. He will not be producing the new race for his country.
France decides that the United States has made a mockery of liberty. They demand their statue back.
The divided states do not know how to react. Their princess cannot be taken away. They will fight
for her as they fought for freedom.

A Mexican woman swimming across the Rio Grande is raped by an American police officer. He
would later brag to his friends about the situation. He claimed that she was wanted to fuck because
she thought he was hot. If he had understood Spanish, he might have known that she had
contracted AIDS. She was begging him not to rape her because she did not want the guilt of his
death on her head. His ignorance became her greatest fault. He would regret his actions.
American prisons have become too full. The president decides that it would be the country’s best
interest to send the meddlesome inmates to Antarctica. The plans for the construction of this
improved form of exile begin. Rumors leak out about the president’s plan. The prisoners unite and
destroy the prison facilities in thirteen cities. Their effort is futile, and the president decides to
punish the men by using the most cruel method of execution: death by hanging.
The monkeys ransack a small hut filled with bananas and other foods. The people are left with
nothing.
The Sydney Opera House is considered one of the seven wonders of the world. Its architecture
creates perfect reverberations. The lava is not prejudiced. It swallows the opera house as it would a
homeless woman’s paper bag.
A twelve-year old in India gets his first taste of cocaine. It is bittersweet. He thinks he is getting high
until a friend of his informs him he is sniffing baking soda. Twenty years later, he will be arrested for
manufacturing cocaine. Twenty years later, it would be the real thing.
She falls at the exact moment as the eruption in Sydney.

God calls on a girl in Georgetown. Hallucinogenic drugs reveal his message. Her name is Mary; she
will become the New Mary and birth the second-coming of the Messiah. She has been a lax
Methodist her entire life; however, she cannot question the revelations from God. After the first
fictional tri-mester, she vomits blood. Her fever is so high she begins to hallucinate again. She
reaches to touch the wet paint on the wall. Her pudgy hands stretch beyond the red to feel the
confines of her new home. The sign outside reads Texas State Mental Hospital.
On the black market on an alley in St. Louis, a girl is bought. She is consumed as if she was a beef-
saturated French fry. As their relations intensify, he has a cardiac arrest.
There are no volcanoes in Sydney.
He used to trap butterflies to watch their wings flap in struggle. The pattern of the eyes on their
paper-thin wings seemed to look at him the way a lover would.
They say that a butterfly flapping its wings in America could change the weather in China; there is
simply no way that this could be true.
Lily Hoang is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame. Her
work has appeared in Square One and Invisible Insurrection.
PETER JAY SHIPPY: seven poems from ALPHAVILLE
22
Qince rows
u
segue to umbilical, vascular
willows, xenial yuccas–

zygotic zogos.
Your xi-shaped wisteria

vamps upward
toward sunlight,
rethreading quintessence.
Pools of nervous
maple leaves
knell, juddering
into helpless
glaucous folds.
Each day cans beauty.
23
April?–
Aunt Bereft.
Crocus drifts
edge forward. Grass

has industrial
jealousies, kamikaze
leanings, making
numerical order
providence.
Qern rocks
u
slough tow-flax.
Umbelliferous vines
wind X
S yetis.
Z
amzummims?
Z
ombie yentas!
24
X
iphisternum wielding
vibrists up-end
the soft aRch-

maninoff. u Qartets
pissed on Novocain
may lose
kopeck juice
in Herzegovina, going
for euphoria–dead cat

bounce–as after
brunch caesuras
deaccession
encomium
from gracile haiku.
25
I’m jumpy.
eeping lookout
K
means not observing

Peter u
Qince record
surf tunes using viola

with xylophone.
You’re zero zero.

You’re xenophobic.
We vaporetto, until
tony Sicilians rush
Q
-ships, portside.
Onomastic numen Mafioso
look kewpie
(joining in huggermuggery).
26
Goldfinger fingers
ermine, daring
Connery’s Bond
as a body contractor
digs excavating finks.

Green Hornet’s
id jeopardizes
K
ato’s Lee.
Martial Nazarenes
once poxed
Qeensbury’s rules
u
starting trouble
under aVmpirella’s
wranglers. XY !Z
27
aZmbonis yaw,
-ing west via
X
ultima Thule, sailing

R
imbaud Quai, parsing
old Norse moments.

Laity killers jump ice,
haunting gangster friezes.

Eunoia descends,
crowning Bö k’s
articulable antelope.
Brünnhilde calls down

elegant funk, gob-
smacking
hang-dogged Icelanders
28
Jell-O knees
lend mobocracies
naff off powers.

Q
-tip racketeer’s sense
tense under-the-table
variables.
When -XBox
yoo-hoos zing
eZaland’s yobs, -Xman

Werewolf vituperates
Ü
bermensch talk show
ranters. u
Qip
pipsqueaks! Only neocortexes

model love.
Joel Bettridge : From Presocratic Blues
Editor:
Senator Pericles’s motion on the floor yesterday was right on it. Why do we need
to call one number for city streets and another number for roads even just a few
meters outside the town limits to report potholes? How do you know which
street is under which jurisdiction when the town limits have never officially been
established? Why can't we call one number to report all potholes and have the
information channeled to the appropriate government entity? And please, no
study to figure out who to take reports down from city and country residence.
Whatever happened to preventive maintenance anyhow? We deserve better!We

need results and accountability for our taxes. It amazes me how people in this
city can request large enterprises to open here when our thoroughfares are such
an eyesore. The road leading up the hill is disgusting, and the top is enough to
jar your teeth out; along with that the neighborhood at the bottom is filled with
the vacant establishments that used to support this city, buildings that I am sure I
don’t need to remind you are at this point gutted or heaps of rubble. Our city
needs to clean itself up in every respect.
Sincerely,
Archelaus
D
ear Sir
Threats and accusations will do you little good. The racket coming from your
backyard at such uncivilized hours was of an order of magnitude even
unrecordable on Charles .FiRchter’s and Beno Gutenberg’s scale of energy
measurement, and as such only the Blessed iVrgin could bear it with grace. And
so, while I am not the one who poisoned your dog, I am glad it’s dead.
Heraclitus
D
ear Priestess
Enclosed your will find a check for one thousand handfuls of grain. It is for the
building fund. Your vision for the new temple is to be commended. Number,
you have understood, has two proper kinds, odd and even, and a third from both
mixed together, the even-odd. Would that the godly and the godly-by-way-of-
what-they-think-of-as-earthly-things understood this as you do. o Fr the entirely
ungodly it does not matter. But Nature in the world-order was fitted together
out of substances which are unlimited and out of substances which are limiting,
and it will take some time for people to sort it out in ways that will not lead them
to want to do harm to each other. o Fr now please keep my gift anonymous as
our countrymen are unable to know the difference between these differences, and
most who come to me think I am a godless man and it would not be good for my
pocketbook or professional standing if this got out. I don’t really need the tax
break anyway.
Philolaus
Joel Bettridge teaches at the University of Redlands, and he is

currently editing a collection of essays on Ronald Johnson for
the National Poetry Foundation's Life and Work series. He has
poems and essays in recent or forthcoming issues of the
Colorado Review, Jacket, Pom2, QUE, Sagetrieb, Chicago Review
and Mandorla.
Joseph Hughes: Graze
I thought that I saw purity and harmony without a vicious nature but she is
hollow now. A great amount of effort was necessary to ensure that she had
distanced herself far from me; they think that I am some kind of heretic with tangled
ideas. I am not concerned. I only desire that second in life where all is there to
envelop, like that little ghost that sings every night. That deep, sinuous sort of line.
That hollow line ending in a quiver. Like a moth caught in a soft, floating web.
I am sure that there is only a bit of time left now but I can’t think too clearly
about that. I will not cry when I have to go. My father told me that those who give
their lives will be happy, much happier than I may ever be.
A few hours at the least. I have some time in front of me.
When I was young they asked the children about devotion. The man in
charge had a calm smile that was not frightening. I left early with the older kids.
They seemed to have more answers. I think that it was all intended to forge a path,
to help us find our way home. I couldn’t find a place in that retreat. I tried but
could not carve a niche. That is better left to those in charge. They have conducted
those procedures hundreds of times.
This, she said, may have been my downfall. The core of this spiral. I loved
hearing things like that. She gave life to my ideas. She seemed like she had never
experienced that spring-like energy, that flood of life that is so overwhelming that
one cannot keep from smiling. The endless flow of light that showers resolve
among every misguided notion. Every unrealized dream.
At those times I felt like a prophet. A caesarian prophet with words

sometimes like flowers.
She did not understand most of what I had said but she continued to listen.
She would never feel that way.
Sometimes I would present a look more hostile to make her think that I
knew something that she could not understand. That was the picture that stayed
with me, the time that I saw her last. In a field like a painting with some strange
daisies that felt like fingers pulling me closer and closer to her. It was in the books
by then; I wanted so badly to see those lavender plots with the sunflowers behind
them. They seem so soft but they will not let you go. I am a heretic at times.
The one that sits across from me now, he sits at that table every day. I
thought that he could guide me through this. I should know not to look for
answers from men like myself. He has only books and reads with fluency the ideas
of others but has nothing within himself. He seems to carry with him a stench.
One that he has not created and one that he cannot destroy. He rattles something
of Heisenberg. He has been talking for hours. Someone who should not have a
tongue, someone that sleeps for only an hour or two then feels a headache coming
on, one that will engulf him and send him to the border of the world. He simply
wants to breathe in the day, like he did when he had hope inside of him. When he
was small. And blissful.
I think that it is Provence with the wisps of purple. It looks that way if my
vision is blurry.
There seems to be less time now. I feel a bit of nausea but it passes quickly.
It was that April; she talked endlessly about vineyards and she was something so soft
in velour. She wanted so badly to have some rolling spring dinner parties, with
songs that she would play on the piano, Chopin, always in a nocturnal tone,
something always dark. She really wanted to be passionate but I could tell within
seconds that she was empty. That look that she had hiding somewhere, it had to be
that of a soul like mine. I loved her more than I had ever loved anyone. And that is
a story to be told, one without end, one that is a cycle. Like the sun that comes in
and tells us that we are awake.
She was empty but she drew me in like that morning sun and I had no
control, simply a sentimental view of life and a clear understanding. This prevented
me from changing that which had been written. Like the prophets said in school as
they crept underground. In cells. Like little mystical leeches. They crept in and
toppled the house where my brothers and sisters lived. Autumn will always evolve
like that. With smoke and fire and the thought that God may not always hear us.
That was the necessary evil. It had been written.
She told me that she would take me in and we would live like peasants.
Some horrible storybook that she had been reading. She thought that I would
immortalize her in an artistic fashion but I have not an ounce of clarity when dealing
with such matters. If she was left as she appeared initially, as nothing more than a
desire, I could then send her to the heavens. But she was only a siren. A moth that
flew upon suspicious air.
The man that sits at the table is looking at me now because he knows that it
could have been his child. I can’t smile right now. I can’t make it right for him. I
am only here for a few more hours. Struggling with something that he will have to
expel. It is his idea. Behind what looks like a thick blue mist I can see him
sometimes, or maybe a reflection; his face haunts me and I want to tell him that I
cannot cause any more pain because I have no reason. I just want to smile and let
him know that he is safe. It is this life that makes me want to sleep. So they may
safely graze.
*****
“And there I am going to have delphinium. They are particular but worth
the trouble. In front I think some poppies. If I can find the soft orange kind. The
spring will be beautiful. This won’t last forever. I felt it in the breeze last night. It
was full of that moist, mossy scent.”
“Why do you spend so much time out here?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to paint, or sing, create something

beautiful. This is all I have. This is the only thing that I can care about.”
“Have you tried anything else?”
“I used to try. I would sit with these little ideas and they were full of color
and life but I never captured anything close to what I wanted to convey. Because
they were rendered too densely. I lost that light, that clarity. Until the ideas
became diffused. I only wanted simplicity at that point. Which led me to this
garden. I have never known something so delicately simple and so overwhelmingly
brilliant.”
“You have created more than you will ever know. Something that is far from
simple.”
*****
Not much time now. With that I can feel her touch and the listless expression
that welcomed me when I saw her lying on the lawn. I remember her this way
sometimes. Her dress was moving hypnotically through the grass, providing a
sanctuary in the waves and a flow, a smooth grey flow that could only nurture. I
lost myself in the coarse fabric and we laughed for hours like children caught in the
rain, like fervent little angels caught in a storm of familiar joy. Something like
narcissus pulled me to her and I felt that I would never love her as I did at that
moment. The spring it arrives with demons and we all know what follows. To
detach in that moment would have been impossible. I could only see as far as the
end of that field. She had a smile that would not let me forget. Not for a second.
She would certainly speak about this. She had little concept of the truth. I had
been forceful. She had always been full of ridiculous stories. That is why she
smiled, as if she had known before I did it. Always telling stories to anyone with the
patience to listen.
Now I am called and I know that I will not cry. There is something so
comfortable about the evening and it is this comfort that will carry me away. I am
nothing if not receptive and I am looking for moths in the garden. I have seen one
that flies at night and its path is precise and linear. I will follow forever this song
because I know that it will lead me into the arms of a green, maternal ghost, one
that fosters the simple force of adoration, one that will nurture and never suggest
that I am alone. In the springtime I found love; in the springtime I fell asleep and
dreamed of its return.
Joseph Hughes lives happily in a quiet piece of Cincinnati where he

constantly strives to balance an automated occupational life with
thoughts of the vivid life-to-be. He has been writing since an early
age and occasionally stumbles upon something that avoids the recycling
process. His current list of credentials is overshadowed by his
current list of plans but he is slowly tipping the scales in favor of
the former. He blames it on the roses, which are not such horrible
things.
Donald Wellman: Prolog pages
Madrid, Andalucía, Tangier, … July 2003 – July 2004
Previously
1
I can only guess how she feels. I will never know from her words.
Dimly, I hope that what I imagine to feel nice might also feel nice to another who has
feelings similar to mine, but my ability to achieve the necessary level of auto-
affect has been diminished by insufficient exercise.
If something or someone with properties similar to those of a machine had been wanted,
then the impossibility of truly sharing might have been circumvented;
but, at the time, who dared to ask?
So I fled to the opposite end of all earthly lands:
…………………………
2
The young age of your heart, poet, is not a shore
that the sea charges with its ragged surf,
teeth of love that nibble the edges of the land,
roaring sweetly at human limbs.
No. Esa luz que en el mundo

no es ceniza última.
luz que nunca se abate como polvo en los labios,
eres tú, poeta, cuya mano y no la luna
yo vi en los cielos una noche brillando.
A strong breast that lays itself upon the ocean

breathes like the immense celestial tide
and opens its outspread arms and beats them,
caressing the far limits of the earth.
Translation and quotation from “El Poeta” in Sombra del Paraiso by Vincente Aleixandre. The
coast here is Aleixandre’s native Málaga.
Ensaladas
Asparagus salad in a savory vinaigrette (white as once so tender in youth,

awaiting reunion then, with one I loved).
Now navigate the Plaza Mayor,
its inviting tables and handsome waiters.
Murals of pink-skinned youth in leafy glades
either side the shield of the municipal corporation.
The near view absorbs the eye
Cold cider from Asturias and a "revuelta con gulas."
My instruction until now

has been “to dance sitting down.”
(a large brown bear in that image)
My baroque juxtapositions, assorted, folded
laundry in a suitcase, phrases and images,
furniture.
Ensalada, a musical form, mixing folk and art traditions, often mixing the meters of
madrigals with homophonic forms. The practice, as developed by Matheo Flecha, draws
on the work of Jannequin. Hybrid forms, now in the postcolonial period, characterize the
borderlands (Texas and Mexico, Morocco and Andalucía) or cosmopolitan centers
where different populations mingle (New York, Madrid). How does a visitor who is not an
exile participate? His nasal monotones, his imagined flights of soprano pitch. A taste for
seafood. Wheels within wheels within wheels. Apparently purposeful traffic sets the
pace. Leaving the shelter of the arcades, he follows, anticipating a vista that he might
not otherwise have encountered.
Madrid
A warren of calles, an abruption of plazas.
… because I have my notebook open, and so I am writing

Handsome is as handsome does in wig or frock coat,
18th century men enjoyed sexual privilege.
The bo-peeps showed their petticoats.
On the Plaza Santa Ana, three young people

ask to share my table.
The waiter shoos them off
Are they thieves, well-known to him?
In “Perspectivas Imperiales,” Edward Said comments upon the arrogance of empire so

palpable in the foreign policy and military interventions of the United States in Palestine
and Iraq.’
El Almanaque, 26 Julio 2003.
Requiescat, 25 September 2003.
To remain invisible among the beech trees and holm oaks appears the wisest course
[Machado’s “negra encina campesina”].
At their leisure, did the philosophical men of 18th century France and Spain
dress in turban and pantaloons?
Who dares to call the gods our play things
as someone might make reference to statuettes
or bric-a-brac
and not acknowledge the opposite?
The gods do not impress us with their morality,
dismembering their offspring,
transforming mortals into beasts
in their lust for hybrid procreation,
their pleasure in administering famine, death, old age,
indiscriminate in destruction.
As once in Havana, revealed itself

to have many hands with which to swat at flies,
but not the stomach of a god.
Requiescat 17 July 2003.

Celia Cruz, la Guarachera de Cuba.
…because he writes in his notebook
«This one here is a stranger whose eyes scan the room and in turn he writes without
stopping. He can’t be a spy because spies work with greater secrecy. He wants to walk,
unperceived and alone. He undertakes to denounce the stranger who sits in the shadows.
He asks if it is the custom to serve the tea so hot. At the first sip he burned his tongue,
gave a small cry and made a stupid face. He could be a poet or writer. They told him that
this “café where merchants gather” is famous because the best poets of Baghdad meet
here to read their compositions. He hopes that a place with this famous and creative
ambience will inspire him. Why not? He must come from a cold country because he
sweats so much and looks at the ceiling fan with desperation, yet without electricity the
wheel doesn’t turn. What things and in what language does he write in his little notebook.
Surely his thoughts might be a good subject for the pronouncements and debate that will
occur in the gathering here this afternoon.»
Mario Vargas Llosa, reporting from Baghdad for El Pais Seminal, 27 July 2003.
....................................
Donald Wellman bio:
Publication history: http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/pubs.htm
Full text of Prolog pages:

http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/Spain/PrologPages.doc
Buffalo\focus : Ed Taylor
ADAM DREAMING
Label maker. That’s god.

Maxi with wings.
Early times bourbon, a catcher on rye, a pitcher with jug ears.

A dream team.
“International paper puts the tree in tree frog,” the announcer reads.
Then strike three; caught with a snake in your hand.
Next stop Cannibalopolis, father-son holy roast with aristocrats,

inbred as setters.
A bipolar wife’s by your side. Her name is Dawn

& she’s a knockout.
Put up your dukes.

“I FELL IN LOVE AT A MARTHA STEWART STORE”
tv commercial, 4:55 a.m.
I am awake. Carefully monitor vital signs: whiskey and rain in a paper cup,
on the back deck in a replica Senators cap & Balenciaga gown.
Does she know I jumped center on the only losing Harlem Globetrotters
team, in Vienna 1899, when Egon Schiele and some Austrian academics painted the
floor with us, in a floral pattern she might go for?
Is that her rumbling overhead, B-52s, or a Wisconsin couple keeping kids in
cages? The eternal question: what would Martha do? I gas up the tractor and drive
to town. At 5 mph, should take a lifetime & I will get the senior discount.
The air, full of fruit flies–the grapes on a plate since Martha went wrong,
dust on the stuff, awaiting her touch.
I am a moldy mattress wrapped in plastic, huffing kerosene, its carbon rings
clipping the curtain on the shower rod of my heart, which keeps feelings from
soaking her laid-out clothes.
Now huzzah: her free white hand snips a ribbon to open the road to clean
living. Trucks snort crossing to the interior, where all’s quiet on front and sides.
They stamp and trumpet, dump fitted sheets. The bridge on which they leave is
frilly.
Martha, you win. “Uncle,” I say, among the dried flowers, a perfect partner
for the living room’s puce.
ICTHYOSTEGA
first four-legged creature in the world, from fossils in eastern Greenland
9/11/05
Everyone here in cave city is pale. All the houses are coal black. At evening
we sit outside to watch their eyes open and close. Our street is a fish, silversided.
Doors let their tongues hang but neighbors do not talk.
Whispers of fossils filter up. We claw at the ground, earth in teeth, but not
fast enough.
Meanwhile something gleaming struggles from dark water onto the slick
bank, born above us.
METAPHYSICAL STILL LIFE
A scientist, old brass, a painting, hay.

The coarse tongue of river
fills a mouth. At the zoo the otter
and sea lion dry as smoke. Some
Bathsheba in a sun dress. Tree
branch, antler. Crows in a black eye
of cloud closing.
SANTAYANA
What a relief–the door’s teeth marks are only Moholy-Nagy, Tiger of the
Tiber, a Hungarian neighbor. Let me know when you’re finished with the piano
This is an outpost, a corner of the yard. I huddle with rabbits. I have a
baby’s fear, or am I weaving a movie on the soft white wind rippling, a story about
Turkey and persecution and spongy tongues in light syrup?
I had a dream last night. It was huge, bent my hook, left me gasping on the
bank. Hello, reconciliation commission? Do you take this torturer to be your
lawful salted ice holder to a warm mouth of wound. Lips in all kinds of places.
Where they’ll stop, nobody knows.
It is Monday, that I know because the bible tells me so, and furthermore, the
Pharisees won’t always be around to protect us. Who knows when the Baltimore
Ravens could swoop in, leaving only a boy with a book, reading history as if his life
depended on it.
THE BIG TENT
September 2005
Divide, do not unite; win a prize. Offer sugared pennants.

Guess weight & fate. Spin until dizzy in blinding light.
Bleating & shrieks rise like fireworks.
Time & menu: Jurassic on a stick. Now something

crawls the midway backwards: a torn dress, empty
by the Cinderella ride to the long hall, the corn palace,
where the dead harvest stares from glass, & animals
lie under flies.
The freaks close their robes, open smokes.

It is finished here. Pull up stakes, leave the holes behind.

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BlazeVOX Vol. 3 : 2k5

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Volume Title ISBN ISBN 13

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BlazeVOX Vol. 3 : 2k5

Bald Spitting Elephants............................................................................................. 7

Paul A Green ........................................................................................................... 15

Michael S. Begnal ................................................................................................... 23

Ashok Niyogi .......................................................................................................... 39

Marie Kazalia .......................................................................................................... 43

Christopher Barnes .................................................................................................. 47

Jennifer Firestone .................................................................................................... 51

Joel Van Noord........................................................................................................ 53

Pat Lawrence ........................................................................................................... 61

Rosemarie Crisafi .................................................................................................... 63

Rich Murphy ........................................................................................................... 69

Geoffrey Gatza ........................................................................................................ 75

Rochelle Ratner ....................................................................................................... 79

Buffalo Focus | Ted Pelton................................................................................ 85

Colin Searle ........................................................................................................... 101

Randy Prunty......................................................................................................... 123

Bald Spitting Elephants

A Letter From The Editor

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