Funeral Processions in Rain

                                 How do we know which cars they are?
                                 Are they the slower cars
                                 and should we pull over now?

this happened to someone before--
arsenic, a clammy death / not reversed in time,

       ghastly, the room
wet            he carried his romantic self                              she lay in a fever
             in a fist
of dried flowers                                                                  flying
              full                                                                        was not expected

gosh

I guess I better send in three poems. I had forgotten. I guess I will send the three that were nominated. Now to go search.

Bluebird of Happiness

The Fallen Bluebird of Happiness caws,
folds its molting wings around my house,
my prison, this cell of karmic perdition.
Mother's best china reels out scenes
of too many Last Suppers, her crystal
carrying imprints of lips kissed and long gone.
Grandmother's sideboard moans old
family stories to a pale glass angel
standing guard on my windowsill; she
sparks back the passing lights of cars
careless enough to venture this ruptured street.

The Filipino couple next door argue
until dawn snatches fire from the east wind,
igniting the sky with its breath.
They think redemption can later be found
in a bottle of Christ's Blood Shed For Them
or in a quick fuck on a mattress, its spine
bent like a weeping cross.

I am Moses crossing the Red Sea, I shout;
Frodo, grasping the golden ring, Ulysses,
self-blinded in order to stay the way, but
in my fake cockiness, I turn, stumble, arms
flailing against my dear angel, too late
to catch her, already tumble-crashing
into that greedy Bluebird's beak.


Pris
2005

Henry’s Purple Love Poem For Sandra Cisneros

You bring out the Mexican in me,
your purple house meandering,
the mind Malinche in the purest form, reform,

the river in the canyons of the city, pity.
You took that picture of Henry
for the cover of his third book, Henry crook,

unbeloved Chicano poet that he was
and still continues to be, agree,
Henry won’t get down on his knees, pee.

The Mexican in me is brown and beautiful
and ugly just like the agringado---
who woulda thought the only ones left, Paul, Ringo!

Henry writes his angry poems,
his poems about the truth,
the truth’s horrible knives sticking out of it,

the lies are filtered out, El Grito, Frito Bandito.
You bring out the Mexican in me
even though I’ve been Chicano all my life.

sonnet?

let my words be the smoothest scotch
hot and velvet upon your tongue
let my words pull your hands into fists
and against walls, against air, let your knuckles
break like a fever passing, a pack of wolves howling.
run to a confessional box, savor the darkness there
dislodge the sonnet stuck in your throat, and dance
dance the samba under broken streetlights
pray to gods whose names you've invented
carve your own poems into the walls of churches
place offerings at the graves of strangers.
let my words pull you across the continent
to show up on my doorstep unannounced
with the full moon concealed in your coat pocket.

Back from Brazil

Back from Brazil! A great visit to the fruit and vegetable market in Campinas!

Market

Tons and tonnes:

Dark men, small and large, wiry, intense,
out of the way, out of the way,
pull blue wooden wagons
loaded with boxes or bags,

I heard then saw
½ tonne of tomatoes tip over,
off a ramp.

I jumped out of the way
of um corregidor rushing
800,000 pounds of potatoes
to the waiting “box” drawn
on the floor in yellow paint,
the space of a seller.

Did not wait to see the wagon
reloaded as potatoes sold.
Nor the rush to buyers’
trucks and vans.

From the clinic data:

• 18 months from hire of porter to first back injury;
  
• thereafter, every six months.
  
• Still, S says that the Calcutta market is worse.

The making of Eve is complete

Click on her picture to see her bigger.

IBPC -WINNING POEMS FOR JULY 2005

INTERBOARD POETRY COMMUNITY'S
WINNING POEMS FOR JULY 2005
JUDGE: AARON WELBORN



First Place:

The Mandolin
by Laurie Byro
Melic Review



Second Place:

A Meaningless Poem
by sabyasachi nag
The Writer's Block



Third Place:

Murderers
by Judy Goodwin
South Carolina Writers Workshop






The Mandolin

by Laurie Byro


I tried to tell you about the barbed wire man
and how as a kid I was frightened of that starved
hound of his, the snarl and bite of wire round
the shack that he called home. You never listen
when I am like this. You invent ways to compare me
to a mandolin, your callused fingertips wanting to strum,
to pluck my body like a string. I shake you off.

The wire of my body is being stripped from the inside
out. The lining of my spine heaves with nerves
that are taut and frayed. I tell you I am afraid.
You never believe me. Instead, your nails move back
and forth across the frets of my wrist. You play
chords on my arm, croon "Don't be afraid, hush."

You sink into me on your couch and run me through
the lush green forests of childhood. You rehearse
me on your guitar, eyes half-closed against the bright
summer moon. I study your arms as you play,
mesmerized by the clawed fingers, the rusty
glint of hair. There is a river we cross and we pull one
another along through a crooked wire fence.
We arrive skin on skin and only slightly torn.
The wire man sleeps. We replace him with this.



Aaron says...

Occasionally you come across a poem that disturbs you in
some inarticulate, private way, because it seems to have sprung from
some inarticulate, private source. With its dreamlike imagery and hint
of menace, "The Mandolin" strikes that chord with me. The barbed-wire
man and his dog establish a sinister element early on, a fear which
slowly gets transmuted into fear of another sort--the trepidation of
intimacy. The ending is richly ambiguous. What is "this" which
replaces the nightmare of the barbed-wire man? Intimacy achieved? The
physical act of love? The poem? Or something more sinister still? Like
a disturbing dream, this poem rewards revisiting over and over.




A Meaningless Poem
by sabyasachi nag

In Graz four newborns are found cold
in a freezer. Frozen in a bucket.
Blue-black under rose-garden-debris.
No one is shocked.

They hold out fists, point
fingers, shake heads at her.
Each time she birthed she despaired.
Birthed. Despaired. Each time.

Even the man whose wrists are red from her cinch
can’t remember any pregnancies. They will run
tests, tie threads. Meanwhile
the tenant who opened the freezer walks

three miles before he finds the ice cream
and relishing the taste of fresh peach in
crushed pecan notes in his diary – June 3.
'Blood hides in every apple, a moon in every blister'.


Aaron says:

Good poems often contain instructions on how to read them.
In the case of "A Meaningless Poem," we can look to the title, which
shouldn't be taken too literally. If anything lacks meaning here, it
is a world in which "No one is shocked" anymore--whether by a
freezerfuls of dead babies, or by poems about them--where all
expectations are reversed, much as the saying in the poem's final line
seems to be inverted. If we cannot face absurdity somehow, the poet
seems to be saying, we cannot react to much of life.




Murderers
by Judy Goodwin

It was my father
who cut up her credit cards,
stuffed them into the black plastic
sacks along with her lipstick
and Regal handbag,
hefted it all out into the carport
bins. On Sunday
I emptied her dresser drawers.
We were both guilty, startled
by small sounds. One night
I dreamt she returned,
raging through the house.
"What have you done!?" What
had we done? There was no going back now.
No reaching into the city dump to yank
out the trash. Her things
were turning and kneading
at the bottom of great vats,
rain soaked and loud with machinery.
We had watched the loaf of her
split, take in the rust
and waste, roll like a seal in the bay -
our muddy hands were cold
for months.




Aaron says: For a sentimental poem, "The Murderers" is refreshingly
simple and plainspoken. The catalog of detritus of one woman's life is
richly interwoven with the speaker's guilt-ridden story of gradually
getting over her death. The alternating metaphors of breadmaking and
gravedigging make for a richly suggestive and unusual elegy.

like Blondie said, Call me.

Call me toll free to learn more about the poetry-at-sea cruise at 1-866-456-6752. cafe' cafe' members get discounted price. Call me and find out how low you can go.....

Didi

nocturne in four

your white shirt
Pima cotton,
oversized

night
matures so
flexibly, your arms

define the cloth,
the sheets,
darkness

itself,
a soft
space held open

free advertising spots on mIPOradio

Here is the information.

http://miporadio.libsyn.com/

I will also take news from poets. If you have a new book, a reading, etc., record your spot or send us the copy and we will record it for you.

Please note that even though it is free it is still at our discretion.

Also it would be like really cool if you had any questions you would like our staff to answer. Send us wacky stuff if you like. I personally would like to ask Gabriel Gudding why the chicken crossed the road. What would you like to ask us? Leave it in the comments section and if selected we will also broadcast your question along with the answer.

Spread the word.

Thank you,
Didi Menendez
Publisher/Producer
Birdie Jaworski
Director/DJ
www.mipoesias.com

P.S. How many of you really know what a podcast radio show is? If you do not know, let me know and I will explain it on a one to one basis.

(tryin' my hay(na)ku hand) "Another Summer Day"

Another Summer Day



we
are two
and not you

inside
a treasure
of your house—


bloom
on the
street of pleasure

present
under arbor
between the wine

fine
finery, true
expressions in humor;

good
imagining touch,
a surrender, white

flag
of humility.
We, too, again.


(inspired by Ernesto Priego's Hay(na)ku, a form invented by Eileen Tabios)

acts

buy canned goods before elves shift poles to the east and dance wildly

work hard for war and place hands on a table like ripe seeds

sell yourself for a cup of soup and a ticket to Algiers on the late flight

ask creation to flow back into the gates before the town falls apart

become a falconer and spit on fire throwers near flowers

deliver a letter to the president dated 8/15/07 and chuckle

donate your heart to science or the next best offer above zero

delve into fountains screaming at the gods

ask martin espaldino for an anal injection

pray that the rains will gently cleanse your conscience

A Simple Measure in the American Idiom

Throw the baby
over the fence

her ball

said my cousin
Stanley

Communiqué

I am wearing someone else’s shoes.
I stole them, but they were left right
out on the street. They are plastic pink
ballet slippers, stiff as hardened leather.

I receive a threatening note, in code.
Someone has allowed the aquarium
to go dry; the goldfish are swimming,
gasping, in air. So many languages

I do not speak. Even if I were to set out
now to learn on a magic boat of talent
and time, some would die before
I could reach them. A voice speaks,

clearly: This is about a child. This is not
about comfort. This is about sadness.

last call for nominations - ibpc

any poem posted in the month of july may be nominated with the exception of the poem tha won the ipod thingy -- so this is your last call.

Elpidio, Illegal Alien, In The North Tower

Crossing the Sonoran Desert all he could think of
was getting to the Promised Land,
living the great white way

and sending some money back home
to help his father and mother,
his brothers and sisters.

A cousin was already in New York City,
loading clothes into trucks,
clothes going who knows where,

clothes made in China,
clothes made in South America,
so when Elpidio finally

made it to the Big Apple
he lived with his cousin
in a one-bedroom apartment,

he delivered breakfast to the North Tower
every morning, tacos, pancakes, donuts, gourmet coffee.
When the plane hit he was on the 90th floor.

Later, he felt himself falling with the building,
sucking in the smell of concrete, fire, sky.
Suddenly, he flew in all directions

and he couldn’t keep track of himself.
They found some of his body parts,
but they did not count him as a human being.

a 5th Workshop added to Poetry~AT~Sea event

MiPOesias Magazine has added an additional workshop to the Poetry~AT~Sea event next year on the Caribbean Princess departing from Ft. Lauderdale to St. Thomas, St. Maarten and Pricess Cays, Bahamas for 7 nights.

Gabriel Gudding has joined us along with David Lehman, Denise Duhamel, Nick Carbo and David Trinidad. Further information on the workshops and itinerary is available online in the current issue of MiPoesias Magazine:

http://www.mipoesias.com/Volume19Issue3Gudding/sea2006.html

I hope to see you onboard as well.

Call me at 1-866-456-6752 if you would like further information or if you wish to make a reservation.

Thank you,
Didi Menendez
MiPoesias Magazine
www.mipoesias.com

Poems of Ho Chi Minh

In a comment I posted to Lee Herrick's "Ghost in a Museum" post on 7/20/05 below, I included the URL to a web page I found with some poems by Ho Chi Minh. The URL just displays as plain text in the comment, I haven't figured out how to put an actual hyperlink in the Comments box. (If anyone can tell me how to do this, please feel free.)

For anyone who's interested, the web page of poems by Ho Chi Minh (translated by Kenneth Rexroth) is here.

My Virginia

Midway between this deepest map crease
and the broad expanse of what lies west
of Newport News below Lynchburg,
occurs a patch of trilled lines
that might be rivers, but are roads,

on which each anticipated step
turns trespass. My hypothesized Virginia
occupies a sector of the page from which
hot moisture rises in July. Surrounded by
a fevered pulse. The dulcet southern

speech that overflows proposed
dimensions won't contort factual
softness into twin facing angles.
Truer angels defy the notion
of Virginia in a box, via higher

potency of a land replete
with rivers, ripe with
summer prior to the chill
to follow that outweighs
projection of inhuman mathematics.

Ghost

I will not speak of it
though sun speckles the ivy
with yellow light
and foxgloves sway
in the breeze.

I will be silent
through heat and stunning
slices of rain; through
the river’s decline
to its grey-pebbled bed.

Though the air
turns orange and thick
with fire, I will say
nothing. I drift like a ghost
through my own life.

Progress

St. James Avenue has six corners
and runs down under James Street
for half a mile before it dog-legs
a mile south of the boulevard
where you left me
so long ago
the trolly no longer
stops at James,
any James,
any where.


REVISED:

PROGRESS

St. James Avenue has six corners
and runs down under James Street
for half a mile before it dog-legs
a mile south of the boulevard
where you left me
so long ago;
the trolly no longer
stops at James,
any James,
any where.

Virginia in a Box

Virginia in a Box

Shadows fret on her face
like the pigeon-wing mosaic
at her feet, and she's forgotten
the sound of her name.

What she remembers is elegance,
pearls at her collarbone
and the smell of jasmine, cupped
in the palm of the calla lily's curl.

She recalls dew
on the weeping lantana's leaves
and how dawn trailed through his hair
that summer morning.

But daylight's last stroke
has left her dissected - Virginia

in a box with her wishes
and the song of the ocean,
lost to an abandoned lover's chest.

Songs Unentitled

What would my dead mother say,
knowing I still mourn you--
you, the same one who tore
my flesh open, leaving dank
blood trails for the squirrels
to track through, come morning.

What would my father say
from her side, worms
lifting their heads listening,
if I told him you still sing
in my dreams, barefoot
and sprawled at my bathroom door,
suds bubbling over the hole
that once held my heart,
that same heart that danced
Rumbas whenever your
hand brushed my cheek.

Pris Campbell
(this is posted on my blog, as well)

Ghost In a Museum

This is my first post here. I hope it's cool that I just post a poem. I'm enjoying reading on this blog...thanks for inviting me.


Lee Herrick


GHOST IN A MUSEUM

after Baca Flor, Lima, Peru

The ghost of Carlos Baca Flor sighs
near the tall arches, the climbing windows stained
centuries ago, literally ages—-Bronze, Middle,

Stone. And the woman at the café counter
sighs, reads Monday’s news of Peru. A young boy
sweeps. Hardly any dust here. And there,
over by the window,
a woman thinks.

What dreams did Manuel Ortega have
the night he finished a painting? In my daydream,
the ghost of Carlos Baca Flor stands
near the tall arches.

Do you go to a museum to fall in love,
to forget, or to float?
Yes, it is like floating, being in a museum—-
the texture of Uncle Ho’s shirt,
the Lilies.

What would Vincent Van Gogh say to Ho Chi Minh
over coffee in Hue?
Would Van Gogh know more about tanks
than Uncle Ho would of flowers?

And whose self-portraits are most accurate,
the blind or the mad?

What kind of stories will your home tell,
the verandas keep,
those birds rehash into the wind?

Henry’s Elegy For James Doohan

The Klingon torpedoes hit the Enterprise
right on the motor outlets,
disabling the propulsion revulsion.

Engineer Scott spends the next
light-year fighting the light-gear,
no fear, the nurse will appear,

he cusses and cusses the buses of photons,
the spiny-headed Klingons,
their spiny-butts that scratch the toilet bowl.

You can’t be beaming people up and down
to this and that alien world
out of harms way… Captain Kirk

can be such a jerk, Spock can be
such a cock, Bones can be
so cabrones, but here at the end

of the universe nothing matters.
matter is not matter, and there’s no space
for space, “Beam me up, Goddy!”

Virginia Dare

A great American myth, lost in the mists,
one of The Disappeared, first white child
born in North America, in ye Citie of Raleigh,
dead before we knew her: Virginia in a box.

The Lost Colonists of Roanoke, escapees
from Shakeshaft's Albion vanished in the heat haze
like the crews of Marie Celeste
or Discovery, reduced to stardust,

an empty treasure chest.
As if she never was,
or else she's the white fawn
peeking out from the Hatteras straggly pines.

Christopher T. George

when my turn came

A vagina rests,
tired of creation
and captured prayers;
a Venus flytrap,
moist thinking labia
cover heaven's wink.

Give me mirrors,
give me maps.
Virginia in a
box, turning cards
for my life,
give me time.

I drove all
night to find
my child. Will
I be invited
to the sound?

El Culo de Bettie Traffic

http://www.aspma.com/term/el-culo-de-bettie.html

For the last several days I have been getting tons of traffic to my blog from the abovementioned link. Apparently the term "El Culo de Bettie" is one of the top 10,000 terms being searched on the web currently and several of the poems on our various blogs are posted at this link.

Has anyone else received an exceptional amount of traffic lately?
Peggy

Hey, Didi, I got the iPod!

but my son has immediately confiscated it while I write about po-biz=boyz in underwear. Thanks ever so much. Unbelievable. Is this Saturn turning or what? What an honor. What a gift. Does this happen often? I'm new to this bloch.
Muchísimas gracias!

Floral Tribute at King's Cross Underground*

White chrysanthemums and orange-tinged yellow roses
in cellophane with turquoise prayer beads
photographed with the words of Issa:

in this world
we walk on the roof of hell
gazing at flowers

Christopher T. George

* Follow the link in the title to see to see Ashe's tribute using these words of Issa's.

Happy Birthday Prissy

Virginia In A Box ~ Deadline August 15

One person gets the box. Three others will be sent in to August IBPC.

Guidelines:
Make sure the poem is new and not being considered elsewhere.
Make sure you place "Virgina in a box" somewhere in the poem.

I only have two nominations

Please nominate poems for July. I have to send in three by the end of this week.

Turn Me On: miPOradio's first podcast show

Dear Readers and Contributors,

Our first podcast poetry show is now available for download to your
IPOD or you can just click on the link and hear it from your browser.

http://miporadio.libsyn.com/

Our contributors for our first show are Geoff Bouvier and David Lehman.

Our staff commentators are Gabriel Gudding, Jack Anders and Jack McGeehin.

We hope you enjoy our poetry broadcast and will continue to visit
miPOradio where poetry tunes in.....brought to you by MiPOesias
Magazine.

Thank you,
Didi Menendez (Producer) and Birdie Jaworski (Director)
MiPOesias Magazine
www.mipoesias.com

Hatred

Hatred
blindfolds, justice
denied, blinded victims,
insurgents blindfolded, Prud'hon's
Fortune.

only the hottest need apply.......

fragments

walls dissolve like smoke
a pelican drags its broken wing

hieroglyphs surface in sand
blindly, blankly, she steps into the blue

the husband speaks in tongues
the child closes and opens its azure hand

it is just like walking a plank
the dock is a long grey arm

she is stepping carefully, lifting
each foot, curling her toes in the air

the water is singing
the water is singing

Coconut One

Sorry to say this is my first post--it has been a wild summer!

Coconut (a new poetry journal) is now live on the web at http://www.coconutpoetry.org/. Issue One contains new poems by Alice Notley, David Trinidad, Danielle Pafunda, Sawako Nakayasu, Wang Ping, Katy Lederer, Jon Leon, Amy Gerstler, Aaron McCollough, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Frank Menchaca, Shanna Compton, Ken Rumble, Lisa Lubasch, Amy King, Bruce Covey, Laurel Snyder, and Alex Lemon.

I'd love any feedback you might have, and if you like it, please consider linking to it from your blog or website.

Thanks!
Bruce

adieu! adieu!

I am leaving for Brazil on Sunday. Will be back on July 25. Keep the meter running!

Chuck

What The Fortune Teller Said And Did Not Say

Sofia said I would always live near water knowing I was heading back to Miami.
Sofia did not say I would move near a Great Lake.
Sofia said I would have twins.
Sofia did not say I would have two boys and two girls.
Sofia said there would be an argument over an inheritance.
Sofia did not say we would sell the duplex.
Sofia said I would live happily ever after.
Sofia did not say I would get a divorce.
Sofia said my next lover sat on a throne.
Sofia did not say he was a drummer.
Sofia said he had a little devil next to him.
Sofia did not say his handle was ludeboy 66.
Sofia said there was a man who lived with his son.
Sofia said there would be an incarceration.
Sofia did not say I would bail him out over and over again.
Sofia said I would marry my soul mate.
Sofia said he was well off.
Sofia did not say it was his vocabulary that was rich.
Sofia said he was old.
Sofia did not say he was an old soul.
Sofia said he was not my nationality.
Sofia said “I did not say what color his eyes were”.
Sofia said she came to Cuba when she was a girl.
Sofia said she left Cuba as a woman.
Sofia said the coffee was Turkish.
Sofia said the cards read what is on our heart.
Sofia said she was a mother.
Sofia did not say she was a grandmother.
Sofia said she was old.
Sofia did not say she was dying.
Sofia said if she got paid, she’d lose her gift.
Sofia said Tio Manolo would receive very bad news.
Sofia did not say we would watch the news as helicopters searched for John John.
Sofia said I would live happily ever after.
Sofia did not say happily ever after is a very long time.
Sofia said I could change everything she said.
Sofia did not say that love changes.

"Summer Day"

SUMMER DAY

"Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone"
~R. M. Rilke


The huge press of shadows
goes free, wind in the heavy
wine, a restless command
of fullfillment. I read, wander
up and down the sweetness of your
house: dry leaves blowing, a long
letter I will never have.

O'Malley's Matins

O'Malley wakes as ever at 3 am without an alarm,
performs his ablutions, mutters prayers for the dead,
the sick. He'll repeat them later. It never hurts

to give God an extra nudge. In the cecropia tree,
a quetzal calls keow-kowee-keow-k'loo-keow-keloo.
He dunks a teabag in his Sligo Rovers mug, nibbles

a cracker, adds more notes to his reminiscences
about his father. Remembers Da's neck muscles;
how his splenius cervicis and nuchal ligament

supported Da's great head as he fought Alzheimer's
like a stallion struggling in green Atlantic breakers.

Christopher T. George

special issue

The best of 2000-2005, a Retrospective issue of PoetrySz:demystifying mental illness is now online.

Submissions for subsequent issues are welcome. Please read the submission guidelines before submitting. E-mail: poetrysz@yahoo.com

Thanks.

An ezine/lit mag

Found this today, seems to be fairly new, but at the very least, it's new to me. I rally enjoyed the work there, thought maybe some of youy would to.

Ink and Ashes

Read Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

the language poet
and his read wheelbarrow

glazed with
toilet water

beside the white chickens
that write
his poems

copywrite Mr. Bones

We're Not Afraid

The We're Not Afraid site is a wonderful collection of photographs, based in England and containing photos from all over the world. It's a message to terrorists that the human spirit is still very much intact. This site is well worth a visit. The link is also on my blog. At this point, at least, they're still accepting photographs. An email address is on the site.

Pris

Neruda poem on his birthday

Hey po-bloggers, all your Neruda saludos & posted poems have inspired a new Neruda poem. I posted something I wrote this morning on my blog lornadice, "Sleeping Around (On Dead Pablo's Birthday)". It's after my favorite Neruda poem from Residencia en la tierra, Andando or "Walking Around."

Wishing y'all many muses returns.

Lorna Dee

Rebel with a Cause

Fast car. Fast car.
Liz in his thoughts,
the reek of his last
same-sexed lover still
on his sheets.

Fast car. How fast
can it go? Rev up
the motor. Let
out the throttle.
Full speed around
that next curve.

If he flies at the speed
of light, will he disappear
into the moon's belly,
he wonders?

He stubs out his last cig,
chugs down more Daniels.
The ghosts still
won't slip off
his shoulder blades.

He's two people,and even
this fast, loud
mouthed
little sports car
can't make the one
he hates go away.



Pris Campbell
for James Dean

dead poet society?

Charles Jensen asks

I answer

Calling didi re cafe press

Hi d,
I don't know what email addy you use now, since aol is acting up, but I can't find your link to cafepress. I'd like to send something with one of your portraits on it to a friend for her birthday. Can you post the URL?
pris

a graphic of miporadio for your blogs and thingys

The monarch touches

The monarch touches
summer iris in passing.

I cannot name the arc of purple flowers,
springs from an uncombed bush –
Had I noticed, even once, I could have asked
the Asian tenants,
Brazilian gardener,
ex-ferry boat captain
who sells apartments to emerging technologists –
Had I touched down even once
I would have had the sense of a butterfly,
perhaps the memory of a worker bee,
I would have the taste of pollen on my palate.

The arc of purple springs
from uncombed bush –
monarch touches iris.

audioblogging

getting my feet wet, so to speak.

here's a link to a recording i did of a poem posted here recently:

http://dummy.rentedroom.com/ford_galaxie.mp3

here's the text

Falling out of a Ford Galaxie...

"She Hated Men In Discount Underwear" (for Reb who wants to know)

She Hated Men in Discount Underwear




And she hated men in silk.
She hated men in fresh top
running shoes, and she hated men
in weather. She hated men
in perfect polyester and
she hated men from last semester.
She hated men in flannel shirts
and she hated men who were late
for work. She hated men
in pimpy record stores and she
hated men in raves. She hated
men on ocean cruises, and she
hated men in waves.


~Lorna Dee Cervantes
forthcoming in Play, Book III of DRIVE: The First Quartet (Wings Press)

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda,Chilean poet and 1971 Nobel Laureate in Literature was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto on July 12, 1904. Neruda died 12 days after the death of democracy when Gen Augusto Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende's government in a U.S.-backed coup. His funeral was the first public show of opposition to Chile's military rulers.

The non profit film Red Poppy documents Neruda's life through interviews with those who knew him.

Anthem (CTG)

Lay a new foundation stone,
raise the roof tree
toward the North Star,
lend a helping hand,
palms callused with work--
that's how to defeat evil,
everyone working together,
all our hearts in unison,
our hopes harnessed to defeat
the shadow men, the forces
that divide us, when the devil
seeps into our foundations,
threatens society at its taproot.

Christopher T. George

Happy Birthday Dulce

Just a few days after my daughter's bday. Have a great one.

t

Happy Birthday Didi!

and many happy returns!!

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Birdie and I need your address so we can send you a little ipod thingy.

Email me at chinavieja at gmail dot com

Congratulations

hey

so, dammit to hell. Is there no end to what I don't know how to navigate? techies, bah. lol. here I is, I are. C

after galeano

i can’t sleep. there is a poet stuck between the love lines of my palms. and i would tell him to get out if i could, but there is a poet stuck inside the cradle of my bones and tendons.

I've got a blog!!

Yay! I've got a blog! And it's got stuff on it -- so take a look, when you have a chance.

Chuck

http://chucklev.blogspot.com/

I updated the blogroll

I am updating with ipod shows. There is this really cool one I found for us today. It is a guessing name called Who Said. Go ahead and listen to the passage. Who do you think it is? Send in your answer and then we will see who was right. This is fun for me today. Dennis is causing some terrible weather here.

Call for Poems

For your information:

Damn good coffee. Who killed Laura Palmer? The owls are not what they seem.

Seeking poems that relive the weirdness and wonder of David Lynch's Twin Peaks for an exciting chapbook anthology, A Slice of Cherry Pie.

I'm leaving for a month-long residency tomorrow. Questions answered upon my return. Ciao!

Hurricane Dennis

Dennis has already smashed into Cuba. Key West is evacuated as Dennis heads up Ivan's track of last year, making it the earliest major storm to hit land since 1885 and NOT a good portent for the season. It's projected landfall is again Pensacola where a friend of mine owns a home.

D, how are things down in Miami?

I put a few dawn shots on my blog Songs To A Midnight Sky if anybody would like to see some effects of the storm this far from its center.

Pris

When Keats Lay Dying

When Keats lay dying like an eagle,
his thoughts took flight
on wings of wax

and found the face of God was dead.
His thoughts were shaped
like Elgin Marbles, parted from Parthenons,

the Acropolis was supporting crops,
the rows and rows of what we try to eat,
but can not swallow.

The sea rolling around in the Aegean,
square salt mingling with square sea,
Archimedes measuring the shadow of the sun.

When Keats lay dying like an eagle,
he looked up at the sky to feud
with the democracy of death.

Yowza!

Nervous enough with the bombings in London
I plough through Union Station for a paper,
blasted by a sodding downpour as I emerge
from L'Enfant Metro, crepe myrtles buffeted
by the storm, umbrella arm soaked, hop
over puddles. I felt relieved to see
the George W. Bush action figure at attention
beside Tony Blair as the P.M. spoke out--
George and Dick Cheney have assured
us Al Queda is on the ropes. Better order
more air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, make
some more little Jihadists to hit us again.

Christopher T. George

the *chercher* of true reach

affinity's a pose you won't recall
until time
closes. you will pine
for rubbings of the metropo-
indulgent with fluidity and sparks,

when summer's tiptoe will be bracketed
for minds to lift above and triple
headway. at the time of sleep, fictitious
steeples form line segues
left in park. a perp-
end-
icu
la
r
estrangement codifies emotive glyphs made taut
from sea to shawl. the roadway dawn-
blanched forms to lingua blanc-
half-capsized via thought of envy
snipped from rope and left away.

you will be dormed in feathery
commingling until each pillar
thins into a spray of high sea
equaling homespun reality.

then dream will move the way
a moment drapes across still pale
chemise removed as eye feast
and contralto poise traverse
taxonometric beeline left
of centricle to be.

these are the five - good luck everyone

The Making of Eve
by Lorna Dee Cervantes

"Unlike things yoke together"
~Coleridge

Summer was frying an egg
on the head of God. The Seven
Sisters were aghast at the lapse
of efficiency. The range
of emotions was complex:
God recalled The Mother
gently nuzzling his hair. The basin
filled with the sound of castanets
& the cascabels of snake tails. Winter
was beside herself, every crotch
or crutch expired—the falling
was collecting. Summer crawled
out from the hand of Earth, took
the top-hat out from the rabbit,
and took The Fall for it. Eggs
burst at their seemliness, seedy
viaducts of passionfruit juice
flowed into a red sea. Winter got her
period, and gave birth to Spring
who wanted amnesty—the country
carved out of breath expired, centuries
passed out in the confusion. History,
like a second smoke, snaked around
The Garden. And God, amid the figs
and rapture, was so tight
a Script Institute herpitologist
couldn't milk him. Picture
a moment in Paradise: The Coconut
Express just saying "yet," the robin's egg
view, the hustling guarantee of
mañana. Imagine that. Love
spawning a flood. Summer left
hunting through a drought—the sixth
sense of ash; and Adam, that little blow.
What could we do with butter brush
scuttling Autumn? God's laws clattering
ghost claws through the branches'
sudden hush? The meadow was a subway
to a heart—a sudden stop. An opening.
And we took it.


X
by DANIEL SANDERS

1. the making of eve

adam, ex nihilo,
drugged in a tub
ice-filled in a hotel & you,
shadow next to the Gideon’s
using a very small trowel
putting her arms on.
you’ve spent hours
before the mirror/ posing
with your finger pointed,
deciding what belongs;
such intelligent design.

2. the marking of eve

in the surveillance monitors
they’re searching for large
leaves. six-day sleepless,
exhausted, the cathode ray
tube flickers in your room,
while you're chainsmoking
camels to calm your nerves.
storm out in your bathrobe
to give them bellybuttons &
punctuation marks, a pox
on their mitochondria,
you became I & the silence.

3. the marketing of eve

morning closes the flaps of your universe & you
tuck it under your arm. there's a curtain of frost
on the windowsill, damn AC kept you up all night,
the one night of rest. struggling to get your universe
& luggage through the hotel door together [shut
before your self can wedge in properly] you descend
the stairwell to your Lincoln & head to the convention
center for the exhibition--your booth next to the other
creators & their solutions for filling the loneliness.

for "the making of eve," "Ester See"
by Michael Workman
i ate the lill pomme and which came but spiders from my throat, each glad and weaving bits of irritance in my mind and stomach as i sat, watching him watching himself as a basketball star, drafted right from high school, his tattoos a traditional rebellion across a thousand frolicking intervals.

i don't usually say these things. as the creatures wracked my digestive tract. [i always say such things, i think: i'm not an evil woman, but i am, oh i am, tall as a star-cloud and rouged with blood]

"to spit is a feminine thing for her"

yes, thank you. yes, i spit so rarely and so daintily, like a calico dismissing an unfit sparrows-wing. to spit a spider web is a very strange thing, to spit spiders, stranger. and i think they gave their brood to me; i cough three a moment still (as far as moments go: breakfast, lunch, and donner, dinner). it is unbelievable, to think there has been no one to believe all this before, to feel the falling to the floor; it is unbelievable to think i am neither fact, nor facsimilie; origins aren't ancestries, i've seen that much on tv.

"and as i see is i score! the horny rim i rip from the backboard, creating needless facets of glass! net we eat tonight! net or stagneck! oh, the lady is always in red, she. always blossoming up from the bushoms lately, singing and sahing, 'shhhhhhhhaaaaahhhh--HU!' peekaboo! what a cradle-crazy dance, her falling down, her slips filled with inoculate milk, the wearing of exotic lipsticks. i see her play a reed all year now, like a box fertle, spotted and busy. her body plays the reed so well."

now webs accompany my winding; my loops are lapped with silken fixtures; stars curdle, and we spin milk with our howling. i can go all night...the venom keeps me hot and twisting, the tangles keep me moist and wishing...

could this last? but such a great past, intractable as deserts, barren as unfed ponds! though now (now it is now) i stalk galacial speed with melting speed; i infirm galactic need;

oh heh-millions of sons, i am the kiss that impels your countlessness.


The Making of Eve
by Helm Filipowitsch


Alone

I believe the moon wears earrings and shawl—
this October evening—
departing leaves are cymbals brushed
through another tune—waving note’s
tortured and fractured limbs.

Rain bends black windows into tears
and the drink I’ve stretched
across the table’s slow story
dreams such dreams as one might discover—
littered—Wednesday—at ten o’clock—in a neighbourhood pub.

Time passes—horse drawn milk wagon—milk box
to milk box—each minute named. My hand
moves with the ticking seconds
of Nancy—pale blue dress—hair back—
a mole shaped like loneliness on her neck.

I imagine god as an empty glass—waiting—expectant.
In his chair, he creates stories, pushes them towards the maturity of history.



Search

The city materializes in waves—traffic’s surf washed
against rush hour’s dark oil flowing down
sidewalks—leaking from ill-lit stores—
and the machinery of day brands notes on doors—tenor sax
from throats that have forgotten all names.

I have a name—for slow streetlights—
for those blinking eyes passing on prim escalators—
for words between in hallways—for the sounds doors learn
late at night when creaking conversations fade
and the moon hums a tune from history.

I have a name—for streets and wind—I have
a name for rain and trees—I have a name for alleys
and doors which are closed against—for the language of doors
between and for the punctuation of locks,
the metaphors keys become in evening’s tattered sunlight.

I believe in god the trinity, not god the solitary, not god
walking with me through a café, not god sitting with me, drinking coffee.



Discovery

To speak with you is to place chalk crayons in our hands—
to guide each other’s hands across the sidewalk and to watch
the sketches come into being. We name those snapshots
with poetry—sonnets for sadness—limericks for laughter—
and for love, rhyme separated by distance—yet alike.

To name a morning is to give it sunshine and coffee—
the reflection of your hair in the window—
and recite the story of the peach rose—how our hands
cupped and drank its colour from the air—
to name a morning is to devour it.

The monotheism of love is gray wind’s breath in locks—
petals falling from scree clouds—windows looking into fog.
Look for love in the eyes of a child scaling a harsh
driveway on her tricycle—playing hopscotch over ants—
reaching with her heart into tentative time.

The god of novels and haiku—the god of history is a jealous god.
Yet one stone placed upon another is creation.



Knowledge

Winter kneels on city’s chest—hunter—hunter—killing hope—
and cars gingerly negotiate the rising snow’s tide.
This morning I gathered the paper from the porch—
the roses are under drifts. We drank our coffee—read the news—
and in the kitchen’s silence we locked away our views.

The roadside pines dance to December tunes—slow dances—
cold dances of the number one. I’ll be home soon—
open the door to a dark room where our shoes have mated
through today and stale stories reside. I’ll be home soon—
prepare dinner—wait for you.

I wonder who could so long endure pulling the sun down
into horizon—so long endure in endings were there not a promise
of beginnings to follow—I wonder. As each minute passes
I place it on top of the one before—the phone doesn’t ring.
I will name this an epic in honour of you.

The god of triads is a story-teller—the god of triads is the god of choices—
the god of triads sits in the neighbourhood pub making dust into dust.

the making of Eve
by Ann Marie Eldon

Bear-basalt, dure boweled, cored into and ground
to no avail; earth nailed
down as if some unhalf-lifed, louring, plannish-pig triumphed.
Fricts. Defies not with mollities.
Thus question, thus quickling uptest,
wheresoever surface
topographies, drear steppe veneers, landscrapes,
testitry and flaunt.
Plains openly appetent, rivers with dry bed taunt, all
dream for want of something more. Sea,
vedic, pre-presumptative, underscores, transmogrifies
its vast vellum underbelly to ripple.
Little then from hard has come. Small calls.
Her voice, wet in cresseted asking,
brings forth rise, shore - banks, turns, forks, side issues,
deciduous decideings.
These how needy, how so ripely imploring, how so raw;
ready this world to be logicked
away, steadied by hand, by law. Yet the east blore bluffits
up a passage. Scores.
Lichens, mosses, grasses, ferns, incompossible in strict
land terms, turn flora, crawl
sunwards, spawn tree. Ah that you should be asking me
for the stark making of her!
She smells apple before she senses tongue. She knows
neither rib nor caul.
Brille blink slink, no noetic cetacean death preferable
to menses; unmarried she
engages. Thinks, bites, falls to defensive argumentation.
Time presses a momentary
vulnerary inculcation: hips joined, eyes sindicated, legs
four. Severed, they run
for cover. Worse, much worse, your lush alibi is
flawed, forever formulaic and blood brailles
each brother.

Kike

Kike

If you wrote a poem called “Kike”,
I’d slit your throat with razor words
and leave you bleeding like a no-neck
poet on Boulevard d’Ezra Pound.

I am posting my five choices sometime after midnight

7/7

four collared doves hard-arc up
the hedgerow beneath their

shadows linseed is pre-blue, a
ghost dust willing its hectare self

to bud; here sky squeaks over-
full cheeks of chewed grey

pith spatting unfit to hold
onto and a dense dew

phantoms upon
downy hillsides

in handshake
outline

rain
disguises

what’s askew – rises
wings eyes souls suprises

children, two, home, with unbelievable
directness ask was dad ok in London today

and over 7 million people there didn’t die which
is not the answer to any kind of why

but try explaining how flight
competes with falling

things beat skim
win coo

you are my tears
you and fields and clear mornings

and dear dear thundery awnings
precipitable warnings

my journey is not done yet
our death a slim certain

bet between might
and thought

nought altered
birds flap again treeward perhaps

the local train hushes a micro-interruption
the bane of our hope is merely grace

traced across this beautiful landscape
like someone sprainted a tendentious seal

teal, lacewings, corn, elderberry
poppies-as-red-memes: these

things remind that too few
survive who eschew

the moment

For our English Friends

(not to hog the blog today, but I just posted this on my own blog, too. The outrage!)

He thinks he can bring down
all giants with his slingshot,
so he tamps powder tight
into bombs nightly, recites
a litany of hate as his evening
prayer, tells himself all who
are not him or like him
are evil, laughs while
the rest of the world mourns.
This terrorist...this hero
of Dante's Ninth Circle.
His feet are already ablaze.



For all victims of terrorism everywhere,
and, most especially, our English friends, this day.

The Making of Eve

The Making of Eve

"Unlike things yoke together"
~Coleridge


Summer was frying an egg
on the head of God. The Seven
Sisters were aghast at the lapse
of efficiency. The range
of emotions was complex:
God recalled The Mother
gently nuzzling his hair. The basin
filled with the sound of castanets
& the cascabels of snake tails. Winter
was beside herself, every crotch
or crutch expired—the falling
was collecting. Summer crawled
out from the hand of Earth, took
the top-hat out from the rabbit,
and took The Fall for it. Eggs
burst at their seemliness, seedy
viaducts of passionfruit juice
flowed into a red sea. Winter got her
period, and gave birth to Spring
who wanted amnesty—the country
carved out of breath expired, centuries
passed out in the confusion. History,
like a second smoke, snaked around
The Garden. And God, amid the figs
and rapture, was so tight
a Script Institute herpitologist
couldn't milk him. Picture
a moment in Paradise: The Coconut
Express just saying "yet," the robin's egg
view, the hustling guarantee of
mañana. Imagine that. Love
spawning a flood. Summer left
hunting through a drought—the sixth
sense of ash; and Adam, that little blow.
What could we do with butter brush
scuttling Autumn? God's laws clattering
ghost claws through the branches'
sudden hush? The meadow was a subway
to a heart—a sudden stop. An opening.
And we took it.

Scheherazading Rapunzel

(recasting an old fairy tale)

My hair has grown to the ground
waiting for the one with the ruby
tongue, his hands weaving false
promises into the empassioned air, but

four empty summers have passed by now.
Another man stands underneath my window.
He has caught my tears with his fingertips
and kissed them, tossed me fresh rice cakes,
lathered with honey, as a treat.

Hair finally within reach, he
hesitates, begins his climb.
Do I cut my Repunzel braid? I ask,
and wait faithful in this tower forever?

His eyes light like black opals
as he draws near, bading me,'say yes'.
A redbird circles his head.
I think of Beth's blood and her
loveknot, her highwayman dead
on that ghostly galleon-lit road.

I know that death can come from
loving flamboyant, sweet talking men,
but Mother told me to always believe
fairy tales do come true.

I'd rather opt for this new tale, Mother,
than one filled with unraveled promises,
dwarfs, or a toad that wants kissing.

I set my scissors aside, toss
out my wedding gown; it billows
among the clouds. Yes,
this one will be my faithful Scheherazade,
my mongrel to bay at the moon with.

Calling didi

Hi d
Twice, recently, i've had mail return from your aol addy. I get the 'it's full' message. Do you think aol is saving mail on the server? I had that happen once and mail was bouncing like crazy. Called my own server and found that the box that says 'retain mail on server' was checked and even though I was downloading, it was staying there , too.
pris

Falling out of a Ford Galaxie at 40 mph on a hairpin turn

Wanting nothing, watch this, old man, matchbooks and habits,
washing machine, bald tires
(you're especially fond of old, bald tires)

                                & look up into yr
casual beliefs, blankets, bag of
popcorn, bag of chicken, bag of
             tootsie rolls, dark-blue     dark-brown     old man socks

the sound of yr shoe in rain, the squelch
on, hum                    something maybe native, something
within the cells          the dryer lint, and a receipt for pepperoni

             the list caught     left-right     left-right                  & our DNA is what
is the racket          like the special way that
you don't approve of music               or treat the mail nice
to see who's taken what               or thrust what

                                                              or hold that
I feel yr pants pocket slipping
& so

*

we say it gets
ugly, you'll say
                                   but still you'd like to take that road out
                                 in yr gum blue truck and buy

                                          (the list, mama)
                                                                              watermelon, pickles
                                                                                                        ice cream
                                                                                 Henry Ford,
                                                                            and the cat with trees
kids glove
pistoleras
give the butcher some money

(boucher)

how nice

anyway

it's so harrowing harrowing harrowing

*

now get the fuck out


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

postscript: remedial like a picnic

the sign said $300 fine for dumping & so what. the idea of flat rocks reduced to stream fodder, the idea of 'mill' given to old baptisms & weird hymns sung until labor day. the idea that in a minute there's nobody where the men were. & the girl wasn't yr problem. though nobody wanted to see her, you wanted to pull her out & pull on the eye-shadow & the lipstick. & make her & then take that tube o that aimless slim thing in yr hand & wave yr flag: o good boy.

Harkany Spa

Steam rises from the pools of mineral water,
the sky is winter bright, yellow butter sun.
No one swims, we wade through chest-high liquid,
washing away strain, the poisons of the week,
the aches of the decade, the pains of a lifetime.
We can stay sheltered in a domed room,
or slip through a plastic curtain, wading
under the sun, feel the breezes, talk quietly
with friends, feel the sulfur give ease.
We stay longer than the proscribed 20 minutes,
we could stay a life time at the spa.


C. Levenstein, January, 2001, Hungary

Shin Yu Pai's Unnecessary Roughness

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know that I've just put up a couple posts on poet-blogger Shin Yu Pai's new book of poetry Unnecessary Roughness: http://asianamericanpoetry.blogspot.com. Thanks.

mIPOradio Intro

Where poetry tunes in.....................

eve speaks

[minor edits]

Eve Speaks

Let the man who cannot dream be a condemned man. Who comes here but shadows of ourselves, where smoke seeps into plush velvet the color of lipstick, of juice and blood. This place is my dreamweaving, its iron sculptures, framed in light. Chandeliers that flicker fake fire. Still, wax melts and curls around my feet. The tables here are scratched brass, carved with names and regrets. You who regret, that is who you become. And you who need, but do not know why you need, and how it can possibly come from me. Your need opens something in me which knows to anticipate dread. I anticipate your reprimand, and worse yet, I anticipate your promise. Tell me, as if I knew no words, tell me why it is you have created me to dread you.

Were I to assign us color, we would be mood ring, and then I would understand how heat and pressure make us glow bright crimson in our faux gold casing, how blood makes us aquamarine, oceanic and unfathomed. Think of your pulse, beneath an undulating mirror of sky, think of salt crystallizing upon thighs and hands and lips, feathery seagrass tickling the soles of our feet. How even the coolest freshwater springs are momentary, dissipating. How moonless winters and sunrises can be taken hostage, and then how nothing touches your skin. How this causes you to forget you are standing. Perhaps you are drowning, for you cannot feel your lungs. Even the sky refuses to give its light to you, you, who have forgotten how to breathe.

Tell me how it is your body sustains itself, how your ribcage is beyond bursting, yet you still walk one foot in front of the next, counting and naming, counting and naming. How are these words still foreign sounds to you. How is it your skin still warms you, your pupils still responding to movement. You who are a living shadow, a mountain echo, tell me how you can possibly need, and how you can possibly need from me.

Were I to assign you color, you would be opaque, a fine slice of opal beneath the moon’s veil. Were I to touch you, you’d shatter, and then crumble into jasmine scented powder. I would gather you beneath my fingernails, dust my love lines with you. Lover, I would break you. Lover, I will break you. Let there be the veil then, embroidered with flowers from my dreams, petals resembling moths and serpents, leaves like clouds and unnamable desires. Let me always glance at empty doorways, knowing the movements beyond these are you drawing near.

Let this be the natural law -- lover, I will break you and compose a symphony with your bones. Of what remains, I shall grind into dust and mix with the rain. Lover, do not come near, for I see a poem in your broken parts. Lover, do not promise, for when you do, I come to loathe words. Lover, do not speak, for what you say is vapor.

So here have I become the morning, and this is why water, and why jeweled skies, and why the night, and how it is that silver makes song. Lover, did you know I wrote my own creation story? Did you not know, we all do?

Tatters

It is the time of the dark moon, and thick,
heavy days. This grey morning, swarming

with swallows, gives way to a blue noon.
The hem and sleeves of my favorite

lavender shirt are tattered and thin. It has
a fashionable hole at the shoulder, where

the seam has relented to the insistent
pull of time. It is the time of remembering

that tightening at the groin; that tightening
that demands loosening. A tall brown man

strides along the river. He pulls his shirt
off over his head in one graceful thoughtless

motion. A red motorboat, Stars and Stripes
waving at its bow, clatters upriver, startling

shorebirds up from the banks. I see this day
through a wavering haze, move in a slick

skin of dampness. Have I ever been loved?

a favor

Please consider submitting poems to TigerTails Anthology. Here are the details. Why don't you send them your eve poems now that the results will be available this weekend (change the title of your eve poems accordcingly) and some of your other poems? It is really a beautiful print anthology and this year they are accepting poetry from everywhere not just South Florida. Wouldn't it like really cool if some of the eve poems make it into the book? I'd like to see some of you in there. I would be very proud. Tell them MiPoesias sent you.

On other news, MiPOesias is looking for critical prose.

Old Man in Hungary 

Earthworm Dampness

Late afternoon rain draws a musty smell
from the earth after another hot day,
a backhoe moves earth, uproots trees,
a mulcher whines; a hardhat feeds

limbs into the whirling blades.
They're clearing more land for more
graves at Arlington Cemetery, to add
to the quarter million that wave

already with stars and stripes
on the manicured lawns sloping
down to the muddy Potomac.

Christopher T. George

"Jack--The Musical" in Charlotte, North Carolina

Hi everyone. If you are in North Carolina or have an interest in Jack the Ripper or in musicals, you might like to come and see my musical "Jack--The Musical" in Charlotte in September. If you follow the URL linked to the title above, you can hear samples of the music from our show. The website also has the complete prices and other information for the weekend.

It will be great to see the U.S. premiere of my musical as well as to hear the talks by Dan Norder, Stan Russo, Joe Chetcuti, and Dr. Jim Bailey on various aspects of the case.

Here is the full Ripper Weekend Schedule:

Friday, September 16, 2005 (Dunhill Hotel)

6:00 PM Reception, Dinner, & Champaign Toast

7:00 PM Introductions by the conference producers James Vita and Dr. Elizabeth Peterson-Vita

7:30 PM Keynote Speech by Stan Russo

9:30 PM Introduction by Joe Chetcuti followed by a panel discussion led by Christopher T. George and Joe Chetcuti on "The Nefarious Career of Dr. Francis J. Tumblety"

Saturday, September 17, 2005 (Booth Playhouse)

Buffet breakfast items, snacks, and beverages will be provided up until House Open of "Miller's Court"

9:00 AM Dr. James Bailey on "The Art of Profiling an Historical Case"

10:00 AM Christopher T. George and James Jeffrey Paul on "The Drama of the Ripper"

11:00 AM Dan Norder on "The Many Myths of Mary Kelly"

12:00 Noon Buffet lunch at the Booth Playhouse

1:30 PM Stan Russo on "Who Was Jack the Ripper?"

3:00 PM Matinee Performance of "Miller’s Court" by James Jeffrey Paul

5:00 PM Talk-back session with the playwright James Jeffrey Paul and the actors of "Miller’s Court"

5:30 PM Dinner (On Your Own in Charlotte, NC)

8:00 PM Evening Performance of "Jack – The Musical" by Erik Sitbon and Christopher T. George

Sunday, September 18, 2005 (Dunhill Hotel)

9:00 AM Breakfast

10:30 AM Panel Discussion with Christopher T. George, Dr. James Bailey, Dan Norder and Stan Russo "The Mind of a Serial Killer"

11:30 AM Closing Remarks

12:00 Noon Hotel Checkout Time

2:00 PM Matinee Performance of "Jack – The Musical" by Erik Sitbon and Christopher T. George (Booth Playhouse)

All my best

Chris

A How To brought to you by MiPOesias Magazine

Please note that you do not need an IPOD to listen to our "coming soon, very soon" broadcast. Anyone can download iTunes to your computer. Go to apple.com and download from there.

Thank you.

On Political Poetry

A little further down (on 7/1/05), Ginger put a short post about the Poets Against War website (originally started a couple of years ago by Sam Hamill). I put a short comment in the Comment box to Ginger's post.

In addition, in case anyone's interested:

The PAW website includes (in its Poetry Matters/Links page) a link to an article of mine on "Political Poetry" which has been posted for a while now in Pemmican (online poetry magazine). The article can be found in Pemmican here.

There are also several of my poems posted in Pemmican, here (in the Poems page of their current "issue") and here (in their Archive section), in case you want to check them out.

making of eve

I am going to have Birdie help me. I am sending her five poems I like the best on Friday and having her decide on the best of the five.

There is a cuban club that is older than dirt called the big five. Do you guys want me to post my favorite five on friday?

If you have not participated, you still have time to do so. Here is the link with the information.

After Reading Sarah

Monday finds you in your basement
The light is a sore spot on the back of your hand
And it is cold, a plum sized bump,
this hammer raised wordsmith a wound
untended. Were you ever loved? Dear clown

your paint runs in the alley of need,
your father's cloak full of sewage
harbors vermin and device, the bang on the head,
the snow, the vision. Poetry, her search for clarity,
are guests unfulfilled. Shuffling, a search for cause
yields the answer: confusion, histrionics a backhand slap.
In the fall, we starve, endure a short shift, synaptic bruise.
The snow is thigh deep and drifts
above the level line of vision and the world
is turned.

This satisfies your hunger, the salve is full of detritus.
The source, your father, distributes it like candy.
You are on your knees at the pew, your mouth open,
ready for sacrament.

In the name of Sarah, the disagreeable note has stopped.
You are not the form. The rain meets the river.
With the lidded jolt separate, intensity
is it's own jubilee. On the interface
of surface tension comes a passage, a chase mop,
her shield against the quay's anomaly.

Water womb catacomb, the bearing down, the push.
A splay of viscosity, that first swim,
then the turn of cartilage to bone.

Response to 'what's wrong' by Ernesto Priego

Ernesto Priego responds to my chapbook, what's wrong, on his site, Never Neutral. He is an essayist and poet, writing from Mexico City.

Addendum: More details at my blog. Click on the cover image in my sidebar. Thank you.

a request for a hex

hi all, i wanted to share a couple of (correspondence) poems with nyc-based poet oscar bermeo. my request for a hex and his fulfillment of said request.

IBPC -Poem Of The Year Competition

InterBoard Poetry Community’s
Poem Of The Year Competition
Judged by: RT Smith


First Prize --

"Grassland" from July

I am really arrested by the natural magic suggested in this poem, with
the visceral, image-rich detail. The poem moves from a sense of the
cursed to promise as if we're swimming through a spell. The language is
ripe with authority, confidence. The author invokes a whole perspective
with a light touch, as if the subtext is huge and looming.--RT Smith

Grassland
by Sarah Sloat
Desert Moon Review

When I could not get with child
I swallowed the egg of the meadowlark
who eats the daylight,
the mother of untangled grasses.
A long drop, the egg bore its root
in my foot, it stitched me
together with grain.

I am patient now; I am not damaged by waiting.
Languid as a coming rain, stalks
inch alongside my veins to the tips
of my fingers. A grassland has thirst,
so does a fire,
a cup,
noon,
the color of dough,

so while I sleep the moon creeps
between my poised teeth to feed
and flood me with moonwater.
When I speak, the scent
of lengthening wheat overwhelms me.
Shoots rise straight up
and don't droop as tears,
don't fail like questions;
they get on with growing.

I hold a handkerchief
over my mouth to veil the clover
and bees that tickle my throat,
but the angel
who's due at my tent
won't catch me laughing.

A kiss would do it.
One sprinkle of milkwhite salt
and I'll break like bread at your table.

~~~~~~~~



Second Prize --

Penelope and the Bird Man from August

This is an ambitious poem that stretches across several octaves,
negotiating between received myth and newly-minted myth. It is at once
exotic and very immediate, very refreshing, especially considering how
shopworn these Greek references might be in a less accomplished hand.--RT SMith



Penelope and the Bird Man
by Laurie Byro and Ivan Waters
Wild Poetry

And it is this battle of the giants
that our nurse-maids try to appease
with their lullaby about Heaven

Freud

i

Afterwards, unsettled, I travel
for days. The moon's bone, thin and curved,
points to a new paradise. I sweep the forest
floor, cast fishing nets into the pines
above our bed of needles.

I fill the forest with favourite things:
marmots and chattering bats. Of course,
I will add turtles and rabbits. We read to each other
by the glow of wolves' eyes, a string
of starfish, varnished fireflies.

The earth hardens beneath our backs.
I lay this bed among lady slippers and ferns.
I make him discard everything but his Argyles, loop
his pocket watch over the twig above. Bedtime,
we thrust and sing. The watch swings
back and forth, dropping minutes.

In the sleep of trees owls devise
a plan to furnish him with wings. Each morning
he sifts piles of dead birds. He doesn't fear death,
but nor do jackdaws, I'm told. Some birds
flirt with suicide, fling themselves at oak or ash:
titmouse, nightjar, bullfinch, crow.

My lover promises when his work is done
he will return to me. I will knit Argyles and wait.
Birds have given up breath for him. Among their feathers
faith now thickens, and I rinse away
their sticky blood.

ii

It's easy to see that his purpose is love.
He unstrings the beads of time in the sun.

It's easy to see that his purpose is death.
He sings to an implacable fire.

His mother was a lapwing, his father
part kite, part nightingale. He carries her

cries back to him, as if they were coins
to unspend time, to unpawn summer.

iii

Dear Icarus,

I envy you the bite of heaven
as I lie cradled in the earth. I saw
deer today. I glimpsed a falling
star and wanted to show it
to you. I will be faithful. I am a firefly
captured in your hands, and the forest
floor is carpeted with the dead.
The stars hang from cracks in the ceiling.
How can I be so cold in the summer?

Dear Skylark,

I saw a snake today, a brown
striped viper. I found a broken shell, and blue
was the blue of the sky. And periwinkles
were my lover's eyes, and you are free.
And I have had to let you go.
And I have let you go.

Dear Oedipus,

There was a spider
in the lighthouse, a dry web
on my face. And you have gone
to steal your father's eyes,
to put the moon in a wagon, the planets
on the backseat of your old Fuego. She waited
for you in Rapallo, she is waiting
in Dunbarton. We are all
waiting to see you drown.

Memory spirals
up the gallows hill.

Dear Peregrine, don't fall.

iv

At night the earth shrivelled and you whispered
stories in my ear. They were not fairy tales.

If I had been truly hungry for you, if jealousy
had been a chain I'd fastened around your neck,

then I'd have coveted every hour you spent without me.
You recounted the story of a bird who started as a boy.

He set off to bring back his masterpiece.
You asked me to accept this. You wanted me to lie

under a juniper tree and wait for your return.
I am sorry you had no Ariel to carry you

home in her arms. I flinch to remember the magic
your father fed you. I was your lover, your mother,

your sister, your whore: the wine you were looking for
was locked in my pantry. I gave you as consolation

two strangers telling stories among gossiping trees,
together forging an epitaph, their happy ending.

v

on the griddle of the sun
our dreams melting like butter
and when you leave me
to sleep my eyelids will flutter.


~~~~~~~~~

Third Prize --

Swoon from September

This really efficient poem manages to construct (and share) a private
rirual extracted from a public rite, and I'm impressed with its concise
evocation of a somewhat ominous family dynamic. Thrift is underrated,
and here it results in pure ore, no dross.--RT SMith



Swoon
by Lauren Leatherman
The Writer's Block

The first time I fell back,
hit my head on the pew.
No more than a plum-sized bump
but Mother dragged me down

to the empty bathroom,
woke me up with icy water.
From then on, overcome,

the world often spun.
At the children_s Christmas pageant
I watched my younger sister lead

the winged procession to
a little Mary, veiled and expectant.
My father struck a match

and lit his cigarette. Outside the car,
snow fell white and fast. Night

closed waist-deep and held us.
He called me histrionic.

~~~~~~~~~

I congratulate these three and many of the other poets and thank them
for a pleasurable tour through a year of poems.--RT Smith

Many thanks to RT Smith from Shenandoah Review for judging our Poem of the Year Competition this year!!


R. T. Smith's newest book, THE HOLLOW LOG LOUNGE (Illinois, 2003), was selected by Li-Young Lee as winner of the 2004 Maurice English Poetry Prize. His other books include TRESPASSER, MESSENGER and BRIGHTWOOD, all from LSU Press. He has been awarded fellowships from the NEA and the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize. Smith's poems have appeared in THE ATLANTIC, POETRY, GEORGIA REVIEW, SOUTHERN REVIEW, PLOUGHSHARES and others. He edits SHENANDOAH: THE WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY REVIEW and lives with his wife, poet Sarah Kennedy, in Rockbridge County, Virginia.

http://shenandoah.wlu.edu/sel.html

Hip-Hopping Through Time

Leaving The Vampire Breathless

Snow is a vagabond oat, dear.
 It percolates winter: this wandertime
 stooge who'll traipse, come to town-- thin
   vanity semi-schooled, fluorishing
  six-tongues unholstered.
 
 We'll call it shock-- the toxic
 accretion of some comic pain.   Your hand
 is a sandwich for children
 who magistrate--
      On your sad knees!
 Sodding river.
 
 The meter slows-- hammer on tarmac.
 Decant the old words, crack
   one rust-colored fuse.  I've licked
 the sparse wine from the glass-stem
                           in what you
 laughingly called a silk suit--
                                    Bus stop posing.
 
         When were you radiant, angel?
 What stray cull stillbore you? You cradle
 thin bowls.  Lend me one,
  Danaud, I'm bailing; I'm bound
         to your side by a stone.
 
 Come, come aerie!
 
         Take flight to your reason-filled haven.
 Perfection comes ordained: it's sanity, rouged
 by the miracle images kept of ourselves,
 untarnished by parallax cues.
 
                                 Too, too cozy.
 
 
         Stop bleeding feng-shui on my table.
 I take back my life.  I have no wish to be your
 white-coated gentleman of needles and plums,
 
         Tick
                 tick tick tock
 tickle
 
 
  (coughing)
 
 

Waverunner

Motion delicious skiffs across freshwater lake spliced poise of sun
whose icicles long dissolved are now transmade into the glint of sky backatcha
laxing into warmth qua punctuation's daylight with a purpose pungent or disowned
my way is made for me in present tense alone out here in streaks of slap down against muscular reflex lashing waterfirm resisting being placed into a speck of photograph failing in the act of capturing this breath-light of the animal all mine

Ashes

You arrive home
to this house, this brown
suburban house, made of crushed
autumn grass and old bottles.
I wonder if you'll notice that
the ghost in the chair isn't me,
but you rush out to play with
the dog, tossing indifferent
red and blue balls to the horizon.

The ghosts asks how your day was,
spreads lips to a grin, pretends
stones still can beat as hearts
before dying.

Ash mound at your feet, but you
don't see your trail til
you turn and vague memories
drift of days when a fire once
roared high in your fireplace.

Leaving The Vampire Breathless

Eve never Swallowed (The making of Eve)

She never swallowed.

Never.

Adam would confirm
the truth if he could testify.

He was standing by the tree
the day the rumor started.
All three of them were there.

“I am telling you she never swallowed.

Yes, there was a snake in the area.
Yes, she knocked off a fruit.
She was only hungry
and wanted to know.

She pulled on it
bit it, sucked it.
She then spit out the mouthful
because she said it tasted
salty…or bitter.
Or heavy.
We had not made up the word yet.”

Sisters, brothers
look at us, the proof is here.

Police in riot gear.
A young girl fucked and strangled.
Both burned: Crosses and Joan.
Politics, hate, guns.
Toxic shit.
Slavery. Religion. War.
Hunger.
Eons later, we still hunger.

Eve never swallowed.
If she did,
she would have known the outcome
of the experiment, and Adam
would have never fathered children.

Sat Nite Poetry chat at kitsch

For information, click the link.

Last week we had a lot of fun!

Ellipse

There is bliss in the arc of a whale's tail
and the way the rain only strikes me
every seventh drop.

And if you're careful, you'll find it
in the curve between the morning glory
and the tip of a hummingbird's tongue.

But we don't dive in the ocean
or run unfettered through the storm,
and our nectar falls, not from
wordless feathered flights,

but from the empty bend of my arms.

Poets Against War

The largest poetry anthology ever created online, Poets Against War, now archives over 20,000 poems. Poet Sam Hamill created the site in 2003. Hamill, a pacifist, was invited by Laura Bush to participate in a symposium celebrating poetry and the American voice.

Aware the war with Iraq was imminent, Hamill contacted other poets to "reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam...to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend your names to our petition against this war”.

Within 4 days 1,500 poets acknowledged his call, a response that led to the creation of this website .An invitation by Marcy Kapturs to present poems to Representatives of Congress led to their inclusion in the Congressional Record.

A sample of the work collected by Poets Against War follows below:


becoming one


…slowly
we are becoming one:

it may take a long time yet
it took a long time to shed some of our skin
but slowly we are all becoming
one…
unity is against what diminishes us
as humans
slowly…
we will reach all the parts that threaten us…
slowly
we’ll cross the rivers, and the oceans…
slowly they will become like us
or we
like them
we will shed more skin
shed religion
shed language
shed prejudice
to find the common soul in all of us…
slowly,
find out the biggest differences
that draw the borders between us
big properties
big chairs with big walls around them
big body guards, call them what you will
who blindly guard unjustified-
unshared money
mistaking it for flag and nationality,
slowly,
we’ll realize we have to be faster
and wiser,
cause we don’t have much more time to lose
before they point a finger to someone
before they create another enemy…
we’ll turn our gaze into ourselves
to find that unseen enemy,
slowly,
we’ll find out
that somebody
left an army in our hearts
and somebody has been feeding them
instead of us.
slowly,
reaching their doorstep
we’ll say no
enough of the fake dreams
we are all awake now
fully
and absolutely awake
slowly
we are all becoming one.

Zeki Ali
(Kyrenia, North Cyprus, 5/31/05)

gingerivers
posted with permission ©2005 Poets Against War

Tame the Ghosts (CTG)

My partner has a new rockabilly CD out but the title track "Tame the Ghosts"
is not the one I wrote with lyrics about past loves, Marjorie, Andrea, and Pat.

It's a more serious song by the Frenchman born of a Swedish woman teacher
and a Tunisian who died of a heart attack and is buried in a quiet French village;

camellia blossoms in the graveyard at night, chime of the church clock.
Ghosts haunt us -- as I write these words, as I lift my coffee cup to drink,

past lives of friends and family that touch us for a few moments in the celestial
arc of our travels. So I struggle to describe the ghosts that shadow me always.

Christopher T. George

Nonsense

Being the weak one,
you are satisfied
with holding the alphabets
in each hand, playing
with words that could never be formed.
The way love is
the nonsense of lying down,
of feeling one brave
when all is falling around.

The chickens are laying their eggs.

There is no greater bravery
than being in love.