20081030

ISSUE ELEVEN CONTRIBUTORS'
BLOGS & HOME PAGES


(In many cases these are not
the contributor's only blog,
but their others can be
accessed from the sites below.)

Anny Ballardini
Narcissus Works

Eileen R. Tabios
The Blind Chatelaine's Keys

Michael S. Begnal
B’Fhiú an Braon Fola

Halvard Johnson
Entropy and me

Peter Ciccariello
Invisible Notes

Raymond Farr
mRjonesrEview

Jeff Harrison (with Allen Bramhall)
Antic View

Andrew Topel
vviissiioonnss

Felino Soriano
Felino Soriano

Reed Altemus
Fluxcopy/Copyflux

Bill Drennan
Hypoetics

Charles Freeland
The Fossil Record

J. D. Nelson
Mad Verse

Mary Ellen Derwis & Joe Balaz
JOMA—online

Michele Leggott
N.Z. Poet Laureate

Martin Edmond
Luca Antara

Angela Genusa
fiddling while rome burns

Spencer Selby
Spencer Selby's List

harry k stammer
harry k stammer

Geof Huth
dbqp: visualizing poetics

Stephen Nelson
Afterlights

Paul Siegell
ReVeLeR @ eYeLeVeL

Dorothee Lang
dorothee.lang

Tom Beckett
Slim Windows

Elizabeth Kate Switaj
Elizabeth Kate Switaj

David-Baptiste Chirot
David-Baptiste Chirot

sean burn
gobscure

John M. Bennett
John M. Bennett

Julian Jason Haladyn
Julian Jason Haladyn

Zev Jonas
Zev Jonas Photography

Robert Gauldie
R.W.Gauldie

Mark Young
gamma ways


back to the contents page



David-Baptiste Chirot


El Colonel’s Composition Book

Part One: “Tobacco-tinged, like thought”

“Tobacco-tinged, like thought”
—Boris Pasternak, My Sister, Life


          Birth of a world
          —mountains, streams, trees, flowers, rocks, birds, lizards, insects . . .
           Emerge slowly from mist and take form among the movements of limpid air. Pale blue water-color wash of sky gathers body as an influx of pigment is infused, more capable of supporting the first expansions of warming particles scattered among the myriad pools of shaded, calm and cool air.

           El Colonel observes these changes attentively through his reflecting aviator sunglasses from his “post” in the high ceilinged white-washed room, its windows flung wide to “the resinous, resonating and reverberating greens in which wraiths of mists still coil lingeringly, sinuous ghosts of dawn fain to depart the world of the living . . . ”

           A hunk of flat corn bread, a bowl of coffee, a cigarette—on the window ledge within arm’s reach—are “forms displacing space, and in the action of displacement, sending forth vibrations of each their own colors into the limpidity of air . . . a dispersal of colors in space borne by particles moving through time . . . in this continually changing ‘picture’ . . . “

           El Colonel smiles. Moving in “his customary fashion, attentive to the honoring of the grace latent within each step, within each slight movement of the hands, the eyes, the slight shiftings of pant legs, within the subtly shifting reflections of the sunglasses, and so to create a poetry in action for the vigilant eyes of things, those constant observers of the action of being,” El Colonel crosses the cool, shaded room and seats himself at the ancient, rude desk, a huge slab of wood hardened and mottled by time.

           Running his fingers along the time smoothed and oiled surfaces of the wood, El Colonel reflects, “his reflections enjoying their anonymity granted by the sunglasses’ reflecting the gaze of observers so as to plunge them into the sight of themselves, rather than into any insights into himself . . . ” His reflections at this moment are on the “doubled but not mirroring meanings of ‘constant’ in this punning ‘regard.’ The eyes of things as constant observers of the actions of being—and this 'constant' being both a 'continual' and a ‘loyal’ observing. Things as ‘constant’ observers then are wedded with observing, a marriage of be-ing and be-holding.”

           El Colonel is writing a “commentary,” an “aside, which is to say, a further but expressed elsewhere thought” as he at times calls them for his own amusement. This writing both provokes and is “a sudden sharp staccato laugh shattering for a moment the room’s peaceful air, with the shadows of the fronds of tall ferns which are standing close by, as if to peer in through the windows at himself, as the writing writer realizes in writing that be-ing and be-holding have in them the danger of ‘being beholden,’ as an observer who in observing becomes beholden to what is observed, and so the expression, ‘he became what he beheld.’ ”

           “No,” El Colonel’s staccato bursts bounce scatter shot off the rough and brilliantly lit walls—“I would not want to become a fern which I beheld . . . For one does not, after all, have to become a vegetable to think of one’s roots.”

           El Colonel listens to the sharp staccato sounds of the laughter ricochet off the crumbling white washed stone walls. A sonic ping pong plays itself before his listening eyes. The thought occurs to him that the attentive ferns may observe this game of sounds in the reflecting sunglasses and so retransmit it to himself in their shiny surfaces, still slightly filmed with dew and bright with the first strong light of day. At the same time, the thought occurs that one may be ‘doubled up with laughter,’ in reflecting on these reflections to do with the non-mirroring non-doubling of becoming what one beheld. To be ‘riveted’ by a sight literally, attached mechanically to this that one beholds and becomes and so to vanish into the sight which had ‘riveted one's attention’ in ‘a moment of distraction.’ Distraction as the opening through which the riveting of attention may lay hold of one into vanishing as one becomes what one beholds.”

          El Colonel smiles and lights a cigarette, more to observe the driftings of blue smoke than to smoke the cigarette itself. As the first wisps of smoke rise and begin to feel their blue ways into the room’s breezes, his reflections, too, find their ways back into the movements of their own ‘streams of consciousness.’

          As the blue smoke ‘catches a draft,’ so El Colonel “catches again the drift and punning draft of the writing’s movements” and finds himself continuing . . . The ‘constant’ eyes of things, that wedded observing, as a form of vigilance ‘on the look-out’ for the ‘moment of distraction,’ the moment of weakness, in which to ‘strike’ and ‘seize the attention,’ and so snatch from being the beholder as he or she is beholden to their beholding of this that is beheld. (And here he could not resist a ‘doubling back’ to the reflections on ‘doubling up with laughter,’ and so observes himself going through the movements of being doubled up with laughter and at the same laughing soundlessly—arcing back flips from a diving board suspended high above a limpid pool—into which one plunges at such speed that the doubling up with laughter serves as a “jack knifing” of the body, in which, indeed, all breath is taken away, and so, indeed, one is left with nothing to do but laugh soundlessly) That thing which is observing them, by being observed by them, ‘when they least expect it’ and ‘are caught unawares,’ is ‘the last thing they see’ and at the same time ‘the last thing to see them.’ This ‘lastness’ is a ‘constant’ in reverse—that is—it does NOT ‘last,’ as a ‘constant’ observing does, but is ‘THE last that is seen of them.’ Yet is not this ‘last’ also a ‘constant’ in that once it is ‘lost from sight’ it is now ‘permanently disappeared?’ A non-constant ‘last sight of’ becomes a constant unseen, a disappearance into that which it beheld and which beheld it ‘at its very last’ which is now a ‘lasting’ disappearance from sight.

          Watching this disappearance through the reflecting glasses, El Colonel considers that “the image of this departure, being mirrored—turns around the direction of the disappearance, so that it appears instead to be ‘walking back into’ the concealed eyes which are observing it’s treading of the paths of oblivion in the opposite direction.”

          Amazed at his own ability to keep all these knotting, doubling, reflecting, somersaulting images and words tumbling pell mell on to the stages and screens of his own theatrical-cinematic visions, El Colonel can not help but allow himself “a brief and raucous laughter,” in the spirit with which he had so often as a child observed with great admiration the contortions and commentaries of the acrobatic crows perched on the meager bit of no longer functioning telephone wires that were used by his mother and their neighbors as laundry lines. The telephonic calls of humans had been mutated by natural disasters and the disasters of wars into this raucous cawing, so wildly mocking of the ambitions of humans dependent on machines for the transmission of what are, after all, at the very heart of things, telepathic and so are beyond the speeds and reaches of anything so unreliable as telephonic and telegraphic messages.

          “In the crows of his childhood he had beheld that image of what he himself would like to become. (Had he indeed, ‘become what he beheld—?’) An untamed prowler and observer among the habits and habitations of peoples, at once a part of and apart from their lives and dwellings, at one and the same time able to read their languages and signs and to write in ones of his own, outside of their methods of ‘setting things down.’”

          The laughter triggers a ‘doubling back’ to the reflections on ‘doubling up with laughter,’ and so he observes himself going through the movements of being doubled up with laughter and at the same laughing soundlessly, “thus reminding himself of his earlier reflections on his own ‘somersaultings' and acrobatics, so that he catches ‘on the fly’ as it were, athletic and swift movements at the periphery of vision. Having drawn his attention, these movements at the peripheries swiftly leap and soar into focus, as though in the act of making arcing back flips from a diving board suspended high above a limpid pool, and then plunging into it at such speed that the doubling up with laughter serves as a “jack knifing” of the body, in which, indeed, all breath is taken away, and so, indeed, one is left with nothing to do but laugh soundlessly as one enters the waters below.”

           El Colonel smiles. His various files, maps, notes, messages in code and concealed devices of various kinds are neatly arranged in an order “whose meaning is known to himself only.” Lighting a cigarette, sipping coffee, El Colonel reaches for his “Writings, hidden in plain sight as simply another notebook among others, yet inside of which are those things which no other Notebook has ever before been touched by, the works of an unknown writer in an unknown writing for unknown readers who are written by and in turn also read and write the unknown writings.”

          El Colonel smiles. As blue cigarette smoke drifts in cool morning air, quietly traveling the room towards the open windows, he gently slides the Notebook from the piles of files and slim ledgers, and places it with care and precision on a small thick brightly colored woven mat on the desk. On the outside, the Notebook of Writings looks like any other Composition book a child might have in the first grades of school, with a marble cover and the familiar space with lines for the student’s name and class number. A perfectly conventional looking Notebook, except that on it there is no name, no information whatsoever, despite some slight signs of wear, indicating its usage through time for some purpose by someone.

           El Colonel smiles. He flicks an ash into an eccentrically deformed piece of burnt exploded shrapnel, into a pitted hole of which has been stuck an enormous and ominous bird feather. “An omen or a quill?” as El Colonel enjoys thinking of “this enigmatic and disturbing presence, this mysterious yet useful and talismanic sign of a literal and symbolic ‘Lord of the Skies,’ and of Sky Writings. A Sky Writing which ‘animates’ writing as omen and as metonymical flight.”

          This metonymical flight El Colonel finds “echoed in the shrapnel fragment, itself the remains of a trajectory arcing the skies, a companion to the feather quill in its own forms of fiery sky writing before descending to Earth to continue writing as a ‘burned out fragment,’ a metonymical flight that indeed ‘fires’ the imagination and can be put to practical use also as the receptacle of ashes from a cigarette’s burning flames. Ashes themselves are the metonymical ‘burned out fragments’ of flight as the remains of the cigarettes’ own sky writings in the form of smoke rings, and calligraphic swirls and driftings. ”

          “Fire, flight, writing, feather, quill, shrapnel, smoke, ashes—“

          El Colonel smiles and smokes, caressingly touching the worn marble cover, gently running his fingers along its edges and down the smooth, sturdy spine. These caresses awaken a curled and murmuring being, stirring in the black forms of the marble as the first swayings of a dance. Then, with unconcealed eagerness, he opens to the first page and begins to study what is written, moving from page to page and here and there pausing to make what seems to be a mental note.

           El Colonel smiles. The beauty of the writing never ceases to take him by surprise. As many times as he has gone over what it is has accomplished to the present point, in order to refresh memory and the sense of rhythm, it always presents itself in a new guise, never becoming completely familiar, always bearing within it that same displacement of forms and action of colors and vibrations of sounds as things and beings do in space.

           Reading along, he jots here and there mentally a slight emendation, here a note, there an arrow—and yet on the whole confident that what is in the writing as it is to this point is holding its own in its skirmishes and encounters with the ever varying obstacles and adversaries of its movement.

           El Colonel smiles. To an observer, who would be reflected in his sunglasses’ lenses, so that the observer would observe his own reflections outwardly and in turn reflect on them inwardly—to an observer there would be a shocked astonishment that El Colonel, to the observer’s reflected and reflecting eyes, seemed to be unaware of an absence which was all too glaringly present to the mirrored one, who is doubling the glaring by glaring at himself glaring back in the reflected image of himself in the glasses.

           El Colonel smiles. For a moment he sees the shocked face of the observer as it is reflecting its own shock back to him, a shock made present by that absence which for El Colonel is so obviously to the observer a presence, yet which the reflected eyes cannot see. This invisibility hidden in plain sight is a compliment to the visibility hidden in plain sight of the ordinariness of the notebook’s appearance.

           For it is in fact quite simple. There is nothing at all written anywhere in the pages of the Notebook, that is, nothing that the self reflecting eyes of a seeking observer may even “catch a glimpse of.”

           “And indeed, it is the very presence of this absence which is so disturbing to the self reflecting observer, who had ‘caught himself looking at himself looking’ to see what was written inside these slowly and fondly opened pages. To observe oneself disappointed in the act of observation of what is not there and yet is in itself a presence that is present, is disturbing to the observer, who is literally ‘registering his own shock and disappointment’ in the reflections of himself into which he sees himself staring.”

           El Colonel slows a moment the pace of his thoughts, in order to observe the sudden shifting of directions in a swirl of smoke, brought on by the passage of a small and darting breeze . . .

           “And does this not also further disturb the observer, that this presence of an unexpected absence reminds him in turn that the eyes which look at him are the presence of an absence also—the absence of the eyes of El Colonel, who the observer suddenly feels with a distinct chill and discomfort are observing him while all the while remaining unobserved by himself. The observer, suddenly seeing the reversal of presences and absences now turned into a writing in a notebook which is not perceptibly there at all, suddenly is made aware of ‘reading’ of a non writing, which he realizes with a further shock, is an accompaniment to the observation by one who is unobservable of the other, who is all too observable, but can see only the reflections of himself observing himself observing his own reflected self. ”

          “This self- reflecting observer observing himself exists suddenly to himself, in a ‘flash of insight,’ only as a being trapped in an endless hall of mirrors, while it is the unobservable observer who is free to roam the crow-skies and to caw forth that raucous laughter at the futilities which it finds from its perch on a ‘utilities’ pole.”

          And, thoroughly stunned at himself this morning by this completely unexpected series of revisitations by the raucous laughter of crows from his childhood, here, in the presence of the crow that he has become—El Colonel cannot help himself—and bursts into another round of raucous laughter, observing his shadow on the wide expanse of the wall flapping his arms like wings, on the verge of a great and soaring flight, over the mountains, and into the skies of Time.

          A shadow on a wall, a flight into the skies of Time . . . .
          A raucous laughter . . .
          The flapping of wing shadows . . .

          Careful to not let a whisper or hint of ash stain the brilliantly formed calligraphies in their traversals of the pages, and at the same time observing the soaking into the paper fibers of the smoke, lending it that sense which he recalled from a line in a Pasternak poem. This line which always stayed with him, like a shadow, like a wraith, like a ghostly spider web clinging to his being, came from a book he had found during a patrol.

          The line, a fragment really, was: “tobacco-tinged, like thought.” Immediately, this phrase became for him a talisman of writing itself. As “a man of action,” thought and writing for him were inseparable. And, ever since the first awareness of his own thoughts and writings began, it meant that he always smoked as he thought and wrote.

          Tobacco-tinged, morning light bathed El Colonel’s sinuous smoky lines as one of the Heroic Patrol appeared in the half-open doorway

          “El Colonel, the Tourists’ Planning Committee is ready. The new documents are ready for discussion.”

          Casually sliding the Composition Book into a neat stack of newspapers, journals and files, El Colonel seems to glide more than rise into standing position. Pocketing cigarettes, pen and lighter, lightly brushing a minute crease in a pants pleat, palming a little notepad, El Colonel smiles.

          “Excellent. Let’s go learn more about what our Tourists were up to before they dropped in on us. For in the study and making of a New Poetry, every word is of the utmost importance.”

          “Yes, Mi Colonel. Every word.”

          Tobacco-tinged smoky lines rocked gently in the air in the wake of El Colonel’s leaving the room.

          And, as the sounds of two pairs of footsteps faded away, out of the once distinct lines a floating veil began to form, a presence of writing drifting in the light-bathed air of an empty room.

          Like the Composition Book’s, a writing visibly invisible and invisibly visible. A white smoke veil hanging in a white room bathed in light, and, tobacco-tinged, like thought.




David Baptiste Chirot "Essays, reviews, prose poetry, sound and visual poetry, performance scores, Mail Art have appeared in print and web 60+ different journals in over a dozen countries. Participated in 350+ Visual Poetry and Mail Art exhibitions, Calls. 3 books, 3 chapbooks and in many print and e-anthologies. My work is with the found, everywhere to be found, hidden in plain site/sight/cite. http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com"

 
 
 
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20081028

Individual pieces Copyright © 2008 by their respective creators

Issue eleven Date of Publication 1 November, 2008.

All images in Otoliths can be enlarged by clicking on them.



CONTENTS


Anny Ballardini
Three Poems

Michael Aanji Crowley
Five Photographs

Sheila E. Murphy
from Noun that I've been Watching
Five Visual Poems

Sheila E. Murphy & John M. Bennett
Visual Poem

Eileen R. Tabios
Two Poems

Marcia Arrieta
Four Poems

dan raphael
Four Poems

Philip Byron Oakes
Two Poems

Michael S. Begnal
Three Poems

Halvard Johnson
Six Poems

Peter Ciccariello
Three Visual Poems

Naomi Buck Palagi
Ode to the Ten Cent Cigar

Aaron Crippen
Three Visual Poems

Raymond Farr
Five Poems

John Martone
Five Visual Poems

Jeff Harrison
Three Poems

Andrew Topel
PAIN TINGS

Felino Soriano
Two Poems

Reed Altemus
Three Visual Pieces
Five More Visual Pieces

Iain Britton
Two Poems

Bill Drennan
Two Prose Pieces

Charles Freeland
Three Poems

J. D. Nelson
Six Poems

Mary Ellen Derwis
Three Photographs

Joe Balaz & Mary Ellen Derwis
Two Visual Pieces

Alexander Jorgensen
Homage to Jack Stauffacher

Craig Rebele
from The Abilene Paradox

Gregory Braquet
Two Poems

Marilyn R. Rosenberg
False Fiction Fractured Fact: take it with you

Michele Leggott
rangehoo
nonpareil
te hākari / the feast

Martin Edmond
Cold Calling

Angela Genusa
The Bo Ficus Religiosa Tree Equation

Bobbi Lurie
A Watercolor & A Poem

Charles Mahafee
This Man and Legs

Spencer Selby
from Assemblage Point Metaphor

Thomas Fink
Nonce Sonnet 14

Thomas Fink & Maya Diablo Mason
Two Poems

Cara Benson
Five Poems

harry k stammer
Two Poems

Samit Roy
jeebanjuddha

Geof Huth
Words upon the Opening of a Thought
The King of These
Man as Green as Eye
The Blue-Green Windows of My Eyes
Telegram to Telemachus

Stephen Nelson
Four Visual & Three Bracket Poems

Jaie Miller
Two Prose Pieces

Paul Siegell
*A Good-Surprise Experience Awaits*

Dorothee Lang
Three Visual Pieces

Stephen C. Middleton
Two Poems

Vernon Frazer
Celebrity Montage in Captivity

Tom Beckett
from Exposures (work in progress)

John Moore Williams
Three Visual Poems

Elizabeth Kate Switaj
Five Poems

Manas Bhattacharya
Shadowgraphs: A Requiem for Polaroid

David-Baptiste Chirot
El Colonel’s Composition Book

sean burn
cdmn
Two Visual Pieces

Scott Helmes & John M. Bennett
Three Visual Poems

John M. Bennett & various collaborators
Visual Poems

John M. Bennett
Eight Poems
Three Visual Poems

Doug White
grand father's chair

Steve Wing
Sidewalk Visions

Julian Jason Haladyn
Five Poems

Zev Jonas
from The Condition

Robert Gauldie
Otolith Ear-Stones: Reading the Runes

Contributors' Blogs





HOME









 
 
Doug White


grand father’s chair

am I doing something — writing assiduously,
say — yonder where I think I can (fore)see
participation, over the horizon,
which has always seemed useful,
or — stop — all manner of beings
swim around the grand father’s chair

including yrs true — lie as I
might how things do this —
thing in the winter, sea
lives of their own, resisting, flying off
so I told her to mind but she —
when when when, he wanted to

know your tools — who did
brown leaves wanting cream,
the suspense, feet that meant
flippers, the nook of embarrassment
bargain, fluid, who — whose —
cavern, do you want to flatter

yourself — at this stage all
but useless legs of steel lungs
of love lace underwear
loop a rope over that stake
lie me out and wait —
how does one want one



Doug White is a writer in rural upstate New York. Medical text by day. Running and what spirit moves by night.

 
 
 
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Zev Jonas


from The Condition














Zev Jonas writes:
"Born and raised in Australia, I came to photography as a way of conveying my isolation while traveling, using the camera as a way to articulate the overwhelming sense of loneliness I encountered. Having never formally studied art, I attempt not to over-complicate my process. I shoot 35mm film and transparencies, and scan and print the images with minimal alteration.

Since settling in New York, I have further explored the idea of solitude - by looking at the way we view and interact with other animals, our environment and each other - through on-going projects, collaborations and exhibitions across the US."

The entire portfolio of The Condition can be found here.

 
 
 
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20081027

John Moore Williams












John Moore Williams is the author of two chapbooks: "I discover i is an android" (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and "writ10" (VUGG Books). He is increasingly fascinated by the intersections of polysemy, alphabetic letters, hieroglyphs and pure images.

 
 
 
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Julian Jason Haladyn


7 Kilometers

a petting that literally
pulls the skin back from his eyes

the dog looks like a cartoon
black fur extended

so rough are the hands
my grandfather tells me of

working in the mines
7 kilometers to walk

from the barracks to the mine
and 7 kilometers back

like selling fish for his father
the distance is the same

to bring the fish to all the houses
he had to walk 7 kilometers

dogs roaming the ghetto streets
caught and locked away

treated like a bunch of matter
material to be disposed of

like Jewish people
off the streets of Krakow

my grandfather tells me of
his experiences during the war

working in the black coal mines
skin stained

no one had a name
just the number

his worn skin stained black
he walked

7 kilometers there
and 7 back again


Intaglio Landscape 19 x 68 (given)

for Marcel Duchamp
the grain is lifted like intaglio prints of serene landscapes
loose armatures resting quietly
against several unused copper utensils
engraved with scenes of sexual acts performed in nature

and so we all must prepare for bed
washing up
leaving the final edits for tomorrow
so many lights to turn off

the fire is unusually illuminating this evening
castings made of certain newspaper balls
twigs allowed to rest quietly
against engraving plates of copper

tables hold the hands of two amateur astronomers
Pluto is no longer a planet
birds confidently caught in the orbit of this solar system
like two peepholes drilled in a wooden door


Go to the Front

Grandpa’s pajamas are too big for his body
rolled up around his ankles and sleeves

                our walk through the hospital
                quiet with little sense of direction

lots of woman in this place
he points out three times as we sit by the front door

                I ask him if he wants to live in London
                his answer is to a different question

we returned to the fifth floor on the elevator
his room right by the administrative desk

                he told me two stories three time
                the first time was my fault he says

I used two rocks to help me get up
he had fallen in the backyard some weeks ago

                my arms no could lift
                he adds in the second two versions

it had rained the day before he had fallen
I was on mine bum and it was wet

                as I prepared to leave
                he snuck in two more tellings of the story

when I got up and told him I had to leave
he got up and was about to walk me out

                am I at home
                he says to me when I tell him to stay in his room

no grandpa you are in the hospital
he does not respond right away

                I want to go to the front
                he tries to walk through the nurses station

you must stay in your room
he insists that it is warm and wants to sit out front

                on the porch in the front of his house
                you must stay in your room grandpa


Intaglio Landscape 8 x 0.06 (missing swarm)

After Sylvia Plath
The bees have got so far
                now

                crossing the image border
                beyond the black and white and copper

                to a life beyond paper
                to a life beyond the demarcations of maps

                colourful and simplistic
                as long as you colour within the lines

                newspaper articles with missing letters
                invisible sounds that fall off the page

                making it difficult to understand
                the sporadic nuances of language

                etched into the world
                from which our experience is pulled

                paper from the plate
                ink pulled out of crevices

                and this is why
the bees argue


Waiting for Friends

There are no moments quite like these
friends coming to visit, they are late
the time seems stuck
I try not to anticipate, but I do

                considering the circumstances
                the graveyard is closed —
                a car pulls up, but it is not our friends
                — I must postpone my visit to her grave

our dachshund seems to know
barking at every little noise
he anticipates something, not knowing what
and I look out the window each time

                the flowers my mother left
                and an empty space, for my grandfather
                it is a double plot I am constantly reminded

there it is again
car drives by, dog barks, I look
the event is becoming a ritual
it’s been thirty-seven minutes

                her whole family was killed in the war
                my grandmother’s that is
                she left her village
                when she came back they were all dead

certainly they would have called
unless they forgot about the visit
or a terrible accident
they probably just forgot

                she lived through the war
                and never spoke of her family
                in fact never really spoke of the war

the house is remarkably clean
as it always is when people come to visit
Miriam cleans and arranges everything
I try my best to help

                I remember when my grandmother was sick
                she would not go to the doctor
                I went to stay with her in Toronto
                we sat quietly together

I am sitting here quietly
trying not to look out the window
the floor has the shine of well polished stone

                I skipped several days of classes in high school
                but she would not go
                we had coffee together everyday
                sometimes with sweets

people walk by carrying odd things
a yellow plastic chair for children
two broken wooden flowerboxes
a plastic bag filled with something blue

                that reminds me of my grandparents house
                filled with so many odd things
                I was told that much of it was brought from Poland
                and my father insists this is true

a ripped screen for a window
a new red tricycle, which I don’t know why they carry
two large Napoleon statues fully painted

                I loved to explore through that house
                looking inside the innumerable cupboards
                and spaces and crawlspaces

time passing slowly
remembering the odd things in relation to —
well I am not sure, I am just waiting

                the cancer spread through her body
                by the time she went to the hospital —
                I think they are here, wait
                it is not them

we prepared way too much food
if our friends do not come
it will be like so many family gatherings
when my grandmother would make enough food for an army

                the first time I visited her in the hospital
                she looked so sick and small in the bed
                it was the first time she was really nice to my mother

Miriam is talking on the phone
I wonder if it is to our friends
it has been well over an hour now

                we did not stay much more than an hour
                grandma spoke very little
                my mother gave her a pair of slippers
                I drew a picture of her in bed

four people and a dog walk by
the floor, smooth as polished stone
Miriam is talking to her mother
I could only make out the words “and she called them back”

                the second time everyone visited her in the hospital
                I stayed home
                she died within the week
                the call came in the middle of the night

I think I should call them
see if they are still coming
cars continue to catch my interest

                that reminds me of when I was in Nice
                on a side street, there is a small shop
                it had halva in the window

I bought a lot of halva for their visit
Miriam doesn’t like it but it appeals to me
it reminds me of my grandmother

                when I mentioned halva to my father
                he told me that it was my grandmothers favorite
                so much made sense to me at that moment –
                wait, I think they are here



Julian Jason Haladyn is a Canadian artist and writer. His poems have appeared in, among others, apt, Ditch, Elimae, Istanbul Literature Review, Identity Theory, Laika Poetry Review, Otoliths, and The Southernmost Review, as well as the collection Nuit Blanche: Poetry for Late Nights (Toronto: Royal Sarcophagus Society Press, 2007). His poetry book 17/13 was published by Blue Medium in 2007 and his chapbook Convulsive Hotel Dreams was published by Trainwreck Press in 2008. In addition, Julian has published collaborative critical articles and reviews with Miriam Jordan in Parachute, Broken Pencil, C Magazine, On Site Review, and a chapter in Stanley Kubrick: Essays on His Films and Legacy (McFarland and Company 2007).

 
 
 
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Michael Aanji Crowley


Skeletal Leaf


Burdock



Grey



Composted Leaf



Rhubarb





Michael Aanji Crowley writes:
The first picture I ever took was in the Navy Photo school, and while the rest of my naval trainings have been long forgotten, the photography has stayed.

I was born in the midwest and after much movement, have ended up here in Iowa, not far from Iowa City. I make my living working in Early Childhood, currently in an infant room- I get paid to crawl around on the floor with babies.

Except for those four years in the navy, I have never really used my camera to support myself. It felt like I’d lose the love I had with light and dark to work commercially. My earliest work was all black and white, home processed, fine-art photography. I went digital about twelve years ago and started doing more color work, though my latest work is back to black and white. I like the lack of chemicals in producing images.

For me, taking pictures is a form of meditation, an enforced act of being present. To see the beauty, you must be there, you cannot be thinking of other times or places- you will miss the only life you have, going on around you. And beauty is everywhere . . . sometimes in the big picture (and most folks catch those moments,) but more often it’s in the fine details that are too easily missed if you are not living in that moment.


 
 
 
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Steve Wing


Sidewalk Visions












A bionote for Steve Wing and links to his work can be found here.

 
 
 
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20081022

John M. Bennett & various collaborators



















 
 
 
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Scott Helmes and John M. Bennett










 
 
 
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John M. Bennett












John M. Bennett has published over 300 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials. Among the most recent are rOlling COMBers (Potes & Poets Press), MAILER LEAVES HAM (Pantograph Press), LOOSE WATCH (Invisible Press), CHAC PROSTIBULARIO (with Ivan Arguelles; Pavement Saw Press), HISTORIETAS ALFABETICAS (Luna Bisonte Prods), PUBLIC CUBE (Luna Bisonte Prods), THE PEEL (Anabasis Press), GLUE (xPress(ed)), LAP GUN CUT (with F. A. Nettelbeck; Luna Bisonte Prods), INSTRUCTION BOOK (Luna Bisonte Prods), la M al (Blue Lion Books), CANTAR DEL HUFF (Luna Bisonte Prods), SOUND DIRT (with Jim Leftwich; Luna Bisonte Prods), BACKWORDS (Blue Lion Books), NOS (Redfox Press), D RAIN B LOOM (with Scott Helmes; xPress(ed)), CHANGDENTS (Offerta Speciale), and L ENTES (Blue Lion Books). He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of publications and venues. He was editor and publisher of LOST AND FOUND TIMES (1975-2005), and is Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries. Richard Kostelanetz has called him “the seminal American poet of my generation”. His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions, including Washington University (St. Louis), SUNY Buffalo, The Ohio State University, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major libraries. His PhD (UCLA 1970) is in Latin American Literature.
 
 
 
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John M. Bennett


Blinder Blinder

blinder roast than towel incineration

incineration of the luggage boat

boat thighs dripping off your plate

plate toilet or the glassy wall

wall natter ,instant gate ,crud snore

snore fuse ,piled the worm throat higher

higher clink across the drowning stove

stove plunder ,stroke of snipping beets

beets layered in the basement hush oh hush

hush bubbler throat or fog my cash

cash smaller mumbler of the soap

soap ,heave ,knack ,drip ,loft ,bucket

bucket coughing like your stripper leg

leg mist drifting toward your face blinder



Sure Fantod

sure plow sure nick sure some sure boot sure
glottus sure bank sure hole sure scissors
sure butt sure cloud sure sender sure fart sure
glue sure thumb sure inch sure core
sure sung sure nates sure bomber sure pore sure
lung sure knot sure loss sure sunk
sure dumb sure matter sure hung sure it sure
clod sure went sure nod sure blunt
sure weasel sure gak sure limb sure tie sure
flag sure shit sure clung sure amble
sure whallop sure do sure mope sure him sure
bender sure morbid sure lunge sure fantod



Neck Neck

neck whistle lounging in the soup

soup thread ,plod across the street

street nekkid ,focus of the gun

gun dip smartly scattered past the fork

fork and cheek ,cloud and shirt ,lamination

lamination wrinkle coughing on your foot

foot suit puzzle ,aim your wire shrug

shrug dancer humming past the lake

lake gland toppled ,grunting hair left

left gristle foaming on the sidewalk

sidewalk yam ,a bus crumbles by

by nostril hose by rinse your innards

innards bustled in the soggy afternoon

afternoon or window crawling in your neck



Neck Yes

yes neck blut neck calm neck dog
neck yak neck try neck yet neck do neck
pill neck rote neck am neck aim
neck yet neck no neck clobber neck saw neck
chit neck roster neck dead neck giggling
neck odd neck um neck raw neck ha neck
sham neck slant neck cud neck blowing
neck rumor neck old neck gasp neck rod neck
shore neck tram neck coddle neck dry
neck glut neck angle neck sno neck cod neck
meal neck mud neck soak neck hammer
neck shake neck dim neck hack neck chaw neck



Shore Shore

shore heavers dripping in your undershirt

undershirt dust ,glassy wind ,lung puzzles

puzzles cut inside your pocket nod

nod thing steaming in the lab condition

condition leak your fulsome trotting

trotting grab the bungled arm air

air and fist a notepad burns

burns the cawed the clamp the quick

quick an dreamless ,shade of lumber

lumber wallet where your tripping eye

eye bee ,fruit of stripping coffee cups

cups and guns ,sawdust ,flies around yr lap

lap sot ,where yr pistol ,flooded chair

chair laundry ,fatty cyst lying on the shore



Bring Smelt

bring sip bring hump bring gnat bring shoe bring
tongue bring glot bring us bring crap
bring int bring res bring gum bring sew bring
come bring bowl bring bowel bring sog
bring bog bring gut bring sent bring glue bring
sprung bring logorrhea bring sit bring gas
bring calm bring too bring the bring beck bring
on bring gust bring death bring spring
bring lid bring matter bring us bring clod bring
hone bring got bring needle bring never
bring hum bring ass bring oil bring don bring
shave bring sombra bring dung brink smelt



Slumber Slumber

slumber headless in your inky hat

hat honey sticking in yr ears

ears sporking windless acrobatics

acrobatics crawling houseflies in the afternoon

afternoon and puzzles on the windowpane

windowpane or laundry falling in the breeze

breeze swallowed tumba or a sugar cube

cube water or your hollow chin

chin looper ,full lingo ,dot mater

mater fogging where your loot crystals

crystals splitting in your shoe

shoe river ,or your toweling escapade

escapade and dimwit smiling in the dusk

dusk lightning slowly crossed your slumber



Mal Ente

mal cheap mal cloche mal liquide mal sot mal
place mal ink mal droit mal steam
mal hiel mal note mal nom mal seer mal
dock mal langue mal usé mal shank
mal desordre mal tu mal be mal not mal
cram mal lung mal toot mal same
mal frotter mal bleat mal was mal id mal
short mal estar mal dung mal cute
mal sank mal pense mal sue mal shot mal
due mal rat mal dôme mal run
mal sop mal rue mal pluie mal dirt mal
soif mal gnat mal con mal ente


 
 
 
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sean burn


slave lave ave triptych




wen a child unseen.....





sean burn is a writer, performer & outsider artist with a growing international reputation. he has completed theatre works for (among others) ctc; first draft theatre; half moon theatre; maverick productions; pegasus youth theatre; paines plough; under construction; weaver-hughes ensemble. his poetry films — ayler, our ordinary map (chekhov), stealing brecht, sz and the terror we create have received many screenings around europe. he has had three spoken word cd's ov his work released, most recently speaksong (with gareth mitchell, musician). he has created/exhibited text-art exhibitions for (among others) arcadea; cesta, czech republic; dada-south; fold gallery, cumbria; and the humber mouth festival, hull. skrev press have published two full-length collections of his writing — edgecities (isbn 1904646-34-4) and @ the edge (isbn 978-1-904646-39-6) and are publishing a third — they say the fuchsias bright — late 2008. gobscure is sean burns website — from where you can find details on how to purchase his first novel — margin-walking ( isbn 978-0-9557746-0-7).

 
 
 
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sean burn


cdmn



















 
 
 
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Dorothee Lang

inside




overload




unspray





Dorothee Lang edits the Blue Print Review, an experimental online journal, and is the author of Masala Moments, a travel novel about India. Her work has appeared in Pindeldyboz, Mississippi Review, Hobart, Eclectica, juked, NoTellMotel, Subtletea and numerous other places. For more about her, visit her at blueprint21.de.

 
 
 
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Manas Bhattacharya


Shadowgraphs: A Requiem for Polaroid
"Polaroid will soon disappear as a direct consequence of the advent of the digital. Polaroid factories worldwide are being shut down and the company has stopped producing all Polaroid films from February this year. This series is, therefore, a lament for a photographic format that embodied a singular way of looking at and imagining the world."




















Manas Bhattacharya is a cinematographer, photographer, painter and composer based in Kolkata, India. He studied comparative literature and film in the university, and is currently completing his studies in cinematography from the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute. For the past six years, he has been working as a cinematographer in experimental fiction films and documentaries. He has received support from the India Foundation for the Arts for new media projects in 2002 and 2008. His visual work has recently been shown in a juried exhibition at the Centre for Fine Art Photography, Colorado, USA, appeared in Black Robert Journal, and is forthcoming in Indian contemporary art journals Art Connect and Marg. Manas is at present preparing for his first solo exhibition to be held at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre in Kolkata, in March 2009.

 
 
 
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Elizabeth Kate Switaj


Wearing

even if my jacket were leather
                                              (steel spiked
                my tofu steak
                                              or something tougher
even if I drank
                               Milwaukee's Beast

I'd still sleep
still have mouth & nose
                            open to disease

I was somewhere in between
& nevermind love)
                                     when Jon raped me


Fog from I-90

this thin veil over land
   & not respecting lakes
makes trees into carpet
   & houses      baldness
where no one lives or lets
   birds & beetles kill
what they desire

     is not this gray that makes
color blend in color
                  & is not even gray
but sharp patches curving
into each other
                     thatching
                     layered
                             still diverse


Abutment

all ten who have begun in gray
shelters on gray curbs of free
ride zone
                  have avoided
seats in reticulation
             gray accordion heart of bus
   half loved to spin in
                                     as old as nineteen

& given up to no avail at ends
                               of floating bridge
rising from water
                            as our feet rose stairs
                above mass transit tires

no one can tell
when they begin land
what song is on iPod
leaking from white buds

                                     & no one on a cell phone
                     cares

                      we've been this way before


The Rapist's Son

you've never even heard of such
things when your crayon-thick pencil turns
breasts into fingers
                               sperm into one-eyed monsters
                swarming measured
with your first shaky numbers     (you don't even know
how many by your fingers

     wax etched in housepaint
will follow your first knife
                                    This isn't destiny
                                              is
                                                your line
scotch tape palimpsest can't save
(except your name
                               was his
           straw beneath acrylic god
no handmade book to save
the blooms of your Proteus(tor)


October Head|ines

rescued climber survived
on centipedes overlaid
      fractal generated
      shamisen strings
                               & feather breaks

   the very mathematical
(possibility) he'd be saved
made strumming their legs im- (

another world
                                with a broken ankle
crawling through southern Mt. Baker
devouring creatures    w/excess
                                                         of walk

(o investment bankers
                                                         o)



Elizabeth Kate Switaj (www.elizabethkateswitaj.net) has two full-length collections of poetry forthcoming: Magdalene & the Mermaids from Paper Kite Press and How to Drink a Floral Moon from Blue Lion Books. Her chapbook, The Broken Sanctuary: Nature Poems, is currently available from Ypolita Press and her echap, Shanghai (has more capital) from Gold Wake Press. She edits Crossing Rivers Into Twilight, blogs for Fringe Magazine, and serves as assistant editor for Inertia Magazine.

 
 
 
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