and casts it wide – new energy sustaining night.
now she lifts her arms, her darkening cape
bruised blue bruised grey
till it’s a smear of red
breathes it into lungs
into legs, belly
sucks it
she
She sits on the horizon sun cupped between her feet
she
sucks it
into legs, belly
breathes it into lungs
till it’s a smear of red
bruised blue bruised grey
now she lifts her arms, her darkening cape
and casts it wide – new energy sustaining night.
Category Archives: Issue No. 1
Alphabetical Adlestrop by Mark Totterdell
A Adlestrop, Adlestrop afternoon,
all and, and and, and and, and and, and and,
and bare, because birds, blackbird,
by came, cleared close.
Cloudlets drew dry, express fair.
Farther, farther for Gloucestershire grass,
haycocks, heat high. Him his hissed.
I, I in it, June, late, left less lonely.
Meadowsweet minute. Mistier name, name.
No, no, no, of of on one, one, one
only Oxfordshire platform, remember round.
Sang. Saw someone. Sky. Steam still than that.
The the the the the the the the;
there, throat train! Unwontedly up
was, was what? Whit? Willow? Willow-herb?
Yes!
from FURTHER AUTOVARIATIONS – two poems by Jerome Rothenberg
Reminders of a Vanished Earth
1/
the poem as landscape
The definition
of a place
is more than
what was seen
or what was
felt before
when dreaming
of the dead
the way
a conflagration
wrapped itself
around his world
leaving in his mind
a trace of dunes
the fallout from
a ring of mountains
reminders
of a vanished earth
the landscape
marked with rising tufts
the hardness of
clay tiles
that press against
our feet like bricks
the soil concealed
beneath its coverings
through which a weave
of twisted wires
crisscross the empty
field as markers
to commemorate
the hapless dead
the ones who fly
around like ghosts
bereft of either
home or tomb
in what would once
have been their world.
The count fades out
beyond 10,000
leaves them to be swept
down endless ages
fused together
or else set apart
lost nomads
on the road
to desolation
a field on mars
they wait to share
with others
dead at last.
…
2/
never done counting
Enclosed by matter
all my thoughts
scream for prophecy.
When I wake up on Mondays
the night sky is hanging
above me…..galaxies
shedding their images
fading unknown
in the half light
a light that confounds me.
Nothing we know is unreal
& nothing is real.
There is only the face
of a woman
blind in the sun
& a voice that cries out
in a language like French.
When she raises her arms
they look distant & lame,
something there
that won’t work but falls flat
against me. I will follow her
up to the moon, will watch her
paint herself red
with no sense
of the distances
still to be traveled,
no plot to adjust to
but numbers
that show me
the little I know,
the way one
vanishing universe
shrinks till it swallows
another.
There are worlds here
hidden from sight
whose ends are like
their beginnings,
the world in daylight
turns dark
the blaze of noon
caught in their mirrors,
as the sun slips
through our fingers
never done counting
where the globe
has dropped
out of sight.
..
You’ll find much about Jerome Rothenberg and his enormous contribution to the world of poetry at:
https://jacket2.org/commentary/jerome-rothenberg
Waiting on Third Avenue by Pierre Joris
Waiting on Third Avenue
& 81st street,
that’s Bay Ridge
not the prick-
shaped island on
a Saturday pre-fever
afternoon,
just out post
lunch @ the
Bridge View Diner
where we’ve never
ever had a bridge
view, & while you go
into the Brooklyn Market
which isn’t a market
at all
& I watch
our bikes al-
ready laden
with what was bought
at the actual market,
two tee shirts criss
cross each other
right between me
& our bikes
& the shirt going
north reads
All you need is less
& the one going
south says
below the picture
of a large
crucifix-shaped
corkscrew,
screw it!
..
Klein at us the by Pierre Joris
Oral homophonico-mechanical translation of Gottfried Benn’s “Kleine Aster” using MacSpeech Dictate.
..
Line as of Colombia for bold the post didn’t teach wished and.
It can die now how to team I know the doing good heavy us to
Switch in the 10 dependent.
But its initial nibble with scouts
Wouldn’t they’re how
Make I none none and mess up
So move with Doman L-shaped,
More sushi conditionals and happen, then think of it
In death may been begin to get him.
-ish Park Disney team in the worst mood
swishing beholds vote,
but it’s Monday soon make the.
Think gibberish sucked in dying of Batson!
Who is hunched,
Klein at a stuff. If
Philip Guston Considered As An Ekphrastic Text by Chris Stewart
He takes his feet with him
And his hands.
..
He piles the corpses of his favourable reviews
In a cart.
..
They carry their feet
So they can work
Preserve their hands
In crude oil like ammonites,
..
Stack their lungs
Like smoking chimneys
Flaring effluent,
..
Discharge themselves from hospital mortuaries
And retard against walls where
The dead queue patiently.
..
He piles his hands as a bonfire
They light
And
The chiascuro hides
What they refused to see:
..
Feet
And
Hands
Gathered
Smoking
Late at night
In the kitchen
..
Window volcanic
Magma night metamorphic
Ammonite
Tar
Bitumen
Formaldyhyde
Smokestacks.
..
A charred cinder cross
On unkempt weed-lawn
Ayrian mower in shed.
..
Crude oil on tap,
Seabed in the kitchen sink,
Plates unwashed
No visitors come to visit
The plughole
He struck.
..
His feet feed mushrooms
Sitting in the basket
That forgets the dog’s bark.
..
Hands point
But they don’t laugh any more.
His back remembers the applause of slaps.
Migration
New shores
Flat palm on cheek
Connect
Red face
Dishevelled hood.
..
His new work?
No good.
Machine in the Ghost by Ira Lightman
there is a ghost school
your rectangle nests in it and
is a school with a name
mine may square have could
perhaps bebeen
..
there is a call to
no call to
bell hour clock second minute
counted cost
..
blubber to a chum
concertina memories
betweeeeeeen
a hand perpendicular on the z
from a face
..
reassemble ass-let us be
serious
aged 4 to 5 waddle in the
sound-swallow
noise and eye’s-cries is
..
booth your partake
five year term primaries
five year term go to my office
..
in seven years all the cells
and even the head gone
in-steep-tutor-shun
..
now test labour-rat-TORY conditions
insultation quest on air
..
That Cat Beginning by Ira Lightman
..
Proofreader and storyteller. Has three books of poems, a dozen chapbooks and broadcasts occasionally on BBC radio 3 and 4.
Paranomia: Suites by Peter J. King
..
..
Peter J. King (b. 1956; Boston, Lincolnshire) was active on the London poetry scene in the 1970s, running Tapocketa Press, and co-founding words worth magazine. In 1980 he took up philosophy, and is lecturer in philosophy at Pembroke College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Returning intermittently to poetry, including translation from Modern Greek with Andrea Christofidou, he began seriously writing poetry again in 2013, including translation from German, and has been published in journals such as Tears in the Fence, Dream Catcher, New Walk, The Stare’s Nest, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Three Drops from a Cauldron, and streetcake.
..
We May Not Sing by Geraldine Green
the wolf song
but we can and must try
and the bee song tree song
insect and amphibian song
the old songs
the flower nations
bird sisters bird brothers
sister moon brother sun and
lizard song
must sing the spring song
the old songs
the bee songs
wolf songs worm song
badger hare
and jay song
never forget the old songs
they are our heart ways
our pathways
the spirit way back
to our selves.
..
the curly mind linguistically innovative poetry - weird & risky 