Poetry (I) The L.A. Day Grinds On Me or I Wish I Had a River . . . RD Armstrong The Men Loved Storms Michael Carman The Real Story Miles Coon Paul Espel Giving It Time Cicadas third world customs When Fed Silence Allen C. Fischer Unsaid Dana Gioia Daniela Gioseffi In Confinement of Spirit I Wake in the Dark The Unborn Calf After Confinement, Sudden Blood The Contortionist's Dilemma James Hale Maureen Holm Ant Haiku Ex Natura I and II Nicholas Johnson Alone (For Admiral Byrd) One of the Monkeys Polychrome Valerie Lawson These Are the Pains of Roses Robin Lim Poetry II Curriculum Vitae Samuel Menashe ~ A Prison Bus, Beige Greggory Moore ~ Cicada (excerpt) Mark Nickels ~ Alice Notley ~ D. Nurkse ~ Bearings Charles Pierre ~ The Piano String Terence Purtell ~ Elaine Schwager ~ The Revolutionary Gets Lost in the Supermarket Jessica Stein ~ . ~ . ~ The L.A. Day Grinds On Me or I Wish I Had a River  .  .  . RD Armstrong It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. — Raymond Chandler (Red Wind) This day is no different from Any other It swirls around me Yesterday's news The bric-a-brac of Fourth Street Trash and I'm not really here yet I am as here as I'll ever be As far as I know As far as I can tell I could be sitting here Beside myself instead Observing: the way the Music surges the way the Crowd seems to Pulse in time to it Like an undersea ballet The way these sad little stories Vivisect my morning Like forceps pulling the shiny Tumor apart           People will always try to burn you down           With their dirt-clod minds their sad           Attempts at irony and deceit their           Barely disguised anger I am gritting my teeth Leaning into the wind Call me con man Call me rip-off artist Call me a taxi (R.D. Armstrong is the editor and publisher of Lummox Press of San Pedro, California. home.earthlink.net/~lumoxraindog. This is his first contribution to the magazine.) ~ . ~ The Men Loved Storms Michael Carman The men loved storms and prayed for them. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) Though ice two fingers thick lined windows stark on barracks walls, and breath of ice whispered in their ears, the men lay listening, bony shoulders under blankets thin as napkins in the dark, For the ringing of the mallet on the rail the warder's mallet ringing reveille and they listened for the boots of orderlies come to take away the steaming shit-filled pail And call out Foot cloths! Jackets! Count off! One two, one two one Prisoner number! Gang number! Work detail number! prisoners' watches in guards' pockets, long time gone. They heard guards shout above the wind at ten below picks and shovels rang on frozen ground the sun a chancre on this lip of world, and all around, the landscape vast with snow. And yet behind their eyes, the men still dreamed not of what was lost or taken or forgot women's breasts, meat pies, hearths as far away as heaven but what seemed A glory earth's own holocaust. Though storms would stop the trucks that brought them lumps of coal and flour for bread though storms would mean more work for labor lost All the same, the men loved storms, and prayed for them to come. For storms in chaos warmed the blood as if the men were home, and storms would rage inscrutable sublime and set the men's hearts beating in the men's own time. (Michael Carman was formerly a newspaper journalist in the Midwest, founding editor of Richmond Magazine in Richmond, Virginia, and, most recently, group publisher with Lippincott Williams & Wilkins in Manhattan. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Columbia University and is a first-year graduate student in poetry at Sarah Lawrence. This is her first contribution to the magazine.) ~ . ~ The Real Story Miles Coon It's the way the story's told that matters: don't focus on the tattered shawl, worn around her shoulders, but on her shoulders, still soft, warm, though winter's come, her family gone.            It's not about the storm, the corn chowder warming on the stove, a crust of bread as stale as the day was long. It's about the book and the lamp light, music from a distant time on her radio. It's about the life of her mind,            her heart tied up in its own freedom, seeking neither praise nor tribute, but rather, its own fulfillment, the quiet calm of its own making. (Miles Coon is a graduate writing student at Sarah Lawrence College.) ~ . ~ Paul Espel Giving It Time A wind comes up and leaves us more alone. The same unciphered reasons in the air. Old bones and ashes cultivate the lawn. Hollow music fills the afternoon. And holy children whirling in the sun. Like gods we are removed and stoic, even in surprise, (that subtle sonic boom). We stare at things. At nothing. Shadows crawl. The wind continues. Spiders stagger in their grip‹ concede this breach of June. ~ . Cicadas Sure clocks of their bodies know this rendezvous— dapper black metallic creepers, decked out in rented crystal wings, scouting the new world with bulging crimson eyes: a ripeness aged in umpteen seasons tippling roots and tubers beneath our cautious feet. Now courting with huge voices. Or thrashing madly, even on mailbox posts, on spurned tires. Mocking our diplomacy with flailing consummation in these urgent hours— screaming their small names in white oaks, in silver maples. ~ . third world customs stuck between destinations— you've lost your passport that's what you keep telling them at the terminal but they're pointing at you and yelling things in quick bursts like machine-gun fire now escorting you to somewhere you don't really wish to go that prayer you know by heart keeps playing in hour head and faith can move mountains if you believe in mountains in a trash bin you can just make out today's financial headlines in your native tongue: Consolidate Your Holdings at last they let you through annoyed but satisfied that you are who you say you are— still "security" is staring you can feel them from behind (thinking the worst) on your way to claim some excess baggage you glance at the temporary passport it could be anybody's the picture doesn't look like you or have you changed so much so soon the stamp is there, the date and some official foreign phrases— when all is lost things like this become the only proof of who you are and something illegible that wants translation some unknown footnote you may never decipher is scribbled in the margin (Paul Espel is a regular contributor to the magazine. Masthead.) ~ . ~ When Fed Silence Allen C. Fischer Just as wind pervades the narrows and corners of back alleys, dreams breathe hope. Oh, they may howl and skew as when a stuttering beggar spits and a stricken dog yelps. Yet silence them so they cannot vent, and all will be lost. Heartbeat will deafen and out of the closet of each body, its skeleton will bolt. (Allen C. Fischer, a former director of marketing for a large corporation, splits his time between Saugerties (Ulster County) and Brooklyn, New York. He has had poems published in Atlanta Review, Indiana Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rattapallax, River Styx, and 1997 Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry.) ~ . ~ Unsaid Dana Gioia So much of what we live goes on inside— The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches Of unacknowledged love are no less real For having passed unsaid. What we conceal Is always more than what we dare confide. Think of the letters that we write our dead. (From Interrogations at Noon (Graywolf 2001).) ~ . ~ Daniela Gioseffi In Confinement of Spirit I Wake in the Dark When terror festers in me and my eyes open at a strange noise in the midst of night frightened of my coming death or what my child's life will become, I go into the woods to listen for the loon's laugh on the lake and sit by the lull of the lapping waters, glistening where the great blue heron fed in the day, and I come alone among the peace of the wild world, and realize that birds and fish do not upset their lives with politics or imagined grief. I sit lulled by the lapping water of the deep lake and listen to the tiny songs of insects, until I feel the stars reaching down to me as I reach up to them amidst the great mystery of endless space full of the smell of burning stars and I know that many stars I see—millions of light years away— have died long ago but were seen by lovers much longer than I can ever live. I come into the presence of creation and feel the confinement of my spirit left behind in my bed and I wait for the great sun to rise. I rest awake in the vast grace of the world and I am free to be in the moment of my being without pain or grief, breathing deep of the dark pines as my spirit freed with wild things sings with the gurgling leap of a fish. Even the owl's feathery swoop and the vole's scream as it's gulped seems in its place and at peace. ~ . The Unborn Calf The calf could not be born in the icy rain Pouring through the grey sunrise. The mother lay in mud grunting, scrambling to rise, and the white and black lump bobbed, dangled, hung wet and dripping blood from her hind. She tried to gallop away, but the lump flapped from side to side, a sack of swollen muck with mouth yawning agape. The old farmer roped her, pulled her down on her side in a skid of flying mud, and tied her. He put his hand up inside, beside the slithering calf which still hung a bag of half-life from her, born to where the hooves were caught and would not come. He wrestled until sweat poured from his forehead in the cold, and the cow groaned until all thrashing stopped—finally, as he took a rifle from his wagon and aimed for the soft temples one, two, of both heads of flesh from which we come half born into cold light for the pain, the shooting of the young Mother and child tethered into death. ~ . After Confinement, Sudden Blood I walk on sand, sink deep into fire. Sharp knives cut the walls of my stomach crack open as glass. My moans are red jelly, a mass of shining splinters pokes out through my belly, you are born! You are not twins! You cry and are lifted high dangling red string. Numb lungs, living nerves, this amazing absence of air! I vomit ginger ale into my just washed hair. Silver elves in chromium light poke needles, bunch intestines back, sew flesh seams. Your screams are stitches taken in me. They shatter my glass belly again; more glass splinters fly up. No warning, no Ladies Home Journal story, just sudden blood and you are there and you are screaming into my matted hair. (Daniela Gioseffi is a regular contributor to the magazine. Masthead. Her interview with Galway Kinnell appears in this issue. ) ~ . ~ The Contortionist's Dilemma James Hale Because he can, he twists himself Into a breadbox no bigger Than his dislocated torso, its height, Width, and length defined By ribcage, arm, and femur. Because He can, the exchange he makes Of hands for feet seems almost Natural to us, as if anyone could walk Palms down, soles up, face back. Because he can, he follows his Escape from the straitjacket By fighting his way back into it, Teething shut the final buckle‹ Houdini, eat your heart out. But then again, because he can, He suffers as a dog the joke That asks the question, Why? ~ . ~ Maureen Holm Ant Haiku Ants administer the crucial drool to fists of pent-up peonies. ~ . Ex Natura I Because it is deep in the nature of things that snow dissolve and flame consume the pine, that the ache be keenest at the oiled joinder of divinely fitted counterparts, and leave a stain upon the skin; diminished or increased, strengthened or retired, each according to the burden of its weariness in the world, surrendered sinew by sinew, torn piece by piece, as hyena devours wildebeest —on the hoof. 'You should live on the tundra.' Friend, I will love her best for the saying of it when I am feeble and the page gives nothing back. Until then, not death, but the nuisance of desire, jackal nipping at my heels.                       * * * To what loss impute a Natural intendment as the mockingbird looks on aghast, tone-deaf from the moment when the cello face is dashed against the unsuspecting flagstone, disconcerted as the Aing twitches uncontrollably along the path of broken frets? Musician squeezes out his hot remorse as he gathers up the resonating splinters, yet marvels that the footsore timber wolf digs herself no burrow in the snow. (Prior publ.: Southern California Anthology) Ex Natura II No enemy bold enough to seize him by the throat, he is enfeebled by the odor of the pine and climbs the rankest for the panorama of killing meadows after dark, when prey is hid and crickets bow a mortal day's relief. On the cliff of his first disenchantment with instinct and hungers at dawn, invisible to condor and hawk, he gnawed on the knuckle of self-pity and vomited up the lice. What becomes of the lunivore who starves at howling heights, rubbing at the blade of gold wedged in his brown tiger eye? If he runs far away over flatland or tundra, shying jag of hill and branch of tree, must he return, reoccupy the rock, and succumb to its misery twice? Trust the wolf. Trust the wolf. Bend, lick the paw within, cracked and scaly from exposure. Enfold in January, flank to shoulder, and breathe warmth long a bushy tail. Heed the needle, but reclimb the pine. The marauder heart takes fanged delight in new stages of alarm, drives geese from the frozen pond, flees the blaze but not the grizzly, and howls a perfect G sharp. Little wonder she wanted him as companion in this brutish timber season, he who let her weariness recline on a bed of scented leaves. (Maureen Holm is one of the magazine's senior editors.) ~ . ~ Nicholas Johnson Alone For Admiral Byrd I think they'll find me buried here. I cannot feel the cold; I've gone snowblind. I live between these walls of snow and air. I lie in bed. I know these walls. I stare at strange shapes twisted like a vine. I think they'll find me buried here. I listen hard. Around me voices flare like colors in the sun. Only time lives on inside these walls of snow and air. My life shrinks with the cold. I do not dare go back outside. My death is by design. I think they'll find me buried here. This arctic night must end somewhere. In three more months the sun will shine inside these walls of snow and air. All this ice is just a grey nightmare. If something else is living, give a sign. I think they'll find me buried here between these walls of snow and air. (Prior publ.: Pivot) [American Naval officer Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888-1955) led five expeditions to Antarctica, the first in 1928, the last in1955.] ~ . One of the Monkeys I'm one of the monkeys they've got typing in a room full of monkeys. It's a play Shakespeare wrote back in the old days they want us to write again. So we're writing a play we never read. They keep inviting strangers to watch us and the strangers say "They wrote, 'to bee or nutti to bee.'!" They stay too long if we write something exciting— but the bananas flow like wine. We know it's a crazy, morbid, ranting play, a stew full of murder, love, but with a noble feel. Shocked, I see hack monkeys come and monkeys go. One keeper killed my father. What should I do? I'm watching him. My teeth are sharp as steel. (Prior publ.: Pivot) (Nicholas Johnson is one of the magazine's senior editors.) ~ . ~ Polychrome Valerie Lawson We talk the things we know the tapestry chair, the leather futon, the fold-out couch; serve coffee, tea, clear spring water, fill ashtrays with Abyssinian phrases. The elephant foot umbrella stand cues the potted palm, antimacassars absorb their own secrets. These are foreign words we sit among, you and I, birchwood rocking chair, the cadence of a planked floor. You speak to me of the willow trailing grace, sweeping paradox, phototropism gone awry, the explosion of tap root grown upward into a hair-thin mat; the ability to tread water, breathe, carve stone; of river beds and dry gorges, hand-knotted silk rugs, a braided one made from the old woolen coats of ancestors. The ambiguity of these lines is purposeful. I weep as I write them, not knowing why. The rocking chair makes the same sound, the runners of a sled on snow, on sand. Tomorrow I will speak with Lawrence and it will be the same, the echo of rooms treading on pools of color shot through leaded glass: ruby, cobalt, gold. (Poet/photographer Valerie Lawson was named 'Up and Coming Poet' at the Cambridge Poetry Festival 2001. Lawson's print appearances include Aeolus, Earth's Daughters, Sensations Magazine, and The South Boston Literary Gazette. Online her work appears in Lid, Lightning Bell Journal, and the Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry anthology (pdf) published by Rattapallax and Fictionopolis. This is her first contribution to the magazine.) ~ . ~ These Are the Pains of Roses Robin Lim Waiting woman face hovering like an overripe moon. Sky narrowing to a star-gate tonight. The midwife's hands are paired owl's wings protecting your harvest of hormones, and foolish love. Shed pride. Be taken apart utterly. Be afraid as each new mother has been, since love invented sex. For this travail even courage must be cast off, as you will throw away clothing, shame. These are the pains of roses. You will be ashes before your work is done. Your heart will break forever on the shore of a life you evict tonight. (Prior pub. in Midwifery Today and in the magazine's Jan'01 feature, "Because They Did," released just this month in Print Series version.) ~ . ~ .[Poetry II]