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CARTIER STREET REVIEW June 2012

Joy LeftowPrincipal EditorNew York

Bernard AlainFounding EditorOttawa blog site

DubblexAssistant EditorNew York blog site

Brad EubanksStaff City State blog site

Thomas HubbardStaffPuget Sound blog site

Marc CarverStaffLondon blog site

Mike FinleyLayout and Web GuySt. Paul blog site

Cover: Dream, by Ben Heine (partial, full image inside)

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Table of ContentsFira by Night, by Ben Heine...............................................6The Man On The Bremerton Ferry, by Keith Moul...........7Double Landscape, by Ben Heine.....................................11John Lennon, by Ben Heine.............................................12Escape, by Wendy Brown-Báez .......................................13Two Poems by Mike Finley...............................................17

A Monk at the Door......................................................17Everything Dies But Nothing Goes Away....................20

The Toy Box of Youth: Mike Finley's Yukon Gold, reviewed by Danny Klecko...............................................25London, by Ben Heine.....................................................33The Self Collected: Mike Finley’s Yukon Gold, re...........34Green and Magenta Lizard, by Nina Kurilof...................42Two Poems by Christopher Title.....................................43

First Tomato.................................................................43Taking Samples............................................................44

Featured artist: Ben Heine...............................................45Brussels by Night, by Ben Heine......................................47Featured artist: Nina Kuriloff..........................................48Abstract Rainbow, by Nina Kuriloff................................50sister of the caves, by Chansonette Buck.........................51Bicycle Dreams, by Mary Kay Rummel...........................54Dream, by Ben Heine.......................................................58

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Muttnik, by Danny Klecko...............................................60The Assassination of Jimi Hendrix, by T.K.O’Rourke....63Mic check mic check, by Dubblex....................................72Looking Around, by Gerald Solomon..............................76The Day I Met Tennessee, by B.Z. Niditch .....................78lean against the letting go, by Christopher Lawrence.....80Salmon Spawn, by Mary Eliza Crane ..............................82A Wedding, by Charles Brooks III...................................84Peace Rainbow, by N. Kuriloff.........................................86We Are The Ninety-Nine Percent! by Firestone Feinberg..........................................................................................87Silence, by Afzal Moolla...................................................89Buddha on His Throne, photo by Joy Leftow.................90

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FIRA BY NIGHT, BY BEN HEINEBEN HEINE

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THE MAN ON THE BREMERTON FERRY, BY KEITH MOUL

KEITH MOUL

All I miss adds volume to time’s vacuum.Solitude evokes from me a feeble say. Random events may:check a need for friends;misdirect a stroll to a run for one’s life;strengthen resolve to rebuild from unmet conditions;surround me with fruitful space; fail me silently;course cosmic lives to intersect on ferries;give voice an object, with time ever running on. So, I am ready today for this man who talksat me as though long absent, well-met, avuncular;as though the ferry lounge were his parlor;as though the red-satin sunset his personal illumination;and I his shy, intimate relative or friend, chosento register in script his painful talesand collaborate in the loss of his facultiesbefore dark and wet weather settle in.

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Although on my way I am not his friend,I am where he needs his friend to be. With his smile, he creates convenience. His eyes, so weakened, obscure justice.I am contrite for whatever is my guilt. And on we go until my silence fills melike a basin with showers overflowing. With his voice always more at ease,I steal another’s life,my felony an act of uneasy will. I shake in his reverend air. His blessing offersample commutation to fit an hour trip. His frankness frightens me. I am more shy. On other occasions, in its glidethrough Puget Sound the Yakimahas calmed my eddy in its wake,has excited fervor for this land of waters.Not this time.

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When finally I talk, my words inherit voices:a stupid man who mumbles an inanehomage to dinner and freedom;the cornered man, agreeable to a fault,anxious for his own release; anda man who shares his heart,as at home, or in the parlor of a friend,freely at ease with age, with hurt,and generous with empathy. When he departs the vessel, the manon the Bremerton ferry,I am changed, liberatedto afford a last assumption:warm at home, he relaxes in his chair,grateful having met his old friendat a moment of calmbefore the evening storm. Returning to Seattle,I am grateful for his errorand envy his friendships.

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KEITH MOUL is a retired insurance executive, with a PhD in English. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife of 44 years, Sylvia. His daughter, Ianthe, is an exciting artist, whose website is www.iantheart.com. Keith has published his poems widely, starting in 1967. His chapbook, The Grammar of Mind, was released in November, 2010 by Blue & Yellow Dog Press. He also publishes his photos frequently. Also in 2010, a poem he wrote in response to a photo he took was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He will not be surprised if his readers envy him his pleasant life.

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DOUBLE LANDSCAPE, BY BEN HEINEBEN HEINE BEN EINE

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JOHN LENNON, BY BEN HEINEBEN HEINE

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ESCAPE, BY WENDY BROWN-BÁEZ WENDY BROWN-BÁEZ

Everything is possible in a red pick-up truck: even secrets.The sea breeze chilled my hot heart into rest, the sandbeneath my feet curved to the shape of my invisibility:no one laughed at my disappearance but you.

In red we fled. If they wanted to find us, nothing isbolder than red shining on a dusty Mexican road, the fewbelongings you grabbed rattled in the back, every bumpa jarring reminder of how far we traveled from certainty.Everything is possible in a red truck: even flight.

You bought the truck cash down intending to turn wheelsinto wings so we could find shelter, succor, strengthto move through the nightmare of crushed stars like a blazeof cempasúchil flowers to honor what is gone.

The road unwound to beach. The tacos tasted like sea blissand the micheladas of cerveza and hope. I stood with my feet in the waves and a sunsetbenediction. I opened my arms wide for the first time sincemy son died. “To you, Madre del Mar.” She answered:

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“Everything is possible: even courage

to go on, to live, to journey to the reason you are herebound each to each by the thread of truthand the ribbon of dare.”

We slept hammocked, we dove into womb waterbirthing us. I grew mermaid scales along the rootsof revival. You looked as though God had kissed you. When I licked the salt from the rim of myglass, I tasted freedom: Everything is possiblein a red pick-up truck headed to the sea.

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WENDY BROWN-BÁEZ is a writer, teacher, and performance poet. She has published poetry and prose in numerous literary journals such as The Litchfield Review, The Chrysalis Reader, Minnetonka Review, and Wising Up Press anthologies, and is the author of Ceremonies of the Spirit (Plain View Press, ’09) and transparencies of light (Finishing Line Press, ’11). Wendy has performed her poetry from Minneapolis to Mexico in bars, cabarets, cafés, galleries, bookstores and cultural centers. She is the creator of Writing Circles for Healing and received 2008 and 2009 McKnight grants to teach writing workshops for at risk youth. www.wendybrownbaez.com

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TWO POEMS BY MIKE FINLEY

A Monk at the Door

One summer morning the doorbell woke me.When I opened the door, there was a man in a Tibetan robe,wearing Buddy Holly frames.He was a chaplain from the Minneapolis Police Department.He read from a piece of paper in his hand.He told me that my daughter had been found dead in her room.

Then I had to tell my wife.Rachel, a man downstairs …says Daniele …has died.This really happened.It was August 18, 2009.

Within moments of hearing my daughter was dead,God died, too.I had put put all my trust in his faithfulness.I knew we were on a journey, a journey I could not understand.But I trusted God to see us through.

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I prayed every day for protection for Daniele,from the dangers that surrounded her life.And so God began to shrink, to collapse to a dot.I could see him disappearing into air.I could hear his tiny voice calling out: goodbye.

The day of the funeral, a beautiful hawk perchedon our backyard lines.A dozen people looked up as it surveyed us, shrugged,and flew away over the garage.

Sometimes in the fall, down by the river bluffs, I see eagles.And herons. And ducks.Always, a curious sensation that they are not just birds,they are messengers somehow.Here I am, they are saying. I am here.I am everywhere.

Winter was hard. Rachel went away.Friends stopped calling.They were sick of my stories.I sat and watched the satellite and I drank.Sometimes I was so angry I would argue all day,with the people who no longer called.Behind their backs I told them the truth to their faces.

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Spring came, the trees leafed out and blossomed.One day I heard a tapping in the dining room.A robin had returned and flown in the back door,and now was leaping over and over againinto the same sealed window.The bird was frantic, afraid and exhausted.I fetched a plastic Walmart bag from the pantryand slipped it over the frightened bird.As gently as I could I placed the bagon an open planter in the back yard.The bird sat paralyzed, unblinking, one wing cocked awry.I left the bag and bird alone, and when I returned minutes later,the bag was empty ...the bird was gone.

And for the first time I found myself wondering about something …If God was truly gone ... if nothing mattered and the universe wasn't just a snide joke at the expense of the conscious …then why was that man on the porch, with the stubbly scalp and the stubbly chin and the stammering affect …and why was he wearing saffron robes?

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And why has that color …the color of the embalmed body, but also the sign of surprise,been everywhere I look?

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Everything Dies But Nothing Goes Away

In Kotzebue there is no recycling program.No one wants what this small city far away to the norththrows away.It's too expensive to go after their shit for the small savings ofreprocessing it.A crusher would cost a million plusand everything would still have to be sortedand separated.You think of the melting glaciersand you think of the energy hat went into everythingthat is visible everywhere.And it's not just the pop cans, it's everything.And so the front yards fill up, with everythingpeople have used –the cars that no longer run,the freezers that stopped freezing,the broken toilets, the ravaged boats,old air conditioners, rusted grills ,the splintered plywood rampsused by skateboarders to get liftfrom the pull of the tundra.bicycles, snow-gos, barrows, storage containers,chainsawed doghouses,

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shipping containers as big as a house,cement mixers that ground to a halt.I saw industrial equipmentI can never identify,great hulking iron things with fans and flangesand levers that once did something powerfulbut now can only sitIn front of a log cabin I saw a broken treadmilllabeled "Endurance."I saw four school lockers, leaning side by sideagainst a wall, their yellow paint flakingin the subzero cold.And up on the tar-paper roofs of these caved-in houses,the racks of moose and caribou,skulls still connected, vegetarian teeth baredto the cold, the trophies of long-ago hunts.And sits on their lawns forever,I don't mean lawns, because there is no grass,it sits on their property,it gives away their secrets,it's a 3D photo album, shot to scale,it's the story of their livesstanding around doing nothing.no one pays the gas to have it sent to a landfillput on a barge to be chopped up and reused

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A part of me says how wasteful.A part of me says what a mess.But it teaches us a lesson.it teaches you that everything we maketakes up space.We who ship everything off to the dumphave convinced ourselves we are tidy peoplewhen somewhere a half dozen zip codes awaya landfill is groaning from our excesses. And we look at these people of the northand wring our noseslike they are the slobs and we are the civilized oneswhile our shit is packed off to trouble some peoplein China, in Mexico, or under some mountainin Nevada,Or it leeches into our own water substrateand we wonder why our SAT scores are dropping.It's a filthy-ass world however you shave itso why not keep the bones above ground, to see?And that's what they do, in Kotzebue –the permafrost prevents deep graves,as if the earth is saying. oh no you don't,you can't stick that slop in me,so you lay them atop of it instead,

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you heap a mound of stones and gravelover the suck-mouth ancestorsand the beautiful girls in beaded fur parkas,you strew plastic flowers on the sea-washed stonesflowers that fade from the cold and the blinding sun,and say this was our life,we cannot tell a lie,and even if we could,the earth would not allow it. We honor our ancestors because they brought us to this placethey set us on this pathand even if it is not a path that anyone wants to stealwe cling to it because it is ours.These people lived in valor in a hard placeand they never complainedand their successes are measured day to dayby the children they bore,and the children that survived,and they will never be junk to us because though they havepassed onthey are our hopebecause they gave us us,and the most beautiful thing is when it snowsand the snow comes down and covers everything,

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and we are all together finally, the way we really are,and the junk disappears under the clean new coat,and the dead sit up in their resting places and smileand holdout their hands to catch the snow,it is proof that things go onit is proof we are gratefuland everything mattered in the end

MIKE FINLEY is the layout editor for Cartier Street Review. He is author of over 140 books and nearly a hundred videos. He is winner of a Pushcart Prize He is the husband of writer Rachel Frazin and father of Canadian Guitar Festival winner (2011) Jon Finley. Mike lives in Saint Paul.

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THE TOY BOX OF YOUTH: MIKE FINLEY'S YUKON GOLD, REVIEWED BY DANNY KLECKO REVIEWED BY DANNY KLECKO

Yukon Gold: Poems de terre, 1970-2010; With a Key to the Mysteriesby Mike FinleyKraken Press, St. PaulDownloable free at this link

Reviewer's disclaimer: Mike Finley has been my friend for many years.

Opening Yukon Gold is like is like finding the toy box of your youth on your 50th birthday.This book took 40 years to compile. Forty years denotes an

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..entire generation, and when I thought of all the labor, passion and toil that had been put into these 300 poems, I became overwhelmed.

I say Mike Finley has the most unique poetry today. This befuddles my colleagues.

But to me, my choice makes perfect sense. When I read poems, the topic isn’t as important as the angle the poet views it from. When Finley begins a rant, you can be certain that he will start it from a vantage point that most of us would not have thought of using.

When I glanced at the table of contents, not 10 seconds elapsed before my first smile. Who else besides Larry David or Jerry Seinfeld could do a poem about Hitler, and not only “get away with it” but make you glad you invested a glance on it?Yep, Mike Finley can.In “Hitler in the Vestibule” we are treated to a story that Mike heard from a performance artist during a midnight show.When the comedian was a little boy he grew up in Vienna and was at a hotel with his parents. Like most kids, he searched for imaginative ways to entertain himself. One of his better ideas was to hang out in the elevator and push the buttons for every floor, lighting the panel up like a Christmas tree.

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How was the young boy to know that Hitler, on the very day of Anschluss, was in the lobby waiting to use the lift to take him to an important meeting? Hitler having to wait for a little boy on the day of his triumph!

Finley is deliberate in turning the most common people into heroic protagonists. In “Dishwasher” we are given a list of the different jobs in a restaurant from the top down. When the poem concludes, you can see Finley giving a wink of encouragement to us all.

But the dishwasher warms his blood at the wristsAnd it goes to his heart like wonderful liquorEveryone yelling, but he doesn’t hear

In “Thank You” Finley shares his gratitude with a motor cycle rider who sports the face of a pirate, leather pants and a beard of steel.

When this biker begins to ride slowly down Marshall Avenue,

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Finley’s son cranes his neck out of a tiny stroller.

To see you pass like Jesus entering the Jerusalem gate

And you wavedBut the greatest hero of them all was a barber named Dave. When Mike’s stepfather had finished his chemo treatments (he was dying from a brain tumor) Dave the barber would stop by every week. Even though his client was completely bald, Dave would pull out his clippers and run it across the skullwhere ghost hairs ran wild. They were unstoppable.

This would take place for about an hour, and both men would volley random conversations like “Kids today” or “Open Lots”

But the thing that touches Finley most is the phrase he ends with. When Dave was done he carefully

brushed the excess off Shook the cloth off on the porchLet nothing ride away on air

These lunch-bucket tributes are a continuing theme in Yukon Gold, and often times its subject matter will force you to

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slump into comfortable positions on the couch.

There is some edgy content that I’m glad I read. If I could forget “Jacob the Crow”, I might be grateful. It is the most controversial poem in the collection, dealing with the famous Minnesota child abduction case of Jacob Wetterling.

Like most of Mike’s poems, this one too starts with a natural occurrence. While hiking in the northern woods, Finley thinks he hears a boy’s shrill cry. As his eyes peer across a marsh in hopes of spotting a waving mitten in need of help, Mike then realizes this sound isn’t coming from a child in distress, but a distant crow.

Then the poem takes some dark twists and morphs into an outcome I will let you read for yourself.

But if you are one of those people who skip over footnotes, you mustn’t here. On the bottom of the page Mike goes into detail as to how even though he wrote this poem for people to have a common focal point for grieving, one person in particular sent a poem in return that was really creepy in a calculated serial-killer kind of way.

The FBI got involved. Unless you can handle intense – well, 30

you get the idea.

Then of course is the series of The New Yorker poems. Without a doubt “Minnesotan in New York” is my favorite.

A couple of years ago I had a cookbook published by the Minnesota Historical Society and the Martha Stewart campwanted me to come out to Manhattan to discuss it.

Before leaving, I was feeling a little apprehensive, and realizing this, Mike sent me this poem in the mail.

It may have been one of the kindest gestures anybody has ever shown me.

What made this experience special was that in the poem, we Minnesotans basically end up having the upper hand on the natives from the Big Apple since we are less affected by the cold.

All along 6th Avenue phalanxes of muggers and murders part

Melted from their purpose by sled dog eyesUrgent and cheerful on a cold, cold night.

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In “Dead Cat for Ray” our author sneaks a peek in his best friends diary, and instead of confessing, Mike simply starts his own diary, where the opening submission is about him peeking at his friends diary.

“Meet Me at the Carwash” and “University Avenue” are so epic that when I read them, I could see them in my mind as if they were movies, but not Hollywood movies, they were cooler and full of character like the stuff you see on the Independent Film Channel.

“Mini Van” and “Dog of God” were important reads as well.

I have to believe that. I could not have a cynic on my Top 10 Poets List.

Finley was once described as “America’s angry young poet,” but the poems “Minivan” and “The Dog of God” are proof that he subscribes to hope with a heart of gratitude.

Book reviews often look for clever ways to entice their audience to like (or dislike) a particular work. I’m just going to leave you with this. Yukon Gold, at 500+ pages, took me an entire day to read. While I was reading it, I really felt transformed. When I closed the book, I rested in a wonderful glow for over an hour. Then, when I realized that the

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experience was in my rear view mirror, getting smaller, I got depressed. I didn’t want to leave.

This book is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, people. Have fun with it.

DANNY KLECKO is the CEO of the Saint Agnes Baking Company in Saint Paul. In addition to feeding the Twin Cities daily, he has been able to lecture on baking and business principles throughout Europe and Asia. Although known as primarily a cookbook writer for the Minnesota Historical Society Press, he has also completed several poetry books and albums. His most recent is 30 Foot Pole (Lucky Park Productions). Danny lives with his wife Sue McGleno and four dogs in Highland Park.

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LONDON, BY BEN HEINEBY BEN HEINE

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THE SELF COLLECTED: MIKE FINLEY’S YUKON GOLD, RE REVIEWED BY CHRISTOPHER TITLE

If she’s good, and a little lucky, the poet arrives at a point in her career when the phone rings and an editor suggests publishing a collected works.

This comes after years of scribbling and years of licking envelopes—she has developed a taste for adhesive. She has worked hard, writing and otherwise, and so finds her books on the shelves of every bookstore in town. She is right proud of much of her work, but some she regrets, wonders, How did that happen?

A “collected” is a chance to draw from the best of her work and arrange it in such a way as to represent the full breadth and depth of her life’s literary effort. And, I suppose, it is a chance to relegate lesser work to the background. In the end, it is the culmination of her poetical career.

Does not this moment trump all other moments, all those rarities of acknowledgment and accolade, every single fleeting frisson experienced as a poet contributing to the field? And it is a vocation for her, a job she has shown up to day after day

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writing verse and other oddments.

Poetry as a job holds such little promise for those who pursue it. Most toil in obscurity motivated by the desire to craft something memorable and plagued by the desire to craft something memorable. If any of the work is published, in some manner, then the total sum of satisfaction is gained, only to be lost immediately in the next lonely study. Yet, to have previously published work re-mastered into a Collected is something, if not memorable.

And here she is on the phone with the editor. Yes, of course, she says and sets down the receiver to gaze out the window.

But what if the poet is not so fortunate? What if the poet has worked for years publishing things here or there, or—gasp!—self –publishing? That kind of poet is the most common. He is the kind of poet down at the local open mic, the kind of poet actively contributing to social networks, participating in the community; he’s somewhat of an outsider, iconoclastic and un-lauded. His poetry is good. He works hard. But editors don’t call.

That kind of poet is Mike Finley. His Collected, Yukon Gold: Poemes De Terre 1970-2010 with a Key to the Mysteries, was

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not solicited by a major publishing house or the imprint of an academic institution. His opus is not found in the catalog of the Library of Congress (yet), it’s free on the web. Any numbskull can locate it, download it, and enjoy.

At 534 pages, Finley’s book is no compendium; it refuses to be condensed. Yukon Gold is epic in scope. Stretching over thirty years worth of work, it includes a wide range of subject matter and varying stylistic techniques. And, get this, it isn’t finished yet. In the preface, Finley describes his book as following in the tradition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, “self-made and self-renewing,” a work that is in a continuous state of revision and re-envisioning.

Over 70 of the poems are linked to video versions on the web, audio/visual representations posted on YouTube. The book also contains a plethora of annotations and explanatory notes. As Finley says, “indulgences are sought.” What is perhaps most unusual is the author’s call for feedback by providing a mechanism for comment. This self collected Collected is interactive.

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Finley is no new-comer to publication, though his work in poetry and prose is mostly published nontraditionally. He claims over 100 published books, which means Finley has been striking out on his own for a good long time. All of it is available and accessible. Thank God for Mike Finley’s Internet.

I get the feeling that Walt Whitman would approve. Like Whitman, Finley tilts toward a hyper-expressive, egalitarian view of the cosmos, everyone welcome, every leaf of grass counts for something, and just about every moment of his life as a poet has generated an impulse to versify. The results are, well, surprising. Consider the first movement of “This Poem is a Public Service.”

Listen when I talk you little nothingsLittle zinc-heads in the cupboardsBy the rattling platesAnd the nutpicks and the malletsAnd the napkins and the forks—When it comes it will comeAs a surprise.

This poem is written in homage to d. a. levy, a literary figure of

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1960’s Cleveland (so says the note) and is a fairly good representation of Finley at work: a speaker finding an audience in cans of soup and the slightly off-kilter, hard music of lines enjambed. Finley says he admires levy’s feisty irreverence. It shows throughout much of Yukon Gold.

But the work is tender, too, as in the middle stanzas of “Cannon Falls.”

Rachel reads on the sofa,I sit in the library and pull bookafter book from the shelves.Baseball books, history, politics, poetry.

In one is a poem by Jon Silkinabout the death of his child.It is so heartbreaking I read it twice,and the sorrow saws through me.

Suddenly, I don’t hate poetry,it is not false or vain or unimportant,it is a way to talk and think

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about things that matter most.

And things do matter to Mike Finley, the poet. Perhaps nothing so much as the life of his daughter Daniele, who committed suicide in 2009. Daniele’s passing manifests within Yukon Gold in a number of poems. Readers interested may want to read Finley’s Zombie Girl before looking for details within Yukon Gold. They are unmistakable, as in “Tattoos,” a litany derived from the text of the medical examiner’s list of Daniele’s body markings.

Side of her right leg; skull with flowers and a snakeSide of her left leg: minotaur skull, with green tentaclesLower back, centered: a spider, a flower, and red flamesUpper left back: skull with devil motifUpper right back: skull with angel motifLeft shoulder and arm: against a maze-like backgrounda skeleton with a bovine skull and hooves,lifting a bottle in salute

Famed American composer Morton Feldman reminds us that, “Where in life we do everything we can to avoid anxiety, in art we must pursue it." Mike Finley’s Yukon Gold has made the

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pursuit of anxiety—the approach of the big, difficult, unanswerable questions of life—its central aim, as its subtitle seems to suggest.

In “God Must Love Crazy People,” Finley moves toward the heavy without burdening the reader with goofy aphorism:

When we weep ourselves to sleepbecause we can’t seem to changeand we drive the people we loveonto barstools, saying

it matters, it is fulfilling,it is the indivisible element,it is the purpose ofthe entire experiment

God must love the crazy peopleor why would He make ussuch as these,impossible to put up withunhealable as disease

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But I shouldn’t put goofiness past Mike Finley because in many ways Yukon Gold employs the ridiculous to great effect, and I think poking fun into what can be an overly serious genre is Finley’s raison d’etre. Perhaps the most sublime poem in the whole collection is brief and to the wondering point, but it’s also a gas:

The Stink

Does not understandit is the problem

Brothers, sisterswhere are you going?

Indeed, where are we going? I know Mike Finley is going to keep on writing, keep on revising his Collected, until, as he says, he is no longer able. Let it be so. And also let it be that Yukon Gold find an audience beyond soup cans and ghosts.

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GREEN AND MAGENTA LIZARD, BY NINA KURILOF

NINA KURILOF

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TWO POEMS BY CHRISTOPHER TITLE

First Tomato

I forgot about the Brandywineseeds I planted springtime,the sense of real anticipation,Big Boy fantasies and Early Girl dreams.I even forgot how I staked them out,careful not to crowd their little lifetimes.I think I may have thought about the sunand how it goes. I may have thought that,but I don’t know. It’s hard to rememberall those tiny graces, small gesturesthat blossom into ripe, vermillion fruit.Memory decays in a vegetal way.When it comes to what growsin tangles of greenery, the amygdalaholds sway: her tangy grassinessand faint, miasmal bouquet.

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Taking Samples

My son squatswith a stick in his lapat the river’s mud and pebbleedge. He’s found emptya bottle of exceptionally smoothblended liqueur, and he’s taking a sampleout of the shallow water.It’s a little American Honey,blended bourbon whiskey,and ample proof he wants to keepof what he loves and would liketo have around in the years ahead:an ounce or so of opaque liquid,as at dusk, the soft green colorof a Luna Moth’s wing.

CHRISTOPHER TITLE lives and teaches in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area where he also produces Barbaric Yawp, a literary open mic reading series. His work has appeared in Ash Creek Press, Living Out, Main_Frame, Rock Paper Scissors, Asphalt Sky, Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and Sleet Magazine. Visit http://barbaric.weebly.com/ for more information or find Barbaric Yawp on Facebook.

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FEATURED ARTIST: BEN HEINE

BEN HEINE (born June 12, 1983 in Abidjan, Ivory coast) is a Belgian multidisciplinary visual artist. He is best known for his original series "Pencil Vs Camera", "Digital Circlism" and "Flesh and Acrylic".

Ben grew up in Ivory Coast his first 7 years, with his parents and 3 sisters. His father was a commercial engineer and his mother a Modern Jazz dance teacher. The family returned to Brussels in 1990 to great change. At boarding school, Collège Saint Vincent, in

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Ben Heine, photo by Kirk Feria

Belgium. In 1994 Heine discovered that his energy, fears, emotions and ideals could be canalized into visual projects, the start of a life-long adventure in drawing and painting. In his teens, Ben wrote poetry daily, played drums, piano and guitar, and played basketball and ran every day. Eventually Heine realized his greatest love was visual arts.

Ben has a degree in Journalism. He began at "Université Libre de Bruxelles" (Belgium) and completed at "IHECS" (Belgium) & Utrecht University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. Heine studied Art History briefly along with Painting and Sculpture at Hastings College of Arts & Technology. Drawing and photography are self-taught and a continuous process. Ben is fluent in several languages; French, English, Dutch, Polish, Spanish and Russian. Ben loves languages because it enables him to communicate and interact with many people and he loves people.

Since 2006, his pictorial works have been published in famous Belgian and international newspapers and magazines (see "Press" for more info) and been seen by millions of people online. Ben Heine’s artworks have been exhibited in Belgium, Great Britain, France, Canada, USA, Germany, Turkey, Romania, Brazil, South Korea and Spain.

Here are some of Heine’s defined techniques. You can read and see more at his websites and flickr account.

http://www. benheine.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/

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BRUSSELS BY NIGHT, BY BEN HEINEBEN HEINE

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FEATURED ARTIST: NINA KURILOFF

NINA KURILOFF has exhibited her artwork in galleries and colleges throughout the United States. Her work has been selected for exhibition in 25 juried competitions. One of these exhibitions occurred at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and another took place at the Heckscher Museum of Art, in Huntington, N.Y. A third occurred in a Small Works exhibition at New York University.

The other juried shows took place in art galleries and colleges.

She has also had her art exhibited in many curated exhibitions, the most recent occurring in 2006, called “Ultimate Destination” and curated by Martina Batan (Ronald Feldman Fine Arts). It took place at the DUMBO Arts Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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Her artwork has been chosen for cover art for several chapbooks of poetry and online publications. And, her paintings have appeared in catalogs that have accompanied several exhibitions.

Nina is now a self-representing artist, selling her artwork via the internet to collectors worldwide. She does exhibit her artwork on an occasional basis in curated group shows.

Nina Kuriloff lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

She enjoys painting organic forms and is greatly inspired by phenomena she sees in nature. These phenomena and her vivid imagination inform her artwork.

She is currently a member of the Women's Caucus for Art.

www.ninakuriloff.com

ninakuriloff@gmail.com

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ABSTRACT RAINBOW, BY NINA KURILOFF

NINA KURILOFF

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SISTER OF THE CAVES, BY CHANSONETTE BUCK

CHANSONETTE BUCK

for channie

my sister of the caves,surrounded by stone, the darkcities i've watched you run throughin dreams, thinking this is nota dream, how the stones weepor bleed, how some nightsyou stand, trapped, until a voice saysrise! and you feel your body liftstraight up – but never beyondyour ceiling of no-color sky.... dream after dream i've watched you. now i place my galaxy-hand on yours.now our matching palms mergethrough this opalescent light.now you know i see youcarry a fading world. i send you sustenance. you send me truth.

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CHANSONETTE BUCK spent her childhood “on the road” as stepdaughter of a Black Mountain poet, living all over the American West, in England, and in Spain. She holds the PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she concentrated on 20th-century poetry and poetics and wrote a dissertation on childhood trauma as the source of William Carlos Williams's poetic obsessions. She has a BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Art, and has won awards for her visual art, her poetry, and her teaching. Chapters of her memoir Unnecessary Turns: Growing Up Beat have appeared in Why We Ride: Women Writers on the Horses in Their Lives (Seal Press, May 2010) and Polarity eMagazine (Fall 2010). Her chapbook blood oranges was published by NightBallet Press in October, 2011; her chapbook desire lines will be published in January 2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press; and she will be a featured poet in the journal tinfoildresses 2012. She lives in Berkeley with her family, her boa constrictor, and way too many cats and dogs.

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FLESH & ACRYLIC

BY BEN HEINE, FEATURING CAROLINE MADISON

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BICYCLE DREAMS, BY MARY KAY RUMMEL MARY KAY RUMMEL

1 You slept through his visit— the lover you waited years for. All that’s left, his orange bicycle, odor of his carotty hair— smoke and hay— more forlorn than if he never came. You lean your own bicycle against the wall where he must have rested. Imagine you hear himlaughing or scratching his beard. And then it all dissolves like fresh water in salt. 2 You and your magical girl child park your bikes

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at the State Fair and she slips away from you— a glimpse of brassy hair, a green skirt. You run after her, almost near enough to grasp. Then you lose her for goodand the crowd closes in around you. 3 Blackbirds surprised behind a wall, shoot straight into a rain cloud. Scraps of paper from an orange notebook drift out over the bay. 4 She’s back—the sibyl girl you love but there’s a funeral in her eyes—oh her promises even the rusty bricks in the wall know she won’t keep them.

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I’ll pass this way again, she says, before the dream’s over and you know that’s the last you’ll ever hear of her. 5 So thirsty after riding you fall to your knees in a cloudburst—you open your mouth but the drops all slide on strands of ochreous light home to the clouds they fell from. 6 Wheels of fire, wall of cloud orange the color of trumpet flowers— the tapestry so close, you can’t make any sense of the pattern.

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Blue Light Press of San Francisco recently published MARY KAY RUMMEL’s sixth poetry book, What’s Left Is The Singing. Other poetry books are Love in the End (Bright Hill Press, 2008) and The Illuminations (Cherry Grove, 2006). She has poems in the new anthology, The Wind Blows, The Ice Breaks (Nodin Press), short fiction in Double Lives (Wising Up Press) and poems in Nimrod, Ekphrasis and Askew. She teaches at California State University, Channel Islands and divides her time between California and Minnesota. http://marykayrummel.com

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DREAM, BY BEN HEINEBEN HEINE

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MUTTNIK, BY DANNY KLECKODANNY KLECKO

Laika heard the children laughingFrom what appeared to be a distant roomThe most beautiful sound she ever woke to

When Victor brought her home from work last nightAnd took her straight to bedIt seemed natural to assume they were alone

Fraternizing was considered unprofessional

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But this secret would remain safeBy this time tomorrow she would be gone

Boarded onto a tin canFilled with rocket fuel and no parachutesAll the more reason to break protocol

This is why the entire science teamAnd the launching crewHeld their tongues and looked away

While Victor escorted herOff the project siteSo her last day of freedom

Could be spent outdoorsGetting bellyrubsFrom his daughters

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THE ASSASSINATION OF JIMI HENDRIX, BY T.K.O’ROURKE

T.K.O’ROURKE

1I believed Hendrix was set up.Why shouldn’t I believe it? King was killed April 68, Bobby Kennedy that June.It happened to everyone I admired.I saw a pattern to the deaths of heroes. It was like Al Pacino in The Godfather sending emissaries to wipe out all his enemies in one fell swoopwhile baptizing the grandbaby at the cathedral.

Only instead of Pacino it was J. Edgar Hoover,Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, C.I.A, the US State Department, the Military Industrial Complexand Anglo-American corporations.

2Hendrix had just released the Band of Gypsies, the featured piece an instrumental,

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“Machine Gun”, dedicated, in Jimi’s words “to those revolutionaries in Chicago.” Dec 4 1969, Fred Hampton, the twenty-one year old leaderof the Chicago Black Panther Partywas machine-gunned in his sleep by Chicago police.

September 1970, Hendrix died in London.Janis Joplin died Oct 1970. July 3 1971 Jim Morrison, OD'dYeah he was an alcoholic with a drug problembut Jimi like Janis, was our spokesman, world leaders of Western Youth.

3Dec 10 1968, Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk and antiwar poet, died.His essays argued the US Government’s policies for southeast Asia and Latin America were lifted directly from the Nazis.Thomas Merton died at conference between Catholic and non-Christian monks in Bangkok.Electrocuted while adjusting an electric fan as he stood in his bath. Can you believe that? Who put that fan there?

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Any thoughtful hit could have set this one up.4Considering my arguments about the assassinations of poets as specious, I always remembered that in1970 a friend, a Green Beret back from the war,took ecstasy and wailed wept and confessed he had taken part in Special Forces missions to enter villages and murder only the village headmen, the shamans… the poets.

During the 1980’s contra-invasion of NicaraguaSandinistas captured a CIA field manual instructing field operatives to apply this same specific tacticmy friend had described and I recognized this same pattern throughout the history of colonialism.

5When leadership is killed off, especially cultural artistic and spiritual leadership, society becomes directionless, identities of individuals within the culture erodes.The deaths of the poet leaders of my generation are consistent with policies of assassination and destabilization of a community

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that could interfere with the defined missions of our State Department: Empowering community violates the idea of capitalism, and is therefore considered communist, so instead they undermine the Constitution of our government by the people for the people.

6Things got worse, the woman doctor, who in the late 1960’s, set up the People’s Clinic in Minneapolis, was murdered. A friend’s brother, back from Vietnam, started writing articles for the underground paper, A Thousand Flowers and he bled to death from a knife wound one dark and rainy night as he stood waiting for a bus. And Cortez McKinley, a sixteen-year old I mentored, had become an activist too

spending his time in Minneapolisexposing police shakedowns of youths was shot to death in a “drive-by.” Drugs the police said. I knew and mentored Cortez. Practically raised him. He didn’t sell drugs.

7How about Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone,

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truly a man of the people. Was his pilot threatened with the murdersof his family, of his wife and children his grandmothers and aunties, Is that why the pilot willingly crashed the plane into the ground, flying around the airfield once first to get his courage up?

Except for Kerouac, an apolitical drunk,every single case of these assassinations, murders, and so-called accidental deaths, seem entirely consistent with the articles of assassination outlined in the CIA manual.

8Jimmy Hendrix’s rendition of the Star Spangled Banner made him a target. Millions from my generation followed him. And when Hendrix recorded Machine Gun, he publicly aligned himself with the Panthers and the Weather Underground.With Black Panthers hijacking planes to Cuba, the Weathermen blowing up the ROTC building in Madison

Hendrix made the top of the government’s hit list.68

And who does the government hire to do its dirty work?The mob? Common criminals?Anyone with a felony hanging over their head?

9.In late 1970’s, I played blues harp and jammed with Buzzy Lindhart. He played with Hendrix and was in London when Jimi died. Buzzy told me that Jimi Hendrix, an experienced drug user, popped a few yellow-jackets so he could sleep. He’d been drinking wine, but not a lot. A few yellow-jackets shouldn’t kill you, he saidor knock you out so much that when you puke you drown.

But on that particular night the yellow jackets Hendrix swallowed were sleeping pills called Veserax. They look exactly like American yellow-jackets, but are four times stronger.

10.Monika Danneman, whose flat Hendrix died in, told changing stories. In one she claims Jimi was alive when they took him away in the ambulance.

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Another story: She wasn’t there when he took the pills, nor was she there when he died. So, who gave Hendrix those yellow-jackets? Or, knowing full well he’d take them, who set them out? Who didn’t warn him

about the increased potency? Who set him up?What was the role of Monika Danneman,and who was her handler? The US State Department?For Monika, like lady Macbeth, came to a bad end, suicide according to the medical reports, foul play according to her last boyfriend.

11.Is my own trauma such that I project conspiracy and assassination onto the deaths of any good person?Admittedly, my trust began to erodewhen I was six years old, when the ability to trust is just becoming hardwired in the brain. But I am a sober man, and a thoughtful man. History, personal experience,

and common sense tell me my arguments are other than specious.

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~T.K.O'ROURKE who also writes as Kevin O'Rourke has won the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition twice, short listed for the Loft McKnight award, published poems in Ireland Poetry Review, and a spoken word CD, The Confessions of Saint Jack, recorded by Willy Murphy. Kevin keeps a backyard garden, and is also raising two foster children at this time.

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MIC CHECK MIC CHECK, BY DUBBLEXDUBBLEX

We are back again I represent the 99 percentWho resent the one percent who has all the money that is spentThey got millions and billons to satisfy the greedy They don’t care to feed the needyWe camp out and protest the mess of this so called democratic processWe march and demonstrate to try to alter our fate

Plastic bullets are fired and still we remain inspiredTear gas is thrown in the crowd panic sweeps through like a jet stream in the fogginessWe wonder where is the freedom where is the justiceWhat crime did we commit?

No one is read their rights. It’s not explained why they’re detainedAmericans young old from all backgrounds and colors dragged with plastic handcuffs on their wristsThousands arrested when we protest and resistSomeone’s forgotten my first amendment rightsSomeone’s forgotten my right to free assemblySomeone has forgotten this is a democracy

The 99% reach out and rise from a flicker on Wall Street to a flame burning through our countries main streets to around the world north south west and eastHear the sound of marching feet to defeat the elite We protest against the bankers’ bailoutsWe protest against foreclosed homesOur outrageous student loansAgainst our working homeless

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Censorship by Ben Stein

We stand against big money in politics We demand healthcare for the poor who are sickWe amass to stand against corporate greedWe chant for freedom from poverty for those in need

The police come in the dead of night and rip down our protest signsThey rip down tents and tarpsThey trash thousands of library booksThey herd us with horses to force us to change our marching coursesspray us with mace,fence us in with blockades The right wing money controlled media turns a blind eyeWhat is their reply?Will you sit idly by?What is the future for our children in this economy?

This country is full of ironyWe condemn other countries for limiting freedom of speech but can’t see our own hypocrisyCorporations are not peopleWe need a country that is equalSo mic check this nationLet the unions take to the streets

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Demonstrate a strikeLet us close down ports in Oakland California New York and FloridaDemonstrate in the streets of D.C.Occupy Wall Street close down the stock exchangeWe are the 99 percent screaming it’s time for a change.

Previously published in Occupy Wall Street Anthology, edited by Stephen Boyer

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LOOKING AROUND, BY GERALD SOLOMONGERALD SOLOMO

You said without the right words this useless thingdeath is not to be considered.Still, for a time anything helps — sunlight on grass, hard stones.Loveliness has something to do with it, and being scared. Yesterday down by the tennis courts:small ball pushed to and fro, till some blundermake it trickle away, lie still in a corner —ball that is clear, mathematical, unusually true. I don't get things straight...If my mind were a gun its moving targetwould look much like a gun, pointing at me.(We teachers say such things in school.) This morning found myself watching a blackbird, busy in our muddy garden after rain.Jumped down from a wet shiny crooked branch —springy legs, cocked its eye from side to side.

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GERALD SOLOMON was born in London and studied English Literature at Cambridge University. After a short spell as sales assistant at a bookshop in London's Charing Cross Road he worked as a producer at the BBC. Subsequently becoming engaged in education, he helped found General Studies courses at Hornsey College of Art, and this led eventually to an enjoyable period teaching poetry courses at Middlesex University. He retired early in order to paint and write. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines in the USA and UK as he prepares his first collection. He is married, with four children, and lives in Manhattan.

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THE DAY I MET TENNESSEE, BY B.Z. NIDITCH

B.Z. NIDITCH

It was a rainy dayof unbearable laughterat a boarding housein New Orleansold men playing black jackthe young flirtingwhere gas green lampslit on a adolescent poettravelling alonefrom moonstruck milesalong the coastover murdered townsfilled with auctioned pianosand pawn shopped jewelsand reading in the Gazettethat Tennessee Wiliamswill star off Broadwayin his own play"Small Craft Warnings,"the young poetwith all the metallicand chutzpah grown inside himgoes by train

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to the Big Appleand buys a matinee ticketshoring up courageparades to the dressing roomfilled with old costumesand oilcloths of fateat the sunset mirrorTennessee calms me downand takes my poemin hand, wrily says, "The muse iswith those who hearher voice,and youobviously do,you have the giftnow take it,"and it has not left me.

B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Le Guepard (France), Prism International, Jejune (Czech Republic), Leopold Bloom (Budapest), Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

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LEAN AGAINST THE LETTING GO, BY CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE

like pressed garliccreamy crushedhusk blown away,I held herforgetting the argument,forgiveness andplaying with that blonde hairthinking of tomorrow

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Poem first published in the journal rustytruck .

CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE lives in a seaside town in northwest England with his muse and children. Lawrence has been an avid reader and writer since early childhood. Writing is now an established way of life for him. His works have been published in a variety of journals and anthologies since 2009. Lawrence is now in the process of developing some of his poems into short films.

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SALMON SPAWN, BY MARY ELIZA CRANE MARY ELIZA CRANE

Underneath a gray and murky skyin cloudy water silted by the rain,humpback salmon burrow into river rockand drop their seed.Cool breeze broken by a milky sundrifted onto shore the fish decayfragrant, buried into mudor dinner for the ravens calling,circling overhead.

Rebellion spawns on cobbled stonesin cities everywhere,loving angry youth well upa current through a world in tatters.Open arms and echoesresounding each small voicetogether one, in every shade and creed,why the river and resistance matter.

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MARY ELIZA CRANE grew up in New England and began writing poetry at age fourteen. Poetry remains the one constant in life to which Mary always returns. In the Adirondacks she fell madly, passionately and desirously in love with the natural world. A transplant to the Cascade foothills of the Pacific Northwest, her voice lives in the understory and fog of the Snoqualmie River. A fusion of this one true love and a deep understanding of what makes us human, she fuses the personal, political and natural world. A regular feature at poetry venues in the Puget Sound region, she has two volumes of poetry, What I Can Hold In My Hands and At First Light, published by Gazoobi Tales.

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A WEDDING, BY CHARLES BROOKS IIICHARLES BROOKS III

Laced in yellow rhododendron,the lake scoots aroundan impromptuparking lot. A trail bent like the tailof a water dragonrolls toward two iron deer.Flanked by these hartguests make awkward conversation. I traveled north todayto be burrowed beneathSharp Top’s shadow.So far I’m[maybe]not going mad.

A hopeful forever-and ever coupleis born from pawn shop sparkles.Family meanders in clusters,circling food.

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Eyes cut at mebecause I put some of themin jail.

I hear joycome fromsomewhere ahead.Mon cœur est une pierre.

Congratulations to CHARLES BROOKS III, previously published by CSR now nominated for a Pushcart and a Pulitzer, plus Georgia Author of the Year. We are proud to announce Brook's first book, The Draw of Broken Eyes and Whirling Metaphysics, is now available though Gosslee Press with reviews and the link to purchase here.

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PEACE RAINBOW, BY N. KURILOFFN. KURILOFF

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WE ARE THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT! BY FIRESTONE FEINBERG

FIRESTONE FEINBERG

For corporate castles crowned in greed,There is no way to pay the rent —Except by robbing those in need;We are the ninety-nine percent!

In gilded gates that guard the wayTo hallowed halls — we’ve made no dent —Yet funded them our hard-earned pay;We are the ninety-nine percent!

Wake up! wake up! O woeful world!And face the force, the fierce intent —Of they forsake our flag unfurled;We are the ninety-nine percent!

For tyranny who’s paid the cost?We live in neither house nor tent —And who the homeless, tempest-tossed?We are the ninety-nine percent!

Whose land is this? Whose times have changed?

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Whose power and glory will be spentTo keep the order pre-arranged;We are the ninety-nine percent!

Tho’ things are seldom what they seem,Our mission’s clear — our good intent:We are the world — we have a dream —We are the ninety-nine percent!

FIRESTONE FEINBERG is a retired music teacher living his art in the northern tip of Manhattan Island. Firestone creates sculptures, paints, draws, and writes poetry. He and his wife Susan, live in New York City. They have two grown-up sons.

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SILENCE, BY AFZAL MOOLLAAFZAL MOOLLA

Hidden between fragmented shades,mingling within the folds of thought.

Dreams ceaselessly wander on,soaring above the day's tumult.

Hope burns the fabric of today,as this afternoon fades.

AFZAL MOOLLA was born in Delhi, India while his parents were in exile, fleeing Apartheid South Africa.

He then travelled wherever his parent's work took them and he still feels that he hasn't stopped travelling.

Afzal works and lives in Johannesburg, South Africa and shares his literary musings with his most strident critic - his 12-year old cat.

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BUDDHA ON HIS THRONE, PHOTO BY JOY LEFTOWPHOTO BY JOY LEFTOW

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