Download - Bending Light into Verse III
bending light into verse
every picture tells a story
Jennifer L. Tomaloff
b e n d i n g l i g h t i n t o v e r s e I I I every picture tells a story
Photography by:
Jennifer L. Tomaloff
Featuring written works by:
Andrew Zawacki
BL Pawelek
Claudia Lamar
David Tomaloff
Ed Makowski
Eryk Wenziak
Felino A. Soriano
Helen Vitoria
Howie Good
J.D. Nelson
John Sibley Williams
Joseph Quintela
Keith Higginbotham
Kristina Marie Darling
Mark Lamoureux
Matina Stamatakis
Nate Pritts
Paul Scot August
Prathna Lor
bending light into verse III | Copyright 2012 Jennifer L. Tomaloff |
All works contained herein are owned by their individual authors | No
part of this book may be used except in brief quotation without the
express permission of the author(s).
bendinglightintoverse.com
Special thanks and dedication to the talented individuals whose
works are contained in these pages, without whom this project
would not be complete.
Every Picture Tells a Story
Words and photography, photography and words: The two are almost interchangeable in
terms of modern-day expression and communication, yet they don’t often overlap
artistically as a means for one to complete the other. Bending Light into Verse encourages
one form to do more than simply describe the other. It is often said that every picture
tells a story, but surely that story is subjective and belongs to each as well as to all of us.
In short, Bending Light into Verse seeks to establish an ongoing conversation between the
image and the artist of the written word.
The photographs included in this book were taken using a Nikon D40 or Nikon D90 with a Nikon 50mm f/1.8D, Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G, or a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX lens. bendinglightintoverse.com -Jennifer L. Tomaloff
Contributors:
Andrew Zawacki is the author of the poetry books Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman House), Anabranch (Wesleyan), and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia). His latest volume, Videotape, is forthcoming from Counterpath. Coeditor of Verse, The Verse Book of Interviews (Verse), and Gustaf Sobin’s Collected Poems (Talisman), he edited Afterwards: Slovenian Writing 1945-1995 (White Pine). He also edited and co-translated Aleš Debeljak’s Without Anesthesia: New and Selected Poems (Persea). Zawacki teaches at the University of Georgia, where he directs the doctoral Creative Writing Program. BL Pawelek grew up on a small Japanese island (kinda true). He wonders if his master's degree in Literature was worth it (not financially). There are stories, poems and plenty of art (google search). The Equation of Constants and Ten Everywhere and the unfirm line. He tries to show mad love to everyone, especially you. Claudia Lamar is the founding editor of Phantom Kangaroo, an eerie place for poems. She lives in Sacramento in a small studio apartment with her boyfriend Sam and a dead fish named Alien. Her bucket list includes being recreated as a comic book character and time travel. David Tomaloff is a writer, photographer, musician, and all around bad influence. His work has appeared in fine publications such as Mud Luscious, >kill author, PANK, Connotation Press, HOUSEFIRE, Prick of the Spindle, DOGZPLOT, elimae, and many more. He is the author of the chapbooks 13 (Artistically Declined Press), A SOFT THAT TOUCHES DOWN &REMOVES ITSELF (NAP), Olifaunt (Red Ceilings Press), EXIT STRATEGIES (Gold Wake Press) and MESCAL NON-PALINDROME CINEMA (Ten Pages Press). He resides in the form of ones and zeros at: davidtomaloff.com Ed Makowski is a poet and writer who can't sit still. While working as Eddie Kilowatt he released the poetry collections Manifest Density and Carrying a Knife in to the Gunfight. Over the past year Ed became interested in radio and now curates The Lunch Counter storytelling series on Milwaukee's NPR station 89.7 WUWM. Between November 2011 and April 2012 Ed is also serving as the Pfister Hotel Narrator and in this capacity he is the hotel's resident writer and gatherer of stories.
Eryk Wenziak is a drummer, photographer, visual artist, and teaches management at the graduate level. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in: elimae; Short, Fast, and Deadly; Thunderclap Press; Used Furniture Review; Otoliths; Negative Suck; Psychic Meatloaf; Dark Chaos; Guerilla Pamphlets; Deadlier Than Thou (anthology); Phantom Kangaroo; Pipe Dream; 52|250; Long River Run. Most recently, his cover art was chosen for a chapbook of poems honoring Donald Hall titled, Olives, Now and Then, which he personally presented to Mr. Hall at the poet’s 83rd birthday celebration. Felino A. Soriano is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. He has received the Gertrude Stein “rose” prize for creativity in poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. Over 3,100 of his poems have appeared in print and online journals such as BlazeVOX, Otoliths, infinite space, Poetry, Yes, and Fact Simile. He has had 48 print and electronic collections of poetry accepted for publication, most recently Pathos etched, recalled: (white sky books, 2011), Divaricated, Spatial Aggregates (limit cycle press, 2011), and Abrupt Hybrids (Whale Sound Audio Chapbooks, 2011). For information regarding his published works, editorships, and interviews, please visit: felinoasoriano.info. Helen Vitoria’s work can be found in many journals: elimae, PANK, MudLuscious Press, Foundling Review, FRIGG Magazine, Dark Sky Magazine and others. She is the author of three chapbooks and a full length poetry collection: Corn Exchange forthcoming from Scrambler Books. Her poems have been nominated for Best New Poets & the Pushcart Prize. She is the Founding Editor & Editor in Chief of THRUSH Poetry Journal & THRUSH Press. Find her here: helenvitoria-lexis.blogspot.com Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently Love Dagger from Right Hand Pointing.
J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words and sound in his subterranean
laboratory. More than 1,000 of his bizarre poems and experimental texts have appeared
in many small press and underground publications. He is the author of several collections
of poetry, including When the Sea Dies (NAP, 2011), On the Toad (The Red Ceilings
Press, 2011, and Red&Deadly, 2011), Roman Meal (Ten Pages Press, 2011), Noise
Difficulty Flower (Argotist Ebooks, 2010), and The Frankendelphia Experiment (Tainted
Coffee Press, 2010). Visit MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published
work. His audio experiments (recorded under the name Owl Brain Atlas) are online at
OWLNoise.com. J. D. lives in Colorado, USA.
John Sibley Williams is the author of six chapbooks, winner of the HEART Poetry Award, and finalist for the Pushcart, Rumi, and The Pinch Poetry Prizes. He has served as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and Publicist for various presses, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Book Publishing. Some of his over 200 previous or upcoming publications include: Bryant Literary Review, The Chaffin Journal, The Evansville Review, RHINO, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, and Poetry Quarterly. Joseph A. W. Quintela writes. Poems. Stories. On Post-its. Walls. Envelopes. Cocktail napkins. Twitter. Anything he gets his hands on, really. His last chapbook, This is not Poetry. #poetry, was published by The Red Ceilings Press. Other work has appeared in The Collagist, ABJECTIVE, GUD, Bartleby Snopes, and Existere. As the senior editor at Deadly Chaps Press, he publishes both an annual series of chapbooks and the weekly eReview, Short, Fast, and Deadly. His work at Sarah Lawrence College revolves around integrating the disparate yet rapidly dovetailing fields of Conceptual Poetry and Eco-Criticism. As such, he is an acolyte of intra-action, hash tags, and the Oxford comma. josephquintela.com Keith Higginbotham's work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Cricket Online Review, experiential-experimental-literature, Golden Sparrow Literary Review, Mad Hatters' Review Blog, Moria, Otoliths, Stone Highway Review, and The Ten Pages Press Reader. He is the author of Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press, 1995), Prosaic Suburban Commercial (Eratio Editions, 2010), Theme From Next Date (Ten Pages Press, 2011), and Calibration (Argotist Ebooks, 2011). He lives in Columbia, SC. Kristina Marie Darling is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Night Songs (Gold Wake Press, 2010), Compendium (Cow Heavy Books, 2011), and The Body is a Little Gilded Cage: A Story in Letters & Fragments (Gold Wake Press, 2011). Her fourth book, Melancholia (An Essay), is forthcoming from Ravenna Press.
Mark Lamoureux lives in Astoria, NY. He is the author of thee full-length collections of poetry: Spectre (Black Radish Books 2010), Astrometry Orgonon (BlazeVOX Books 2008) and 29 Cheeseburgers / 39 Years (Pressed Wafer, Forthcoming 2012). His work has been published in print and online in Fence, miPoesias, Jubilat, Denver Quarterly, Conduit, Jacket, Fourteen Hills and many others. In 2006 he started Cy Gist Press, a micropress focusing on ekphrastic poetry. He holds an MFA from the New School and teaches in the CUNY system. Matina L. Stamatakis lives in upstate New York. Some of her works have appeared in Coconut, Free Verse, Otoliths, Word for/ Word, Moria, and others. She is the author of ek-ae:a journey into ekphrastic aesthetics (Dusie, 2007), Metempsychose (Ypolita, 2009), Eos (Oystercatcher Press, 2010), The ChongDong Misfits (Avantexte Press, 2011), and Breaking the Bird's Beak Hymen (Venereal Kittens Press, 2011). Nate Pritts is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Sweet Nothing. POETRY Magazine called his third book, The Wonderfull Yeare, “rich, vivid, intimate, & somewhat troubled” while The Rumpus called Big Bright Sun, his fourth book, “a textual record of mistakes made and insights gleaned...[in] a voice that knows its part in self-destruction.” His poetry & prose have been widely published, both online & in print, at places like Southern Review, Columbia, Washington Square, Gulf Coast, Boston Review & Rain Taxi where he frequently contributes reviews. He is the founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N, an online journal & small press. Poet Paul Scot August is originally from the North side of Chicago but has spent half his life now in Wisconsin. He has an MA in Creative Writing from UW-Milwaukee and works these days as a software developer. He is a former poetry editor of The Cream City Review and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and once for a Best of The Net award. His poetry has appeared or is upcoming in Tygerburning, Connotations Press, Midwestern Gothic, The Los Angeles Review, Sugar House Review, Hobble Creek Review, Country Dog Review, Stone's Throw Magazine, Dunes Review, Naugatuck River Review, Passages North, Poetry Quarterly, The Cream City Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in the Milwaukee area with his two children. Prathna Lor is the author of Ventriloquism (Future Tense Books).
b e n d i n g l i g h t i n t o v e r s e I I I every picture tells a story
somewhere a childhood that was not mine
i remember as my own its sudden burst of trees,
its carefully planted stars just outside the frame,
its chaff swirling back into uncut wheat,
back into seed, back into your hands
that once dug up six inches of hard earth
and believed that enough to reach China.
safe in the unpredictability of a tire swinging,
i as your bare feet when they struck sky
and toed the old gods, before they were known
as lightning and climate variations,
back when you asked them for nothing more
than another series of childhoods,
i before gravity returned your feet to the world.
may I use your empty field again to call back the stars,
and in my being the sky you once cherished,
the trees you once climbed, fell from, and climbed again,
let me stand straight as golden autumn grass
before the winds and their irreversible bending.
-John Sibley Williams
how the soul moves
the I unfolds in long white corridors
tongued by a nondescript carpet
that knows the gravity of footfall
but cannot speak.
dust has been cleansed
from the main thoroughfare
and rises in prayers to remain
in the unseen corners
where impossible walls meet.
here, bathed in false fluorescents.
here, where the freight we carry
bears in nametags each origin and destination.
here, bordered by thousands of matching doors,
the soul reaches through a panel of missing glass
and hauls out the lone extinguisher
that must suffice to protect this entire structure
from its inhabitants.
-John Sibley Williams
Data file recovery complete: telephone cables arranged in cedilla, icicles
accent aigu. A light meter teeter-totters—overcast, the selenium shot—like
a spirit level bubble, wavering. Shannon, Reykjavik, Santa Maria, on HF
radio, U- or V-: “the night ark / adrift, / & water- / divided, the / stars.”
-Andrew Zawacki
originally published in Conjunctions 56: Terra Incognita: The Voyage Issue (2011).
This is how it’s going to go down: grain silos & power grids, slingshots dot
the Susquehanna, belaying the phone lines in sine wave & synapse, a plat of
McMansions splatter a forest, new-mown grass in lawn-brite hypergreen.
Unspooled wire to the foosball palace, & a grove of bucket trucks off 81.
-Andrew Zawacki
originally published in Conjunctions 56: Terra Incognita: The Voyage Issue (2011).
exit ramp a) scientific data. tension between sleeping.
b) obsession described evokes division.
c) outside: a shed once facing right.
d) my mother was interviewed while in Paris.
e) engraved on a bronze plaque: Information is Public.
f) suddenly discovering Sylvia Plath’s drawings
1. they forage
2. (like gulls)
3. for a question
a) inside a statue dressed in blue.
-Eryk Wenziak
white noise i pick up the flag
trace a figure-
eight
into the high sky
like a child burning his
name with a sparkler.
the figure-
eight
will fall on its side—
become infinity…
-Eryk Wenziak
Ink Milk Halftime.
I’m on the woof. : • :
• : •
: • :
• : •
: • :
Three nights from never, when water tasted like dirt. “Wow,” said Dangerous Lou of the third floor. I weep for black-and-white spiders.
• : •
: • :
• : •
: • :
• : •
Today is safe: x
A moon in my room.
-J.D. Nelson
Weekend Brunch 100 years after Star Wars. Down here in the spider hole, we recycle. my blood neon & when crickets
✂ – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Bonus: To land on Mars at night! blue gum -J.D. Nelson
Laser Floyd X. Elfwrench
{o zerö} {ø zero} {ö zerø}
∑. (:::) - - : - - (:::)
Room 68 o o o o o o o o o o o o o
❀. Hack into a flower
[my little
spider] -J.D. Nelson
agenda
I will prick my finger on the last pine, spread the stick juice that never comes off.
It will seep into me, and I will branch.
I will gather the barn swallow in two hands, pulling feathers until one shows
blood. I will slide that into my holed arm, mix the blood.
I will climb the rocks, jetting and sharp, and lean into the strong wind. Farther and
farther, loosing the touch of feet on solid.
I will wade into the back lake, knife in hand, and under the dark water. When the
breath is done, I will cut and build gills on the sides of my neck. Force my body to learn
the new way.
I will steal dry sticks and leaves, gather them in left hand and light a match. The
fire, small and nurtured, will heat in palm as a reminder: there is new life after the burn.
I will create it all in six days, a son and sin. I will demand sacrifices and enforce
commandments. Preach active love but stay inactive. I will tell you that I am no longer a
god.
-BL Pawelek
dismas and gestas
the right the brighter
the first to meet at the gates to rub fingers along cool metal
the first to feel full sun warmth on shy cheeks
no safety net strong enough to cast shadows and blast
the due reward for deeds
as the ground opens for dismas whispering
‘remember me remember me remember me’
staring and prayers
in the left shadows cold and scowling
red anger coats the mouth
the impenitent gestas screams and collapse
fading and fading, remembering attacks and easy blood
the final flight to egypt
the lights fade and fade and continue
the saved the sinner
and the other
-BL Pawelek
the girls of crow
they darted with the new plants the old rocks
catching sunlight and smiling
jumping rocks higher and higher
asking great spirit for more
above the clouds with the crows
he smelled them
innocent girls and easy
closer and closer the hunger of so long
the growl
running clamoring and frantic prayers
the girls on the rock tower rising
grinding marks broken bear claws
through rising stone of his blood
cries of hunger cries of relief
the bones sleeping below the tower
old women still above
singing and crying
-BL Pawelek
what is it that bridles me? something subtle & made out of your shadow. it has
the confidence of an unfound planet & the tone of a forgotten language. but it is a
dull suffering. & it hates it when i leave & i leave often. because it has to follow &
all becomes anonymous & that can be sobering. so i always come back to the
ache/to be moored - to live with this weight of familiar ghosts that refuse to
travel.
-Claudia Lamar
A method for time travel (for children ages 3 and up)
We swore we were bigger than monsters
hiding kisses underneath our sleeves
while our mothers spoke in tongues
on the front porch
I told you the truth about echoes
our palms inked in stars
all the planets in blues
moaning like street musicians
and begging for childrens' hearts
but we were never young
we met our fate like dinosaurs
taught ourselves the rites of bones
we stole chairs and sheets
and built a shrine to all our secrets
and we lived there
below a canopy of ghosts
we laughed at the myth of grownups
and traveled through time in our heads
falling in love in other dimensions
until mother said it was time to go
and head down I would follow her
each step on the concrete
imprinted a confession
-Claudia Lamar
From the series BECKETT
1
You weren’t cold. You just shivered sometimes.
2
The sleeping pills that knocked you out at night also kept you in a daze during the
day. You moved as through a dream of fair to middling women.
3
All poetry . . . is prayer, you said to hoots of derisive laughter. Being damned was
the same as being saved. Your old wounds flared like the pink and green sunsets
you found only in Ireland.
4
Ezra Pound declared himself the only sane writer left in Europe. The lines on the
map ruptured. You passed long stretches of empty time in the no man’s land
between perceiver and the thing perceived, where people were just blobs of color.
5
You could read three languages and, of course, grieve well in each. In late spring,
you visited a mental hospital out of curiosity. Jesus wiped the dribble from
patients’ chins.
6
Something terrible was about to happen, but even you couldn’t divine what. The
only stage direction was (silence).
-Howie Good
WHO KNOWS WHAT HAPPENS NOW
Gulls have a third eyelid.
I lost my sunglasses.
Blue-eyed people
are supposed
to wear sunglasses.
I shield my eyes
with one hand
and point darkly
with the other.
Gulls crouch like doubts
among the rocks,
the psst of waves
withdrawing.
-Howie Good originally published in Rain Dogs
A SPELLING BEE IN STEREO FOR WHICH THERE WILL BE A QUIZ
We barricade ourselves under snow where, as we say, the streetlights will never
think to look. Still, we dream we hear the laughter of angry, passing cars. A
windsock waves from a radio tower in Brooklyn. Seems to be saying, I think they
went that way. Spring pops its flares, implies with a series of codes &dogs: It’s
only a matter time.
+strange shapes become us / huddle, we, in dust / &move by fog
-David Tomaloff
AMONG THE WRECKAGE, WE
We filled our bags with special powders &linens, &with the pictures of supposed
loved ones we had cut from magazines on living room floors. We knew nothing of
the ocean. We played soldiers on television. It didn’t hurt us when we died. Every
animal in the place was a small bird, &all of us, how we felt the same back then.
The songs of our ancestors were built of radio signals &rouge. The elevator
groaned—floor, by floor, by fast approaching floor. We reached the city in our
work clothes. A man suggested we’d FINALLY ARRIVED. Nothing here looked as it
had in the moving pictures. The birds carried on in contempt.
+a windless oregon / the shuffling of boots &limbs / the laying of iron &rust
-David Tomaloff
A DIVE INTO A HALF-SWALLOW
, OR THE COMING OF SONGS UNDONE
the cages utter
words like arsenic
, &sentencia
you reach
to touch
my street gang
, &the park fills
w/ the vowels of promises
it could never hope to contain
-David Tomaloff
Peanut Portrait Gallery
In the frenzy to
inflict trophies
and christen all else
failure
from smug armchairs
we neglect noticing
that the “also rans”
Ran
-Ed Makowski
originally published in BlazeVOX
G'night
sometimes
it's nice
to walk home
alone
sometimes,
it's
walking home
alone
-Ed Makowski
Gradation of the Artificial Apparition Absent sequences of the serial collocations: corporeal| |contaminations questioning whom among antiquated broken variances ascends simulated functions of angled origami sans shadowy possessions of the body’s resembling hearsay. -Felino A. Soriano
Within __________, yes Numerical postulation upon missing nuances, spheres deliver (separated halos engage though weary against abstract limning of __________) mobile area, awaiting touch of breathing blurs to analyze distances of inaudible tongues braiding confiscations. -Felino A. Soriano
What the Devil will say in Spring: Entomb me in your garden, next to the sound of water. Tie blue filament around me, hang me from a bridge. And sing. -Helen Vitoria originally published in The Cartier Street Review
Isabelle, the summer before you died, I rode a Ferris wheel warped by heat− in the old baseball field rain sheets, raised dirt, floated bases while I smoked Marlboros with your brother in his ’83 Corvette, watched him juggle knives in the sun, in the distance horses grazed near the cattails, till dark -Helen Vitoria
Rooted That rock
loosening inside—the
one whose
pollen utters
swallowing all kempt
crisscrossing
dusty furrows.
Always
this and distance.
Whisperers—
stringings;
beyond tracks
arrogant: eye: vigils
fraying
tiny as polished
tunnels.
-Keith Higginbotham
Grass of Leaves
Dinner of
enamels, mark handle
in
(could
your wire
hands love lidless
things?).
We are on
an arthritic breeze.
Replicas
force our words
now,
words once
bottles breaking.
Those things.
They painted the gardener's
face [brown]—so this is for
you.
-Keith Higginbotham
She imagined her heart as a white bird in a silver cage. -Kristina Marie Darling
SONNET ON THE SEVERED HEAD OF DON DRAPER
Right speech, right angle. Mirror mirror
of the boardroom door. Detective chromium
was the dream of the mid-century clusterfuck.
Fugazi for this—bad scotch in a tumbler.
Marlowe’s rye really spit up
in a freight elevator. Depression glass dish
of calcifying allsorts, Miss Whatever &
millennial fishnets of the insipid general ledger.
Lonelyhearts & bad minds shorted out
by the aluminum Christmas tree. Staccato
of the Hueys for your pacemaker,
whoosh of napalm for your iron lung.
I’m staring at the sun while all the rest
slough off into sodium chloride.
-Mark Lamoureux
Killcrop
I grew up like a changeling.—Ian Curtis
Shiv-
fisted
curve of
the fisheye
in the drop hung
from the desiccated wings.
Spriggan-sprig, the taproot
heart is the bruise of the gloaming:
the angel is black, the angel is whip-thin,
a coarse shadow in the vapor of your own
breath inside the pinion-rustle of the sigh of
the evergreen revels. Come away if indeed
you are human; full of weeping, too,
is this grove, but those tears
are not for you.
-Mark Lamoureux
Resonate/Opus/Flesh
: A fluster of tiny mechanisms:
‘neath the grooves, eroded bodies
makes of water, or the breadth of ether. &
Lethe in the wearied face, drink my body─
boldly & without sugar.
:Vocabulary of desire:
in the ecstasy of metal,
a persuasive din— licked of needle,
geometries spun-out to a jagged discord.
More tongues, loosened flesh, orgasmic
swan-pulp softness─
whispered incognito.
: A flash of skin impulses:
recreating, in space, the moons
of our eyes─ an infantine lumière.
This flesh of us knows no end─ as predicted.
-Matina Stamatakis
Crosshatch & Splinter
Terrain, the markings
pool this pulpless
blood, this
intricate & finite, this
sucked- from- marrow, where
not a sparrow has perched
-Matina Stamatakis
HORIZON PROBLEM The past is so easy to read,
written on top of everything,
though I know there was
plenty of intervening time
some of which took me away
from myself. I remember
every building & storefront
in terms of what it used to be.
I feel as if I have to be declamatory
about my feelings or that I
should make my simple emotions
smarter. More worthy of an audience.
Some people think that form
is what makes things worthwhile
but I like talk. Cars zip by
not noticing the night. Maybe
what makes them real
is their spontaneous flow
& not forced together
with brute fists. I like things
to be graceful though maybe
even in that you can see
the chaotic energy boiling over.
Like how I traveled from low
entropy to high entropy. Like how
even thinking about a specific
crisis moment doesn’t help me
understand. Two in the morning
& my power to generate change
is quickly fading from my present.
-Nate Pritts
Anguish & Wolfenbarger While she waits on tables at the Dallas City Café,
she glances up through the greasy front windows
at the Anguish & Wolfenbarger Ford Dealership
across and slightly down the street. People in town
just call it The Anguish. The name still makes her
wince. Today is Tuesday, so she takes her coffee
break at 2:15, just like she does every Tuesday,
sits at the table in the front and waits. She’ll see
the Greyhound Bus as it motors down Main Street,
stops at the railroad tracks, the driver looking down
the rails that extend in each direction to the horizon,
becoming arrows he wishes he could grab onto and use
to launch himself into another life that is not this one.
She’ll watch as the bus crosses the tracks and pulls
over at the far end of the auto shop to either catch
or release another passenger. Or more likely, no one
does either, and the driver shuffles inside for a cup
of vending machine coffee and a piss, before leaning
against the brick wall along the alley and having a smoke,
then getting back on the bus. He always leans in the exact
place where her Billy did that day, where the metal plate
on the wall is falling away from the bricks, where he smoked
one Lucky Strike after another until the bus pulled up
and he turned to her, winked, and climbed into the past.
-Paul Scot August
My Dearest Emile --- after a letter by Van Gogh Sunset? Moonrise?
Summer sunshine at all events.
A mauve town, yellow star,
blue-green sky. The corn
is in all tones of old gold,
copper, greenish or reddish
gold, yellowy gold, bronze-
yellow, greenish red.
A size 30 canvas, and square.
I painted it with the mistral
at its height, my easel was
pegged to the ground
with iron stakes, a method
I recommend. You dig
in the legs of the easel, then
next to them an iron spike
fifty centimetres long. You tie
it all together with rope.
Then you can work in the wind.
-Paul Scot August originally published in Zuzu’s Petals Quarterly Vol 2 – Issue 2/3
This is what I call a mother a mother a mother. -Prathna Lor
I know the stain of his voice. What he needs to close his mouth completely. There
was a time when I was able to call him a name and there was a time when I was
able to curdle a voice. I felt the haunch and rigor of his throat. I felt the
importance of him having to lie down. I knew that somewhere there was a forest
and waiting.
-Prathna Lor