issue 1 november 2014

swirlissue 1

editor: lars palmcover design: Petra Palm (aka social photographer)

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in this issue

a short note on what & howPansy Maurer-Alvarez

6 poemsEric Dickey

Train 19: Atlanta to TuscaloosaEileen R. Tabios

I Forgot the Exploded World Coming Down Like Rainlars palm

(hastings)

short note on what & how

a new online zine. do we really need that? & does the answer to that question really matter? i've edited blog zines before & enjoyed it immensely. the contact with to me previously unknown poets doing cool things. giving some little thing back to a community that is so patient with my scribbles. & yes. we really do need another online zine. swirl will focus mainly, though not exclusively, on poetry, including translations of living & consenting poets. i also welcome comics, vispo, stories (crime is more than welcome), non-academic essays, reviews of newish small press poetry (chap)books & music with a bias toward anarchists, punk in all its permutations & whatnot. Issues will be published when i (your undemocratic editor) deem there is enough good material. & if some ambitious person sends enough good stuff there's the possibility of a single author issue (aka chapbook). send your finest unpublished, in any form, things & keep in mind that the format is A5. &, as usual, if i like it i publish, if i reject i'm only one editor with his own odd taste & not an objective judge on quality. yes. & now invade that inbox atswirleditorATgmailDOTcom our first issue features 3 lovely poets & persons & myself. have fun with it

Pansy Maurer-Alvarez

DEFINITION

roll a coconutdown the stairs

it’s the sound of a word

POEM

a mouth slip

noonday view

unusual with his hands

desire way below

because you’re in such a hurry

with a full belly

belie

you will settle for

the sky misspells water again

and you wanted a noonday view

SONNET (1)

The detachment of the feminine was

red & sultry a day gone by

Youthfully rounded she laughed & asked

It was the kind of rhythm that feels pretty nice

What could I do but visualize

the sense that each Goodbye & God Bless You

would fall into 2 parts

1 of which would pull me down

There was no one around

the day I heard something drop

into my own country, I’m obliged

that I must consider her

remember now in black & white

that look of surprise, those earrings

SONNET (2)

to think that the dance in already contained

in the presence of our bodies

that we are the gesture and the verb

the word takes up space

the word takes up time

the verb, the fall and its recovery

song and poetry, balance, dance and circus

how fast the key to light and sound can slip

away, touch as we might our worldly possessions

as if in answer to a wish to not

love afterwards, again or anything

dance cannot be contained in reason

static silence will finish off this space

I wince and I feel scared

SONNET (3)

O briar rose here’s your mirror

and my hand here the flower

and the berries Sinews of rain

in what tranquil axis tree

touching morning in a compatible presence

for a moment etching a scarce shortage

on the filaments of reason

There was someone lying there unattended

in turbulence in dailyness

in the elegant full circle of the self

Meanwhile overheard a slip of doubt

rises up yet within plate glass

enclosures lies the curvature of stillness

THE CABINET OF HUMAN PASSIONS IS MEASURED

show me that case, show me

your body first smile

smile open your palms, palms up

give me the palms up of your ears

tango your hands on head

hair in the way

given the palms up there, no your ears are gone

so your eye laughs black

in its gold setting

there’s someone caught in there

smoke and a violin solo

breathing pink

the rest is fictitious

Eric Dickey

Train 19: Atlanta to Tuscaloosa-after lars palm

the rambling man two seats behind me talks to himself:“when the helicopter crashed the white and black peoplecame out black in Fort SamFort Sam Houstonthe silver bullet was named‘a penny silver’

a green colored Trojan schoolthe color of my barberthe fake cowboy

last Mondayhe gave out $50 then added up to R & K. A, R, T & Kand he saved it cleanI thought he said ‘the machine’”

the rambling manruffles passengersthey ask to moveto different seats

out the window

kudzu over a playground slide and swing trellis

linemen in the heat

red dirt road

speckled sunlight

speckled forest

the rambling man still talksbut I tune him out

train crossingred trucka Ford1972

the forest floor a speckled leopard

cleared fields

old white snag pokes out the middle

a rock crop with holes

we’ve arrived in Alabama

the words of the poetthe natterings of the rambling manthe clattering of the train tracksinterpreting the scriptureof the landscape through the picture windoware one and the same

another train startles mewhen it rushes past my window in the opposite directionjust inches from my face

a freshly painted fire hydranthalf-circle cut around itin the kudzu

pine glen shooting range

blue garbage cans

rusty red roofs

trailers, trailers, trailers

a patch of corn

there are books in my bag but the landscape readsfrom left to right like a ticker tapethat will only stop at Anniston and Birminghamstreaming like the rambling manaltogether a more interesting book

a culvert circle under the roadat noon marks the half way

basalt columnslean like clock hands

after the stop at Annistonthe window scrolls by the history of war since 1941

Abrams tanks

Patton tanks

transporters

Sherman tanks

the grounds around war memorials are like the newly shaved heads of new recruits

the tanks and jeeps stain the earth with greasespots that darken the red clay

the rambling man:“I used to read to kidswhen I went to prisonthey was gonna lie about what I did”

after the war machinesthe forest takes overand the kudzu matted like dreadlocksreturns a feeling of calm

bounding deer

a stag and a doe

a white egret huntingthe edge of a pond

a council of refrigerators

canisters of welding gas

bales of cardboardstacked like bricks behind a mill

Cooks Spring Tunnel

the urge to nap takes overlike a tunnel

I nod off to

the zigzag Zs of fire escapes on the old abandoned buildings of Birmingham

a waking dream

orange propane pipesrising from the groundwill only take a sparkand we will surrender to the powerof Earth

welders dismantletrain equipment

stacks of train axles

piles of scrap

rusty springs

black mud

black water puddles iridesce

the rambling man stopped talkingand I only just noticed

people on porchesno longer waveat passing trains

their children wave

children connect usto the mystery beneath the lawn

the stop and start of the trainthe stop and start of the landscapescripture in the picture window

the start and stop of the rambling man:

“that’s why I don’t worry about you allI don’t worry about your daughterswhat does that have to do with me?if I always look the other waywhy do I always feel wet?”

the train engine howlsGinsberg would approve

he rides the engine like a tricyclehis black beard furls backin the breeze shows the skin of his chinlike a cleave lets us see in

the rambling man is quiet againI look back to see he sleepshe drank three beersand now he sleeps

and only the slight whisperybabbling of giggling childrenripples in the current

of the great southern mythof the single kudzu vinethat grows from Atlantato New Orleans in one runner

it grows along the train tracks

it grows along the power linesthe linemen try to clear

it grows under the red clayjust beneath the surface

it grows disconnected like the rambling man

it networks and networksand networks

until it capturesthe fish of disbeliefthat swim in my stomachin my fishbowl stomach

the train arrives at my destinationI hurry to exitand utter the mythunder my breath “Alabama” which means “I’ve cleared the thicket”

I am snared in its pile of trimmingsthat lie like a dark warrior under the trainand curl around my ankles demanding my surrender

I read the place sign as I step onto the platformsummoning Black Warrior himself I breathe his name as if asking for mercyas if crying “uncle” to an uncle:“TUSCALOOSA!”

Eileen R.Tabios

I Forgot the Exploded World Coming Down Like Rain

I forgot curtains.

I forgot injected air bubbles.

I forgot October mornings with their light of gold and blue so stark they resuscitated anyone.

I forgot wanting to see sky above her cheekbones instead of a mirror reflecting the killer inside me.

I forgot cheekbones so high they were like horizons.

I forgot a detective looking at me with encyclopedias as eyes.

I forgot brown and yellow grass trapped in mud without evoking a precious stone like amber.

I forgot a limp laundry line, almost invisible in the grey air.

I forgot the world going up in smoke and coming down like rain.

I forgot the musk of a stolen wool coat.

I forgot sleeping on a traffic island on a highway near Lyon.

I forgot the days when I wished for just a bit of Heaven.

I forgot intention is a form of focus, at times control.

I forgot a dirty river glittering underneath the false life I created with no intention.

I forgot time slowing into a taut agony.

I forgot the laughter of weary men as they shared a wicker-covered

bottle.

I forgot long lines of Arab workers in cheap suits attached to small bundles.

I forgot too many hot and dusty evenings at train stations.

I forgot the enchanting glow emanating from a murderer’s eyes.

I forgot the tiny woman with huge buckteeth her lover used as a bottle opener.

I forgot rain becoming thick.

I forgot lighting candles but not saying Grace.

I forgot the Frenchman cooking horsemeat in blood, wine and garlic while lecturing on techniques for making plastique.

I forgot sighting a bloodied face through a cracked windshield, and moving on.

I forgot seeing sky as the sea and sea as the sky.

I forgot strolling outside to hear trees murmur.

I forgot the row of prone people on the remains of mattresses.

I forgot the dank air around a man, belt wrapped around one arm, heating a spoon.

I forgot the hollow man in a basement collecting water as it dropped from a corroded hole.

I forgot summer clarified by sitting on a stone embankment on an ancient street: suddenly heat rushed out of the evening!

I forgot the town where all women possessed supple thighs.

I forgot feeling more far away than the moon over Ferris wheel.

I forgot the bare arms that defined “summer browned.”

I forgot the stench of spilled wine.

I forgot the fair where I learned loud carnies overpower reason.

lars palm

(hastings)

continuing the breakfast habits of contemporary europeans we get to the french abroad with one of them removing most of the bread from inside a bun before adding cheese & salami while another one cuts open a water melon with a tableknife

last days of april parched streets oblivious of shakespeare & company advising ”be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise”

mark my words with a red & black marker pen & then forget them & if this is a guide you may shape it yourself & it most certainly isn't about politics this time

how about we draw a drinkable cup of coffee for that toothpaste thief sentenced to turn around to face a blood moon

iridium flash

foaming at the mouth of a laughing dog leaping down a flight of stairs at a kid on an electric skateboard or a burning math book

this is how you destroy that which destroys you

i hate maths though i like cooking my family & my pets & how to put words on a town so amorphous & a population so difficult to envision anywhere else?

this door is a jar of red table wine

not to mention those mansions down on millionaires row where those millionaires come & go not thinking of michelangelo

whispering i have no god live with it

is it the day that's random?

or a car called khaled

probably not the same one who planted a large patch of garlic in the park & then spent the night as a bar owner in some small mexican town

at the bottom of the drink list ”molotov cocktail for outside use”

so tell me how does being sentenced to 500 years in prison for a 500 page poem need any more context than that?

distill the life that's inside of me

serve in a nice glass

hold the ice & enjoy out of reach of the surprisingly bright spring sun

or these hardcore bosnians on tour having driven from tuzla to paris to watch their national football team beat france in the final european qualifier being slightly less expansive when we returned to the hotel at about 1.30 a.m

this plane forced to land in england by farting cows

learning fragments of another local language

& that public transport system forced karl & friedrich to move a handful of yards to the east

& the sweet madness in planning a high speed railway line from north east china to the continental u s

loop zero

this is how you argue safely

this is how your face gets cut into cubes

this is how you barbecue your self

your shelf returns seasons seasoned without authority

& of course mr. science works with making robots cooperate with humans in factories & of course the studies include violence

& time to tune that piano in the corner & steal that guitar for the book is handed out for free

& the road side littered with walking dead

& her constant paranoia

every weapon is a tool

& all the people who built that pyramid

& oi the punks are with us

& the first gang of the day marching from the square

& habitats painted red

& that tv squeezed into a corner between couch & chair & covered with pillows & blankets

& talk of agony & revolution

& all cops are bastards & once again they showed that

& all these people facing the same book

& going left of the roses & what's left of the roses

& kangaroos fighting in the street

& a mouth chewing trees

in the quiet area no one is allowed to breathe or even scribble in the old fashioned way

& my hand became a monster again

& he's quite sure he imagines

& if his memory serves him well he never saw the rather large banner saying petra ich liebe dich in real (such as it is around here) life

be tray

meanwhile in istanbul a poet who camped for weeks in ghezi tells a reporter that lemon is good for those tear gas bombs

how about that green bulb near the periphery of your vision?

waiting in the shade to get in & start making paella

waiting in the shadows to turn someone into a paella

asking if this is election or erection day

the rule of vengeance

should you dream of anyone i know, give them my regards

the rule of law

the various laws of physics & the jungle throwing its legislators to the lions who look disdainfully at them & return them for you to enjoy irresponsibly

getting that brogue in order

in my rebellious youth i

wait i'm still heading into it

we are the soma mine explosion killing upward of 300 workers

you must fear your new shoes

we are formaldehyde

it speaks with forked tongues

it uses tongues as forks in the road rather than planting them in the spine of a not fictional dog

& we can only speculate how but the sun sent the clouds running

but oh the horror

hindu fascists win this election in india

& northern europe votes their fascists into the european parliament

while the south voted left & spain said we can

we are everywhere

this lady letting her twin daughters run some of their excessive energy off in the sunny square

& suddenly they get 15 afghan teenage sons

& suddenly they reap the blue lights & go to market

& suddenly they don't quite know what to do with the voices down in the streets at 1.30 a.m on a warm thursday night

& suddenly they decide to cut the cat in half just be cause they can

instead of opening another can of worms lest they find themselves by a quay fishing & finishing loading that ship with their catch of the day

light saving sanity

don't try to get out of your face

it seems your face wants to keep you

through another town with no discernible name on another open road tail lights snake off ahead in to another entertaining day into another mountain pass

passing the friday unaware bakunin had his 200th birthday as if he cared

yet 2 attentive anarchists celebrated him

we are oppositional defiant disorder

we are running down that hill

& what to do with that piece of string?