Rudolfo Carrillo

Sonnet Sixteen: Saltwater and Smoke

The past, or rather the world created

by expired occurrences and dangling

actions remains out of reach. The

inchoate symphony in everyman’s left eye,

is a globe of indeterminate composition

and volume. Arms cannot grasp such

roundly articulate implications. Its girth

is unitary and expansive in directions

previously dismissed as outlandish,

as not befitting the shabby wizardry

defined on a Cartesian plane and

primarily used as a basis for moving

wind-driven, wooden caverns filled with men

and their produce across the vasty deep.

***

***

Paul Howell

Late Beethoven Fugues on West 86th Street

Late Beethoven  fugues  are  strong  boys  wanting  to  and  going  in  and girls wanting to be wanted following running up the stairs and the girls dashing in and rushing up the stairs  to  keep  a  distance between  them  and  the  boys  who dash in and rush up the stairs after them not knowing wanting or the chase just flitting like bees  to  the  next  shiny  buttercup  no  more  deliberate  than  unavoidable and a third wave of boys wanting to and going in and girls wanting to be wanted following running up the stairs. That’s what was going on on West 86th Street last Sunday. The May flowers were pollinating little accelerandos all over the place. You can’t shape better Old Ludwig Van than that. Old Ludwig Van Old Ludwig Van Old Ludwig Van Vaan Vaaan!

***

***

Russ Golata

Perceptional Fortitude

open the door

already ajar

 

see the mountain top

without climbing

 

believing

everything-everywhere

 

vibration

the source

 

listen

music speaks

 

your heart

knows

***

***

Lawrence Upton

Old island a hill now, high land out of lower land; below, a cultivated plain; above, a lake,
islands and bits of flotsam and a bedstead near the shore.

A big red tree and a mass of birdshit. Oyster beds and a cliff barricaded by warning signs.
The signs glissen and scintillate -- afternoon rain. A car goes past.

These various compositions of light and sound. All this noise the sunset coming,
boisterous, in my head. Reality is so big it’s hardly noticeable.

Appearance of goods from heaven, death, that sort of thing, you understand? -- the reality
-- these inexplicable things and these things that I see that you don’t, apparently, you say.
We can’t talk about them if you can’t admit to them; not until you do; and I have no words
and that does, whatever you say, limit me, the vocabulary, like not being able to make
notes of a complex subject - you start to forget what you have established or been told,
like going into the forest and the sun clouding over. You can navigate with a compass and
that’s part of the vocabulary, what we have made rather than what we have grown up with.
You think I’m rambling in my own words. You don’t see any problems, but then you don’t
see anything much. No built environment beyond the human mess, no contrivance that we
have not made. It is extraordinary. Never mind.

***
***

Anthony Robinson

Open

From twig to branch each opening is next—

Siren, lichen, post-temporal

Majesty.

*

Today something happened big.

Today minor susurrations bled into being.

My mouth was open & things came out.

*

A happening on a twig is a bug.

You on a twig—

a small bit perfected.

***

***

Victoria Marinelli

Lament for Wilhelmina

Someone named Wilhelmina
– no last name given –
once owned my copy of Ferlinghetti’s
A Coney Island of the Mind.
Bagged beast of my bookstore
prowls, in every off-season,
I’ve found this
volume with its ankles caught
in rusted traps of used
romances, Westerns, sci-fi.
Wilhelmina, what have you done?
I’ve plundered your dead dreams
and have you to thank
for freeways fifty lanes wide
and steamheated cemeteries

***
***

Philip Meersman

Poets of my Fatherland

Curlcirkly  

               Gezellosy   

                                   Shopply

Burning

re yearning

wordrepressing

Consciense reading.

The blue porsche

evades                         scr eeeeeeeeeeeeeee chchching

Bang klang dingelombomkom

droomboom tsjulpkulpdulpbulb

tuuwietwietawazawiet

Chalk lines languish away

drippingflowed sadness

Claustrofobic away

TL-lamps                               cling

BA live!

Catherine Daly

In the Garden

Non Serviam

Light falls,

respects

no source.

Said, done:

light bends,

time dilates.

Emit, detect

nothing, heaven, limit.

Transgress.

And,
the compact
impure,

suggests sacraments. 
The very idea,
true thing. 

Knowledge is a beautiful crime.

InterestFascinate , don’t upset,mouths:
their teeth biteing sins’ fruits.
Eat what you can get:
blood, malice, love.

*“wantonness lulled to sleep

with the virgin’s lute,

or sated with her love”

                William Blake

I served what animatesd bodies, was served:
evoked, varied, twisted it,
coiled it
like a serpent.
I myself was served. 




Memory, madness, error:

I served perception,
demolished beauty, light,
defeated sun,  moon, sun.

***
***

Hugh Seidman

Like Anyone

Grace, action, redemption. 

Lies, jokes, truth, faking truth.

Teeth gnashed, nauseous, nauseated.

Remembering, forgetting war. 

Moments, a day.

Did the back hurt? 

Did it hurt to stand?

Hand held by hands.

Anyone, a neighbor, say. 

Sick unto death.

Saying what is said of the strength to go on.

Whether or not: strength. 

Whether or not: one went on.

Like anyone.

          Cincinnati Review 2005, rev. 2012

***

The Train Explodes

The train explodes. 

One pays the fare. 

Snow falls in a song. 

A door closes.

One pays the fare. 

There is a platform. 

A door closes. 

Words explain.

There is a platform. 

There is a timetable. 

Words explain. 

Dark is a metronome.

There is a timetable. 

Stars implode. 

Dark is a metronome. 

Fear halts desire.

Stars implode. 

Snow falls in a song. 

Fear halts desire. 

The train explodes.

          Cincinnati Review 2005, rev. 2012

***

***

Alicia Askenase

Modest Elegy

               en memoria de Modesto Solans Mur

Gris sky we crossed Barcelona
Cataluña for Barbastro of Aragon

your birth at your end site she:
nada of hospitals for you to me

admit el querer crept and burnt
stages us out recall indoor sitios
the last time we never
danced into situations
of pequeñitas side streets shops
of feathers simply encantado
por possessive apostrophes’
case with no of, good-bye dear

Valencia blue hands back sun
to water stroke flight laps
dusk patterns you said
once jugador de baloncesto
as if it were a sentence to love

him but I did and gave a vuelta
to you deeply in your dark I
chose not tú follow which
would have had no now o
future, señor had-the-blues
nodding to the sea’s
final playa Las Ramblas
we-never-got-to part

yet yes by Andalusían rooftop whitewash spray painted joint
at southern most tip of continent the stars washed a pool
there too not dip a toe in its then now what
matters the voluptuous candid immediate

***
***

John Oughton

***

***

Philip Meersman

Meanwhile in Budapest

Out of a blue sky

a thunderstorm ambushed

the breakfast crowd

a gigantic grass stampeed

naked fish

steamed in a railroadcan

midst essences of hormonal mouthwash

They – like cattle ready for slaughter – stared@

a squadron of the Spanish Armada

searching frentic

Picasso left

already

with Gauguin

to the south of France

Courbet, Corot and Rodin

guided me

to

“Christ Carrying the Cross”

(again you might think

doesn’t he get tired

of carrying

that heavy load!?),

but this time

Sebastiano del Piombo

made Him do it.

(And how!)

1.     In a penitency cloak
haloing sadness
and inner pain

2.     With long fingers stretched tired
over the beam
as was it the moment
before blowing on a frail flute
a funeral elegy

3.     Against a carbon grey background
absorbing the obscured surrounding
dissolving into the panel in which His Sorrow is kept.

His Pain varnished the pigment

His Blessing lacquered the varnish

“Mas mojitos” seemed to be the answer to all party preguntas

***

Brussels

Swamp, Village, City, Iris

Museums stuffed, dinosaurs

Pissing girl, pissing boy

Cathedral, chorus, Ode of Joy

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

Pentagon, small ring, Leopold,

Louise, Haren, Laeken. Hold!

Neder-over-heembeek.

Who to assimilate next? Strombeek

Waterloo, Braine, Rode or Anderlecht?

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

Fortifications, Revolution, Frenchification, EU

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

Baudelaire, Blanc and Boulanger

They fled here due to grave danger

Jacques Louis David

Painted and ran, vite vite vite

Dumas, Hugo and Proudhon too

They wrote around here a book or two

And than there was Rodin

At Bourse - they say - enfin

He sculpted nudes to feed his kin

Africa - Asia, the original sin

A writer and trader of coffee and tea

Welcome the writer Multatuli

Verlaine, Rimbaud poetically rebelled

Engels and Marx, even got expelled

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

Brel, Bertrand and Thielemans

Let’s here it, any fans?

and yeah (oh God) Marc Dutroux

He’s on my list of people too

Erasing evil with the Singing Nun

She sang until her cross was hung

Audrey Hepburn film-dream mythology

Lévi-Strauss structural anthropology

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

Peyo drew smurfs

Hergé Tintin

Poelaert buildings, eclectic sin

The list goes on

with Tits and Tome

Spaak, Toussaint, Van Damme, Tramont

van Istendael, Vesalius too

Impressive, isn’t it, this who’s who.

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

Arno, Barnard, Béjart and Brouwers

Brueghel, Bucquoy with his panties with flowers

Erasmus, Horta, Hoxha, Magritte

Merckx, the Canibal, are also in this heat

Solvay, the chemist, the business, but, look

van der Weyden, Van Gogh, yeah Vincent, and van Ruysbroeck

HUB, VUB, ULB

Erasmus and Saint-Louis

The officers of the military

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

Old politics, new politics, unemployment, gay,

Magreb, Congo, the US and the UK

Russia, China, Asia, Africa,

intercultural monologue, asylum seeking algebra

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

advertize

africanize

americanize

arabize

balkanize

barbarize

bastardize

colonize

colorize

commercialize

communalize

demonize

dogmatize

dramatize

emotionalize

eroticize

europeanize

feminize

fetishize

feudalize

fossilize

ghettoize

legalize

merchandize

patronize

penalize

radicalize

stigmatize

terrorize

trivialize

urbanize

vandalize

victimize

vulgarize

compromize

USS Enterprise

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

Bashing, slashing, attacking and winning

Parliaments, governments, Councils and predicaments

Ministries, committees, agencies, communities,

Asylum seekers, NGO’s, Representatives and fugitives,

Journalists, socialists, communists,

economists, anarchists, lobbyists,

politicians, physicians, doctors, nurses,

diplomats, bureaucrats, eurocrats, curses

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

We are Brussels. Lower your shields, surrender yourself. Resistance is futile.

***

***

Lynda Schor

***
***

Ruth Lepson

of all the books
that came in the mail
the one I wanted to read most

was yours I know you
pretty well now and that
helps too

I’ll bet you 10 bucks I said
he said ok I bet it’s
a hill we kept driving

toward it between the bare trees
it was huge navy blue with lines of
pink ink and at the top looked

craggy like hills but

it was one cloud
covering the bottom of the sky

you could think of it as
beautiful but you could
imagine the end of the world

as some do in these long thin
days as
the century gets started shakily

I was too hard on them
and not hard enough
I should have distanced myself

but the fury twirled us
around in twisters fits
it’s not a question of whether they

could help it or not it’s

what pertained

yvonne told nancy
when you’re in a wheelchair no one
talks to you

when I left the museum
everything was a painting
one painting
hundreds of tiny paintings
the guard rail on the highway reflecting
the towers of pollution the tiny hands

an awareness that we’re all here
like fish minions
like scholars fleabag hotels

it’s lifted from the landscape
once I noticed it everywhere—in the backs

of falling down barns in the diners of
small towns in the weeds in back of the
project in the christmas lights

it’s gone it was
melancholy
it disappeared dried up

is an answer in
something felt
the moon’s as small as a necco wafer

hart crane’s father
invented life savers

to keep things
to yourself

I think you were wrong

a butterfly eaten by a dragon
a dinosaur under the covers
fluky —I imagined miro

saying come out & play then thought
of calder
who then appeared in the crossword

whiff of what’s unresolved
think of arp since he
photographs inside a brain

his poems mention sitting
in the pre-dawn which
destabilized me

it seems he
has no feeling while
sitting and I admired

him all those years
now I

sit in the pre-dawn light
ready to see it without flight
once we went riding through the woods

on his harley there were no paths we
stopped he gave me a joint my first
time a cop heard us pulled up to

the woods’ edge & started walking in give
me the joint, he said and he ate it this
was

a homophone of
myself then

I want to get it
down why
I walked in a field of blue grass

while the horses were waking

the world is substantial lately
with ribbons of
gratification

how they reappear disguised as
others we knew others the seemingly
same

right as rain
I awoke from an ancient dream

nothing to do
but work and sit
through it

***
***