Larry Goodell

American Stanza

Don’t be a humble haiku
stretch your feet out
become an American stanza
we still have something to do with art
be one of us
become
big inspite of yourself
broadcast large
make money off of your many words
become the rolling American stanza
that is studded with products
and still loves the land
the Western version of it
where one slow roll of a hill disappears almost
into a ribbon of road
as you drive and drive
and know you're not in the big city
that you're large and flat
and too big for one page
too roaring, too specific,
too car oriented too bound to the daily clock of money
as you value your job and if you don’t have one
try not to feel guilty
as we enter a major stage of pessimism
both in and out the city
and your words and loops of phrases
sing through the air and catch the horns
of the ghost on the prairie
yanked along into song
too enormous for a haiku
too full of problems
too necessary
too grounding
the rolling out aloud bark and welcome
getting down to deeds like
putting on a roof and balancing hammer & nails as you walk
tiptoe between the possible falls
and get it up
to persist, native ingenuity is all there ever was
to stretch this country out to any sense
to give it form
large and difficult
trite and straight
to learn the old again
for the first time
having always before
been new
the old ingenuity to make do
and get us out
get this line out of its chains again
its remains
its slow death
and rest,
its stretching out into a new fate.


***

Walking Hawk

(pot with cards in it – shuffle & read)


. long hair is a scaffold for blowing out yr brains
. a Nixon nugget is a nuxin Nigget
. Survival is kitchen napkin
. they want the most violent image to tear their tissue paper
. revolution is a dragass minority in rear
. it defeats the purpose not to be named
. it pops into yr head
. do you want another he said pouring charcoal out the sewer
. I cocktailed inefficient Sunday rock rock
. nematode is no toes
. flash on cards
. a heap of Sundays
. on cards
. freeflowing Tuesdays jacks yr diamonds
. change attire retire
. going out on Sunday
. sundancers
. keep in towards
. leaping hinges
. a jack in time multiplies the dime
. reaches on Sunday
. what you can’t reach on Monday
. it’s terrifying what language does to him
. I am used ill-used
. leaping high in vineyards

. language to put in a pot
. take it out on Sunday & leave it there
. a make to brace
. a challenge for Europe
. old electric dildo catching a snooze
. I’ll never make you on Tuesday
. make you mind
. I am out on Tuesday
. tie it all together with a mop & sop
. how many wafers do you have in yr corn
. donuts donuts
. in each case there was a case to shake
. other than that it was stone pussy
. jack off backwards
. I come first then play all day
. that is your ferris wheel rocking
. knocking them off
. sugar towards Christian hippies knock them off
. a meeting on Sundays
. knock them off
. a meeting on Tuesdays time to get up
. don’t go out go out
. time to get out
. whack a steward
. this is not the first time the first time
. I never slept with you
. are you minding yr puddings & yr pants
. don’t breeze off too soon.
. a jacket on Tuesday
. a meeting on Tuesdays
. rock my wind pardner
. a hanging cob justifies the brain
. you get too much money for what you do
. his peter was up higher than his salary
. I’m not going to be pleasant pleasant
. I’m going to fill this soap notebook up
. wipe yr ears clean
. adjusted images a deviled pig
. where it’s at was where it rot
. don’t look at it 2 ways upside down
. pick it up & lay it down along the pot
. images on Tuesday Monday’s Sunday
. I’m red you’re dead
. she comes itching out of her period
. periodicity is a dish for a period

. get up & ejaculate the dawn
. a rooster is a quick pulling hen
. my sex is yr sex disaster
. playing with the trucks
. he done fuck himself with rapid cleanser
. a solid formation on the cup
. a releasing thru
. he cd hear the fly buzzing after it was dead
. the fly wasnt dead
. take it out on time
. the precious nowhere escapes me
. the face of Cain is the ass of Able
. are you able Tuesday
. Aaron is Monday Tuesday is Sunday
. all school functions are decrepit
. a school is a walking hawk
. the hawk that walks
. he realized he cd go on forever so he stopped


***
***

Roger Mitchell

Talking to Myself Again 

I tell myself it had to happen.

I say, we knew it would. And it did.

I say, really, what were we thinking.

The nose was in front of our face. Who,

I say, did we think we were kidding

when we said we couldn’t be that

uninformed, that we would win,

that history was somehow not

going to happen to us, that we

could know we were right and think that

enough, that those who did not think

as we did would see the error

of their thought, that they would not tire

of the power held over them,

as we did, power held over them by us,

and not come to the capitol in bands

looking for us and the tools used

against them, cleverly, by us.

And finding them, use them. Against us.

***

***

Halvard Johnson

Just a reminder: The Barcelona Review, on the downside, doesn't take poetry submissions, and thinks much more highly of Anis Shivani than I do, but, on the upside, its archives are a treasure trove that's still out there to be enjoyed. Some of its offerings come in English, Spanish, and Catalan. If I were you, I'd jump into the archives and pull up Irvine Welsh's "Fault on the Line" and have a go at reading it out loud to yourself, plus anyone else who happens to be around. You'll find the whole shebang at http://www.barcelonareview.com/index.html.


***
***

Hugh & Jane Stilley

***
***

Hugh Behm-Steinberg

Feral Parrots 

Were they expecting the tropics, were they born with other musics to which they make do with the local instruments?  Or do they say it’s better here, no jaguars to climb after us, and the monkeys here consider us cute.  Or do they practice, so that at night when we hear the word cracker, over and over, and sweetie, and hi there, and the sound of car alarms, the sound of the baby monitor, we hear the ocean and we’re nowhere near the beach, we pull up our curtains and they seduce their caged counterparts?  Helloooo?  Helloooo?  Dusk birds, the fullness of them, loudly calling out.  Not condemned, marvelous.

***

The Pronouns

  

When I was younger I was so liberal with my pronouns, characters would rise up like ant infestations; I would leave the sugar out, it didn’t matter, I’d go to sleep in honey and there’d be hundreds taking little bites out of me.  The pronouns would grow wings, I’d let them out, they’d come back with their lovers and families and I’d let them, I’d let them sleep in my house, if I had a house for them to sleep in.  I didn’t mind because; I was the only one in the house, if I had a house, I didn’t have you in my life yet.  Like black snow the pronouns eventually darkened me.  I’d like to say this is a parable but I got so fucked up back then.  May you stay you.

***

Spring, Shoes Left in the Hall (I’m Sorry) 

Who is your mud, the people who can’t sleep have to walk in it, so you like it and you’re laughing.  Wilderness!  Nice trees give you away, you give them away in turn.  Layers, some secret books, saying this and this and how you flatten and how your hand slips in.  Fills, evens, act collectively, freely, the parts of you without roads, the light above those parts.  Be with, be unshattered, unsleeping, take a long nap, all gardens lost in snow, all gardens tugging the ghosts out of you, calming the tulip bulbs and telling them when they have to act, treated well, gladly, you will never be without love in your life, even when you track dirt all over the place.  May I always remember to pick up my shoes.

***

All You Healthy Motherfuckers

  

Because you never had a before, or a body that wasn’t right, so you’re confident, it’s all going to go right so you don’t or didn’t have to think about it, didn’t have to think, always rightmaking assertions, just need a positive attitude and get more sleep, maybe you’ll feel better when you eat more ayurvedic herbs.  A raft out there you don’t have to rescue, a flickering out there, say it, try it on, roll it around in your throat, maybe it’ll be your turn to hold a chromium hubcap you’ll pour all of your credit into; you think you’ll be able to take it with dignity, without really suffering or you won’t have to experience the way the blue cross employees leered at my wife when she and thirteen other sick people marched.  I want to see your secrets get fucked with for awhile, see you wake up damp and eager to give your money and your body away to anyone who’d take care of you, who you can afford, your body like a door, like a revolving door, like a revolving door that turn by turn gives all your power away. 

***

***

Andrew Burke

Remembering Robert O’Hara Burke

Because we're leaving the city

next week, my wife bought

a GPS. As the till

rang up our purchase, I thought

of Robert O'Hara Burke dying at

dried-up Cooper's Creek, unable to return

to what passed for Western Civilisation

on Terra Australis in 1860.

Now we read Instructions to Begin

at our pinewood kitchen table

instead of his 'Sorry' note

stuck in a tree at a camp

recently deserted. Now our bitumised route

is spelt out in measured female tones:

Enter round-about. Take third exit.

It would have been handy for Burke

back then when there were

no highways, no roadside diners.

***

Going Home

As I exit, I walk by my books in the uni

library. There is a shorter way but I

choose to hear my old words whispering

off the shelf 'in the swarm of human

speech', as Duncan said. On my way home,

in the safe bubble of my Japanese car,

I take the tunnel and in the humming

dark inexplicably think of

my White Russian friend naked on

his chopper, whooping loudly in his flight

across the desert, ejaculating in ecstasy

on his fuel tank. Those were the days,

my friend. Now, my tunnel breaks

into sunlight. The poet I visited today said,

Even the poems are chatty now, and he

was right: at the red traffic light

lyrical lines come to mind and I hurry to

write them down. The lights change

and my pen dries out. Diesel fumes invade

my thoughts as I drive so I turn the volume

up on ABC Jazz to drown out my

annoyance. That motel has been there

for decades. I remember the one-eyed

mother, with her baby in a cot, offering

me her love, or something masquerading

as that, in dusky afternoon light, a room

rented after fleeing her husband, the sound

of peak hour traffic slowing as it banked

for the suburbs. I'm off in a dream world

when the car behind me toots, and I'm

on the road again. Her name has gone

but her eye patch remains and the baby's

sweet snuffling. I change to a pop music

station. Get out of your own head, I

advise myself. It's not safe there, the

past is corrosive. At home I park

and leave the bubble of car and poem

with its own centrifugal force.

***

Dead Spit

I saw a man looking

the dead spit of you

today, Ralph, only

he was black, a

Noongar in Midland,

healthy and clean.

As he passed my car

he stumbled a bit

and for a moment

I saw his palm on

my side window.

I don't know if I

read too much into

that quick glimpse,

Ralph, but it seemed

his lifeline was un-

usually short -- maybe

I saw what I expected

to see. We do delude

ourselves, don't we.

He prob'ly never sang

at The Raffles in

the Sixties, although he

may have played didg'

outside Perth Train Station

late Saturday night with

his footy cap upturned

in front of him. Muso rates?

Not bloody likely, hey, Ralph.

No panties with a phone number

either — just bits of shrapnel

and ciggy butts, the burnt out

ends of smoky days.

***

***

Laura Young

Dark Sea XLVIII

15"x15", pastel on BFK paper, 2011.



***
***

Halvard Johnson

Barcelona

Barcelona anticuarios recently called everyone
long-distance, offering nothing artis-
tic, but a relatively casual environment.

Languishing oneophiles near a burnished
ATM relate certain events long
overlooked, nada antes.

***

***

Jerry McGuire

The Early Years

Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind

              Shakespeare, King Lear

Crapulent, cold a’lonely in the crepuscule,

gaggle after gaggle swooshing this

way that way, mud in yr eye,

which keep disappearing? None

for me, thanks, he thinks. A little

corny, flustered aberration, corpulent

and suspect. Gallery of holy aspirants,

sublunary flame, Tsigane, Chagall,

and a balloon in Japanese. Christ

to be nailed here, ass on a stool.

Cockles and mussels, insinuated

preclusions, all the time in the world.

Adore me. Pluck my lint. Compose

yrself. Flag down that apparent

instrument of declension. Which

is in store, in stock. A queer honking

outside, flurry and crude rush nowhere,

and you and I left alone tonight, cool

interlude, dark musics, chilled liquors,

no one left dancing in the cage. Let’s fall

back and disappear, as the crossdressed

palindrome said to the uptight palimpsest.

***

Half Moon Creatures

You’d say half full, not half empty. And can’t help

but celebrate the greater notoriety of fullness, what it means

to be replete in light, nothing but light. How out of the light,

the creatures of darkness come singing their low songs:

Wolfman, serial mutilators, phantoms of opera, the works.

Indeed the moon with its Gorbacheved reflection gets the glory,

and the famous blame, for everything. Whenever two children

in the same city get torn to pieces on the same night, everyone

glances up, and there it is, that loathly face, red

farmer, pale bloated boil of night, always at a head.

But tonight’s antennae are differently tuned. Nothing comes

and stands up crooked like a mummy or superglued heap

of recycled body parts to pray or bay towards this en pointe

semicircle, ready to topple off its toe and wobble still.

No lycanthrope cut back to only quarter-wolf

howls up for his translucent bowl of milk.

The worst woman-and-child-choppers of our nightmares

lie sleeping off their excesses, their dreams a cryptic calling

for more light, always more.

In this half-light the monsters

themselves seem half-full of themselves merely, gutted

semi-presences that pass the light like smoked glass. Here

the Snarling Man speaks harshly to his fragile mother, there

the Lousy Teacher smiles and pencil-whips a boy into despair.

The Traffic Cop commits the extra minutes needed

to intimidate. Here’s The Banker Who Says No. The Fucked-Up Boy

who torments the timid one. The Perfect Woman who laughs

her silver laugh at the pudgy depressed girl

in the checkout line. All the crossbreeds here are innocent—

the Earthwormduck, the Porcupinebaboon, the Muskoxfrog—

and it seems in fact that everyone is innocent. Still

the Wolfman is out there waiting until these half

measures are history. And we hunger for him, to be full.

***

Surprize!

Brisk march wind morning

chimney hiccups and blows in

six pissed-off hornets

***

***

Rodney Nelson

From a Letter to Bernadette

you have not forgotten how we went up Elden Mountain and ran in Grand Canyon that week I know, you gave me a book in time so I would think of it and who you were, Merseyside Irish, a beauty, or the Flagstaff we returned to, the elated screaming of Freddie Mercury wherever canned music played, Viva Barcelona, and my trail-wise nod when you told me over beer that you attended gospel meetings which meant you would not open tus puertas al mundo or me at the end of the song, that you taught in Oregon, we were talking, had picked each other up on Oak Creek you know the other day, Viva Barcelona, or the Red Butte we would camp at with your Irish whisky and my stick fire and no elation only quiet but I did not tell you of a man from Cataluña I had met who mentioned the poet Margall and that Freddie’s mania got me thinking of words he had quoted, their musicality, so you have not forgotten, may remember the peppery mild night wind of Arizona, it seemed to matter even if it does not now

***

***

Stephen Russell

A Portrait of Gertrude Stein's Blog

would Gertrude Stein write a blog or would she be bored by them?
if Gertrude Stein wrote a blog would she be bored by them?
Gertrude Stein wrote a blog once and was bored by them.
was Gertrude Stein's blog a boring blog?
Gertrude Stein was bored by blogs.

Gertrude Stein said what she said and she wasn't bored by it.

she said what she said and when she said it she wasn't bored.
when Gertrude Stein said what she said she said it well and she wasn't bored by it. 

having said what she said she felt little need to say it any better.
Gertrude Stein said what she said and said it as well as it needed to be said.
having said what she said
having said just that

Gertrude Stein never wrote another blog.

***

***

William Bain

labyrinth

  

some tensile hollow

then in the strand

looping knotting

at her fingertips—

they ask answer some

unspoken playback like

racing around the

block in a race

already won—

that is her family

readily their own

to be praised once the braid

has ticked away names

fired off torn plank

corral—voteache

in spine marrow

future tense

but within the unmoored

arena only a footfall

drops the braid

saltmix facing a last

last turning—

a step and

they are there

combed gauges

beyond the waveline

stir of summer

high thus to tumble

over the rushing 

***

***