Dear Friends: Here is some news about my upcoming readings and August poetry workshop, Intensive: The Love (and Sex) Poem. Hope to see you!

Love, Larissa
slidingsca@aol.com

Tuesday, May 29, 6:00 p.m.: HAVE A NYC Launch Party
Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, NYC
The launch of the new Three Rooms Press collection of New York City-noir short stories. Featuring Kat Georges, David Lincoln, Kofi Fosu Forson, Pedro Ponce, Ron Bass, Jame Ormerod, Peter Marra, Puma Perl, Lisa Ferber, Janet Hamill, and host Peter Carlaftes

Sunday, June 10, 3:30 p.m.: Tamarind Magazine
Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune Street, NYC
A reading for the noted magazine edited by Tom Savage. Tamarind contributors to read TBA.

Saturday, July 21, 8:00 p.m.: Art and Psyche Conference, New York University
New York University Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South
Sponsored by the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association, the International Association for Analytical Psychology, and the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. With Martine Bellen and Kristen Prevallet (open to conference participants only)

Sunday, July 22, 4:30 p.m. The New York City Poetry Festival Governor’s Island
Representing Madhatters’ Review. With Susan Scutti, Yuriy Tarnowsky, and Marc Vincenz.

SUNDAY AFTERNOONS IN AUGUST, 2-4 p.m.: Intensive Workshop: The Love (and Sex) Poem Sunday afternoons August 5,12, 19, and 26, 2-4 p.m. West 70s location: Call 212-712-9865 or e-mail slidingsca@aol.com for more information or to register.

Thursday, August 9, 7:00 p.m.: Bright Hills Literary Center
94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY
Curated by Bertha Rogers.

September 29, noon-3:30 p.m.: The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses vs. the Unbearables.
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery between Houston and Bleecker
Every bit as riotous, hilarious, and outrageous as it sounds – cast of thousands. Part of the 100,000 Poets for Change international poetry event, with over 500 readings in over 100 countries scheduled to date— and still growing!

Coming Attraction! The Carol Novack Halloween Tribute Party – stay tuned for details!

oxo,
L

BIG BRIDGE 15th Anniversary Issue!

ANNOUNCING THE BIG BRIDGE 15 YEAR ANNIVERSARY ISSUE www.bigbridge.org * * * CONTENTS Our Feature Chapbook is Andrei Codrescu’s “bridge work” with illustrations by Nancy Victoria Davis * Guest editor, Bonny Finberg presents 30 POETS, a poetry anthology dedicated to Akilah Oliver, includes poems by Jim Harrison, Alice Notley, Patricia Spears Jones, Lynn Crawford, Ron Kolm, Louise Landes Levi, Jennifer K. Dick, Steve Dalachinsky, Karen Margolis, Yuko Otomo and others. Thomas Devaney's Big Tree Poems: An exploratory anthology of contemporary tree poems featuring George Evans, Allison Cobb, Bob Arnold, Joan Larkin, Jonathan Skinner, Paul Kane, Hoa Nguyen, Katy Lederer, Peter Larkin, Bob Holman, Elaine Terranova, Kevin Varrone, Iain Haley Pollock, Sparrow, Nathaniel Otting and others. Jonathan Penton manifests Cuyahoga Burning, a feature on current Ohio literature, dedicated to Nobius Black, with fiction, poetry, and criticism by folks like Marie Kazalia, Cheryl A. Townsend, John Dorsey and others. More poems from j/j hastain, Dale Smith, Michael Basinski, Arpine Grenier, Lakey Comess, Nicolas Ekerson, Martin Willits, Lee Herrick, Larissa Shmailo, Nicholas Karavatos, Larry Sawyer, John Roche, Jerry McGuire, Joel Chace, Jeff Side, Peter Ramon, Christine Hamm, and Yahia Lababidi * Fiction selection! Guest editor Ellen Geist is offering a 15th Anniversary Fiction Feature, multifaceted stories orchestrated around four themes by authors such as Ishmael Reed, Carole Maso, Faye Moskowitz, Jeff Friedman, Brinda Charry, Howard Schwartz, and others. And more Fiction from Camille Meyer, Jessica Chace, HC Hsu, Tina Cabrera, Kate Axelrod, Ryan Jones. John Hennessy and Ron Singer. * Translations abound! Poetry from Japan, A Contemporary Anthology of Japanese Poetry is special guest edit by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa with poems from Tanaka Atsusuke, Yoko Danno, Sekiguchi Ryoko, Torii Shozo, Goro Takano and others. Voices for Change: A Contemporary Anthology of Moroccan Poets, edited by El Habib Louai with poems by Boujema El Aoufi, Abdellatif Al Ouarari, Idriss Allouch, Mubarak Ouassat, Najat Zoubair, Ikram Abdi and others. More Translations include Selections from Stet, poems by Cuban poet Jose Kozer translated by Mark Weiss. Dreams–The–Underlinears, poems by Ilya Kutik translated by Lyn Hejinian and Jean Day. A Tribute to Andrey Voznesensky (1933-2010) translation by Alex Cigale and Dana Golin. Still Life with Snow, Dato Barbakadze selected translations by Lyn Coffin and Nato Alhazishvili with Introduction by Sam Hamill. Elvana Zaimi translations of Agron Tufa. Seven poems by Georgi Ivanov translated by Yelena Dubrovin. Tiziana Colusso translated from the Italian by Brenda Porster. Poems of Iranian poet Rira Abassi translated by Maryam Ala Amjadi and M. Alexandrian. Poetry Slam Guatemala. Golden Edition edited by Walter Gonzalez, celebrates poetry from Guatemala and around the world, * Features continue with Brian Unger, who offers another insightful installation of excerpts from the incredible Philip Whalen’s personal journals Guest editor Adam Cornford presents “Neo-Surrealism and the Politics of The Marvelous” with contributions by Sandra Simonds, Michael Leong, Ivan Argüelles, Will Alexander, Eric Baus, Charles Borkhuis, Rebecca Hazelton, Andrew Joron, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, John Yau, and others. Poems, Songs and Children’s books: A Robert Priest Retrospective: "Robert Priest: Poet/Minstrel in Utter Space" by Sheree Fitch, Daryl Jung reviews Feeling the Pinch, "Robert Priest, Dr. Poetry, and the Viral Verbal Vortex" by Lance Strate, and Jordan Zinovich scrutinizes Robert Priest's Blue Pyramids and Reading the Bible Backwards Photos and excerpts from Tom Hibbard’s 2011 Wisconsin Protest Journals. Desmond Peeples essay on maritime subcultures, "In Good Use and Good Vengeance", Akhilesh Kumar Dwivedi’s, “Multiple Responses to Nationalism: Individuals in The Shadow Lines”. Neeli Cherkovski interviews Patrick James Dunagan and Lucille Lang Day writes on Jack Foley. * Exceptional ART from around the world! Jonathan Kane returns to Big Bridge with a selection of sensual photographic collage works. Jim Spitzer’s epic artistic venture: “THE BOOK: 47 canvases of poetry and text”. Julius Keleras’ photographic study, “The Pavements of Vilnius”. An exhibition of mixed media by Shawne Major. 10 photos from the UK’s Eleanor Leonne Bennett and Henrik Aeshna’s SCHIZOPoP MANIFESTO, a gallery of visual anomalies & photopoems from Paris. * And stay on top of what’s happening with important Reviews! Goodbye Gothic Rose: David Madgalene’s “Epic Search For Love and Answers in South Beach”, a review by Christopher Luna. Harris Schiff’s One More Beat (Accent Editions) reviewed by Larry Sawyer. Neeli Cherkovski’s review of Translations from the Latin of Luxorius by Art Beck. Reflections in a Smoking Mirror: Poems of Mexico & Belize by Paul Pines (Dos Madres Press) reviewed by Eric Hoffman, Tom Hibbard reviews Ungulations: Ten Waves (Under the Hoof) by A. Di Michele and Amy Trussell, Joe Safdie’s review of Lewis MacAdams’ Dear Oxygen: New & Selected Poems, 1966–2011 (University of New Orleans Press), Michael Sonsken reviews Micah Ballard’s Waifs & Strays, David Meltzer’s When I Was a Poet (City Lights Books) and F. A. Nettlebeck’s Happy Hour, Bill DeNoyelles reviews Bernadette Mayer’s, Studying Hunger Journals (Station Hill Press), W.F. Lantry reviews Lisa Vihos' The Accidental Present, Lynn Alexander reviews Somewhere Over the Pachyderm Rainbow by Jennifer C. Wolfe, Kirpal Gordon reviews Michael Hogan’s Winter Solstice: Selected Poems, 1975-2012, Bruce Ross-Smith reviews The American Eye by Eric Hoffman (Dos Madres Press), and Cheryl Townsend reviews Kirpal Gordon’s Round Earth, Open Sky (Giant Steps Press) * Our LITTLE MAGS section features Sensitive Skin, Harbinger Asylum, Tidal Bsin Review, Yellow Edenwald Field, Lummox Journal, Meat for Tea, The International Times, Home Planet News, Iodine Poetry Journal, Stoneboat and others. * Happy 15 Year Anniversary from Big Bridge! Enjoy! PLEASE POST, SHARE, TWEET EVERYWHERE AND ANYWHERE! Donations: http://www.bigbridge.org/BB16/donations.htm

MAD HATTERS' REVIEW 13, THE CAROL NOVACK TRIBUTE ISSUE, IS OUT!

MAD HATTERS' REVIEW 13, THE CAROL NOVACK TRIBUTE ISSUE, IS OUT! IN THIS EXPLOSIVE ISSUE: Carol Novack ~ Wilton Azevedo ~ BacBacLove ~ CamillE Bacos ~ Manoj Baviskar ~ James Belflower ~ Stefanie Bennett ~ Ann Bogle ~ Doug Bond ~ Tom Bradley ~ Lee Ann Brown ~ Amy Marie Bucciferro ~ Orin Buck ~ Andrei Codrescu ~ CAConrad ~ Robert Calabrese ~ Robin Carstensen ~ David Chirot ~ Walter Cummins ~ Greg Dember ~ Jean Detheux ~ Dewanatron ~ Kim Farleigh ~ Raymond Farr ~ Nancy Flynn ~ Hugh Fox ~ Vernon Frazer ~ Kirk Glaser ~ Daniel Grandbois ~ Ken Grunke ~ Rich Haber ~ Ernst Halter ~ Jefferson Hansen ~ Daniel Harris ~ Shirley Harshenin ~ j/j hastain ~ Martin Heavisides ~ Leigh Herrick ~ Laura Hinton ~ Webber Holley ~ Lori Horvitz ~ Jason Irwin ~ Rich Ives ~ Kirsten Kaschock ~ Mary Kasimor ~ Jukka-Pekka Kervinen ~ Hansoo Kim ~ Zachary Kluckman ~ Annette Labedzki ~ Dolly Lemke ~ Gregory Lenczycki ~ Bobbi Lurie ~ Michael Main ~ Steve Maas ~ Laura McCullough ~ Scott McFarland ~ Ben Rush Miller ~ M V Montgomery ~ Raphael Moser ~ Robert Mueller ~ Sierra Nelson ~ Cedar Lorca Nordbye ~ Traci O'Connor ~ Abel Ortiz-Acosta ~ Luca Penne ~ Austin Publicover ~ Dan Raphael ~ Lori Romero ~ Alison Ross ~ Hilary Schaper ~ Susan Scutti ~ Larissa Shmailo ~ Jeffrey Side ~ Lysette Simmons ~ Jürgen Smit ~ Katherine Soniat ~ Marcus Speh ~ Melissa Stern ~ Terese Svoboda ~ George Szirtes ~ Gene Tanta ~ Lynne Thompson ~ Paul Toth ~ Hugh Tribbey ~ Steve Tune ~ Robin Vaughn-Williams ~ Marc Vincenz ~ Allegra Wakest ~ Margaret Walther ~ Sarah Walker ~ Christine Wilks ~ John Moore Williams ~ Renee Witherwax ~ Michael Wolman ~ Bill Yarrow ~ Paul Yates ~ Changming Yuan http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue13/index.shtml

My poem, "Oscillation," for the late great Carol Novack, has earned an honorable mention in the May Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest: http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/larissa-shmailo/oscillation-for-carol Thanks, Goodreads!

LARISSA SHMAILO & JULIAN TAUB Traverse the Labyrinth of Language at the Jujo! Sunday 4/29 6:00pm until 8:00pm JujoMukti Tea Lounge, 211 East 4th Street (bet. Aves. A & B), New York, NY This week at the Jujo, we feature two poets who think and write in more than one language, and seek understanding in the places they cross over and the places where they meet a dead end. LARISSA SHMAILO's work has appeared in Gargoyle, the Brooklyn Rail, Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, Fulcrum,The Unbearables Big Book of Sex, and the Penguin anthology Words for the Wedding. Her books of poetry are In Paran (BlazeVOX [books]), the chapbook A Cure for Suicide (Cervena Barva Press), and the e-book Fib Sequence (Argotist Ebooks); her poetry CDs are The No-Net World and Exorcism, available through iTunes and other digital distributors. Her translation of Alexei Kruchenych's libretto, Victory over the Sun, is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She blogs at larissashmailo.blogspot.com. JULIAN TAUB is a poet, blogger, journalist, and occasional linguist. When he’s not trying to explain nanotechnology to the masses or following leads on twitter, you can him in a random park, writing a random line of poetry, or having existential conversations with strangers. He like long walks on concrete, unique perspectives, Irish bars, and of course, Tea…. Located in a comfortable, handsome space in the East Village serving enriching teas from around the globe. $5.00 Admission (Admission price may be applied to the purchase of a tea or coffee of equal or lesser value. Check out the fabulous menu of teas on the lounge’s Facebook page.) Directions: Subways F, M (2nd Avenue & Houston); 6 (Astor Place; 8th St and 4th Ave.); Bus 14A from Union Square (3rd St stop and Ave. A). This will be an "unplugged" open. Hosted by David Lawton.

"Madwoman" finalist in Glass Woman Prize

Thanks to Beate Sigriddaughter for making my prose poem, "Madwoman," a finalist for the 11th Glass Woman Prize.

Madwoman

by Larissa Shmailo

here I am again walking among these vague and tepid people they evoke a slight feeling of distaste in me they smell my pain they have no idea I just hold my phone the cellular phone I use for a disguise and I talk, talk to the ultimate answering service I walk and I talk to God

when you died I ripped the electrodes out of my skull and ran away from the land of cables and TV sets great battles of television were fought here great battles were lost Soho is no different from uptown or downtown it's all money and talking and bars sex and cars job job job so I went to see the trees

the trees were beautiful the leaves forming patterns of light on the ground and as the light played on my hair and my cheeks I realized that no one ever dies they just become trees even Marilyn Monroe was alive in a leaf I saw for an instant your face all aquiver in the shaking of a fern in the light of the wind and I kissed the trees so I knew you were not dead not really you would not be so cruel as to die really die

Under the West Side Highway I met all the men who lived there and one girl she was 22 and pregnant and had AIDS I didn't stay long but I stayed long enough under the West Side Highway I slept with Jesus in a cap talked madman Spanish with Tito and the dirty apostles I knew there would always be enough loaves and fishes for me knew that no matter how hard it got I would always be safe and held near close to God it was my destiny to be greatly loved

I chose then to be close to God to throw away my clothing and be close to God there were times when not even a shirt came between me and God

under the West Side Highway I spoke to Jesus his face always changing now Alex who lived in a tent near the wall now Panama drinking wine now Juan in his tin and cardboard hut

you followed me watched me you were worried how would I get home and back to the life I had known and I said look who's talking you died after all it's hardly for you to criticize me if I go off the beaten path a little too

and as for the others they worried too unknown to them the protection that I had and had always had I said to them all don't worry I will love you pray you home look can't you see I am your guardian angel and you thought I was just homeless and mad as though God hadn't made the whole world just for me

well now I am cured I go to the bank I take pills I sit in restaurants have a job I worry about money and whether my new boyfriend has AIDS we don't even have sex he's too busy with his job it's just as well none of these men have anything that would compel you or keep you through the night its just banging bones after all

you see very few men have souls and very few men have courage the few who have the courage to follow their souls are mostly all dead lost in leaves people kill them you know I don't know any more I take pills and talk into the cellular phone sometimes I think I hear your voice sometimes I think I hear you and then no its just the pills I get a hum in my ear its not you

I know you are not dead but you're not here either and I miss you

I am cured so they say but you can't really ever take the gift of madness away once you have been stripped by God of everything clothing family freedom senses you are his for life and I was stripped oh yes dear lord of everything every last thing God took everything leaving only my soul but I found that was enough

and you you people think you have things but really the next breath you take is the only thing you have so how different are you from me

look at us again we the homeless and see us for who we are the archangels of God

you can not take the gift of madness away I will always know about trees will always see the arch of my lover's neck in the patterns of their light I will know that the patch of

sky between the birch tree and the willow is him his azure face and I will always hear the voice of God wherever I go no pill can block him out no TV set can drown his voice no fool can block the face of God from me

look at me madwoman I am Magdalene I am Joan of Arc I am St. Marilyn Monroe and I will always be your angel baby I will always be your saint pray to me.

Work up at Altered Scale

I have three audio poems with music by Brant Lyon, Bob Perfetto, and Manny Molecular up at the new multimedia journal, Altered Scale - also look for my work in the poetry section. Thanks to Jeff Hansen for this wonderful roundup of musicians and writers.
https://sites.google.com/site/alteredschale/audio2

Three Rooms Press Publications

My poem, "Gymnasium," appears in the Dada annual Maintenant 6 (which is archived at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)); and my story, "The Wrong Woodstock," is in the New York City anthology Have a NYC, both from the wonderful Three Rooms Press; thanks to publishers and editors Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges.

My poem translated into Farsi by Rahi

I am so very pleased that Mohammad Mostaghimi (the poet Rahi) has translated yet another one of my poems. Here are the English and Persian versions of "My First Hurricane." Thank you, Rahi! Mamnoon!


My First Hurricane


Like a dead leaf

Lifted from the scorched summer earth

Now wet and almost green

Like a dead leaf

Carried by a thundercloud

And brought to water by wind:


I am here in the eye of the storm

Dizzy, motionless,

Suspended in the humid air

Waiting.


Trees tremble.

I breathe slowly.

I have known tempests, squalls, and gentle rain.

You are my first hurricane.



لاریسا شمایلو
نخستین تندباد من

چونان برگی پژمرده
از تابستان سوخته‌ی زمین بالا رفت
اینک نمناک و سبزگون
چونان برگی پژمرده
بر دوش ابر صاعقه‌دار
و سفر تا آب
با باد

اینک من
سرگردان
بی‌حرکت
اندروا
در شرجی
چشم‌ به‌ راه

درختان می‌لرزند
به آرامی دم می‌زنم
تندبادها
بوران‌ها
ژاله‌باران‌ها را می‌شناسم
تو نخستین تندباد منی!

گزاشتار: محمد مستقیمی - راهی

RESOLUTION / REVOLUTION: Alfred Corn

RESOLUTION / REVOLUTION turns full circle, ending on the work of Alfred Corn. Caveat lector: Behind the measured verse grins the face of war.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI*

Is what the Dachau Jews would see,
Where Hitler chose to lodge them.
Now, bombs have set Iraqis free—
At least, those who could dodge them.

*”Work Will Set You Free””


EXCHANGE OF FIRE

Missiles, tanks, smart-bombs, and, when things got hot,
Cries of offended dignity:
“I’m entitled to this technology,
But you barbarians are not.”

“INTERVENTION IS NOT WAR”

Well, no, and “ethnic cleansing” isn’t murder.
Nor was the Führer’s rabid New World Order
State terror. Nor are pre-emptive strikes on weaker
Peoples a crime—or not to the power-seeker.

CASCADE OF FACES

Five seconds of fame drag them down
the screen, ranks, names, faces, ages:
Staff Sergeant Hannah Nagel, 24.
Private Tom Abeel, 19.
Major Luís Moreno, 33.
Lance Corporal Rafiq Ibrahim, 20.
Captain Roger Kean, 31.
Candid American faces, unblinking,
unafraid, unvenal, snapped
a year, two years ago, not yet reviled
or revered, the newscast’s evening crop.

Images swallowed up, transfigured,
launched into an unlived future.

*

On the Oval Office desk,
dead center, one hot white spot
lights the briefing’s final page.
A chief executive is working late,
behind him, tall windows onto
a sky petroleum black,
strewn with trembling sparks.

*

In another hemisphere noon towers over
a desert city where his signature ignited
hair, skin, and eyes of the unknown civilian.
One by one, for how many terrorized
hundred-thousands the precedent was set,
roofs, walls, thundering down on their screams.

*

He reaches to snap out the lamp, ambles
to a door that closes on his steps.
Official darkness. Clockwise stellar bodies,
in their long-term impartiality, continue
rinsing the blackboard,
rinsing the blackboard—
which in a decade, or a century,
will free itself from any obligation
to save a chalked-up tally of the cost.

 

WHAT THE THUNDER SAYS


A crack a second and a third splinter as the dam fractures
Soundbolts spiking down through granite a dynamite
That means concussive rage detonations battering
Skull ribcage spine an earthquake high in the ramparts
Stone ramparts blocking a sun no longer strong enough to rise

The houses collapse roof skews off to one side a broken
Beam crushes doors windows in its crazed veer a drill
Screams into rooms to shiver walls timbers floor ratcheting
Through the garden spewing hoses of dirt spinning flagstones
Into the air while a tank that dives from a cloud flattens on impact

Whole quarries of rock shear off tumble smash shock their way
Off the mountain megatons of shattered booms packed stacked
On the air collapsing around your ears and what the din sounds
Out is the last thought which already owns you you and yours
Nothing holds off the thunderstone it says I am your death.


NEW ENGLAND/CHINA

Wakefield: Did some romantic alderman
Settle that name on our recycled mill-town?
I know Rhode Island is Red Island, or
Island of Roses... And, look, buds on Mother’s
Haviland china, fifty years of attic
Storage ended, are pink, flushed with excitement
At being propped in ranks along the plate-rail
Of cabinets a shipwright made for this
Centenarian house I signed the deed on
Nine days ago. No way would I have served
Dinner on old porcelain in designer
Manhattan, my home turf for more than half
A prodigal life-span once I’d waved goodbye
To the South. But here it fits, a tasteful, gold-rimmed
Victorian replacement for the showy
Chinese export bowls and plates how many
Prosperous New England tables boasted
Back in the bullish age of clipper ships.
Those clashing pinks and reds epitomized
Spice roses of the Indies gunboats opened
To enrich our Union, sea to shining sea.

Following the Vicar of Wakefield’s homely
Advice, I’ve put a “Rose Medallion” teacup
(Bought for two dollars at a thrift shop) here
In this eastern window so its damasked pattern
Can go translucent as light rejuvenates
A naïvely rendered pride of mandarins
Hard at their silken round of tea and gossip
And calligraphy. The Vicar’s older daughter
Olivia, with her sensibility,
Might have been drawn into their circle, even
If her graver sister, Sophia, wouldn’t follow.

Goldsmith, Mother most likely never read,
But Gone with the Wind she surely did and like
White Southern women of her day (except
The ambitious few who idolized Miss Scarlett)
Modeled herself on Melanie—for instance,
She never told black friends and workers they
Should “know their place” and stay in it. Her son,
If he works up his nerve, can copy her
(And risk a snub) by taking lemon pie
To the family next door, whose ancestry
Is African; and probably Narragansett,
Too, or else Pequot. Out beyond the teacup
I see their children, the older climbing up
On the garbage bin while holding an umbrella,
A taut silk octagon of alternating
Ebony and ivory pie-wedge panels
That read as either a black Maltese cross
Against a cream-white background, or a white
Against a black. She’s poised to make her skydive
But seems to doubt the parachute; and none
Of her younger sister’s high-pitched razzing works.
A pause, a balance; but she doesn’t leap—
The Sophia of this family circle, just
As her wilder sibling’s the Olivia.
Now their mother’s called them to lunch, their game
Shelved with no decisions made, no plunge
Into the aerial realm of weightless pleasure.

I’ll have my self-prepared baked codfish on
These resurrected roses—a chance to ponder
The leap I leapt in settling here and calling
The Ocean State, at last, the Golden Decades’
Ultimate Cathay. So, veteran frigate,
You, unlike the Pequod, may now dock
And prove that not all sexagenarians
Are skippers hot to tap-dance round the deck
Like Ahab, thirst for blood a scorching trade wind
That gives them forward thrust. The middle ground!
Vicarious pastimes, watching children’s games
Or tending post-colonial and post-
Postmodern gardens, should amount to a sound
Retirement plan, Sophia, calm, deific
Wisdom, serving as hand-hewn figurehead
When our vessel comes to port. If goods we heft
Down the gangplank are only earthenware,
So be it, Yankees also favor those,
Judging from bits of broken plates and cups
I dug up planting the hybrid tea a friend
Gave me, the spot selected not haphazard,
Instead, exactly where a rose should go.
He laughed when told I’d named the house Knew Place—
A tribute to comedy’s most tragic playwright.

But try to name or know a place you never
Lived in: Beijing. Nablus. Kabul. Baghdad...
Imagination’s olive branch stops short,
Absorbing the news that soldier and civilian
Sprawl face down in crimson pools enlarged
With all they owned, one clotting upshot of
Capitalism’s abstract cannibalism.
Prosperity. Ours, but insubstantial,
Like all dream-castles based on greed, up there
Above the outcome. Who’d listen if I called
Our captains by their real names? They won’t,
Conceded, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
Out of the deeps, a voice: Permission denied.
No port for the tempest-tossed, you haven’t yet
Begun to fight. While you breathe, you won’t retire.

RESOLUTION / REVOLUTION : Marc Vincenz

Marc Vincenz is Swiss-British and was born in Hong Kong. His recent books include Upholding Half the Sky (MiPOesias, 2010), The Propaganda Factory, or Speaking of Trees (Argotist, 2011) and Pull of the Gravitons (forthcoming Right Hand Pointing, 2012). His translation of Swiss poet Erika Burkart’s Secret Letter is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. Last year, his poetry was nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize.


The Mystical Art of Accounting

“When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast…”— Harry S. Truman

It’s all about volume,
capacity per square metre / foot
(whether metric or imperial floats your proverbial boat);
although, there are others
(a whole slew of choices, in fact):
the Tokyo Tsubo for instance; sounds like soy-infused Wasabi sauce;
the Seoul Pyeong: true measure of an average ninth century Korean male—
arms and legs fully splayed, face down prostrating, flailed by the brunt
of a Mongolian warlord’s cat ‘o nine tails, an ideal size for a room,
I am told; or perhaps face up, making perfect circles
under cherry blossoms in the snow, stargazing,
defining the rules of space and numbers.

Imperial Peking had,
and Social Democratic Communist Beijing
still has the Mu, which possibly derives it’s name
from the exhausted groan of the water buffalo—
a measure for judging the extent of rice paddies before harvest.
Everything is weighted, ruled, cubed, boxed, angled, triangled—
lucky we came up with these handy things, numbers.
Now we can finally count the stars in the sky—
6000 with the naked eye—and we know useful things
like the distance from the equator to the moon
represents sixty-nine times the girth of a full grown earth.

Funny that, the number 69—
normally I think of being twenty one again,
in the back of my Unbeatable Bonk Bug with Maria-Rosa,
Hispanic-American goddess, gently calculating
trigonometric angles, postulating X/Y positions.
Without numbers we wouldn’t know our up from down,
we wouldn’t even know there are more than two of anything at all—
just be walking on straight lines in flat spaces, like Pacman,
we wouldn’t know an arse from an elbow, really.
Yet, these are mostly distances—things men have conquered,
numbers have far reaching consequences:

Analysts know how much Namibia is worth on paper,
in Dollars, Euros, Rupees; its equivalent in derivatives;
and in conjunction with funded institutions of science,
how much bacteria and moss can contribute
to the global economic balance sheet—
it has all been tallied out, audited down
to the last decimal point, then stamped,
duly notarised and sealed in hot wax for posterity.
There is surely a secret book,
hidden in the darkest catacombs of the Vatican
where all calculations are indexed for future evidence;
or perhaps it is hermetically locked
in the sprawling prairies of Middle-America,
guarded by the Federal Agency in charge of numbers.
I mean, why else would they call it Area 51,
giving it not one, but two prime numbers?
And, by the way: 69 and 51 add up to 120,
which is a recurring number in the Mayan calendar,
and shall someday well fulfil an ancient prophesy
unlocking the last secrets of the Universe.

Yes, we have developed all sorts of uses for numbers;
we know how many atoms are required in an atom bomb,
but more importantly how much it costs,
(2 billion dollars for Harry Truman in 1945, 20 billion dollars today);
there must be reasons, of course, why God gave us five fingers on each hand—
he wanted us, it seems, to count on them. One by one by one.

Previously published in FRiGG


Monkeys & Flowers


Nobody stands for old Auntie
on the 6.45 to Purple Pagoda Park.

Most of us are gripping the overhead rails
like whooping monkeys.

In the streets of a city
flowers need a man’s attention.

There are no birds, no bees.
Dirt & dung are horse-carted

& the Buddha & the Chairman skip hand
in hand, all the way down to the waterfront.



[Earth-Shaving]


“I know you’re thinking
these are trees from the days
of wilderness and chaos,” he says
wielding his electric chain saw,
a crusader assessing his holy war,
“when butterflies were golden eagles
and spiders the size of cartwheels.”
“We,” says his companion
Manolo who looks like a gunslinger,
“are trimming our way to enlightenment.
There’d have been no Renaissance
without the heat and the paper-makers.
It’s stubble from a chin, and we’re
just giving her a close shave,” he says.
And Manolo points at my Canon
dangling from my neck like a marsupial.
“Take your shots of the extinct volcano,”
he says, “but these are coming down.
And I know you’re thinking about
the wild flowers, about the bees,
but listen—don’t you want to know
what the time is?”

RESOLUTION / REVOLUTION: Sarah Sarai

Sarah Sarai lives on a bridge under a cave in the eastern quadrant of the portion marked “Odds 'n Ends.” Time draws nigh for her to publish a new collection to comfort her first collection (The Future Is Happy, BlazeVOX[books]). She is a member of the Occupy Language assemblage rising from ashes of Zucotti Park. Both of the poems included here consider the word resolve, with its impossibilities and its maybe more.

I Resolve To

Buy cheap, sell now.
Buy sheep, sell ewe.
Buy ewe, shear me.
Talk the talk
walk the keep
keep you.

I resolve to
shear my nethers,
then Esau, a woolly fellow.
Ewe want to buy a bridge?
I resolve to sell you one.
Ewe cannot walk this bridge.
This is a bridge you cannot walk.

I resolve to walk the bridge
and shear ewe within
an inch of my wife.
She is sheared fun.

There's a bridge on my teeth.
It spans incisors.
My teeth resolve to represent.
Pearly as Heaven's gate
(or gates, we're not sure),
they resolve to take ewe in,
my little wayfarer.
My teeth know things.
So would you if you lived in a cave.

I resolve to live in a cave
with a bridge, walk the line,
brace myself for the next trick
or for ewe. I resolve to buy braces,
for ewe.



Two Dreams Hovering Insect Wings Above Me

First I lie across your lap
for everyone to see for comfort.
Second we kiss I pause you touch my hair
and wave good-bye in one graceful sweep.

I wonder who I am in either dream and
talk myself through the threshold of the new day
archived by winged beasts who know life
as a slow volar flash of something close to pleasure.


Berfrois, “The Avoirdupois Chic”
http://www.berfrois.com/2011/11/avoirdupois-chic-sarah-sarai/
Boston Review, “So Tender Beauty” and “From Love, Imagination”
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.4/sarah_sarai.php and
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.4/sarah_sarai2.php

POOL, “Commerce for the Good of the Peoples” and more
http://www.poolpoetry.com/poeteight.html

Scythe, “No Need for a Door” and more
http://scytheliteraryjournal.com/issue-vi.php

Redheaded Stepchild, “Blame It on Family”
http://redheadedmag.com/poetry/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=268:blame-it-on-family-&catid=36:poetry&Itemid=59

Fogged Clarity, "Experiential Philosophy"
http://foggedclarity.com/2009/03/experiential-philosophy/

Minnesota Review, “Further Arguments”
http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns68/sarai.shtml
Posted by Larissa Shmailo at 5:27 PM

RESOLUTION / REVOLUTION: Annie Pluto

Anne Elezabeth Pluto is Professor of Literature and Theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, where she is the artistic director of the Oxford Street Players. She was a member of the Boston small press scene in the late 1980s and started Commonthought Magazine at Lesley 18 years ago. She has been a participant at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 2005 and 2006. Her most recent publications are in The Lyre and in W_O_M_B, The Buffalo Evening News Poetry Page, Earth's Daughters, Blackbox Gallery, and Helix.



Wake

I’ll wake this world for you
each sunrise to the moon
stretched taut and drawn
back waiting for the arrow
You are the mark, darkened
by time and terrible space
this is what remains of
love, a grove of flowering
trees, the songs of birds
the emptiness of no promise
or prediction – the knowledge
that time does move – never
backwards, but ahead – in front
of itself, and it takes us along.


Jung in the hands of the Mujahideen

Father
born on the eve of World War I
I live your conscience
daily reminders that
the world is a frightening place
you never dreamed as you spent
the Second World War traveling west
landscapes away from your home
that New York would be the site
of terrorist activities
on the day of your 50th
wedding anniversary
in the third millennium,
in your second century.

As a soldier,
you lived Central Asia,
traveled the Middle East
Byelorussian, in a British
uniform, having escaped death
in a soviet prison
the names of cities
roll off your tongue like Turkish
delight, now ruined
Beirut, beleaguered Damascus
starving Baghdad
mysterious Alexandria
and bleeding Jerusalem

I played store with your war
souvenir coins
turning over the bas relief of pyramids
and camels
my kingdom for a beggarly denier
I see the world is round
and hold it in my child's hands
well traveled in your stories
I pray now that we can realign
against the evil
religion brings to the oppressed
that magi lift their hearts to god
and climb the mountains of Babel
holding words instead of weapons,
and as their voices reach
heaven
God hears the faithful ask forgiveness
for themselves and all of history.
amen and amen

Documentation

Sigh lanced
like Jesus pierced
I will cry alone instead
of bleed – and plead
what innocence
I ascertain – so tired
of being
my own
advocate. and you
blameless in your
corner – drawing
the line and redrawing
the times I stepped
over it. you need me
to agree – I want to
get out and over,
the rain
as a cover
to wash me clean

My translation of Victory over the Sun on the Brooklyn Rail InTranslation site

My translation of the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by the father of zaum, Alexei Kruchenych, is now up on the InTranslation section of the Brooklyn Rail. This opera was first mounted in 1913 with sets and costumes by Kasimir Malevich. Victory! We can become awesome and powerful!

RESOLUTION / REVOLUTION : Larissa Shmailo

Larissa Shmailo is a poet and a translator of Russian. The following poems are reprised from the 100,0000 Poets for Change anthology edited by Anny Ballardini and Obododimma Oha in collaboration with Michael Rothenberg.

Winedark Sea

In the east, in the eastern rising lands, a tide, westering, earthdrawn, rising, the morning sun bloodied in its wake. She drags, pulls, shifts, hauls, trascines her hydraulic load. Tides born of tides, moondrawn, myriadheaded, within her, within her blood, oinopa ponton: the winedark sea. A wet sign calls her hour, bids the earth-shaken fallen rise, bids the wet-dirt wounded rise, bids the blooddimmed peoples rise, as she radiates out, out, out, forever from her bed. The wet sign calls her hour, bids all to rise from childbed, bridebed, deathbed, rise. He comes, the pale salt vampire, in clouds and tears, and claws, battle-led, draws, battle-red, mouth-to-mouth, limb-to-limb, skin-to-skin. There.
Here.


Scarcity

Listen:
If you wait but don’t want
If you want but don’t take
If you take but don’t use
If you use but don’t care
If you care but not much
The petty demon comes.

The petty demon says:
Not all of you are wanted
Not everyone is needed
A few may be accepted

There’s scarcity, you see
There are no loaves and fishes─
Not for the likes of you─
A few baguettes for baby
Some caviar for me
There’s just enough to shit and sleep
But not enough for thee.

The petty demon shrieks:
Time is money
Sell short
Eat to win
Assume the position.

In the world
In the angry material world
There are men who are not men
Men
Whose imaginations never rise
Above the box and plane
Whose imaginations squat
Upon the positions of power.

If the petty demon bothers you
Here’s what you say
Tell him:
I don’t know about
Your lawyer’s fees
Your MDs
Your CEOs
Your deep freeze

I do know that
The blind man is perfect
That there’s more to life than irony
And squealing like a stuck pig

That the truth is hard but you can stand on it
That time isn’t money or a threat but a gift.

As you assume your position
In the world
Do not love
Men who are not men
Whose imaginations never rise
Walk tall; walk with God
Assume nothing; take a position.


560 Brooke Avenue

The walls, barbed wire, barbed, next to a
drive-by window of Burger King: Dios, is
this your way? Electric doors, opened one
at a time, they make a sound, it maddens.
All the time the boys do time, all the time
they say, “Lunacy, this is crazy, crazy mad.”
It is. “Nigga, nigga,” one boy prays, farts as
the JC twists his hand: He tries to laugh, he
cries instead, porque? Scared, so scared, his
scarred voice cracks, 15. “Nigga, ay, I here
4 murder,” he lies. O child, perhaps so. My
Jesus of the got-nailed, my Angel of the why,
& what could you have done yet, why are you
here, porque, my God, & donde vamos, u & I?


Vive L’Égypte

A man, beaten — face the color of a burkha
dragged through the mud — is lifted by Isis
with her rose and her tiet.

Isis, who loves mothers, the downtrodden, slaves —
who is friend to the Nile and the dead —
who listens

even to the prayers of the rich — lifts his frame —
trampled and broken — from her mud.
Allahu ahkbar! he cries.

She cries. Cairo — Sharm El-Sheikh — Alexandria —
Hurghada — Luxor — Aswan — the blood of Isis
calls from Philae.



Speak Now

Speak now.
Darkened, once neutral air,
Skyscrapers turn,
Dream fire, and burn.

Dream fire, and burn.
Skyscrapers turn,
Darkened, once neutral air,
Speak now.