Four Poems From Lâle Müldür

From  The Cyclamen (Mary-Incense)

IV

“the apricot blossoms are blowing
from east to west,
i’ve tried to keep them from falling.”

summer’s passed quickly with its tanbur lutes
a raspberry rain is falling now
grandfather’s sleeping inside
in that wet raspberry land
the elegy of the Virgins of Jerusalem begins.

summer’s passed quickly with its downpours
the woman’s still sleeping on her prayer rug
she is a raspberry land now
in her heart an angry and frightening
song begins.

did i want to return
did i want to return
to no you,
to that pagan land

to return with rock and roll records
to return in Venetian outfits
sassy and decadent
to return to a bunch of boys who had waited for me
CONTRA NATURA

and to say “I, Lazarus
                have come from the land of the Dead
                Forgive me”

forgive me for the terrible things I’ve seen
                among you
because i walked away from you with violets in my hand
                forgive me

i want to join the Virgins of Jerusalem
in that wet raspberry land
i want to give birth to a son and
                and forget you.
…

VI

Apprehensio-Melancholia!
Memorabilia! …

“the Angel wanted to remain a while longer …
But the storm breaking out from Heaven
catches his wings with such violence
that he cannot close them again.”

the angel of History,
his face turned to the past,
helpless in the storm,
is dragged toward the future …

Like Eurydice
attaining an identical new maidenhood,
untouchable.

“And suddenly,
taking the god’s hand, uttering
with a painful scream these words: ‘Looked back!’—
not understanding something, softly said, ‘Who?’

VII

irhâç: the light on the brows of the grandfathers (the blush)

a watchword written
on the brows of Mary’s grandfathers: MHMD

They are a race that come from one another!

Mary’s pearl birth
The oyster, it is said, at times rises to the surface
to draw the rain into itself like a heavenly seed
Pearl, it is said, is good for melancholy
Unperforated, virgin pearls …

VIII

Maryam al-Basri
was in the service of Rabia al-Adawiyya:
Whenever she heard knowledge of the love of God
she would faint

In a session of dhikr (the remembrance of God)
she died suddenly of love …

God has servants who are like rain,
Falling on earth they become corn, falling on the sea, pearls.

IX

the universe is a compound of four elements.
whichever you choose you’re nipped in the bud.

Rose:   burns in fire
        withers without water
        suffocates in airlessness
        freezes in marble.


From “The Divan of the Dictionarie of the Turk”

Shaman! “your secrets, who will ex-

pound them to the crowds?” a message

goes out from your head, that you stay

in your forest place. who could you

love? even for just a while, who will

you love? the Shaman spirit waits for

the founding of “our own city,” open

to dangerous winds. among the Turks

at the entrance of the year of the croc-

odile, much rain falls and in the cycle

of years remains an unforgettable

memento. a pearl there caught in a

spider’s web, your secret, who will

expound it to the crowds?

the woman was trying to be nothing. names

they shouted her. the woman became a

sensitive flower. she made her escape. her

housepole she set up herself. she became a

sensitive flower.

                   “My foot was caught in the snare, not seeing
                   the secret snare, I suffered thus
                   long sickness. Be the remedy my beloved.”

 
waterjug was chilled under the star Bakırsokum
(copperbite). skin of wild rabbit could be made
into raincoat and the Sword Xan observed it.
he made himself secret, from everyone. they said
“This man drives his horse, always to the fore”
but like that very Woman he was trying to be
nothing. “thirst-making sun was overcast;
hoped-for friend made jealousy.” he pulled down
his tentpole. observing nothing he made his
exit.


among the Turks the highest jumper becomes

king. he has two wives, one the daughter of the

summer, the other of the winter god. the first of

the children changes into a white stork. and

there are Turkish forefathers who have slept

with a sea goddess, ones sprung from wolves as

well. to spring from she-deer and he-wolf is also

seen among the Mongols. the Genghis line

springs from the marriage of Börte Chino

(göksel heavenly wolf) and Qo Maral (she-

deer). the wolf is blue, the deer is dark. on the

barren steppe the legends are counted true.

prince of hearth and fire …

in the Book of Dede Korkut to say “annihilate

your clan and kin” they say “extinguish

your hearth.” while in the north of Mongolia

fire is deemed female and its priest

is a woman, in the south fire is male

and its priest is a man.

“The thirteenth tribe” … the Khazars

… double kingship … religions are

debated. jews come from Baghdad and

Byzantium to Khazar. Khanate is

established. Gabriel becomes first

khan. shamanist before, the reason the

Khazar khan accepts judaism is this:

because all religions to come after

judaism accept it. German jewish

traveler Petachia, Rabbi of Ratisbon,

who in 12th century passed through

Khazar land, finds jewish Khazars

primitive and says his ears heard

always “wailing of woman and howl-

ing of dog” in his journey of eight days

in Khazar land … wailing of woman

… howling of dog …

The Melodies of Forest and Light

to Ömer

For it is written of them, they will not believe
       even a voice from out of the grave
“I, Lazarus, have come from the dead.”

Transfiguration!

The Holy Prophets Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Jesus

As a race that comes from one another!

Those who did not see Elijah in John the Baptist

How could they ever see Muhammed, Moses, Jesus, each Holy Prophet,

A wretch whose every journey begins from the desert

One who suffers, one who is always about to be killed!

Pitiful human being!

Who does not hear the melodies of forest and light

Whose eyes are veiled by arrogance

Who mutters delusions of infinity

Who builds castles and houses,

        as though to dwell there to infinity

Even the disciples

Wanting to build a tabernacle of leaves

For Moses, Elijah, and Jesus

meeting on the mountaintop

They were nothing but uncomprehending servants

O those who take themselves seriously!
Integrals of arrogance!
For it is written, they will not
believe even a voice from out of the grave

“I, Lazarus, have come from the dead”
And the disciples saw
       Jesus turn to light
His garments transfigure in a weird whiteness.

Jezebel’s hatred and Elijah

Herodias’ hatred and John

The Jews’ hatred and Jesus

Prophets!

Rough drafts of one another!

Melodies of forest and light!

Behold a swan,

        For you,

     Splitting into particles of light!

From A Solar Regression

II

because melancholy should just breathe in and out in silence
and i should be dressed in white like a tree of ice

now get out,
hope, suggestive whore

       NOLI ME TANGERE

i made a tree of my body
no one can touch me again

mimosa pudica

wound that remains beautiful

dark and hopeless the trees are demigods
where countless voices and dark green death take shelter

you killed the living things
like a light emitted by pansies
i only broke the branch of a mourning plant
and made a tree of my body
a tree that takes breath in Silurian seas

       NOLI ME TANGERE

i forget my body
       and a tree forgets its motion
i forget that i have lived
       and the sea forgets its anemones


Translated by Donny Smith

Widely considered one of the most important contemporary Turkish poets writing today, Lâle Müldür is the author of ten books of poetry, including Ultra-zone'da Ultrason (2006), which was awarded the Altın Portakal Poetry Award. Two collections of English translations of her poems have been published: Water Music (Dublin 1998) and I Too Went to the Hunt of the Deer (Istanbul 2008). A volume of Müldür’s poems in French translations Ainsi parle la fille de pluie (Istanbul 2002) has also appeared.

Donny Smith teaches at a high school in Istanbul. His collection of Lâle Müldür translations, I Too Went to the Hunt of a Deer, was published in 2008. His own collection of poetry, Was Gone and Has Gone and Was Gone, also appeared in 2008. His translations of Wenceslao Maldonado’s Si cortarle la cabeza a la Gorgona and Cemal Süreya's Üvercinka are to be published soon.

Four Poems From Dawn Corrigan

Sailing from Troy

The next morning Cassandra was brought to the ship.
She’d told our people not to take the horse—
though it was futile, she could not stop
herself from trying to warn them. Of course
she was ignored. She turned away to miss
what she had already spoken out loud:
the serpent wrapping Laocoön like a shroud,

its barnacled skin the fluid bark
of a tree. It moved relentlessly
to the prophet and his sons, the way a shark
finds a shipwreck, and ate them with glee.
The dumbstruck Trojans suffered loss of memory
as they always did when one of Cassandra’s
prophecies, before their eyes, came to pass.

But I’m surprised she left. I would have wanted
to see the monster, though not the slaughter
that followed, everyone killed but a few painted
boys and girls, and the king’s daughter,
who would have been raped by a soldier
but he was stopped by Agamemnon,
the triumphant chief, who claimed her as his own.

On the voyage Cassandra assured me
she would not live one day in Greece:
Iphigenia’s avengers will not spare me.
I didn't believe her, as perhaps you might guess,
teasing her, even: Death shouldn’t scare a priestess.
I thought no one would harm Agamemnon.
But I was wrong. The fleet was scattered by Poseidon,

and envoys have just brought word on Cassandra.
Diomedes thinks war is threatening
against the murderous Clytemnestra,
but Cassandra’s words as we were sailing
away from Troy, as she clutched the ship’s railing,
were No revenge, pointing toward the cabin
where Helen lay with Menelaus again.


Naked and Playing the Harp

They are unknown to me, tears and laughter,
as the history of man is, strewn with shards,

a string of beads heaped upon the bureau
blinking scarlet, turquoise, marigold.

The brutal singer, seeking work, fleeing work,
knows a song adorned with a name lasts longer,

sings of Odysseus, who thought of Penelope
though he slept soundly beside Calypso.

She has a violent relation with the moon.
She says, Let me say nothing of the moon.

Let me speak instead of the hungers
of bodies, those machines

that invent things delicious and repulsive
and reproduce in a clap of laughter.
 

Pyrrha Remembers the Ages

Chaos begat Night and Erebus
who together produced Love
who in turn begat Light and Day
who begat Gaia and Ouranos
who begat the Cyclops and Titans,
Prometheus among them and his brother
Epimetheus who, with Pandora,
begat me.
               At first earth and air and sea
were all one thing, the earth not solid,
sea not fluid, air not transparent yet.
In that undifferentiated world
all creatures kept their heads bent toward the earth
except for man, who dared to raise his eyes
toward heaven and the sun.
                                     But Jupiter
felt that gaze like fire; it burned him
all over, so in return he took some dust
and from it made revenge, which took the guise
of woman: Pandora, earth's first mother.
Upon her Venus bestowed passion,
Apollo music, Mercury persuasion,
but no one knows whose gift was curiosity.
Epimetheus saw her and called her his own
and that occasion was the start of history.

Through each ensuing age--the Golden,
Silver, Bronze and Brass--the gods diluted man,
but with each his malice only increased.
So they took the road that weaves across
the sky at night, the road to the palace
of the gods' king.
                      As one they approached
and called to him, and asked what should be done
with man, who ever bathed the earth in blood.
Jupiter said the experiment had failed.
It was time to work the mud and try again.


Pyrrha Remembers the Flood

Then all was sea. The wolf swam with the sheep,
the fishes moved among the tops of trees
and weary birds gave up and plunged to water.

Deucalion and I, warned by his father,
were sealed inside our casket, where I lay
on him until we landed on Parnassus.

Zeus spared us because we had been harmless.
We threw some stones and made the new race,
a hard people who, like us, are virtuous

if only they can say: My life is harmless.
At last, when none of them objects to wrong
or feels some shame, Zeus will destroy them.

Meanwhile, my uncle, who arranged for men
to keep the good meat for themselves, lies chained,
tortured for his generous mistake.


Dawn Corrigan has published poetry, fiction and nonfiction in a number of print and online journals, most recently Prick of the Spindle. She's an associate editor at Girls with Insurance.

Seven Poems From Sundin Richards

The Helper Years

Be
wildered
by loco
motives
the little
town fumes
in a cradle

It’s the sound
noticed first
full reassuring
threat on skin

         blooms into a
         love of animals
         and small things
         under wheels

Ghetto in the eye
blink of nowhere
the bow
the rifle
the shitpile
and the dog

         The Royal Order
         of the Queen’s
         guts is given
         braving spiders

And if this aint
the end of the world
you sure can see it
from here

Firedamp is feared
up and down the line
and are those your teeth
over there?

         Even for us that’s
         a lot of mountain

Sugar from plastic
was goddamn grace
on credit

Glow yon
searchlight
aimed at the library
or honkeytonk
counted as the
same well

         Why punch the hero?
         The bucket drops in
         a gurgle night


Teratologia

Where is the smoke
filled room? I’ve got
my ticket somewhere.

Here is this enough to
cover it? Sorry about
the curtains.

How do you figure he
did that? I mean the
whole thing is torn.

Can you believe this
rain? We’ll be trout
fishing on Main.

I’m telling you now
ok? Plain as the
nose on your face.

The thing looks like
ten miles of bad road
and smells worse.

Let loose of it. Just put
it down and look at it
a second.


Away The Vapour Flew

I have a background
in reality but I’m
willing to learn

Shock of sleep
for sight

I drop my brains
along the trail

To find my
way home

When light is
diversion enough

Gems crowd
almagests

And you’re a pretty
little thing

What’s your
name

When it’s drastic
everybody matters

It’s always
drastic

That you’re
a favorite

In the deadening
reddening running night


Train Smoke

Guard it
like a one
armed convict

Reset the
chemicals
to balderdash

When the
climate
climbs

To rest
no rest

Champion
voodoo
among rocks

The Good Humor
man got drafted

Then it was
up to us

Soaking the
organism in

Snake oil


Some Ease

Picked up a
mournful thirst

By the slap of
an Aldis lamp

That we lose some
thing by proportion

Clinging to ciphers
or a shared cup

The engagement
is wholly local

Penumbra pierced
straight away

Seen behind
rocks

Roll up
rightly

The wagons
are uncircled

So let’s
go


Mjollinar And Me

Heroes remake
statures

Even in
fated air

But catch
it

They’re always
deaf and dead

Though you
shine

I see the red
the forward

And glow
on my eyes

When open
when shut

Sauce me
no sauce

Oh embrasure
assure aesthesia

The little
sickle moon

Cut into
the face

Of the
door


Loving The Insane

is a thing to do
after losing the
orders by Dillinger’s
Lake all at sunrise

Falling snow girl gets
said but I think Mithras
with a dash of Hermes

The cradle is cold at
ten thousand feet and
god I love your face
happy or otherwise

Swill leads me
chaldean along but
combat interuptus
for the lights

My head rings
from an accident and
hemorrhage-a-mundo says
the power plug

Dictionaries are a story
are a window are a full
feathered secret

Wolf cry you useless
glissando through rain
or a glow that looks red
but isn’t


Serious Fun

My brain
smooth as
an egg

Walking
the shiner
off

The last
of the morning
in green glass

Fine fortunes
in the general
crack-up

So a quota gets
filled and we’re off
to the Hesperides

Filled with fun
by the very blade
of the sun

I locate
sacrifice
by feel

Pretty well
my anointed
splash splash

The ultimate
slash letting
light in

My creature
you just barely
got fed

Thus you are my
personal interfer
on

The first rule of
living is don’t
die

The rest is play
and sport

Sleeping in
ditches in
church clothes

So it’s palin
genesis from
here on out

I keep trading
cows for
magic beans

And last
election I came
in dead first


Sundin Richards' poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, Girls With Insurance, Colorado Review, Interim, Zone, Volt, Cricket Online Review, Concelebratory Shoehorn Review, and Western Humanities Review, where he took first place in the 1999 Utah Writers' Contest.

Footage of him reading at the Cabaret Voltage reading series is available here. An interview with Richards appeared earlier this month in Zone. Richards' book, The Hurricane Lamp, is forthcoming from ONLS Press. He lives in Salt Lake City.

An Interview With Sundin Richards

Sundin Richards in San Francisco in 1993. Photo by Andrea Perkins.

Sundin Richards, whose poems appear in a special double-length feature celebrating Zone's fourth anniversary this month, sat down with Andrew Haley on June 17, 2010 in Salt Lake City. They discussed Richards' penchant for composing on typewriters, bar fights, railroad towns, Walt Whitman's pathological happiness, big shirts, Moby Dick and the poet's first name.


AH: What kind of a name is Sundin?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: It’s a Swedish surname, but I’m not of Swedish derivation. I was born in the early ‘70’s, and my folks were hippies, so I suppose it was their way of being interesting. When I was little, I wanted to be called James T. Kirk, but then, who didn’t?

AH: Where do you come from? How did you get here?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Those are some pretty loaded questions! I was raised in two small towns, here in the Mountain West, and would ride the train between them several times a year, by myself.

First there was Helper, Utah, which is an old railroad town. It once was known as “The wickedest town in Utah.” Butch Cassidy robbed the bank there, and the last brothel closed in 1977. More saloons than churches, that sort of place. Then there was Glenwood Springs, Colorado, a lovely little mountain town where Doc Holladay died. There are two rivers that go through that place. I hitch-hiked from there to Salt Lake City in 1992.

AH: You studied under Donald Revell. Did you learn more from the man or his poetry?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: You know, both his poems as well as his own great self have been enormously instructive. I feel that I am a better person for having known Don. His example gives me a great deal of hope regarding the possibilities of the art, being an artist, and just plain old how to live in the world, and to care about doing so.

AH: Spicer or O’Hara?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Huh. I’m a big fan of both, I must say. I find Spicer to be the more challenging poet, so the pleasure I get from reading him is more cerebral, I suppose, than that which I take from O’Hara. Obviously, I’d like very much to have a Coke with Frank.

AH: Melville or Rimbaud?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Sure. Well, I try and read Moby Dick once a year, and mostly I manage to. It’s an American epic poem. I mean, what can I say that hasn’t already been said, and better, by others? It’s exhilarating and infuriating, divine and profane, visionary and boring. It’s a goddamn masterpiece. In fact, I probably should give this up right now, take up my copy, crawl inside a hollow log and read it! As for Rimbaud, well, just like a lot of folks, I had a steady diet of him from my teens, through my twenties, and even now I still read him frequently. The guy seems human in only a biological sense. Incredible vision and guts. He was steel hardened by genius. Compassionate without sentimentality. He’s just the bratty father of contemporary poetry. The little bastard.

AH: Do you find it at all contradictory to be a hard drinking bar fighter who writes beautiful poetry?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Not in the least. It’s a major branch of the tradition. A rich vein of bad behavior runs through the collective biographies of our kind, starting with Archilochos and going all the way up. There are too many to mention. Besides, I may enjoy a frosty adult beverage now and again, but those wild days are largely behind me. I haven’t been poked in the nose in years.

AH: If the academy opened its doors to you, would you go in?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Sure. I hear a lot of griping from other writers about its evils etc. but sometimes it looks like a pretty sweet gig. I mean, you think about poetry all day anyway, and talk about it sometimes, too, so why not get paid to do exactly that? I don’t have any illusions that it’s some sort of Arcadia, but I think about it quite a little bit during conference calls at my corporate job. And who knows, perhaps I could do some good for the art.

AH: You have been known to dismiss Walt Whitman’s poetry. Do you truly dismiss it?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Nah. It’s not the poems I object to. I recognize and respect their importance and influence. Particularly from a technical standpoint. It’s that carefully cultivated public persona that makes me uncomfortable. I’m just not able to buy that anybody thinks everything is that great without suffering from some pathology. So I guess it seems to me that there’s more than a little bit of the carnival barker in that personae, yawping his own awesomeness. And that makes me uneasy. I know this seems like some pretty heretical stuff, particularly from an American, and I imagine I’ll get some strongly worded letters. Maybe I’m being unfair. I haven’t read him in years, so perhaps I should sit down with him and have another conversation.

AH: Your book, forthcoming from ONLS Press, is called The Hurricane Lamp. Are you the hurricane or the lamp?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: That’s an easy one. The world is the hurricane and the poem is my lamp.

AH: You still write by typewriter. Are you a romantic?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Well, I don’t wander around Italy in a big shirt, trying to get laid or anything, so no, I’m not a romantic. I’ve been using manual typewriters for 20 years or so, and I like the direct physical cause and effect of the things. Their only function is writing, and I enjoy that simplicity. Obviously I own and use a computer. I just prefer to go through the process of making poems the other way. Plus they’re darn pretty to look at.

AH: What do you love?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Umm… train whistles at midnight, snowfall, good Scotch, good food, fine friends, animals, come on, the list is endless.

AH: What do you hate?

SUNDIN RICHARDS: Questions like that.

Happy Birthday

Zone was founded in the dead of Austral winter in a small apartment in Buenos Aires four years ago this month. Its purpose was and remains to create a magazine of poems and short fiction freed from the geographic, economic and linguistic politics that tarnish so much of today's literary syndicates. Zone's founders believe that writers have always crossed borders, whether as immigrants or explorers, for the wild and the uncontained, and that a true servant of poetry helps poems and poets across the divide.

To that end, Zone has always been committed to bringing together writers from a plurality of backgrounds, locations, and languages. The magazine sees itself as a focal point that is no where, a utopian common open to all. Operating on a threadbare budget, with a staff of volunteers operating according to the logic of the cooperative, Zone has published in its first four years 68 poets and writers from nearly 30 countries.

Our New Russian Poetry feature which ran in December 2006 published some of the first English and Spanish translations of Danila Davydov, Julia Idlis and Viktor Ivaniv to appear outside of Russia. Translator and poet Peter Golub, who came to Buenos Aires to unveil his translations of these great contemporary poets, has in the intervening years been widely published to critical and academic acclaim. The extraordinary Australian magazine Jacket commissioned him to edit a special New Russian Poetry feature; he has been accepted to Columbia University's PhD program in Slavic Studies; and his translation of a collection of short fiction by Linor Goralik was awarded a grant from the PEN Translation Fund three weeks ago.

In June 2008, Zone published the first chapter of the then-unpublished English translation of Indian writer Sarojini Sahoo's controversial novel, Gambhiri Ghara (The Dark Abode). The novel was a bestseller in Bangladesh and sparked controversy across India for its explicit treatment of sexual, religious and political themes. Through the story of an adulterous affair between a Hindu house-wife from India and a Muslim painter from Pakistan, Gambhiri Ghara examines the roll of women in contemporary India. Written in Oriya, Gambhiri Ghara has been translated and published in Bengali, Malayalam and English. Mahendra Kumar Dash's English translation, titled The Dark Abode, was published later that year by Indian AGE Communications.

The following April, poems by George Moore forming part of an installation with award-winning Icelandic textile artist Hrafnhildur Sigurðardóttir appeared for the first time in Zone. Sigurðardóttir, whose work has been exhibited internationally, and Moore, whose poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, Nimrod and other magazines, collaborated across media to create a site specific installation in the Nes galleries, in Skagaströnd, on Iceland's north coast.

Golub, Sahoo and Moore are only three of the 68 poets, writers and translators who have appeared in our pages during our first four years. Zone maintains a complete archive of everything we have published since our inception. If you browse through our archives you will find a wealth of interesting, new, brushed-off, under appreciated and later lauded work from the 8th through 21st centuries, in languages as diverse as Chinese and Catalan, written in countries, and cultures, as far afield from one another as Nigeria, Siberia, Colorado and The Philippians, some original, some in translation, all of it free, and all of it worth while.

To celebrate our birthday, Zone is featuring a special feature on poet Sundin Richards, whose book of poems The Hurricane Lamp is due out from ONLS Press later this year. A double-length selection of Richard's poetry and an interview will be appearing shortly.

A final word of thanks to our readers, contributors, volunteers, fans and followers: without you Zone would be unable to continue. Thank you for your attention.

-Henri Beauregard

José Saramago

16 November 1922 - 18 June 2010

Andrei Voznesensky

12 May 1933 - 1 June 2010

Peter Orlovsky

8 July 1933 - 30 May 2010

New Poems From Richard Cronshey

Politics

Night sky
you keep
smoking
up your sleeve,

a bad kind
of unearthly;
a burning
worn by air.

...

Conflagration,
our transparent
address.

I bury
my name
to the quick
in your name.

.....

By the embrace
my life disguises,

Cinder and prism
hoodwinked unto death.


Practice

Our Lady of The Razor Wire,
Wounds luring wounds
along the slaggy gallows path.

Our injuries
make us rattle,

like dancing.

Who am I anyway
compared to your heartbreak
That is so big
you have disappeared
altogether in it
and become ransom for specters?


Calamitous shadow
histories
I live out
Invoked by our starved tautology.

The left hand undoes
what the right hand is doing.


Swim upriver
away from my eddying heritage
accompanied by nothing
but my own growing strength.


To the victors
go the despoiled.


The world is my dog run.
I shall not want
for exercise.

My bones now hollow and papery as words,
blown as hornets nests.

Earth will return them to me.


Salute

Rescued again, despite my best efforts, by my very uselessness.
The divinities can’t even see me,
those jerk-offs in their boudoir universes,
for whom only you're either a backscratcher or a tambourine.

Free as a parking lot at 3 AM. Here’s my best trick. Look!.
I disappear in the weeds along with the extinct
high desert mining towns whose only surviving acolyte I am;
and the infinitely brittle, star lit thing still living in them,
a creature of whispers and paper-mâché,
half imaginary, too stupid to die; to which I pledge allegiance.


Beware of Poem

What a beating
that poem gave me.

Fed me
in little pieces,
to my wishes.

Night, you look
a lot smaller
on television.

Still, I flourished,
suddenly,
until I didn`t.

Beware of nourishment.
The skinny one
is my co-pilot;
La Flaca, pale hand
where the stars succumb.


I was to be the lungs
in some floundering anatomy.
I thought, "Why not?"

I am, I think,
because of the rustle that hunts me.

Look at us, skeletons
with burning crowns,
kicking up dust
as if we were real.

Go ahead, Poem,
smoke me.
I`m home now.
You know the address.


Blues with a Skeleton Key in its Palm

My eyesight wanders off,
starry revolver, a dog
drawn to your softness.

I stay here waiting
for it to come home,
listening
to the continents drift.

I will miss
your snaggle
toothed sick
room piquancy
the most.

Somedays
you were a roadside grave;
others, you were smoke rising
from behind a hill.

Bête noire
Slaughterhouse,
feeling you still
silverfish
spirochete
limping thing
little fistula
rag doll
on the ash heap--
your history
like grief in me.

No end in sight to this
bag of tricks.
I can just discern
somebody`s death mask
down there circling
mouthing words
I can`t make out.

Widows mite,
It gets passed around,
from hand to hand
growing heavier,
every time,
until we sink.



Richard Cronshey is the author of five collections of poetry, the most recent of which is The Snow and The Snow, forthcoming from ONLS press. His poems have appeared previously in Zone.

Five New Poems From Robert Lietz

                     
IN COURSE

1
                                                                              Not Then

     The music, uncertain after all, unheard
outside

     a mid-spring theater, was it The Nutmegs,
James Brown,

     Ray Charles we missed, in Syracuse,
New Haven,

     at the War Memorial, and at somebody's
instigation,

     where none of us, not then, ever
arrived

     at      the same
moment?

2
                                                                              House Warming

                         Surely

     somebody left charmed, with forever
freshening, whatever

     the losses meant, and not what we thought,
be sure of it, charmed

     by the heart's response, and by the manners
lingering, by

     our inflatable and serial dawns, the feathery
and first drawn greens

     with the year warming to mid-seventies, the plants
where they were last night, set

     close to the outside, brick, back fire-place wall
for house-warmth, and

     on this screened porch safe, from the cloud
-clearing forecast

     and selective frost we well-imagined, with
potting ahead

     for them, prettying the chipmunk-
flash summertime

     we mean --again -- to
celebrate
     together.

3
                                                                              What and When

     What if we never looked like that, not
in a figment, phase

     or entertainment, and what if our morning's
storyline, this

     groundhog say, climbing, sampling, ignoring
the bend, bow,

     to top-most green almost, if that were only
narrative,

     a matter of taste, a wink to the day outdoors,
to the idea

     glossed, rubbed so, wished over, returning
our common

     interest, reminding us what and why, and how
we've rehearsed

     these literacies and contritions, these timely
critiques,

     overheard, as even the morning is, abroad
in its first lingo,

     as the actual day, embraced in course,
whatever

     the language lacked, or the informed
finessed,

     conspired by their own reports
and
     confidence.


HORIZON SLICE

     So the howling's not, days apart are not,
nor the words
     you can no more arm, disarm, than save
by re-combining,
     by their jarring and jarred tones, matters
fit to the day's sprawl,
     neither unspooled nor reconditioned,
beset by caricature.
     But, left to our better selves, so that the days
themselves
     will not appear outdrawn, mis-presented,
there's much to explain,
     exonerate, when too little thought seems all
impulse
     could ever have intended, matched
to our own weak skulls,
     to our hyper-assisted if flawed tunings,
to the approaching
     dark, with its horizon-slice affairs
and its time studies,
     its pearl-seamed blacks
     and indigo.


ALMOST AUDIBLE

     How will you ask this if? What would you call
this almost

     audible sighing but distraction, these dappling,
deepening woods displayed,

     when you looked up from the glass-topped table
and your coffee, into the breeze,

     by then insisting, settling, this cup you've been
sipping cooled, a finger or so

     left to warm again, replenish, so that you must
think this good,

     when the least breath-taking language
wins you over, the light

     turning into light, to this sensible
accounting

     yes, the ghosts around
go on
     repeating.


A KISS STILL WARM

1
                                                                              The First Look

     First, there's Grizz', the critter gitter, with
tales from the Big Horns
and Denali, soaping exposures off, indifferent
to that bee's buzz, but
wary of the tri-foliate green he's barreled out of,
cartoonishly, no doubt, for
our amusement. Then there's that nesting pair
I mean to search out at North Lima,
and this year's tanager, these hues the groundhog
hasn't yet laid claim to,
as if the whole earth were asking me for pictures,
and this Polish jazz, to get
the feel for the moment, these packages addressed
and stacked outside
the front door, where nobody's signed for one,
if nobody's thought to take one
in our absence, a record nicely filed, since the other
doors were optional and sealed,
as even the gas-filled winter panes, warmer
to the hand than plaster
when the winters hit. So much for the field humor,
for the circumspect reports,
the day from its first look see, and wondering
whether a lens is long enough
for eagles, whether he'll be back this afternoon,
once the trapper
and the trapper's crew-mates come to pass,
prepared, as trained, and
more than enough supplied, to seek
and destroy
     what's necessary.

2
                                                                              Needful Times

     No queen, no queen's dresser, and cute's
no salvation,
be assured, whatever the mantra makes of it,
but he'll be back
before nine-thirty I believe, since needful times
require him, a second coffee
under belt, after Grizz and his crew arrive,
set out
their snares, their bait and live-traps, soap off
and snarl
along their ways to the next clients. And
Anastasio, meantime,
recalling the last dusk or just before, remembers
himself a night ago,
well before the occasion to wash could settle him,
remembers
the costs of gardening, the costs
of that first kiss
and next, and the afterglow, on their flushed
tourist cheeks
and bankrolls, once the prankster's
worked up nerve
to improvise, though not the least,
you can
be sure, of his sole
     options.

3
                                                                              Anastasio

     Maybe that shrine was burglarized. Maybe
a man, for now, makes good
with its bare walls and stubby candles, makes do
and must, with
the strays and pups, yipping at the jams and heels
of the prayerful,
even the lesser enthusiasts, he thinks, impressed,
acknowledging the kiss,
and not the burn so much, as they bend and splash
and rinse and bear their faces,
before a mirror seems possible, or this language,
too much like their own
to be mistaken. So what was the day but photographs,
but these young,
the nesting pair away, newcome arrivals
at the heron's
fishing claim, was Anastasio himself, who will not be
heard on it,
recalled by the heat, by the showering and sweat,
was Anastasio
after all, but a handshake yes, but a kiss still warm
with garden earth
and gardening, who could appreciate each theft,
each saint, meanness, each
first well-planted kiss, having housed his implements,
houseled himself, hosed
clean for the post-gardening burritos and cervesas,
for this catching up
he is sure to miss come suppertimes, imagining exits
and escapes,
and that groundhog, that survivor, yes, coursing
the spray-painted green
toward edibles, eyeing that fishing pair, explaining,
as they might, the moonlit foam
and firestones. And where's that trapper after all,
or that hummingbird
I never got around to mentioning, or the heron
now, when signs of trespass
reappear, this courted nightmare the coral bells,
the moon fingered quack-grass
make no room for, a stolen kiss no room,
no hint of the meaner
lusts or treacheries, the sub-surface
tones he'd heard, hears yet,
in alien conversions.

4
                                                                        The Cousin Source

     Where's that crow, that, their jay-mocking
ins and outs,
claim-jumping feeders the bunting plays beneath,
sampling crow-spill,
as, a small man, Anastasio rinses clean, dreams
honestly, himself
the cousin source of tourist horrors, tourist smiles,
from the first handshakes,
first pecks, no more deterred than the crows seem,
by tourist gear or pedigree,
by how they hurry to wash their fallen faces
when he's finished, about the time
when pups have had their day of nipping heels, and
the candles, sputtering, add
their own notes to the angling ends of afternoons,
done with the newsmaking
and tell-alls, suited now to plans he's all but reinvented,
for the dusk ahead, for the dark
and weight of a new century made public, but only
the least, we guess, of Anastasio's desires
and disguises, though nobody's asked, you bet, and
nobody's kept track, kept count,
whatever the losses were or substitutions, considering
his fix on tones and off-season prices,
on his own, we think, and presumable advantage,
though he might call that
something else, something to drink or plant or plant
his kisses on, to bear away
from shrine or sanctuary, complementary, if you will,
and all-inclusive, according
to the lingo of arrival? Surely you see resemblances
among the current crop of players,
who would have eaten the same stuff once, and left
all that behind as true believers,
equating experience with preference, inspiration
with emblems, and, inspired
merely, attitudes, when another season calls for
punishment, with the air itself
trembling under them, because their playing
asks for it, whatever
the shrine-going masks of the old
shrines
     and summertimes.


RECORD HEAT

     Even the spider plant, you think, must feel it,
moved, a few inches
     now, to make room for the low metal table
and sub-woofer,
     for the ipod, satellites, and this sovereign jazz
they may have
     heard among the Keys, heard in Puget Sound,
drawn themselves outdoors,
     as this water is, to freshen the boxed flats,
planters, and potting earth
     you've seasoned, while the plumbing throbs, and
each light-bleached page
     I think could lie here through forever,
conceded
     to record heat, unreadable. There will be wine
tonight, encompassing
     table talk, this pizza tonight, with repeatable
humor under stars,
     these due-processed ends of school-years
tonight, and
     a summer begun you cannot buy anywhere,
sentence
     by sentence piqued, in the botched
luxurious
     stories we come back to, as if
we had
     never had such fun.



Robert Lietz is the author of eight published collections of poems, including The Lindbergh Half-century, Storm Service, and After Business in the West. Nearly six hundred of his poems have been published in print and on-line journals, including recent publications in Istanbul Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly Online, Avatar, Contrary, Terrain, Valparaiso Review, Salt River Review, Lily and previously in Zone. Several unpublished collections are currently finished and ready for publication, including West of Luna Pier, Spooking in the Ruins, Keeping Touch, Character in the Works: Twentieth Century Lives, The Vanishing, and Eating Asiago & Drinking Beer. Meanwhile, he keeps active writing and exploring his interest in digital photography and image processing and their relationship to the development of his poetry.

                     

Four Poems From Ruth Bavetta

Luftwaffe

The storm
         comes for the throat,

a sidewinder in darkness.
         Wind works its mutinies

in storm-snarled trees. Water
         hammers houses from their roots,

a bus shoots under a bridge.
         A man in a tattered T-shirt

floats downriver like a page
         torn from a book.


Foundation Work

They arrive early,
         before he’s ready, go on
with what they have to do.

He pulls his shirt over his head,
         discovers a hole. They’re all around
the house now, shouting.

He puts on the pants he wore yesterday,
         before he knew, goes into the kitchen
(the sunny yellow walls have faded),
         fills the kettle, sets it on the burner.

Today, a scan will probe
         his body for cells gone wild.
Outside, they’re probing,
         seeking solid ground.

The sky’s already bleached with heat. If
         they find competent ground.
they can shore up the foundation.

The kettle shrieks to a boil.


Remember This

She’s used to them now,
the spectators who sidle
small and soft
under the old and fading moon,
a shambling column,
that casts no shadows. In a dark corner
of the garden, where
there’s no more time
for lilacs, they wait for her


Imagine

walking up forty-two stairs,
the smell of a rubber ball, your arm
brushing against a stucco wall,
the prick of a pin in the tip
of your right index finger.

There was a clock you once knew,
draw its tick inside your body.
There was a bicycle on a dirt road
the summer you fell in love,
balance on its handlebars.

Enter a room you have forgotten.
Walk through midnight
carrying a make-believe lantern.
Stretch out your hand,
touch the horizon.



Ruth Bavetta's poetry has been published in Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, Rhino, Rattle, Poetry East, North American Review, Atlanta Review, and Poetry New Zealand, among others, and is included in the anthology Twelve Los Angeles Poets. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California, California State College San Bernardino, and Claremont Graduate School.