New Poetry From Sergio Balari Ravera

ARCA

celatamente Amor l’arco riprese

Francesco Petrarca

A ng

Era l'any del diluvi

(un altre)

i jo m'ofegava,
perdia peu,
sense terra,

illa,

ni barca.

Quan,

entre les llums de colors
i les músiques de Plutó,

vas sorgir,

Noè de la Nit,

i em vas obrir l'arca.

La que navega

i dibuixa deixants de mercuri

en la mar,

que es reflecteixen

en els punts argentats
del teu rostre
i fan preguntar-me:
sarai tu Laura et, io, Petrarca?

1 de gener de 2007

ARK

celatamente Amor l’arco riprese

Francesco Petrarca

For ng

It was the year of the deluge

(a further)

and I was drowning,
on free dive,
with no land,

no ile,

no trawler.

When,

out of the bright coloured lights
and the music of Pluto,

you emerged,

Noah of the Night,

and ushered me into the ark.

The one that sails

and draws over the sea

quicksilver wakes,

which shine

on the silvery flecks
of your face
and make me wonder:
sarai tu Laura et, io, Petrarca?

1st of January 2007

Translated from Catalan by Sergio Balari and William Bain

LES MANS

Agafa'm fort i plora'm.
Plora'm totes les llàgrimes aturades,
perdudes,
robades.

Agafa'm fort i plora'm.
I treu-me la sal de les nits eviscerades,
mortes,
malaurades.

Estreny-me,
esprem-me,
destil.la'm el licor amarg que m'enverina.

Dóna'm les mans.
Dóna'm les mans.
Les teves mans.

18 de gener de 2007

THE HANDS

Hold me tight and weep me.
Cry me all tears dammed,
forfeited,
snatched.

Hold me tight and weep me.
Take the salt off the nights eviscerated,
killed,
depleted.

Squeeze me,
squash me,
distill any sour liquor that befouls me.

Let me hold hands.
Let me hold hands.
With your hands.

18th of January 2007

Translated from Catalan by Sergio Balari and William Bain


Sergio Balari Ravera (Barcelona, 1963) teaches general linguistics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, but poetry and fiction are two of his many other secret passions.

Sergio Balari Ravera (Barcelona, 1963) és professor de lingüística general a la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, però la poesia i la ficció són dues de les seves moltes altres passions secretes.

Sergio Balari Ravera (Barcelona, 1963) es profesor de lingüística general en la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, pero la poesía y la ficción son dos de sus muchas otras pasiones secretas.

New Poetry From William Bain Translated Into Catalan and Spanish

Rucksack screwdriver

It isn’t only the weather that takes the hitch-hiker south.
There’s an irony in southern speech he likes,
a heaviness in the summer days, almost visible
in the glint off the water, the thorn of cactus. Time
from vehicle to vehicle takes each
driver’s maze closer to circle. Blown tires,
overheating radiators, broken keys, trysts
derived, the talked out fire re-emerging in shared close
call just before dawn on an all but empty, I swear,
straightaway just before a perfectly well-marked exit ramp.
He drinks morning chill and vending machine coffee
alone, buys the gas station’s last bargain price screwdriver.
He likes to think he’d never drive that way. He just
hopes for a quick death when death comes.

Tornavís de motxilla

No és només el bon temps que porta l’autostopista cap al sud.
Hi ha una ironia en el parlar del sud que li agrada,
una pesantor en els dies d’estiu, quasi visible
en la lluentor de l’aigua, l’espina del cactus. El temps
que triga a passar d’un vehicle a l’altre atansa
el laberint de cada conductor més cap al cercle. Rodes punxades,
radiadors fumejants, claus trencades, encontres derivats—
El foc silenciat reemergeix llavors, i escapa,
poc abans de l’albada, a un accident en—ho juro—
una sortida perfectament senyalitzada d’una quasi totalment buida carretera.
Li agrada el fred de matinada que beu en el seu cafè de màquina.
En la seva soledat, compra el darrer tornavís d’oferta de la gasolinera.
Li agrada pensar que ell mai no conduiria d’aquella manera.
Només espera tenir una mort ràpida quan arribi.

Traduït per William Bain y Sergio Balari

Destornillador de mochila

No es únicamente el buen tiempo lo que lleva al autoestopista hacia el sur.
Hay una ironía en el hablar del sur que le gusta,
una pesadez en los días de verano extendiéndose casi visiblemente
en el brillo del agua, en la espina del cacto. El tiempo
que cuesta pasar de un vehículo al próximo lleva el laberinto
de cada conductor más cerca al círculo. Pinchazos,
radiadores humeantes, llaves rotas, encuentros derivados—
El fuego silenciado reemerge entonces, y escapa,
poco antes del amanecer, de un accidente en—lo juro—
una salida perfectamente señalizada de una casi totalmente vacía carretera.
Le gusta el frío de la mañana que bebe en su café de máquina.
En su soledad, compra el último destornillador de oferta de la gasolinera.
Le gusta pensar que él nunca conduciría de aquella manera.
Sólo espera tener una muerte rápida cuando llegue.

Traducido por William Bain y Sergio Balari

William Bain is studying for a PhD in Literary Theory at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

William Bain cursa estudis de doctorat en Teoria Literària a la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

William Bain estudia para doctorarse en teoría literaria en la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Three Poems From Tommy FitzGibbon

it's good to be going

he came behind a sun of gold, propelled by his broad shoulders,
and opening his weathered hands a beam of light emits, for a moment,
into the eyes of animals. and he walks through a sea of humanity.

and from where he stands he can look out over a horizon that is
one hundred percent flat, when he strikes the ground it is a fire work
or a flower blooming. spirits shoot from his nostrils and whither as leaves.

when passers by are caught in the rain they melt in their dark suits,
fall through grates into networks of drains. this man has been down the
liquid steps, waves of glass break over us.

he folds his fingers around a warm cup, his cup overflows. this disused
radio tower came to life when it received him, the sky was cut open by
sharp airplanes. he lies there listening to the hammers of development.

did you become sick? did you, with your voice, try to signal, or with some
mechanism, a bright light? crawl through the darkness? and did you pound
on the ceiling of your shallow bunk in pain (as if the bones were breaking)?
in its fever was the body overtaken by violent rigor?

so then what mechanisms put you into this clean bed under a warm
blanket, curled? and did the room emit, from the corners, murmurs?

i drink a sticky liquid sweet tasting and soporific. recline in tall grass,
observe clouds of butterflies. i come to a river as wide as it is slow. filtering
loud and soft through the air the sun comes out, catches currents of insects
above its sluggish waters. gaze into flickered foliage and past into bare
sky.

i came out of ten big animals their eyes were each different shapes and
colors. i eat flesh, i become one another. the skin is covered in a layer of salt.

their long black legs without joints stretched upwards. through city streets
reflections caught across mirrored monoliths of commerce, billowing.
engulf us in their shadows as they pass us by.

his smile cuts his blank face in two, opening his large mouth an odor
of lilac escapes as if from a prison - i was dozing beneath industry tree,
i heard whispers of an oasis, a winged insect, keys.

which float in and out amidst the generative din of another spilt market
place.

at dusk we sit watching dust roll off mountains, for the day we have
removed our protective eye wear.

he wakes in a patch of light, before him an opening that
frames a stark blue. beyond the threshold sweeps a flock
of small birds. for a moment their twittering has replaced everything.
the sun flows in moats,
falls like wings through the air.



for posy

when i start i often release
a cloud of dense black smoke
disappear into my very distress
and fatten a thinness

find myself in dead hotels
that circulate conditioned air
as sleeping i spill over
my artificial boundaries

say no to death, return
holding the future as a shield
against the gnashing teeth
of the present

but now, on the brink
the teeth have become quiet
and our little house rotates
on the wind

emits warmth, brilliant
clouds etched, swept across
and hung before our window
the connection of two stray wires

and any minute now i fear
they´re going to turn me on
and i´ll smell power
become blind

i just want you to know
that if i go
i wont really be going

we never will be forgiven
for the dogs we leave behind
who as empty vessels
hover in the periphery

but now i cant keep from drifting
towards the complex organs

one day maybe we´ll graze
upon these pastures of plastic
dreamily beneath
the impossible airplanes



marooned

sometimes restrained in this room i
go on long walks through my own cities
buildings stand
wheels roll
we buy things
we sell things
we touch each other

once i found myself at night
on an empty street
sheltering myself from a persistent drizzle
by means of some chance overhang

or perhaps it was the middle of the afternoon
and a great rain came that was completely
unexpected so that
everyone forgetting their umbrellas
was squeezed in together
under the same overhang

there was a slightly wild smell in the air
and it was dropping so fast
that it made one long sound
and the street became a river
for a little while

sometimes i sit on the curb of my mind
and watch the cars drive by
of my imagination
they move in both directions and stick to
certain sides of the road
their various shapes reflect their uses
and the forward looking eyes
of their designers

in my grocery stores i shop among ghosts
the food lacks nutrition
and we fill our carts with empty boxes
amidst a profound silence
we stand in long lines
that dont seem to move at all

and i am so happy the places i return to
are always exactly how i left them
and visiting i become the person i was
all the people from my past
are just as they used to be
the dead exist in beautiful precision
my lovers wait behind their doors

now where i am in the dark
solutions are as simple
as reaching for the switch
there will be no more fumbling
a circuit waits to be completed
and bring our small rooms to life
a door knob waits to be turned
so that the outside might spill in
feet wait to walk
eyes wait to see

the body reclined
head resting against a wall
this power manifests itself
through the surfaces we touch
the room is continuously expanding
in my world divisions of prosperity
create zones of intangibility
beggars stand on medians
while vehicles burn past

the machine is diverse to a point
that is unfathomable except that
it always needs fuel

from my pockets a flock of bills
takes flight
sustains me

an environment surrounds me
that will eventually be acquired
while i sleep



Tommy FitzGibbon is a young American living in the Dominican Republic.

Three Poems From David Sullivan

Quarrying

Ten shirtless men
split granite. Drive
iron feathers—tapered
metal triangles—down
into seams they’ve
grooved in stone.

This morning you laid
my hand on your belly
and it pulsed. You live
a double life: vessel
of two hearts, one
smaller than a pebble.

The men wedge apart
huge sections with plug
drills’ chiseled points;
gaining leverage from
above they unsettle
what’s beneath their feet.

I cradle my head on your
lap. Tell you we’ll work
out this tug of war between
wants. Your finger idly
curls a lock of hair. You say
I’ve already given ground.

As the blocks seize,
giving way with a groan,
the men jump back from
the chasm they’ve created.
Granite dust whitens
the air and their faces.

Your too-loving words
are metal-sharp feathers
splitting me through
my weakest seams:
I fear I’m less than
the man you mean.

Below, one hoses
dust down, reveals
teeth-marked granite
he tags for delivery to
sculptor or contractor:
moves to the next.

But this life has only
begun, and what we were
we are no longer. I fear
the face I kiss through
your taut belly’s wall.
Listen for his first fists.

Permission Granted

You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others will pass over.
You don’t have to bury
your grandmother’s keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.

You don’t need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube–the machine’s wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember floury
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Go skydiving as your birthday gift.
Lie in the bath with ears under water
and sing Lay down my sword and shield.
Take all day to emerge from the steamy room,
then hide your prunedness in silk robes.

The skin on things vibrates. Attune yourself.
Close your eyes. Hum. Each beat
of the world’s pulse demands nothing more
than that you feel it. No words even.
Just the thought. Yes. This lives.

The homeless woman is following the tunings
of a dead composer, she closes her eyes
and sways with the subways. Follow her
down inside where the singing resides.
Curl up at her feet.



No Place Like

1.
Double-paned windows
strapped to a truck
are canted
into a lean glass pyramid
that carries clouds,
flickers of telephone poles,
a moment
of blinding sun,
and my elongated body.

2.
Blue vinyl siding
stacked
against peeling white clapboard
encircled by ivy.

3.
The front porch leans
into itself
like a couple
loving the heat
of their argument.

4.
Twine straps
the cardboard boxes
to the park bench—
slipped one
into the next
like a telescope.

On the protruding pillow,
a faded pink cat.

5.
A coffee maker
kicks on
at 6:40 am
and begins
to drip.

Below the counter
the spaniel paws
its red pillow,
sinking down
into its snoring.

6.
The diminishing
T’s of telephone poles
march towards
non-existent
subdivisions.

One unscarred road
turns and ends
in a heap of sand
diamonded with beer cans.

7.
The graduate student
stirs noodles
over his hotplate
in the darkened office.

A security guard
catches the scent
of daikon mingled with
grated ginger.

Closes his eyes.

8.
A place to call my own.

A room of—

Smell of—

9.
No I ain’t homeless,
says the woman
who scrubs
the soup kitchen’s
huge metal pans
beside me,
say I’m
dispossessed.

10.
I’d driven the nails in
myself, and it showed.

That first night
I lay awake on the platform
cradled between four gnarled
apple limbs and surveyed
the slow circuit
of the moon.

Something woke me.
I rolled over and the buck
snorted as it raised its antlers.

Slowly it circled the apple tree.
Moving in and out of my field
of vision
three times.

When it stomped
its hooves and charged
into the trees
a doe and fawn
sprang into being
and chased after.

11.
Camelot. Forest Green.
Tanglewood. Sherwood Forest.

New Audubon’s plowed hills,
like a patient shaved
for an operation.
Pelican Lane.
Killdeer Avenue.
Tern Street.
Kingfisher Terrace.

The street signs up
before the houses.

The animals have fled,
but the coyotes
will come back down the greenbelts
to pick off house cats
and smaller dogs.

12.
A boxcar bulldog noses
the man’s crotch;
his beefy hands
tell the air a story
he hopes the guard
will buy.

13.
What I wouldn’t give—

On any given night—

The trick is
to keep moving.
Always. Sleep’s just
what happens when the sun
finds you
before the cops do.

14.
In Oaxaca they spread ashes
on the first of November
to catch the spirit
of angelitos
who return
through the paws
and claws
of animals.

15.
Sun bakes
the old man’s face
like bread.

He slaps flies
in his sleep.

16.
Ridge beams.
Elk skins. Boxcars. Freighters.
Semi-cabs with night-lights
and mini-fridges.

Burlap sacks.
Quonset huts.
The blue sea of the TV
bathing a sleeping woman
in a terry cloth bathrobe.

Lockets pinched on hairs.
A dumpster redolent
with the rot of a hundred limes.

A dinghy, overturned,
on Nantucket’s white sands
under which I once spent the night.
A cough heard through
a baby monitor.
An empty chapel’s
flickering
electric votive candles.

17.
We need more
than our dreams
to live in.

18.
And Raven
disappeared
through the smoke hole
with the sun in his beak.

And when it burned
too hot he tossed it
to the sky
and it stuck.

And that is why
we leave Raven
the leavings of fish,
brightly turned shells,
and our songs of home.

19.
My son snuggles
against me
in his bed:
Tell me a story.
One where a girl
gets lost
and a porcupine
helps her find her way back.

Home?

Anywheres.

20.
The night drapes
its black cloak
over us
with its cut-out stars
and the new moon’s
scythe.

Our breath
goes out,
over and over again,
into the arms of the night.



David Sullivan is an instructor of English and Film at Cabrillo Community College, where he also edits The Porter Gulch Review. His poems have appeared in The Chicago Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Quarry West, and New Letters. His book of poems, Strong-armed Angels, is forthcoming from Hummingbird Press. He lives in Santa Cruz, California, with his partner, Cherie, and their two children.

New Poetry From Peter Golub

Interpretation of Yeats


When Jack Bauer goes to Puerto Rico

He isn’t really on vacation

And he isn’t afraid to venture past the walls of Old San Juan into the cemetery

He brings a pack of Lucky Strikes, but forgets to smoke them

When he makes it to Isla Mona he’s too drunk to notice how drunk the iguana’s are

On the fancy boat that takes him around the island

Several times before he finally gets off

And stumbles into the black forest where he falls asleep

In an over priced hotel and writes

The following poem after singing Motherless Child

In all the languages the Government

Taught him

Several girls gather beneath his window while he sings

Weeping not knowing

How to continue on with their lives

The world must be saved endlessly

Just as it must die without end

As this terrible country

A sand dollar inside a hockey’s mans stomach

The koala bear in the backyard

Howling from its plastic tree

If I see the man with the tattoo

Wielding a stapler –it is a threat to national security

Preventions

I have met them at the close of day

From the counter of the rainbow I saw this morning

I passed with a nod of the head

While I lingered around a mangrove watching a bird

This other man I had dreamed

A vainglorious lout

I number him

He has resigned

A terrible beauty is born

Minute by minute the change

While I save the nation

While trout fall from the sky

In perfect sequence

On time

Each with his plans

Chatting on black phones

Minute by minute they live

Too long a sacrifice

O when may it suffice?

That is heaven’s part

To murmur name upon name

And for an hour I have walked, that is, in my mind the future years had come

Out of the murderous innocence

May she be granted beauty and yet not

That chooses right

That is no country

Caught in that sensual neglect consume my heart away sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is and gathers me

Into the artifice of eternity what is past, or to come

The America whose plant is packed into the bowels

Of young-four-stomached-girls

They graze the lawns

Inside my mind

Full of grace

Amid the rustle

High in the hills

Dizzy high

A mechanical

Shape

Jet

As if some empty shell

I should hand in my resignation

Those non regulated factories in China

Where there is no congressional oversight

O my god what is this world coming to?

Wine wine wine

Wine relieves my sigh

The men are on their way

They have my wife

They have my doctor’s medication

Public opinion ripening for so long

And a great army but a showy thing

Delicate matters are not unsolvable by anger

Unless a little powder

A drunken soldier

Murder at her door

In her own blood

As before we pieced out thoughts together

With satellite surveillance

I read the signs

I am a call-sign

Oh, master work of intellect or hand

That country round

None dared admit

If such a thought were mine

Chinese

A shining web

Or hurried them

No moralist

An image of its state

A man in his own secret

Is lost amid the labyrinth he’s made

In politics or art

Delicate matters are not unsolvable by anger

Where we trade our work

The half written resignation

We, who seven years ago

Talked of honor and of truth

Shriek with pleasure if we show

The weasel’s shriek and weasel’s tooth

We traffic

Upon the roads of violence

In monetary wonder stare upon

And thinking of that fit of grief of rage

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap

Honey of generation had betrayed,

And who must sleep, shriek, and struggle to escape

As recollection of the drug decide

Maria

Maria full of grace



Peter Golub was born in Moscow. After receiving a BA in Russian and Philosophy from the University of Utah he moved to Nevada to pursue an MFA in poetry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His translations can be found in Absinthe: New European Writing, Caketrain, Cimarron Review, Zone, and St. Petersburg Review. He also has a cat named Sparrow, a squemu named Brenna, and harbors serious plans for international fame and domination.

Four Poems From Nathaniel Rounds

LITTLE LORD FONTANEL

To Bob--whom everyone knows, or would like to.

(Chapter XII--Of lions habituated to seize deer, and eagles ordered to seize wolves.)

1.

Clouds on the horizon. Six sirens wailed. Mother, in alarm, wept tears of
blood and milk. A bearded thief--baneful and watchful like the guileless
snake--removed his victim's signet ring and took to hiding in the lake.

Did he feast upon the catfish? Were his pockets full of scones? Did he
bring to water's surface gilded leopards carved from bone?

2.

William Reuben's fight with jaundice is made obvious in this
single-surviving portrait (drawn by a street artist on Rue St. Denis) and
even in this rough oil pastel we can see that he had few days left to rework
the Táin Bó Cúailnge as a performance piece (a dining car crashes through a
supermarket window) accompanied by three minor notes plucked upon a piece of
bailing wire nailed to a knacker's door. It was just as well. The northern
lights unveiled themselves as William drove his taxi into the Montreal
night.

3.

Marty Volkslied sings in his mirth loving way: “Three peremptory cheers for
fine-feathered Feagh and his keeper, Fortunato!”

Fortunato opines to Feagh (between breezy inhalations of laughing gas):
“Never again shall we confide in our bought sons. One shall do one sort of
work while the other does another. The worm fence shall divide them.”
Feagh’s fat face spreads into a crapulous smile.
“Never again,” he crows. “Not ever, no never, never be it so! Not ever
again, de facto! Make the bought boys work the worm fence! Farm out the
fault line! Never again, both in poor and fine weather, never again shall we
speak them whatever!”
“Stick with me,” coos Fortunato. “Stick with me, little Feagh, like a
cockroach to turd.”
“Like a cockroach to turd,” chirps Feagh. “Like a cockroach who listens to
larvae in turd I shall act on your low-spoken, venomous word!”
Darkness lingers within bright sons.
‘Neath the eaves Noel whispers to Bo:
“Go skip-bomb the wordmongering, tinhorned Jack and hear his sad chide chime
in a flashflood of flatulent timpani over the Seven Seas.”
Meanwhile, as Bob lies browning in the noonday sun, Marty Volkslied sings
outside the door:

“Buffo’ floribunda, tabula rasa,
band organ marches and
Washington pie, our
tabourer with calfskin and fife
trolled rosy-colored,
third-hand hymnals rife
with cloying clumps of storm cloud
leavened
through homage to promised wassailer’s
third heaven.

“Three turns of the crank
as he caroled the town,
singing ‘Riddle-me-roundelay, Old Mr. Brown!’”

4.

Two boys--one aged six, the other eight--
contest over woolly mountains
and scorched field
with aerial evocations to Popeye.

Their bed gives final warning of
earthquake
while the youngest pees conspiratorially off
the edge into
darkness,
making a trip to the bathroom (where Dad,
his face a
torn map of blood, alcohol and vomit)
unnecessary.

5.

Inside a back street car wash in New Orleans,
two bayou smithies
hold their war criminal firmly
by his coat sleeves of Scottish tweed--
a cleric pinned down in his own clipper
by the pirate boys Lafitte.

The cleric recalls a scene
from a nature program,

in which a lion devours a fawn.
Beads of red light trickle
over portholes draped in steam.

The cleric removes a breastpin--
a tree-of-life
from the Field of Gold,
asking that his life be spared.

“We’re sorry,” intone his captors
gravely, “but we cannot process your plea
at this time.”

Inside a back street car wash
in New Orleans,
a fawn nibbles on a timid lion.



KINGDOM OF FEZ (RUINS)

1.
Half past four/
Walking out the door/
Gonna sell a diamond
And a '57 Ford.
Oh, money….

2.
That’s daddy striding waving smiling goodbye
into the bicentennial parade
tambourine and baton Pinto wagon papier-mâché float
Budweiser blanket spread out on the hill
and in the persistence of memory/
mid-jump/
I unsnap my parachute
waiting for peace to bleed through

3.
Jumped out of bed in my burning pajamas/
Swam a roaring river and jumped a train/
In six months time I might poke around in Eden/
In six months time I might be dead again

4.
POETRY KILLS

PACKAGED IN A FACILITY THAT PROCESSES EGGS, WALNUTS, AND PEANUTS.



Pain

Tome 5


And Zachery Snowfield
the Incredible Breathing Speed Dancer
who earned twenty six dollars every two weeks
mopping the floor in a portrait studio
took a job in a shipyard in Kittery, Maine.
He signed on to a ship and was returning from Havana
when a storm blew him off the mainstay
and into shark infested waters.
A sharp-eyed deck hand threw him a lifeline.
Zach thanked him with a boot to the head.
"There's a mermaid out there," he growled.
"Name is Vonny Hedlund.
She was writing down her phone number
and everything. Best thing that ever happened to me
and you had to mess it up."
He was reunited with her on a second trip
and they got married in Walled Lake, Michigan
during a Hewett Theater dance marathon contest.
They were team no. 6 3/4.
The sailor groom and his mermaid bride
would go on to win thirty-two contests across the country
until they were banned from nationals
on account of Vonny’s fish tail.
Their wedding cake was ten feet tall,
850 pounds and required 2500 spectators to help eat it.
No further events are recorded until thirty-six years later
when Zach was killed in an electrical fire
at the Transcontinental Toe & Heel Tap factory.
A Harrington rod implant correcting his scoliosis
was retrieved from the ruins
and used to identify his remains.
Vonny was left penniless and took a cleaning job
in a tuna fish cannery near Gate 5 on San Francisco Bay.



Shining Steel Tempered in the Fire



Wrote the only literate bobbin boy from #7 room:

“Dear Mr. Henry Quackenbush, Factory Overseer:

I’m leaving this note to inform you

that the loom fixer, the sample weaver,

the mill right and the finish percher

have gone home.



“We have stripped your bobbins,

cleaned off your looms,

swept your floors,

turned off your boilers

and overhead lights,

padlocked your file drawers and cabinets,

boarded your windows and barred your doors.



“We have spread storage cloths over

your mill housing furniture,

torn the final page

from the company calendar.



“We have blotted our names

from the final census

of the United States.

“We’re boarding a fast train

fueled with mummies from antiquity,

and are heading home to

Quebec, County Clare

and the tribe of Reuben.



“Our attorney, Mr. Moyse,

shall plague you by requesting

an independent audit on your heart.”



Thought the old overseer,

pulling at his stiff collar

while reading this note,

“My last sol has passed through my hands!

May the spent purple dyes from the dye house

pour down

into the mighty river of water of life

and poison their last fish.

I’ll spend my days weaving baskets

while imbibing Rod McKuen

in paperback,

Schlitz beer on ice and Perry Como

singin’ Dirty Old Town with a

western swing,

then have my cracked nut fastened

to the house of Dagon.”




A Canadian/American filmmaker and poet, Nathaniel Rounds has appeared in Scrivener, Pottersfield Portfolio, and presented numerous experimental movies in films fests. He's currently involved in preserving the lost video tapes of poet Milton Acorn.

Three Poems by Li Po (李白) in New English Translations

Inscribed At Summit Temple

Night, I stay at Summit Temple
I lift my hand and touch the stars
I dare not raise my voice
For fear of disturbing the occupants of heaven

題峰頂寺

夜宿峰頂寺
舉手捫星辰
不敢高聲語
恐驚天上人


Before Wine

Wine
In gold cups
A beauty from Wu, 15, on a dwarf horse
Her lashes painted indigo, her boots of red brocade
She stumbles on the words, but sings coquettishly
At the banquet, drunk, she presses against me --
"Behind the curtain of nenuphar, I could never resist you"

對酒

葡萄酒
金叵羅
吳姬十五細馬馱
青黛畫眉紅錦靴
道字不正嬌唱歌
玳瑁筵中盃中醉
芙蓉帳裏奈君何


Autumn, Leaving Qingmen

Frost falls on Qingmen, into the river trees empty themselves
Plain cloth sails in autumn wind
Fine sliced perch not journey's end
For my love of famous mountains I go to the land of Shan

秋下荊門

霜落型門江樹空
布帆無恙掛秋風
此行不為鱸魚膾
自愛名山入剡中


Translated by Andrew Haley


Li Po (李白) the Banished Immortal, celebrated Tang Dynasty poet, was born in 701 in present day Kyrgyzstan to Chinese exiles. He achieved great acclaim before his death, despite a life of itinerant wandering. One of the Eight Immortals of Wine, he was a legendary drinker and is said to have drowned drunk in the Yangtze trying to embrace the reflection of the moon. He was returning to his childhood home in Sichuan Province after a thirty-five year absence. He was 61.

Four Poems From David McLean

the bolts (after Hölderlin)


if i could also stand there
like him under god’s grayest thunder-heaven
not only bare-headed but totally naked
as a child born to die again, after
life’s brief morning of pain, and if i
could catch with my bare fingers
the rays and bolts themselves, naked too,
i would indeed wrap them lovingly in song
as he wanted, but not to give the people
as god’s forwarded love,
but humble to lay them under your feet,
for only from your earth
grows my heart’s tree truly green.


Psalm (after Trakl)

god's golden eyes opened so slowly in our skulls
and all the madmen are dead in our lost paradise
where the son's of Pan do not labour
except through the laborious twitching love of panic
that swoops black onto the shoulders
of your suffering, faithful as a dog
and homeless as every resounding sound of glasgow.

and we work together to bury the stranger
with the gaunt giant she chose to lay so close beside her,
and here the old asylum grows ever bleaker
remnants of humanity scarred and scored
by the fishwives of psychiatry
inscribing another's sad stumbling nothing on loving yellow,
the raiment of sudden pain fraying away her hemmed days.

as it were our childhood again
every church gapes ever open
this drugged sunday school that taught a generation
my thousand dead secrets
and love still just dust-balls behind god's fridge
where your truth has found me
still dreaming fragile beauty

and inscribing legends for your blind girl's eyes,
for i am the student who stood behind you on the staircase,
the expressive wrinkles on the night's lonely face
a change of time, a change of place


born a man

(i) was never born a man (i) was born a baby
the man came later with the brackets and the loneliness
and now (i) lives in a gym -
an (i) is always homeless


remembering dismembering


tattered fragments flown as proud as the bravest banners
in self-dismissive missives, our pauper's remittance
where we are all desolate stuffed men, miserly in our misery,
our remembered carapaces leaning together hollow as time,
hollow as the idiot ticking seconds of love's tacky alarm-clock
like a million cockroaches chuckling their way to death's pay day
when the glowing soil shall be rewarded for the roots we grubbed
with our decay's dark love.

another lover's lonely "Aubade" tolls the knell of whining this decaying day
as god's convenient rot subvenes on the only eternal,
that cold diurnal round of complacent complaint
waiting the iterative disdain of another generation of impatient patients
dreaming charity, the distant fingers falling mourning on life's alien shore,
(this girl still, this planet)
and only time travel is in our bloods, the hour's tortoise hosting
shelly courage, each painful pace our path's patent disgrace;

and we prop up our meanings on piles of lies, sifted through the maternal filters
thick as sedge, those viennese wafers of vision he gives us still,
the child's blind eye unseeing everything, the little pitcher's pictures
stamped on our grafted skeins of dying where the cordial seeps
freely through the baby's, always already ageing, withered veins,
and our life is a runaway carriage and some It seems to hold the reins.
It gives, Being gives, and we are never there to witness
and give what we should give, only our testimony, solely truthfully

but still your wisdom grows like dusty wine in some Israel's best vineyard
where words ferment their lament through years instilled suffering
listed in your every word, the ones i whisper at night silent by your side
our lives on pause, unseen, unheard,
and we deem a meaning therein, that foreign soil we suppose
our bodies may, some latter day, having died, laying, lie in,
a time for death in love's black and luscious loam, a time for final truth
for reason's unbelieving eschatology, for only Death says sooth.

and Death shall open his great black book that records the sad and final things,
for Everyman rides forth his thirsty day as life's only known knight at arms
and lives a love alone and palely loitering, for at death's door we loiter all
here in this winsome world where the sedge is still withered on the lake,
still withered drier on love's empty lake, and no birds are heard to sing.


David McLean was born in Wales in 1960. He attended Balliol College in Oxford where he took a BA in history in 1982. After working for a lawyer's firm in Brixton, south London, he moved to Sweden in 1987, having become father to a daughter with a Swedish woman. Leaving her in 1990, he remained in Sweden until the present. He worked for many years in health care with older people, the senile, and cancer patients. After this McLean studied philosophy and history of ideas at Stockholm University, taking an MA in 1999 with practical philosophy (ethics) as major. Phenomenology and existentialism are primary interests in that field. At present he lives with his partner Amanda Boschetto who is half-Italian, though she writes poems in Swedish and sometimes English. They have no children but many kittens. Both suffer from the personality disorder known as borderline, although McLean no longer shows any symptoms.

Four Graphomuñecos From Vadim Bystritski

te encontré en el parque de noche
donde del mármol te erguiste
pisoteé tus flores
y tiré piedras
que a veces
tu rostro eludió
a-a-a patadas
quebré un banco
y con un madero
de nuevo te combatí
mezclando insultos
a la lista de asesinados
sequé a sorbos todo el agua
de tu fuente
me oriné a tus pies
me abondané a otras decadencias
hasta despertar los pájaros
después te acerqué
para cerciorarme
si había vida
entre tus párpados
enrojecidos

…

abracé a mis padres y vecinos
al contar este cuento
del largo viaje
de los niños de Hamelín
como embrujado
seguía el gaitero
a aquellos lejanos lugares
hasta que acalló
su intrumento musical
aún sin poder tornar
para huir
sino
mirar
por
horas
en esta dirección
y cuando aprendí
a andar así
y
cómo podría atravesar
la misma distancia al revés
y así llevé
una mala noticia
que otros niños
no volverán

…

quiero ser un huérfano
o un eneano
con todo mi caudal
apretado en un gran bolso
dondequiera andar
capaz
de vez en cuando
de en él huir

…

yo que sé
por qué la luna
no tiene nada más que hacer
que esparcir su luz
sobre una pierna solitaria
que no sabe más
que dar un paso
y otro



Born in 1966 in Kazakhstan, Vadim grew up in Azerbaijan and was educated in Russia (Saratov State University, Philology of Romance and Germanic Languages). Since 1989 he has resided in Los Angeles, California where he attended Pasadena City College and Cal Poly (Pomona). It was at Cal Poly that Bystritski wrote his manuscript Graphomuñecos. The poems appearing here are some of the few surviving poems from that book. In those days Vadim understood graphomania as an aesthetic notion opposed to that of voice: graphomaniacs write not with another voice, but in another language. It is a new language that is responsible for changes in writing style.

Five Poems From Martins Iyoboyi

The Promise

These are my underlined agenda,
No doubt, I dare outline, about its potency.
Those before me cannot be said to be proud,
Much less the brains which computed, refined
These carefully considered opinions! –
Your opinion, I would say, pertaining the
Low nation-state, even the filth in it.
Now, just for convictions, those men,
Names word-wasting, even rabble-rousers,
Possessing the wand of thorough insight,
Advancement, not absent, even vision!
Now, pause a moment, come down to these things;
Shelter, even mendicants could be choosers!
Ridiculous, you might express, but I
Wholeheartedly, my mind’s bosom portray,
No more dead speeches, from disguised aspirants,
Just your concord and the people bloom!
Mark the word, more houses; I repeat, excuse
Me, beggars, when I finally sit, shall
Even, without fear (which shook in the past)
Come out and justice demands, you know,
Human right I’ll provide, in fuller scale!
Even in dreams, I see the convicts free,
No more shall those shackles bind them in jail.
Wonderful promises, no doubt, bear these
In your mind, I would tell my wise men which,
Provided you mind in satisfying colours; I
Say many (this key sector people look forward to)
Their fears I abolish, for how there
Holds costly learning in our own country!
Much folly this is, even decree this to
Tertiary sense. But, you know, a price
Is all I demand. You know this, your verdict.
Now on June 12, the people play their one role.
O.K, here (this is the dove), our symbol.
Only stuff the in-scripted box with wads.
Our ticket only depends on your performance.
I present here four thousand naira, just
Minute, but manage this, a token of
Things ahead. Greater things shall duly come;
Light, water, free medical care, name it!
No more praise singing which leads to nothing.
Take my word and give me your heart, no more
No doubt, my victory shines even now,
Remember: dead talk yields vain promises!



Beloved

Mother educated us to beware,
Of brimming tawdry enlightenment
Against antique satisfaction
Vortexes of gay brightness,
Across oceanic assets,
To ebullient shores,
Replete with boundless bounties
Took unawares yearning animation
To our demerits.
Those killing intrusions
Moonshine, without peace
Into moot jinx,
You are yet the beloved
Still in green optimism
Vim of dispirits ancestral –
Countenances speaking amalgamation
Bruised by new white fangs.


There Are No Foes

There are no foes but the leaders
who have assailed us with their bitter hate,
there is no poverty but the stolen wealth where the
nation bleeds to enrich foreign lands.
The leaders have tasted many a vice
and like vermin destroy the tissues of the land.


Hopes Harmattan Day

Yesterday, aliments defaced the earth,
Twigs derided, unsung of green
Nostalgia keeps beneath hope of afflatus
And cursory gazes become rancid
Hopes harmattan day
Succulent, demanding,
Inanimate flowers galvanized
By nimble caresses.

And fruits burst in binds
Truth leading the target
As onlookers, the mass, the applause
Cast, leading the encomiums
Pregnant glances raise the banner
Of union and progress.



That Fallen Brick

Let that ‘disaster’ consume
Yet inter deep the thing undressed
Lest ages oppress sharp disintegration
Beside the falling walls.

Where personable countenance asleep
Dreamt of victorious minds to come

I will gulp in careful gulping
Lost erudition, departed,
Now in the slivers of broken banks.

Catching phrases of wizened souls
And the pluck of forgotten falls.
Consume them, posterity
If a hothead portent hound
That put in the bleak-home of oblivion
These fertile means of my father.

Martins Iyoboyi was born in 1972 in Ebelle, in the Esan speaking part of Edo State of Nigeria. Losing his father at a tender age, indigence and want had compelled him to work as a farmer, insurance and tax agent, a teacher and a newspaper correspondent. Through dint of hard work and extreme sacrifices, he was able to educate himself at the Bayero University Kano, where he graduated with honours in Economics.

A prodigious reader and writer, his first book Gods Of The Idols, a play, was written when he was seventeen and since then he has averaged the production of four works a year. He has over forty works (poetry, drama and prose) which have not been published. He has always delighted in just sharing his works with a few of his friends without any concerted effort to have them published. However, it was not until late 2006 that he decided to have some of his poems sent to magazines for consideration. These therefore are his first published works to date.

Five Poems From Andrew Baron

Standing at such remove

Fixed (or moving) Standing

at such remove and from its hover the bird dives deep breaks

surface of the water the depths

of its hunger.

In a magazine in a waiting room I saw a photo

of home. Some kids were driving

through the desert and spotted

something on the scorched horizon. A television.

We saw it. A missile

hit a school (mostly children) and all talk was of how missiles

don’t hit schools the living screamed

out the back of our minds for their dead.

We turned it off, locked

the doors and fucked not to

stand at such remove.

Stand moved.

Dive deep.

Robert Creeley

If it would

have been

a convenience store it would

have been

open

all the time: there off the freeway and kept

by those we forget,

and outlive. Night

would have meant another fluorescent bulb there’s

no point here nothing

To champion or condemn we

could have gone in

anytime.

goodbye Robert Creeley, and thanks.

Letter I

Dear Dru,

God is good.

The ground is so saturated

here the roots come loose,

a tree falls into their bedroom

and the couple on the news swears he’s the only thing

that saved them. Empathy

wakes us from the comfort of our atheism: I’m happy they’re alive.

I’m writing to tell you I’ve

discarded all gods but yours, ours.

All shades not present at the creation

when you shaved a candle onto the open phone book and left

me to read there in the sun, all artifacts

without this pulse are dust. Nothing

but what holds us through this distance, your voice

on the phone in a motel parking lot in the middle of the night

before I hang up and go inside, listen half-awake

to a man

on a velvet stage

scream

for all to know what God is.

Good.

Untitled

I see you

at times

as if through that classical veil, layed

by whatever illness or injury keeps

me poised on the edge

of elegy.

A rodeo clown can stand, transfixed

at the edge of bullshit

or can go on

averting the beast that would gore.

I give you this—

strong love

and in our weakness make

love strong.

Thanksgiving

A stone, a carcass, a chisel, a knife:

We’ve carved so

many turkeys

and left carcasses as witness of our joys.

Thankful it’s not worse, that chiseled

in stone the names of our own, our victims

and a monument too imposing to chisel out

again.

again. again.

It’s happening again

this war in which they’ve used no napalm,

no carpet bombing of a land whose destruction

is the first and last we’ll ever hear

of it’s ever having lived. Again, thankful

for our hatred of these lies.

They say we’ve failed to give solutions.

They say we’re desperate to cohere.

So here:

Let’s chisel out a meal together from the breast of a dead bird

and carve our thanks in stone.

Andrew Baron studied at University of Salamanca and the University of Utah, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Romance Languages. His translations of poetry from French, Italian and Spanish appeared in the collection All Echoes and Shadows: A Selection of Poetry in Translation. He currently works as a Latino community organizer in Portland, Oregon.

Andrew Baron estudió en la Universidad de Salamanca y en la Universidad de Utah, de donde recibió un Bachelor of Arts en Lenguas Románticas. Sus traducciones ingleses de poesía en francés, italiano y castellano aparecen en All Echoes and Shadows: A Selection of Poetry in Translation. Baron trabaja como organizador en la comunidad hispana en Portland, Oregon.