Two Poems by Gonzalo Rojas in New English Translations by Andrew Baron

Beautiful Darkness

As of last night I’ve touched you and I’ve felt you
unless my hand from my hand flew
unless my body flew, or what I knew:
in a manner almost new,
I’ve felt you.

Pulsing, not knowing
whether like blood or clouds I’m
fleeting
through the house on tiptoe, darkness coming
darkness cheating you ran through here shining.

You ran through my wooden house,
You opened its windows
And I felt you shake the entire night.
Daughter of the abyss silent in your
Spite so terrible so slight
That as much as everything might
Be for me it’s not
without your light.

Oscuridad Hermosa

Anoche te he tocado y te he sentido
sin que mi mano huyera más allá de mi mano
sin que mi cuerpo huyera, ni mi oído:
de un modo casi humano
te he sentido.

Palpitante,
no se si como sangre o como nube
errante
por mi casa, en puntillas, oscuridad que sube,

oscuridad que baja, corriste, centelleante.

Corriste por mi casa de Madera
sus ventanas abriste
y te sentí latir la noche entera,
hija de los abismos, silenciosa,
guerrera, tan terrible, tan Hermosa
que todo cuanto existe
para mi, sin tu llama, no existiera.



Subject of Summer

Out of great mercy runs the water in its transparent
vibration and today is Tuesday, and
running south the wind
that comes from God.
Seventy
years old the man, and his 5 or 6 years left
are cherry trees
shaken by the wings
of butterflies.
From here
The diamond-fold memory would think
on its own: Praised be
longevity,
that lost wanderer that sees one by one
all the stars at midday and ears the earth
down to its core, as he himself is earth
of rebirth, and spins
the thread of his movement
with mind clear and gaze
fixed. Praised
in him the other him be illumined.

Pasto del Verano

Entre mucha merced va el agua en la vibración
de la transparencia y hoy es Martes, y
corre sur que es el viento
que viene de Dios,
setenta
son los años del hombre, y lo que sobra
5 o 6 son cerezos
estremecidos por el resplandor
de las mariposas.
De ahí acaso
que la memoria diamantina piense
para si:-- Alabado
el longevo por
errante y perdedor, que va una a una
todas las estrellas al mediodía y oye a la tierra
por dentro en cuanto él mismo es tierra
de reniñez y además hila
el hilo de su traslación
con seso lúcido y plazo
parco. Alabado
en él el otro el alumbrado.


Gonzalo Rojas was born in 1917 in Ovalle, Chile. He has published many collections of poetry, among them Contra La Muerte (1964), El Alumbrado (1986), and Antología del Aire (1991). He has served various positions as a professor of literature in Utah, Germany and Venezuela and was awarded the Premio Reina Sofia de Poesía de España in 1992. Cinco Visiones, his selected poems, was published in 1992 by La Universidad de Salamanca y Patrimonio Nacional.

Gonzalo Rojas nació en 1917 en Ovalle, Chile. Sus colecciones de poesía incluyen Contra La Muerte (1964), El Alumbrado (1986), y Antología del Aire (1991). Ha tenido varias posiciones de professor de literatura en Utah, Alemania y Venezuela, y ganó el Premio Reina Sofia de Poesía de España en 1992. Cinco Visiones, una selección de su obra poética, fue publicada en 1992 por La Universidad de Salamanca y Patrimonio Nacional.

Andrew Baron translated Gonzalo Rojas' book Cinco Visiones as part of a translation project at the University of Utah in 2001. Translations printed here are from his collection All Echoes and Shadows: A Selection of Poetry in Translation. He currently works as a Latino community organizer in Portland, Oregon.

Andrew Baron tradujo el libro Cinco Visiones de Gonzalo Rojas como parte de una projecta mas de traducción poética a La Universidad de Utah en 2001. Las traducciones en este edición viene de su colección All Echoes and Shadows: A Selection of Poetry in Translation. Andrew trabaja como organizador en la comunidad hispana en Portland, Oregon.

Michael Dickel's Poems from the Recent Israel-Hezbollah War

After last night’s coffee

i

This morning animals called me awake at dawn—a lovely loud bird outside my window,

then Shuki the tom cat came calling for breakfast. We had coffee together, you and I,

just hours ago on Emek Refaim. The conversation turned to war in the north and to human nature,

the creative Mirkaveh and the destructive one, its shadow. Light and shadow laughed

across your face as we walked through the narrow streets back through Bak’a, then good-bye

as you went up to your flat and I turned toward mine. A soft good-bye, unwanted and cherished.

In the Jerusalem forest, as we dangled our feet in the pool of green spring water,

a blue feather drifted by. It’s special, you say. We fish it out, dry it in the sun,

and I put it carefully in my tourist visa folded inside my passport. Later,

you tell me blue found in nature means truth, especially when rare. The skies here,

always blue, at least in summer when I come to you, the skies hear, do they lie?

And when the smoke from war-fires blackens the skies, what of blue then?

Where is this poem taking me? I breathe you in when we walk together

so that your scent follows me, the loveliness of desire withheld and sweet

caresses that do not stop incorporated in my lungs, blood pulsing.

I don’t want to be anywhere else or think of anything

else. Not the north. Not the Midwest of another continent. Not what can’t be

recalled—missiles, rockets, death. Contraction and creation require each other.

Life requires death, death loves life. What can you make of the sliding together

of such skins? What of the contractions of love, spasms of desire brimming

as two join one moment, experience its passionate eternity, slip away into

quiet affection, holding with arms wrapped around the skin that contains us,

the skin you spoke of last night, asking are you in this skin? Yes. I am.

The cool breath of last night slowly carried me to sleep with you

up the hill and around the corner. Are you in this skin? This poem?

ii

Seeing others across borders can be trying. Watching rubble and fighting

on the TV, tiring. Yet, seeing the person sitting next to me? Infinitely more

difficult. My ex-wife and I saw what we imagined and imagined what we saw;

so it is with all my lovers. How can I see another person? By letting go of myself,

driving north toward the war out of Tzfat instead of south toward Jerusalem?

Those pictures I took project some other images that I never saw nor will see.

Sun, smoke, a flying eagle that I did not know was in the viewfinder, tanks,

jeeps, shattered blacktop and glass that the camera did not capture out of respect

for a soldier’s No pictures. I have one photo of you that I really like, out of several.

Are you in that skin? Sit with me on the balcony, candles lit. Tonight you may

or may not meet with a friend, depending on the mood of the baby you helped birth.

Tantrums surround us, what’s another? I will study with companions from the north.

iii

Tomorrow, you and I

will drive to the Dead Sea.

We will return

in different

skins.

Getting the love you want

From on high a voice is heard, a bitter, lowing call: the bull loves the matador.

—David Grossman, Cherries in the Icebox

To avoid the vagueness of the word “love,” I have elected to use three Greek words: “eros,” “agape,” and “philia.” These words have precise meanings and refer to various phases of one phenomenon. They also make possible a description of a developmental view of love as a possibility in marriage.

When does romantic love [eros] end and the power struggle begin? As in all attempts to map human behavior, it’s impossible to define precisely when these stages occur.

—Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want

aleph. Eros (Ten)

To love this land, sandy and sun-burnt, embattled as long as history chronicles and longer,

with deep love of a grandfather in a sweater holding his grandchildren, or with soft love

of a new father holding the freshly born baby, or with wide love of a sea in the west—

to love this land that way takes their breath away. Hearts pounds faster. Blood rises

in sexual organs, nipples harden, lips demand a taste. So the three men at corners

of the small triangle kneel down to and kiss the ground at their feet. This is love, eros,

passion that keeps them alive each day, awake each night, gratifying every sense.

The scent of lavender and rosemary in the day, of jasmine at night, of dust and water

arouse and lead the men as the best perfume of the most beautiful lover each has known.

Yellow yucca on tall tree-height stems, blue cow’s tongue rising out of a dusty forest trail,

orange poppies, red pomegranates—the eyes search for small treasures of color

and large. Tall palms provide cool shade, carob trees, pines, vines, even rocks cool

skin that longs for touch. When the men listen carefully, they hear the hot dry wind

or the same sound from water falling high in a wadi. Waves tap on the western door

and on the southern backdoor. The sound cools their thoughts. They show their children,

their grand-children, their cousins and aunts and uncles. See, they say, their eyes shiny

like the Salt Sea in the afternoon sun. They taste the salt of their tears. Then they know:

they love the land. They want to possess her, to have her caresses to themselves, to kiss

her nippled hills and explore the moist secrets of her wadis. They want to take her,

by force if need be, from all other suitors, They want her for their own bride.

None can have her long, though, for she has her own soul, commands her own body.

bet. Power Struggle (Five)

It’s a night raid, provocatively through the tunnel slowly dug toward death,

a timeless dance. Men love tunnels like bodily openings and the birth canal,

un-recoverable. Take one. The director rejects the footage and the lion roars.

Take two, to the north. Violate the borders, crossing the lines another favorite

occupation of lovers. Poke the bull until it runs toward the matador’s red cape,

looking in the wind like swollen red lips of desire. Antagonize to ensure existence,

fight to reassure love. Violently take the desired Other, in revulsion and attraction.

It’s a love affair of missiles, rockets and bombs. Kung-Fu on the tv. A matador’s

dance of love and destruction, death and humiliation, taken at the risk of goring.

This cinema verité sex, you know? It’s anal, oral, vaginal and fucking every organ

and opening, pedophilic and necrophilic, horribly, sensually, pornographically violent—

CNN projects our voyeurism, the Fox-y lady displaying her striptease, our desire

dancing nakedly in and repulsed by lovely smoke and debris exploding into night skies.

Do you care that much if the bull loves the matador or the matador the bull?

But this is a lovely threesome, an orgy of unseen influences kicking

the doors open and firing bullets into the night. Anti-aircraft traces, rockets’

red glare, Patriot missile-ism impotent against the sly slip of the prick

into the waiting orifice at the peak of desire, lost, lost, lost to the rage

and violence, ever deepening relationship, addictively (dis)satisfying

the old men who get their rocks off on the television news, dreaming

of tunnels, trains, rockets, missiles and naked, glistening death.

gimmel. Agape (Six)

If they achieve a ceasefire, what then? The three men walk together on a ridge

overlooking valleys that cascade down to the Kinneret. Above them, the ruins

of a Crusader fort share the view. Below them, stacked rocks form roofs, walls,

a town. One holds his grandson’s hand, his sweater flopping loose and open.

Another peers over a cleric’s glasses at his wife and children, she watching them

play in the shade. The third one, shadowed and hard to see as a Damascus alley at night,

smiles as his daughter and her husband carry their new baby. They stand a moment

in the cool evening breeze. Each wants green valleys, fresh water, fish, pastures for

succeeding generations—they dream of a future just out of their grasp. All three have

the thought that if the other two could only know the love that one feels now, then

the others would yield to the one with the thought the prize of the land’s body, out of agape.

The land has different thoughts. All she wants to do is to give to each of them, all of them—

taking charge of her own sacred and creative sexuality, of her skin, lips, breasts, vagina. She

would give to them, give without thought of return, give the love they seek without condition

so that they could complete themselves. She trusts that if she gives, they will learn to give

to her, to each other: to cherish, to trust, to feel safe within her arms. It is not the female who

loves better, but all lovers must learn to give to each other without wanting and to become a

safe haven. The power struggle of human social sexuality is not often love, but usually rape,

she thinks in her best imitation-academic voice. She means that the prickly pear holds sweet

fruit within its thorns, the succulent pomegranate provides nourishment, moisture, and

spreads its seeds, while grain and yeast dissolve into bread in the presence of water and heat.

dalet. Philia (half Ten)

They will need to work together to plant trees, these three men, if they want forests to grow

in the devastated battle fields. Philia. Floating under the stars in the Salt Sea, weightless,

supported by hands of time, recalls comfort of the womb—warm, gently rocking, at peace.

Perhaps grandchildren will swim there together, or their children, meet, and marry despite

feuds of religion and state and language and culture and family traditions. Enough fucking

across borders, enough children of the enemy brought into each family… none of the three

dare thinks this. They might make jokes. There might be the stray thought, like a badly aimed

ketyusha. Botched intelligence might lead to an occasional love affair without crushing

civilians. The old men must learn to satisfy themselves with small delights; the young must

dance in waves of the sea with lovers they could not have imagined. Grandmothers,

mothers, sisters will quietly cry with sorrow and joy as one by one stars fall and wishes

come true. Jasmine will scent the night, lavender the day. Time will stand still, resting

its hands on our backs as a lover casually places a hand on a beloved, without thinking.

Stinging bees willingly provide their honey to any who ask. A cool shadow soothes skin.

It is on a seventh day when all machines do not start, all fires hibernate in charcoal,

most wars end in marriage. If only we could agree upon which is the seventh day, zayin,

part nothing, part anything. Barley will wait for the harvest, dates will fall directly into

mouths below, water will flow in every wadi. How any three men get there is an incomplete

map. We must not follow them. We must find our own path to redemption in the wilderness.

Forty minutes, forty days, forty years, the wandering remains the same. Without the death

of previous generations, the land will not deliver herself into the hands of her lovers.

In Jerusalem, July 2006

In Jerusalem, Johnny Cash's last CD plays in the cafe

while smoke rises north and south and movies reflect

our realities back to us. I'd like to stay out of this poem

but someone has to scribble the words on the front

of a film festival program while wondering who might

fall in the streets of the town where his apartment is

in the line of fire, if missiles turn back into shooting

stars. It’s all wishful thinking, dear reader, as you will

construct me here in Jerusalem, imagine which song

Cash sings right now, what war brought me here tonight.

The waitress bring a large plate of watermelon and

Bulgarian cheese. The fans turn pirouettes on the ceiling.

But what do I know? Maybe you don’t exist. The first

couple my friend married when he started as an assistant

rabbi in Connecticut walked through the door with me.

We never met before; it was just casual conversation

about where we come from, who we know. Silver

shadows spread across the faces of the strangers

at the other tables. The ceiling fans’ flying skirts

cast them; just like helicopter blades they swirl

above while below a few soldiers extract a body

from a tank within range of enemy lines. The tank

sat in the desert for two days. How should I mirror

those details for a reader I’ve never met, letting you

fill in gaps between frames, making movies in the

reptilian brain for your new brain to watch. The

watermelon is sweet, the newspapers sour, the cheese

salty, my heart a mélange spiced with confusion and

ambiguity. The waitress flirts with her co-worker,

who imagines dying when they call up his reserves.

I long for you to read this and tell me what to do.

Actually, the waitress didn’t flirt. That’s a fig hanging

just beyond the door. I drink three liters of water.

Peace requires something…

… far more difficult than revenge or merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and unmet needs that provide the impetus for people to attack each other.

—Marshall B. Rosenberg

The night swing takes you back and forth, laughing and talking

about friends, lunch, the joys of playgrounds in the evening

as we slide away from the war in the north and slip back again,

the metronome of your swing a faster tempo than our recurring

theme and variations. The news tonight reports ketyushas in Haifa

and bombing raids in Beirut as the clock clicks slowly toward

the promised ceasefire and we plan pasta and compare TV-news

scenes while dreading the call of the list of the dead, the dread

of the dead a laugh track cannot unfold as it presses and creases

against our naked longing for quiet, quiet, quite quiet nights.

On swings. Recalling. before. Recreating. after. Requesting.

our lives in a blender shake of lemon and mint and cool,

cold ice. Three weeks, now four, now six how? love has grown

with the days of war. how? we feel this deeply after only three,

four, now only six weeks of knowing each other? Nights without

sleep. When we are seventy let’s make love all night as though

we are young again and there is peace and people don’t die.

for words. for land. for names. for country. gods. but hold. on-

to. each. other. alone. together. emphasizing. fear. and desire.

Michael Dickel resided in Israel during the summer of 2006. He is a
Jewish poet currently living in Minnesota and working at Macalester
College. His poems appear in several literary magazines, including
Poetica, Blue Earth Review, Colere, and The Cape Rock. He would like to
return to Israel to engage in more writing and further conversations
with Israeli, Palestinian, and other artists there.

Poèmes de Manuel Sajus

Il a jeté du sable en l'air

Lorsqu'il est arrivé

Ce n'est pas la paix qu'il nous a apporté

Ni l'épée

Mais le souffle de la liberté

Le silence que fait

Une falaise qui s'écroule

Ils regardaient les lueurs de la ville

Et le vent leur fouettaient le visage

Ils passent des après-midis entières

A contempler le lointain

Qu'attendent-t'ils

Ils n'attendent rien

Cela les attend

Angelica est morte aujourd'hui

Je suis resté encore un peu

Pour regarder les plaines et les corbeaux

Afrique !

Tant de mystères en toi,

Tant de légendes.

Les cendres d'un feu de village.

Il tient le temps dans sa main

Parfois il entrouvre sa main

Et il rit

Pouvez vous lire tout cela

Dans l'oeil de l'éléphant

Trois corbeaux sous un ciel jaune

L'instant clé

La danse d'au-dela des choses

Des mouvements lents

Qui font trembler la terre

Chocs de deux bouts de bois

Rythme très lent

Regardez ce silence

L'appel du vide

Français de mère anglaise, Manuel Sajus a passé son enfance en Afrique puis aux antilles française. Il vit actuellement à Paris dans le 5ème arrondissement à proximité de Notre Dame. Ses poèmes, courts, simples et sans complaisance, sont inspirés par l'oeuvre de Carlos Castaneda, et par les Haiku Zen.

French, with an English mother, Manuel Sajus spent his childhood in Africa and the French Antilles. He lives currently in Paris, in the 5^th arrondissement, near Notre Dame. His poems— short, simple and uncompromising­— are inspired by the work of Carlos Castaneda and Zen haiku.

Poemas de Rodrigo Sebastián Verdugo Pizarro

ASOMO

Detras de los vasos

recuerdo mi primer oncesto con la luz.

Todos los que tenian un nombre de pez se deshacian

Nunca volvio a tener el día la profundidad de un signo.

Del libro "Nudos Velados".

DESTELLO

A Carlos Cortinez

La crispada alabanza del espejo

envia pájaros a la silla eléctrica.

Hemos retornado a jugar a las cartas

nuestra armadura de ascuas

a perderla otra vez inmóviles

cerca del verano.

Del libro "Nudos Velados".

DIECINUEVEAVO ANUNCIO

Pido permiso a los relámpagos para hacer el tajo

para que algo venga desde las profundidades saciadas

solo a cerrarme los ojos

llagado sea el descubrimiento desde la sombra al cuerpo

Pido permiso a la costura esencial

para ver como el cielo es acariciado por la muerte

despues voy a electrizar a esas arañas

que andan con trajes de monjas

para que los sistemas espectrales las ostenten.

Pido permiso a la raíz inalcanzable para ver como se equivoca la noche

Despues voy a glorificar ojos de lobos dentro de las alcancias

total el verano puede calcarlos cuando se repliega

ante los volcanes amputados, ante este territorio de las victimas

que todos van cruzando por las noches,

llevando en las espaldas una puerta cubierta de espinas

no sabemos que clase de castigo es,

que ardores saqueados los hacen hacer esto

pero nos consta que se hacen acompañar por hermanos que no ven nunca

toman el camino más polvoriento, van con el conducto más escabroso

pero para cruzar aquel territorio de las victimas, debian saber de ciertas advertencias,

debian saber que en cualquier momento se les diria:

" Ni un paso más, ni la menor tentativa antes que los sistemas espectrales partan

desde esas arañas que andan con trajes de monjas"

despues medid el empuje, medid el tajo

si quereis con remos o con astrologias quemadas

total un gran hueco quedara en este territorio de las victimas

hueco suficientemente grande como para que descanse el descubrimiento llagado

poned encima esa puerta cubierta de espinas entrad, entrad

y que el último en cerrar la puerta

sea el que pueda ver como es comun todo rayo, toda orilla,

y que el primero en abrir la puerta

sea el que pida permiso a esos ojos de lobos

para que la tierra gire alrededor del descubrimiento llagado.

Del libro inédito "Anuncio"

ANOCHECE

En memoria de Stella Diaz Varin

Nos tapamos el rostro con un escombro de viudo

pero igual vemos el mar y el cielo: esos mismos delirios enraizados

tampoco sabemos que hacer durante el día

salvo tocar la flauta para que se abra la matriz blasfema

donde tú estaras desaprobando ciertas sombras, ciertas llamas

o bien perfumándote para que los salvajes

te conduzcan en medio de una tempestad de imanes.

Mira como en ninguna casa nos reciban, como nos cierran sus puertas

le temen a tu cabellera porque tiene el designio de esos padres laberinticos

que no tuvieron piedad de la luz e hicieron un lecho sobre aberraciones de sal.

Vas engrandecida por cenizas lujosas, por armas de hielo que te rodean en circulos

hasta que ninguno de nosotros puede entrar, salvo que tú lo quieras

salvo que le hagas la señal a la copa y el cielo enrojezca

mientras aqui nos aferramos al polvo jactansoso, nos quedamos fuera de todo linaje

mientras la piel atrapa al día

y una amenaza de cascara se cierne sobre el mundo.

Esos padres laberinticos te estan vaciando los ojos

infringiendo lo conocido del agua

quedan escombros viudos al centro de la noche

donde tú estaras viendo a los pájaros alcanzar la angustia del fuego

mientras nosotros vemos que hombres y pájaros se han quedado para siempre en ello.

Te tapas el rostro con una roca llena de pelos

la misma que te hace odiarnos, la misma que altera las restauraciones

le otorgas a las lamparas la locura de los cadáveres, pero se las quitas sin decir nada

y nada más hay que ver como son las alas

ahora que ningun abismo le falta a la luz.

DESDE QUE DESPERTE CONTIGO

A Diana Camacho B.

Si esta noche la eternidad se arriesga en nuestra sangre

y antes que yo el desciframiento cubre tu cuerpo

¿ Recuerdas que con solo clavarle el ardor de un pecho el bosque fue nuestro?

Desde que desperte contigo

las aguas nos volvieron imborrables

y los días y las noches se mantienen como caidas inconclusas.

Rodrigo Verdugo Pizarro nace en Santiago de Chile el 9 de enero de 1977. Se inició en el taller de poesia "Isla Negra" dirigido por el poeta Edmundo Herrera desde 1992 a 1996 en la Sech. Editor y articulista de la Revista Derrame. Estudiante de Licenciatura en literatura en la Universidad Ándres Bello. Su obra se encuentra publicada en diversas revistas y antologias como: Aurora 55, Boletin de la Fundación Pablo Neruda, Piedrazo, El Bote, As de Copas, Letras Jovenes (México), Cognosco (España), Voces (España), Luke (España), Deriva (España), Letralia (Venezuela), Los Poetas del Cinco ( Venezuela), La Iguana (Argentina), Remolinos (Argentina), La Maquina de Escribir (Argentina), revista virtual de psicoanalisis Fuegos del Sur (Argentina), Diez dedos (Colombia), Officina do Pensamento (Brasil), Escritores del mundo II de Alejandra Zarhi, Ed Rumbos 1995, Sitio Publico, Mago editores, 2005, Desde mi ventana: Soledad y Vértigo, Ed Abaco, 2006 (España), Antologia internacional de poesia amorosa de Santiago Risso, Ed Alejo, 2006 (Peru) como asi mismo en las paginas web: "Sonambula, Surrealismo latinoamericano" ( Mexico) que dirige el artista mexicano Enrique Lechuga y "Viu la Poesiá" ( España) a cargo del grupo "Pocio, poesía y educación" de la Universidad de Barcelona, dirigido por la catedratica Gloria Bordons.

En 2002 publica su libro "Nudos Velados" Ed Derrame (prologo de Roberto Yáñez e ilustraciones de Aldo Alcota). Ha sido traducido parcialmente al fránces y al polaco.

En 2004 fue moderador del primer encuentro de poesía regional en la ciudad de Lebu. En 2005 participa en la exposición colectiva Derrame Cono Sur o el viaje de los argonautas en la Fundación Eugenio Granell, (Santiago de Compostela, España) y obtiene el primer lugar en el concurso Alas de Poesía organizado por la Asociación Amigos de la Poesia (Monterrey, Mexico).

Actualmente trabaja en dos libros inéditos Anuncio y Transmisión debajo de las piedras y en un ensayo sobre la obra del poeta.

-Gustavo Ossorio.

Rodrigo Verdugo Pizarro was born in Santiago, Chile in 1977. He was enrolled in SECH's "Isla Negra" poetry workshop, directed by the poet Edmundo Herrera, from 1992 to 1996. He is editor of and a contributor to the magazine Derrame. He studies literature at Ándres Bello University. His work has been published in varias magazines and anthologies, including: Aurora 55, Boletin de la Fundación Pablo Neruda, Piedrazo, El Bote, As de Copas, Letras Jovenes (Mexico), Cognosco (Spain), Voces (Spain), Luke (Spain), Deriva (Spain), Letralia (Venezuela), Los Poetas del Cinco ( Venezuela), La Iguana (Argentina), Remolinos (Argentina), La Maquina de Escribir (Argentina), the online journal of psycholanalysis, Fuegos del Sur (Argentina), Diez dedos (Colombia), Officina do Pensamento (Brasil), Escritores del mundo II, Rumbos 1995, Sitio Publico, Mago, 2005, Desde mi ventana: Soledad y Vértigo, Abaco, 2006 (España), Antologia internacional de poesia amorosa de Santiago Risso, Alejo, 2006 (Peru) as well as on the web pages: "Sonambula, Surrealismo latinoamericano" ( Mexico) directed by Mexican artist Enrique Lechuga and "Viu la Poesiá" (Spain) run by the group "Pocio, poesía y educación" at the University of Barcelona, directed by Professor Gloria Bordons.

In 2002, Verdugo Pizarro published his book, "Nudos Velados," Derrame Press (prologue by Roberto Yáñez and illustrations by Aldo Alcota). It has been partially translated into French and Polish.

In 2004 he was moderator of the first regional poetry symposium in the city of Lebu. In 2005, he particpated in the exposition Derrame Cono Sur o el viaje de los argonautas in the Fundación Eugenio Granell, (Santiago de Compostela, España) and obtained first place in the contest Alas de Poesía organized by the association Amigos de la Poesia (Monterrey, Mexico.)

Verdugo Pizarro is currently working on two unpublished books, Anuncio and Transmisión debajo de las piedras, and writing an essay on poetry.

New Poetry from Jordan Somers

Neologism


Or·bit·ual: (orbit + ritual)

1.
a. The tangible nature of residential
return as seen through loopholes:
Constructed and Depleting.
b. Knowing the games that you love:
Matching the color of lipstick
with socks.

2.
a. Informing you that A Streetcar Named Desire
is simply a mediocre retelling of Genesis:
“you, Me and Kowalski
move together on parallel lines,
orbitually”
b. Seeing nothing with your glasses off.
c. Refusing to clear a dinner table
with forearm.

3. The world continues to move in an orbitual
fashion, orbitually.

4. Quickly, while all is not obviously lost.


Di·min·sti·cate (diminish + domesticate)

1. I, diminsticate the ideology
of loafer gentry.
The soft shoe aggregator
is but a fabrication:

2. Diminsticating atop
the factory of poorly stitched senses.
“A myriad of diminsticatory
brown.”

3. Sanitized frills of a taut high school verse
that preaches Tuesday –
when we knew it was Wednesday
morning
all along.


Lo·se·qu·ious (loquacious + obsequious)

1.
a. Speak to my of plots
and I will love you losequiously:
Tactile, irrational.
b. “The poet laureate of losequiousness
demands a harsher shadow upon
the leftness of your face
with penalties
for the dismissive sun.”

2. Sex is a losequious pretext
(example):
Illuminating bed skirts
but ultimately denoting
very little
of meaning.


Tel·u·cial (telegram + fiducial)

1. (démodé)

2. The Telucial white flowers die soonest stop
Die into that
telucial chasm bride-bed of a telucious moon stop
I hear the owls stop
While the world is ruled by precedent stop
Here our telucial crimes of history join
the fairy tales stop
It is often safer to be in chains
telucial, bound by the lies
of our ancestors stop


Per·fund·ulate (perfunctory + undulate)

1.
a. The desire to connect
irrevocable schisms.
b. A utensil to sweep chimneys.

2. Perfundulating fear:
Today,
I eat my usual diet
of perfundulating shadows.


Wand·ir·ic (wanderlust+ oneiric)

1.
a. How else to feel
other than I do –
wandiric as such:
b. Combusting in rust:
“wandiric demeanor”

2. Like a wedge pressed between teeth.

3. Other, more legitimate misinterpretations:
Shortness of hair,

4. Grocery lists denoting pain –
dental floss,
wandiric bread,
diet cola.


Ner·bose (nevus + verbose)

1.
a.There is fitness in spades -
b. So nerbose that empty
chairs denote
nothing at any particular
moment upon any
particular night.
c. Not even now.

Jordan Somers lives in Toronto, Canada and unless he is saved by his fans, his women and his heroin, that is where he will probably die - alone in some type of igloo dwelling surrounded by photographs of antique toasters minus their delicious and warm bread slices. He also is responsible for the E-Zines Ninjoetry and The Collected Poems of Valentino the Robot.

New Poetry from MK Ajay

FACSIMILE OF BELIEFS

I

Fog of forgetfulness; hills lost
in the clouds lost in the hot breath
of the city. We watch our daughter
build a monster with legos; outside,
the sky has circled a crimson sun.
We move through roads familiar
with the itinerary of our imaginings
and stop at crossroads no one used
for centuries. The hill is distant,
and we can’t aspire to reach out
to its green loneliness; the hill
is distant, a night’s journey away
from the crossroad where our car
has broken down, puffing smoke.

II

Odd! It is the same white lotus
we saw in summer, on our way
to the stony Buddha at Ajanta.
We have seen the difference
between its whiteness here
and the navel of life there,
while the water gathers clouds
on its blue, cool reflections.
Imitating the local palms,
it sways in the rain-drenched breeze.
You teach me the myth of creation
enacted on the lotus, when the gods
danced and let the cosmos gossip.
You stare at the bee-cup on the lotus.

III

And looking at my face, the squirrel
charges into the night’s campfire crackle.
The dew has unsettled the history
of unending warmth on these slopes.
I miss myself in these woods;
it is so much more intense now
as I watch you snuggle into the wool
blanket on our tent’s breach.
A toppled paper-cup on the grass,
cries of the rain forest, an orang-utan
marking his territory somewhere,
sallow moon’s trail of surprises…..

IV

We walk on mud not in our dreams,
an alien mud, fragrant with the gentle
bloom of hibiscus and orchids.
The hill we climbed is a spirit
we encountered at the airport terminal.
I know, you believe the moon has cast
a spell on me, you believe the river’s
gurgling is only water flowing.
If only you had seen the squirrel’s eyes
and the moon’s hideous wink.

V

Daybreak. All too familiar?
You would sweat too, if you
saw your face, looking hundred years old,
when you peer into mirror’s darkness.
Where is the vein that fed the flesh
last night? And the post-it note
you pasted on my forehead?
In the blue voids clouds forgot
to fill up, I see the sky create
tunnels into the riddles of universe.

VI

The Brahminy-kites have flown out
of our eyes. The tigers have deserted
our inspiration and we have nothing
left to say, thankful we haven’t lost
the memories we carried along. You
hum songs in our mother-tongue. I touch
their strange melancholy coolness,
like a cat’s coat in monsoon.

VII

Finally, the rains. Clear as glass.
Mirror of sights around the hill,
refracted through my dreams.
I touch its faded imprint on the soil.
And discern its coded music like drumbeats.
I don’t feel the pain, till I see
the rains pass by, without words
to kiss their drops and sense the
wet earth’s anguish. Finally,
the subdued trance awaits me.
I welcome the facsimile of my beliefs -
my poem.


MK Ajay’s works have appeared in Orbis (UK), Indian Literature, Blue Fifth Review, The Little Magazine, Cerebration, Niederngasse, Ygdrasil, Crimson Feet, Chandrabhaga, Brown Critique, Montreal Serai, Poetry Chain, Muse India, Kritya and In our Words: A generation defining itself, among others. He has published a book of poems and a collection of short stories. Ajay was born and brought up in Kozhikode, India, and currently lives in peninsular Malaysia.

Three Poems from Louie Crew

Found in the 1988 Register

Susan B. Atwood


cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, and mother

cordially invites you

to attend her divorce

from Henry James Atwood

attorney, financier, and trustee,

at the Cook County Court Number One

on the 29th, at high noon, high time.


Reception afterwards at the Battered Women Center

on Halstead

Presumption

If I had said that you,
--eyes bright, like those your
little boy returns,
shoulders soft, like
your red velvet trousers--
are far too lovely to suffer such sadness,

I would have presumed.

It is better to tell a stranger
in a poem, make him know
how meaningless is one's first spoken word,
how mild the shock of one's first breath.


Chocolate Fishing

Quean Paul takes willing country boys
fishing with a Vaseline tin rolled
in the blanket and a shotgun to fend off
any uninvited crackers who stray
upon their rubbings by the creek.
She can hear strangers a mile off,
and one blast suffices.

She likes only the sweet ones, not the toughs.

Leaving her job at the flour mill, her Afro
still pressed under a dusty stocking,
she can spot the girl in a lad a block away.
She has nurtured a score of orphans
and the fatherless into raising guineas
and smooching at the drive-in.

She spurns more conspicuous queans,
except in the dark, and never is suspected
by any but the boys she woos as Dad.


Louie Crew has edited special issues of College English and Margins. He has published four poetry volumes: Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976) Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987), Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ's Sake! (Dragon Disks, 2003). The University of Michigan collects his papers. More information can be found on his website.

A New Poem by Sandy Hiss

Hidden in the Cracks

Rummaging through your face
blue ocean eyes
the one i remember
an old file
dusty
think unopened bottles
crown royal
coke
stored away
where i could not imagine you

today
i wrote a lost memo
some new clutter

questions
hidden in the cracks
spiders spinning tales
a gold hoop tangled
in denial
returned to sender

you came without a tie
apricot soap
a white angel
greeting me
hand signed
always
a long ago
when my fingertips
tasted your goodbye

Sandy Hiss' poetry and fiction have appeared in Cabaret New Angeles, Autographs, Eskimopie.net, Scorched Earth Publications (Editor's Choice Feb/Mar issue), Autumn Leaves, The Cat's Meow, Poet's Haven, True Poet, The Green Silk Journal, Ken*Again, Thick With Conviction, and Fresh! Magazine. Her work is forthcoming in CC&D, Falling Star, & Bolts of Silk. Sandy resides in Wyoming with her two children and husband. She is also the editor of Flutter, an online poetry Magazine.

A New Poem by Andrew Haley

Moscow Stations

for Peter Golub

I
night tavarish in the Central commode
bubbling in chasms of alabaster
sheltered from endless twilight
the color of putrefaction and dew

II
night in the reaches of television towers
alien baubles of Hasdrubal grey against sky
one-sided barbells fastened to earth
iron-steepled
under-reaches slight-arched
graceful as nenuphar

III
night in dandelion glades sewn with garbage and cars
planted trackless in wild grass under the plantation of masts
reaching for Heaven

IV
night under lamps in wallpaper and cherries
kissing the words Ejaculation and Hemorrhoid
in ash spilled among papers that slip from the upholstered divan

V
night sprawled in talk in quiet in kissing in ashes
in the night at the foot of the door
balcony to the weird sky
flat as the world of tramways and bridges
Iofan ziggurats
rivers wending among fractals

VI
night in the zoo
of thighs smooth under blankets
drowsy in innocent wishes and smells
stunned tired to mind’s quiet
ceiling a wild quiet
fit for thoughts
lost in Dream

VII
night tavarish on the alien actual globe among stars
brevity of cars hushing through actual air
ichor and surprises of desire’s plantations
with the lights out the lights out there

VIII
night automatic in Heaven’s bough
greased with the unending sun

IX
night in bed’s pollen tamped out with ashes
on the patina
crossed
on skis fixed to the tarantass

X
night in the crook of an arm
waking to breath
and the lamp shining on plastic and alphabets

XI
night’s coffer
plain with wires–
black gauges
among fruit

XII
night tavarish in the web of stations nearer to home

Andrew Haley's Poem to Get Started appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Western Humanities Review. It was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2006 Utah Writer's Contest by Billy Collins. New poetry is forthcoming in Quarterly West. He is the author of three novels, most recently Transference, and lives in Buenos Aires.

New Poetry from Peter Golub

Brodsky Walrus Waltz

(1) Non-circularity
Brodsky is not a kind, because the feature that distinguishes members of the set is just that something be a member of the given set. Yet the items in the things might also be described as things.

(2) Mind-independence
Trotsky is not a kind, because the fact that the members figure in an example is just the result of his deciding that they should.

yesterday we drank pepper vodka and talked about the different varieties of incest
the day before that we locked our selves into a small bathroom and blew smoke into
each others faces
the day before that i woke up to find naked boys in the kitchen
before that a friend of a friend gave birth-- the day was warm, there was a light drizzle
and then there was a kiss somewhere near the train station and then a light farewell kiss
at the station
there was the room with the green forest wallpaper
photos and cognac
walking walking and walking
paying-- cops armless men women girls women girls people in the metro
there are many more
they all take something out of my bag or my jacket or my wallet (when i still had the
wallet)
the camera the phone something about poetry and byron and translation and rhyme and brodsky and trotsky and jumping off bridges and climbing climbing climbing
reading reading reading
putting it together
picking and pickling
it art it aren't they
brodsky a walrus
you kiss too much
she waits somewhere near the edge of the bath
like a small child
naked and wrinkly lost in the water
there are things to be picked up
don't i have to give something away
are there not people who would rather be with me
but here i am

Peter Golub is in Moscow, where he is translating and compiling contemporary Russian poetry. His adventures in Moscow and St. Petersburg can be followed at Chekov's Solarium.

Stay tuned for la Nueva Poesia Russkaya...

A New Poem by Jack Helbig

7 Erotic Scenes

-1-

Cowrie shells, curling like toes,
your fingers, my fingers,
the color of conch,
meet in a white porcelain bowl.

-2-

A light breeze inflates the curtains,
ruffles my cotton dress,
moves the hairs on my arm.

-3-

Crossed legged,
book open on my thigh.
You face me:
young brown eyes, soft lips, smile.

-4-

The shells tick:
disks on an abacus,
pebbles in a pool.

-5-

A handful of shells.
Your fist unfolds.
Petals opening to the sun.

-6-

In your palm a dozen
wrinkled eyelids
wincing at the light.

-7-

You smile and I read aloud
this seashell prophecy:
“No one knows what lies
at the bottom of the ocean.”


Jack Helbig' articles on theater and the arts have appeared in the Chicago Reader, The Chicago Tribune, and the Daily Herald. He has had short stories and poetry published in Vice Versa, The Chicago Literary Review, the Grey City Journal, Rhapsoidia Literary Magazine, and Another Poetry Magazine w/Art. He has written two plays, THINKING OF HER MADE HIM THINK OF HER, first produced by the Talisman Theatre in Elgin, Illinois and KITTEN WITH A WHIP, produced at the Café Voltaire, Chicago. His new translation of Franz Lehar’s THE MERRY WIDOW premiered in August, 2005, at Light Opera Works, in Evanston, Illinois. Mr. Helbig lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with his wife and spunky daughter.