New Poetry From Tommy FitzGibbon

Hay Vida?

*

How can it be, that when I open my windows, after drawing back my curtains, in order to let in fresh air, I always get trampled on? Why not just let the breeze carry in the smell of the ocean? The dogs are on the seashore again, their legs stuck in the sand like branches. That is why I drew back my curtains, opened my windows, and let the noise of my operation drift out into the night air.

The wind blows, shakes the dead leaves, drifts across oceans, destroys homes and now breaks into a still hot day and refreshes its occupants. There were over 30 people and the few who survived were swimming for three days. Crippled fishing boats nest sleeping, jumbled about the shore.

I was bustling about the house preparing for something when the doorbell rang and there he was, just there grim in his winter coat, oblivious. I saw hundreds of tractor trailers standing in lines across a moonlit lot, singing, the vehicle sticks to the road. You step out onto a black river and walk across the water; it forms in puddles around us. His face felt like a sea shell, curious eyes like little light projectors followed my movements. A wet nose bumps into my hand. Friday, woke up.

We crouch on the shore of the estuary, search among the piles of shells and scuttling crabs for plastic bottles, chunks of foam, bits of rubber or fiberglass. In order to start our fires, in order to repel mosquitoes. The local firelight reflected off the skin, the sound a thick liquid of mangrove insects and currents. Beneath night clouds slumbering cultures build themselves, a man emerges from the darkness and into the light of the fire. Reduce me to an idiot.

It seemed to come down from the sky and it was beautiful, a million ruby feathers and sharp crystal eyes that amplified our sounds of breathing into a pounding surf against the shore of the future. Rain protects us from our lonely networks. Now that we've fallen from the tall buildings I go from city to city. I change my clothes, I tell stories of the ocean and fleets of ships that stood still in the water.

*

Race cars speed through limitless boundaries burn fuels beautifully crash explode become rusty and fall apart, make their own music as they age and evolve into horns. We never told you to grow up like this, we never intended to be where we are now, we only spent a few dollars but we feel a distinct disappointment. I intend to become the masses and behold the breathtaking effectiveness of our most taken-for-granted structures and most organic mechanisms. Is enthusiasm the ticket?

Dogs smell other dogs, on your legs, the mind draws a blank, the economy rolls. My head tilts forward and I dribble out onto the page thoughtlessly. When a pet dies it can cause a lot of grief for its owner. One should not get scared or avoid eye contact. Take the bag with the merchandise and walk out quickly.

The intrinsic advertisement. If I could rope down a thought in a moment of time it would be like a billboard or a subway poster. Maybe there are good people and bad people. Maybe we move to the rolls of some unexaminable die.

Take the air blowing about gently over the plateau at mid day. Take the stars as they align to the streetlights. Take the indulgence when it presents itself? I wouldn't remember how the words fall into place among the lines. I recover and cast my lure in pursuit of a glorious fish. One person overflows into another, mistakes are made, communication fails.

Behind closed doors rules break and alternate realities emerge. I walk strict circles in pursuit. I overtake stragglers, absorb their energy and continue on. They all remember time at different speeds.

When was it that, emerging from a dim alley, she became white like hot fire and transformed in front of us and followed us home like an animal? We, as the reality, as the functioning experiment, are required to project our wills over digital networks. We, as the functioning reality, cradle picture-boxes like babies. We, humans of the future reject, fail, and become humans of the past. Insects fly in low patterns within the air between and above the plants themselves.

*

Clouds hang over this spectacle on strings. Planets move in this detailed universe on lips that part and emit laughter. On old eyes that shine a dim light. Maybe when the door opens above the world's lost oceans. The sky is thick with airplanes, a tree shakes in the breeze, a white car is parked on the side of the street. The sidewalks are flowing like rivers.

I was here for this sunrise, let me speak of it in a loud voice. Let me breath out in fire my frustrations. I have used words to describe bridges and their interactions with the water at night. I have drawn highways into sentences. Perhaps I am the vehicle that misses both the target and the scenery along the way. The fathers were right and the fathers were also wrong. Even now the translators fail, to give us what we need, to deliver a message that is not haunted by errors and misunderstandings. The experts brag pathetically from their brilliant prisons, trees take root, pot holes form, surfaces change.

These are the controls, we make ourselves out to be just what we are. It is easy to look on one's footprints and say "Thank god these ailing days are sometimes broken into by episodes of joy." The last seat we took in the front of the theater was a dangerous one. The actors were disintegrating under the spotlights. A wind was blowing, we had to close our eyes and wake up somewhere else. Survival. The vehicle runs on gasoline so some of the people keep moving and the janitors come out to sweep up those left behind.

It's not modern; it's an hourglass. I have been outside where there's nothing but the wind and the water but the air was filled with electronic waves and the islands I came across were completely imaginary.

When we meet at the cash register and I load my purchases onto your conveyor belt I can't bear to look into your shining eyes because they gesticulate in numbers and cash. And because we speak across deserts, or as from one watchtower to another, perpetually our sentences arrive incomplete, obscured in jet air planes that move people from one place to another. And because we speak clinging to the terrain we find ourselves littered upon until from the ground explodes, amphibian, our mutual sensation.



Tommy FitzGibbon recently returned to Brooklyn, New York after a year living and traveling among the Islands of the Bahamas and Hispaniola. Once again among friends he is learning to play the guitar and trying to find the Old Road amidst the joys and horrors of modern America. His poems have appeared previously in Zone.

Six Poems From Martins Iyoboyi

THRENODY

1
Heart glow in the dark
Scudding along, refractory smoke
Drifts like kissing waters.

Here, we dole remnants
Upon graver convictions
A bat hanging the measure
A millennial nascence

Itself, the episode replays
A pall of darkness issuing
Night-bird songs heralding
The loss of the years before.

An apparition, sickle-headed
Waiting –
Parting in alien solutions
Gesticulating our road to take.

My spirits open up, yielding
To conference.

2
Sitting at the ‘sycamore’ of my long affection
Inured by age-mates, who languid by aged toil
Do convene to decipher dark and momentary tales
I embellish my fuming senses to obliterate the leer

The defensive encampment of wine has flown
Bending and twisting into a vale-fashioned waste
The soup-con satisfaction grounded in oblivion
And all the animal figments upbraided
Sliding into the hubbub of the soul.

As tangibility suddenly resurrects from opaque thought,
And the transient glee of inebriety ebbed
A bitter notion does weightily float upon my plane
Briefly, vaguely indicating the present reality;
The day is dawn upon my deep abysmal slumber
The senses sentient, enunciating an existence.

If I daily sing to the sediments
Lachrymose at the faded lights of yore
What vigour shall permit my oracle
Like fast-revolving mills?

In the bizarre scene of mystery
Treaded not by sane-cultured minds
A whetted illusion oils the heart
A more tranquil place does possess there
A penchant, more like bliss and clover
Where effrontery is thought
Then if it be this above you dwell
Resting from the pallid state you once engaged in
I deign to invite death-strings
For the unfathomable dearness.

Under the bold ‘sycamore’ life-brimming
Will the wreath come in moments of despair
Dwelling in figment and appearance
To extinguish the craggy war?
My grief pours out of its cistern
And in the multifarious gloom
I see thee, brothers, rise in unity.

3
The moon moans,
The celestial home in the welkin sends
Vellum of titillated rays
Upon a redolent cottage of grief.

A sick-soul, in a trice, fuddles
Attempting to ease the gall
Conveyed by selfish vintage –

The excoriating flesh falls lightly
Upon earth’s incessant wetness
As patch of drifting clouds

Advances –

But leaves his door ajar
Heralding the frightful day;

Moments of deep thought
In fury

Come to recollection of
Elongated days.

A bitter departure
Deserting this bitter self, striated body.
O, if I were thus governed –

Solid states, grey and beaten
Should fulminate the blisters.

Stars are bedimmed by lonesomeness
Clouds become diffident
Memorial, my spirit haunts
Till I mingle with the after-world

A reproach greets mortality, mine –

The drift, yours –
Of a higher plane
Deathless you live –

At nightfall, curses are fizzled
Leaving us pusillanimous
With thy dust in the dust.


THE ROAD

Lives of nobility
Caution mortals
That meekness is –
The road that we should take.
Sometime too soon dust usurps breaths
The world’s business fretting and anguish
Soon in season – quick fashion
Heaving, like sowers upon a done field
Oneness of toil and enterprise;
All are paths, where through
Mortal gleam will admonish young buds –
The road that we should take
Time evil inundates to chastise the just;
Benignity incarcerated in barbed abyss
Leaving the cosmos murky and shallow
But an age arrives to douse
Shelter the embers of inhumanity –
In their squalid residence kindness
And good – the road that we should take.
It’s no paradox life’s own demises
From crudity to nakedness
That the wealth of all mortal labour
Successes, downfalls and ambitions
All inter I mortality –
Yet if in this, cruelty abounds,
And that immortality will advance like a ray
Then must the rat race be done,
Washed off from the fretful spirits
Spirits of incessant rushing like vexed tides
But in tranquility of value and purpose –
To chose dignity in enterprise
The road that we should take.


YOUTH THAT IS NO MORE

I decry the acerbity of age,
Tears of mortal woe gather to the chill eyes,
I know no more of tender years
The youth that is no more.
A benediction he was
An opulent dream given bountifully
A nascent thing unknown
Among market plazas and fainéant plots
A hope, a glee and a laugh
The youth that is no more.
Demotic dances do gaze again
Not lugubrious sights behold I now,
Rich and divine lament do I share
Of puerile plays and fragile path
I hear of death’s horns sounding
While all eager young are no more.
I fight and doze unequal pair
Singing of the youth that is not more.
Rapacity then was nothing of point
Nor rabid thinking ever invited
Though contumacious plays did abound
Yet must it be God’s greatest time for man
He who has no youth and no age
That carves future ideal, - the youth
The glory, the emancipation, of the mind
That I cry, the youth that is no more.
Will it ever crowd my nightmares,
Arrive – those raw meditations
Free – unfettered existence – O, how,
Can that bold age come? Never! I say
The youth that is no more.


GOING TO AFRICA

It is forty years, ten weeks and eight days
Since the shabby creature, full of anguish,
And sick of the numberless times at sea,
First tasted this land full of my brothers,
Sisters, relatives, unfortunate to
Change hands with gold and silver in that land.
I can no more recall those pangs, in the
Searing burns, oppressive whips and stale food,
Occasioned by the business of the seas,
For they seem but eternity to me;
Not the unspeakable deaths inflicted,
At those gloomy stakes and wooden crosses,
On those who, in defense of their kingdoms,
Felt reluctant to desert their native gods,
Hospitable tribesmen and bosom friends,
Will yet fade like the mast of a great ship,
From the tussled consciences of my thoughts.
Nature and the dual forces of man,
Which have but been merciful to my life,
Did admonish the buyers of humans,
And thus I became a liberated man,
(Though in some sense parochial, in
Color, tongues and outlook) to have a house,
And bred through my own strength four hale children,
Full of African blood and ideals.
My gentle friends, with whom my stiff stories,
Have, in the greatest description, found good,
Mirthful attention, to go to that old land,
That is thousands of miles from here, and
Departing my household that I so love,
Is but the loftiest error I could commit,
Yet to erase that bizarre impression,
About the odd accusations by you,
And to establish universal truth
And convince you of the greatness of the
Black continent, I shall forfeit my home
My estates and possessions, in all,
And appoint my humble good eldest son,
Who is four and twenty seasons this day,
To take charge over my huge business;
Thus, we five shall embark on this journey,
Though full of strange tides and troubles, in midst
Of natural threats and calamity,
And shall, by the grace of our mighty God,
Arrive without harm at a black harbour
From whence I show you what I so speak of.
Tomorrow, at the setting of the sun,
At that time when the seas are calm and quiet,
And all the world ignited from dusk,
We shall prepare two heavy, loaded ships,
Built with firm, stubborn wood and stiff metal,
And augment the burden, in greater rate
With provisions of food and flavored wine.
Let us take some mementos, made with fine gold
And some other presents that could well speak
Of the sojourners, to the villagers.
There is the harsh weather, the piercing tides,
The oppressive beings abounding at shores;
Our chief object though shall be to see
The foremost glint of any place, peopled
By creatures, who though in deep variance with
You, have the features which constitute men.
About three months, from this chilly harbour,
With fortune and nature well on our side,
Across the far south, through the Pacific,
On whose waters many strange tales abound,
And across then onto the Atlantic,
Picking the time and praying fervently,
We shall see my like in full-throttled bliss
And the famous empire of Ethiopia,
And see the tomb of the great Haile Salasie,
Here, we visit the shrine, our common bond,
And see the pontiff calling the spirits;
The families are pleasant and shall well
Take us in for a cup of drink and a meal,
For our laws being of such a formidable type,
Allow sweet hospitality for men of all climes;
But I am full of tears and my heart breaks,
That the scenarios which our eyes shall see
Have imported fashions and odd manners.
The ladies, that were once good and loyal,
Giving in to their father’s admonitions,
Have taken to the naked streets, giving
In to any stray call and could be found
In useless brothels and dark thickets.
The men are no better in taste, for since
The advent of white learning to the race,
Illicit hair, strange deportment, unusual
Characters have taken their better parts.
Here is the land we so hear about,
Nigeria, that great African nation,
A beacon in the horizon, full of
Life and antiquity, and we by fate shall
Pay a visitation to the great men
And women of whom we are proud here.
In this country lies the great Calabar,
Where the blacks were so dehumanized and who
After constant beating, were gathered, sold
As slaves and bought here as labourers.
Here also, we shall see the statue of
Jaja, one who in tears, pains and anguish,
Little cared about his own existence but strove
To fortify his land against this place.
My son, I appoint you over my house,
Till that time I shall return, but if not,
If I find disfavour in fortune’s sight,
And fall prey to the monsters of the deep,
Do not weep for me, but pray constantly,
That one day, the injustice against us,
The problems which we have been plunged into,
Shall end and the blood of Africans,
Most of whom were interred in fragments,
And whose blood cries to the highest heavens,
Shall be atoned for, and the troubles of
Ethnicity, religion, sentiments
And blind loyalty that so cursed the black race
Shall fade, and the black become a beacon among men.
Note that I embark upon this business,
To educate the world about the notions,
Odd conceptions and ill tales told of us.
Though I go in the grayness of my years, I do not
Forget the processes of the seas, for
I shall regain the lost valour while I
Fight for my fatherland. So, take heart, and
Weep no more, till when I shall be with you;
Yet, if in ten months, no news of me is heard,
Know that fate has done its due, and that I, an
Ill-fated man, is gone to where he comes.


ONCE MORE, WORKS OF NOBLE GLEE

Once more works of noble glee
Might again recur by artifice, to avert
All deep emotions, thought-veiled to your wonders,
And to the mind make possessions and not despoil.
Disputation usurps arguments stemming day long
Mainstay of which is ambiguity
Amazement comes elementary before all
And engenders all mouths to confess its esteem
Long has the in-satiation for knowledge commenced
To seek and dominate the strangeness of its core
Nor that mouth-philosophizing could make amendments.
The feat that no soul could discern nor discover
The soft-motioning wind causing fumes.
O! The great craftiness employed by its skillful
tender hands
Makes us halt all engagements to sit in thought.
The advent and departure of the seasons, unmistaken –
The marriage of the innocent waters roving silently
Humming and singing making no infraction of the
wonders’ ethos
Like an ingénue invoking the glee of a beloved soul
And are ingathering like heaps made by a labourer!
By your ingenuity and the aptitude we know not
By the interlink of wonders in juxtaposition
Cause pains insoluble and unyielding.
What about the nightingales, migrating to their
carefully made nests,
Or the tender dove, invigourating our strength, that
seeking nothing
But awash by your tiny waters sent from far awayhorizon
If by the care, the oncoming winter, we expect or
The refreshment of tides when seated by river banks,
Or the thought of life when nightingales release their voices,
What entity we cared or to render the message of a supreme being,
If we, fascinated by the resplendence of the lilies
Let the appeal sneak in to the world’s remotest places
And by the witness of these things in creation, revoke this
What honours have we by the wonders of nature
Let alone the creator of all things?


WHAT I DO NOT

O, to give honour where it is undue
And fall at the idle feet of fame,
Or look with disdain the lowliest of the low
Or trample the weak to increase their woe;
O, to seek power where it is least found
To achieve results where results are weak
And praise idle brains of want of means
And covet the society of the rich –
To bear the orphan's cry and the widow’s tears
And walk my way with all reckless abandon
To fear for earth because I desire life
And allow cruel hearts to achieve their ends
Or be a pacifist where injustice reigns
And look with hope at a land in mist –
Yea, to live fretful where sorrow comes
And eat my soul’s comfort by the dying day –
Or beg to win fame, wealth, dignity or laurels
And be sung where earth rings her applauses –
Oh, to please men instead of myself
And make me the slave to the world’s wishes
These and lots more, O soul of mine
I know not how to do!


Martins Iyoboyi was born in 1972 in Ebelle, in the Esan speaking part of Edo State, Nigeria. Losing his father at a tender age, indigence and want 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 honors in economics, which he teaches at the Kano State College of Education in Kano, Nigeria. A prodigious writer, Iyoboyi's poems have appeared previously in Zone, as well as in The Flask Review, 63 Channels, Contemporary Rhyme, The Bending Spoons, and International Zeitschrift.

Three Poems From Srinjay Chakravarti

EMBOUCHURE

Where the straits are perilous, more hungry spittle. . .
The ghosts gather, a shimmer on the waves.

-- Meng Chiao, Sadness of the Gorges
(Trans. by A.C. Graham)


The tide foams at the river's mouth,
wind contrapuntal in a threnode
of susurrant sorrow.

Mermaids, drowned in air, gasp
for water: they abandon
their spindrift of spittle
at the white waves of the estuary.
The water is as briny as tears.

Coming to drink there,
ghosts of sailors exhale
wisps of smoke.
They return home
as thirsty as they always were.

Where the valley yawns,
cold breezes from the north
sough through ivory trees,
petrified pillars stained
with weeping starlight.
The leaves of the forest
tremble under the weight of dewdrops
as they condense in the chill air
into the white jade of memories.

This is the hour of seances.
The soul escapes its moorings,
loss its only cargo
as it flees across the dream-dark sea.

The surf has beaten its head, grieving,
on the rocks throughout the long night.
The blue twilight is fugued:
with wind and spume,
river and rain.


PERFUMED GARDENS

Kaminis, white belles of dusk
with fragrant bodies
swaying to an aeolian rhythm,
their laughter scattered
in splashes of moonlight
on the grey-green bushes.

While kanchans nod
their gold-blond heads
somnolently,
musk-scented skin
soaking in the bejewelled melody
tinkling on the feet
of night's nautch girls.

This is the paradise
for emperors and monarchs,
satyrs and cardinals.

Saying it with flowers,
and butterflies:
petalled wings of pleasure,
on the hinges of which

delicate dreams unfold
and sleep.


Kamini: a pale nocturnal flower; also means 'woman' in Sanskrit
Kanchan: another evening flower, often with yellow blossoms; also a
term for 'gold' in Sanskrit


LOVE POEM TO A SWEETHEART

Your questions float in the air
of the embargoed room, nebulae
in the dark night of my trespass.

"What do I do?
How do I make my living?"
I work nights
walking on air,
harvesting galaxies
with a sickle moon.

Yesterday, near the collapsar
at Andromeda, I met
a girl with a golden silhouette.
In the shadow she cast
on the trapeze of silver gossamer,
I could see a white hole
where her heart should have been.
I could see right through it
to the other end of the universe.

I asked her, sotto voce,
"Where do you come from,
and where do you go?"

She gave no reply,
only pointed a finger
at the Milky Way
and turned into a river
flowing with sand.

Now I was standing in a desert
twilight, the turquoise silence
of countless candles.
She had become the stars
in the black sky of my eyes.


Srinjay Chakravarti is a 34-year-old journalist, economist and poet based in Salt Lake City, Calcutta, India. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications in over 25 countries. His first book of poems, Occam's Razor, (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) received the SALT literary award from from John Kinsella and a literary trust in Melbourne, Australia. Absolutely straight and square, he is a teetotaller (no nicotine, no caffeine, no drugs), never married, a celibate and loves it that way!

Six New Poems From Amanda Silbernagel

dichotomy of grief

in the mind of a train no one exists; no
'something lovely' in noise dystopia- thrummed
from a boy-and-girl's brain: we could live
like this-- and you'd heard cancer
from the southern coast, called it funny;

corroded voice corroding a system
of wires/ an acid bath-- (not yet)
ready to join the Atlantic in forever.
falling away-- eats a path to your ear,
delta-hospice waiting six states north
to catch the contaminated Nile

(you did not ask for this. you were not born
for this) kind of waiting: shiver and scotch/
white noise trapped beneath the thrum/ a train
denies this is really happening-- dichotomy
is strange; we are. (not yet convinced)
of the tressel's strength/ that its giving out

would be tragic. theoretically- we should.
feel ashamed to be both: mute and mouthing
beautiful-- (we are not.) convinced of this
theory; and tar can be chic for a moment
like cricket decor on sulfur-- gleaming
studded as if it knows allure. is fragile:

hang on for dear-- heartbreaking awareness:
this is not a life. but a now- famous bridge
unconventionally stunning as an end/ as a
slender trickle leaves Jackson: laced
in chemical and pooled in a phone's vibration
the train negates its existence (we do
not argue) you were not born a theorist.

Green Italy

in the curious city the moon has fallen
twice through the power lines/ staggered;
like tripping-- the second; slow
enough to feel cool ivory skim your feet-
skimming the lethargic planet

[a stick pin for green Italy/ swirling Atlantic/
a fascination with painted globes]

younger. you measured the months with sleeps,
called unconscious 'night' or a thing
you'd never witness: child methods. [reassemble
in strange time zones--]

-- a pigeon abandons the gutter at the precise moment
another abandons flight; a swapping of sorts; mission
for lack there-of--

wind veteran crumbles on the schizophrenic runway
of a power line, or nerve path spread thin
through cloud/ high-strung from
undecided tug of the each-other-- dialogue.

mimics the pigeon's wings: syllable's rhythmic
pulse turns static. from effort. word-bones
weakened against stubborn will like the wind's
lost appeal: dead air (miraculously) entices

[hence still wire. stop. claws grip the cord.]

a cable measures when circadian rhythms fail; universally
marks the ivory trail--again; the moon asleep,
without you- without the each-other you long for/
warm milk; a cedar tree the size of god

to get lost in (until tired finds you) potent
branches to shroud the skin reassembling softness.
needles: resembling stick pins chart places
the each-other has not set foot/ pine:
unnoted on the globe

a week doubles in the city
as a plastic canister breaks- breeze scatters
pins through the breadcrumbed square/ tugs
the sagging runway [the pigeon positioned for take-off]

curious mix of metal
and crust-- a moon-- dreaming for you--
this is green Italy. you have so much
to learn

subjects whose names do not apply

the wild we had discussed: sequenced sand and my hair
grown out to compliment the wind and a cause we called
"asymmetry"-- we were rebels then. when days were
long and flat as wine; a drink that complimented
everything: flight notions/ two-man tent/ an inner arm
that could carry the world (asleep) through desert storms
unshaken. a planet gets heavy, i guess-- they say

it was dry fire, a dead Saguaro set off by the sun
(these natural disasters happen) i was the flower--
remember? how scary The Blossoming had been; i do not
blame you (for creating me)/ a magnifying glass
to applaud my loosened dimensions: exotic-- called
Cereus. (they say a child will become the name.
she is given; onomastics suggest we're all doomed, or

becoming-- a secret. document is kept by the fire;
nightly, when you sleep/ hard/ solving an impossible
riddle-- the journal is nearly full: i've described
what we don't discuss: the places you've taken me.
(away from the garden) i've recorded the heat's precise
degrees; exact dimensions of flame-- you'd be amazed.

at the colors a burn victim can name at an interview/
wild with dementia: first was periwinkle-- then
a deep magenta-- an index of shades (orders the names)
of suffering, i do not blame you-- for my obsessions:
list and number. violet and umber. wild despair.
for a cactus; it was natural, the disaster:
without matchbook or gas-- you named each flower...
before raising the glass

only as real

to find yourself in a vacant alley is to learn the great intruder
humanity is not. to come (uninterrupted) to the final brick/
each step a riveting conclusion to the question am i relevant:
is real. or a necessary point in the human experience like betrayal.
when i left him: a scarred field-- earth turned back like
kindling's bark from the fire/ felt the torch in my hands- horror

preceded an ethereal notion: what i carry is a common accessory
to weep in the final movement when a symphony succeeds/ exceeds
impossible; whittles senses to carve you: vulnerable, a bridge
crumbling into yourself and --all you finally feel--
is what shrinks call "breakthrough" or a crucial ability to come
unglued from etiquette-- begs a question: but why here?

(she was immovable. a stiffened reed at her father's funeral.
a blade cutting currents.) begs an accusation: but you didn't
weep in the alley-- and when you knew you were a factor
in the weight of a planet did you starve yourself a little?
with the gift-curse of influence comes compulsion to fall

to your knees on the staggered scale/ grovel at the equator
for mercy; a reaction to the reaction you casually caused
in a Universe's delicate alignment: a planet is knocked out
of orbit-- a river, sliced through the chest-- rise up,
daughter-- you are only as real as this moment--

assumed as connection

as if happening upon a budding flower (that knew their names)
they chained themselves interminably to the universe.

voodoo daughter rises
with dark-flicker; fire insists upon motion-
a black furnace masked in flame
fuels (is fueled by) her
feet circles, goatskin arms whipping night

caravans (we cannot see)
stir the dead and dead soil up for air--
an earthworm stretch-slinks desert and hill
as prophet: home is where they will have me,
hear my vision--
dust robed segments; wagon to wagon
dishevels a forest with story and wheel,
slips back under ground-cover we cannot see--

--the wasted brain stem erupt silver.
as hunger artist claws brick and bone/ dissolves
(lighter) into light.
(beneath ribs: a black furnace)
a famished neuron ignites as ash, reawakened

ash sleeps with her (body);
a leather whip laid limp by cindered logs
voodoo daughter- tangled in dreams
of budding flowers. at their center, a black furnace-
speaking. to feet circles/ a famished frame/
the caravans chained to her voice

let's discuss:

and what i wonder to the blue-locked moon
is what passes him most quickly:
the cloud seductress slinking black gowned
across his face; the train racing her (flighty)
motions, consistent over tired tracks
in a town half asleep; or your breath
-quickened- at the quivering curb where
we wait for silence

in a desolate field; knee-deep in wheat
one discovers two opposing forces:

[a young boy's voice]
what are you thinking about?
overgrown grass grazes his chin; a cancerous
seed-- cumbersome amidst pin stripe rows
sewn tight/even to fertile cloth
tied off stitches the young scientist
can't see, one awry-- infected

[mute energy] of a seamstress, hidden
in till and yarn. earth stained fingers
weave the ancient pattern/ ignore his question
-the tumor shares his breath- two beings:
mutually aware of the other's presence
presents a problem for the asker: put on hold,
cells multiplying within reach

to know a theory (to have it explained) is
a (prevalent) legitimate desire in one
seeking connection to another. call this nature.
call this lonely. the scientist is relieved
to receive word:
"results show that the brain responds as machine
to sensory data- translation precedes sensation--"

a technical being understands magenta
before the retina assembles a sunset and accepts
drowning for what it is before stark realization:
this is how suffocating feels-- standardized
knowledge provides a platform for responses
evolving endless. call these echoes.
of a single voice given/received as such:
the being is not alone--

train and seductress slip from sight
(from retinas now responding)
the moon ignores my question/ i,
your quickened breath

Amanda Silbernagel was raised in Fargo, North Dakota and currently studies English, with an emphasis in writing, at Minnesota State University Moorhead. She is taking a year off school to promote her book Centrifuge on a year-long North American tour with Minnesota visual artist el_perdido. The Lovers For Fun tour will consist of readings of Silbernagel's poetry alongside el_perdido's art shows. Tour dates are available at www.myspace.com/fairydust008. Silbernagel's poetry has appeared in Red Weather, Love Child, 27 rue de fleures, and Hamilton Stone Review.

Dmitri Prigov

5 Nov 1940 - 16 July 2007

Three Poems From Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

The Galloping Man


1.

placing, a look
a gull

or, recreation, rewards or to a mind
a perfect tool

or, law. At last
if it had been the turning of a water wheel


2.

A rope, or green
standing in, closer

to hand, is lost, in arms
on seeing, early on, a hold, or, in hand

a title, a given space
or,

as upon question, or, appellation, a spur
or, so to convey



3.

in alternating causes, in states and professions
a line on end

in cloth, in measure, in anonymity and in parodies
to vary

or,
familiar. Passing fast, in jolly tapers and leagues

and in the interest of descriptions, turning back
to rote places, to notes

and floss
a certain sun, and moon and stars



4.

and out of house, a useless emulation
getting to, or, not to use

a looking outward, in secret, deciding
it is latent, and pause

and lasting into song. how does
a body know, here is a hand, and here, is a sentence

or,
what’s riding on hearts




Catching Up


and would you could express it
with stone and bitumen

a hedge of hide and chatter
for the anonymous flip, of a coin.

and fawn,
to sing, of time and of distinctions

of cause and of case
and not to measure, the merits

in very idiosyncrasy
asserted, in room of learning and sufficiency.

the swift and stubborn and medley appointment.
the predilection, quietly, transparency

must be pronounced transparency
must be pronounced insistence

and handed on.
or did not think in terms of Sinai.

a detail of anatomy, say.
a knot in a rope.

and to be shamefully naked.
this comes in the form of an emergency.

this comes in the form of a middle voice.
this comes in the form of a pretty bride.

and this is the poetry
of having known the light of common day.

deeply. and necessarily.
readily. and necessarily.





History

to wish to pause
and planning, planning to return

are of the page, to reflect
is to reflect, of our own say

and welcome, are key, are enough
or,

are unexpected, are at hand
or sudden

and is, perhaps, again, the very room
to be in company

in company, to see
the page, or turn to see

of any sudden, or, guessing, or play
are enough

be it large or small or van or boon
or,

in turn
at different rates of tour

no inherited fit or repertoire
in mid-career

fit or altered, or pathe or incidental
and there is, immersed

in how, of, say, pretense, or lectern
another note or bar or margin

and of the eye
replaced, by sound

the ear can see
a margin or purpose

and of these, to see
not only feeling but is an episode

the chance arrival of pacts
proper to, or, gives way to new

office
is apt, or, to be permitted

done so,
the square of a face

or,
serious and hurry it

each counts, is really stands alone
or are comic, and exact

and curves, into furniture
in a turn, in a tumble

a shrub or suburb
the sudden leads to fit in hand

in no sense of the page
to capture, or ledger, or region

not to say, so unlikely
from time to time, in any landscape

a series of rushes
an arrow off a thread

fiery, and even fidgety
before whom, to quite suddenly

a madman,
which marks those who work when they need not

a great house
but because, and, so unlike it, it fits

that these are all, or, so
or,

so to reflect
reflecting is enough, and always, to surprises



Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino was born in Greenwich Village, New York, and was raised in both the city and in the country across the Hudson River in New Jersey. He was educated at home, eventually to enter Fordham University where he received a degree in philosophy. His poetry and prose have appeared in Barrow Street, The Germ, jubilat, Washington Review, Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Onedit, Cordite Poetry Review, Nthposition and Xcp: Streetnotes. His interview with the English writer Colin Wilson appears in The Argotist Online. He lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York, where he works as a private docent.

Un Poema Nuevo de Andrés José Dotson

Noches de Finca

Mi amor, ¿Recuerdas de las noches de luna
cuando nos disfrutábamos con platos de fruta?
Toqué a mi guitarra con dulcedumbre de tu voz
Los caballos descansaban en seguridad del corral
Andábamos por la finca con tientas unidas
Cantos profundos vinieron de los sapos
Reflexión de la charca–la sangre negra
Nos acostamos en cama de seda.



Andrés José Dotson, nació en Rota, España, en la Costa del Sol, se hubo movido a los Estados Unidos a la edad de tres años. Un niño de una madre Española y un padre Norteamericano, él experienció mucha tensión en la escuela por practicar sus inclinaciones nativas en conversar y cantar Castellano. Dotson, que tiene 18 años y recientemente ha graduado de la preparatoria, actualmente está viviendo en el paraíso de Arizona.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

In June, Zone celebrated its first birthday. It's been a riotous twelve months.

Writers from twenty countries brought us their poetry, translations and stories in seven languages.

Zone is, and has always been, about collaboration. It is an attempt to provide a de-centralized, ubiquitous home to writers and readers of the global plurality.

Their multifarious origins resulted in a common output. In the course of today's violent and contemptuous politics of empire and hegemony, Israel's war with Hezbollah, racism, poverty, loss, heartbreak and drudgery, all of Zone's contributors have responded with the urge to beauty that has transcended borders and idioms for nearly five thousand years.

Without Peter Golub, Andrew Haley, Mariana Calandra, Roger McDonough, Meghan Bolden and all the folks at Crack-Up Books in Palermo, our December premier of The Debut Generation of New Russian Poetry would have been impossible. It was a product of five nationalities and three languages.

Writing is useless without readers. Without our loyal following of readers from every continent, Zone and its sister projects would have no reason to exist.

All of us, despite our backgrounds or professions, come to writing as readers. Without our writers, we readers would be purposeless. So I extend my sincerest thanks to Zone's writers who have come to us from Canada, Guatemala, Italy, Costa Rica, Catalunya, the US, Dominican Republic, Russia, China, Wales, Sweden, France, Kazakhstan, Australia, Chile, India, Malaysia, Israel, Spain, New Zealand and, our mother, Argentina.

Enjoy.

-Henri Beauregard

Whose Nude and Holy Iridescence Belongs to No One: Thirteen Poems by Richard Cronshey, Part Three

The Sound of Wind at Night

Who is the girl inside the girl
cradling a crow's skull
in small phosphorescent hands?
Dirty snow and cellar stairs.
Am I the sound, late in February,
just before morning,
of wind through white pines?
Or am I the listening?
Or the suddenness without ancestor?
Shepherds in the high pastures inside her body
sit up all night beside campfires, their eyes wide listening
to her deep blue skeleton sing
her black and dreaming names into the world.


Notes To Self

Everything that exists
exists to set me free
from everything that exists.
Like a fire, learn
to erase yourself
as you go.
Abide at the intersection
where futures are consumed.
Be a skeleton key
in flames
releasing daylight from daylight.
Shining
in order to have shone.


Solstice Poem

City of almond, and the way to the city
of almond:
this changing, imponderable body,
a ladder of breath scaling the daylight
and the night,
a bridge traversing everything.
She keeps a sapphire concealed beneath her tongue.
I would be the sound of water to her,
rolling over stones.


Wishing Poem For Terra

This is given, this ritual,
this tilling:
earth turning
under earth;
brilliance under brilliance.
Here now, the orphaned storyteller
comes home
driving her herd of wounds through the high blonde grass and the haze.
For her thirst, the new moon,
immaculate black water
cupped in her cut palms,
raised to her lips.


Sweet Thing

Snowmelt through snowmelt.
Orphans of ourselves these many years.
Let the heart be reconciled with the heart at last.

....

There is a laughing power that releases itself into itself
utterly, flashing, and is here and ours.

....

We see that we must relinquish everything,
that we have always been this relinquishing.

....

Cradled in the circle of the breath,
an ember, a folding together
beyond all efforts.

....

New snow, first light, the presence
in which birth and death are reconciled.

....

Elemental space offered to elemental space,
this is our true ancestor.

....

To be here with this weaving and unweaving forever,
wedded to the weaving of the empty world.


This is the third of three parts of Richard Cronshey's thirteen poem collection, Whose Nude and Holy Irridescence Belongs to No One.

Whose Nude and Holy Iridescence Belongs to No One: Thirteen Poems by Richard Cronshey, Part Two

Lost in Probate
to my children

I leave you a mirror in an empty house.
Keep it near you.
I leave you my disappearance,
a place of pilgrimage to which you need not travel.
Be still and it will find you.
I leave you this body and conjuring solitude
sister of the widowed cities
sister of their black windows
an uncreated wilderness
where emptiness seduces emptiness,
a ring of quicksilver singing itself to sleep inside you.

And here is the sound of waves breaking far out at sea
and here is the mother of this motherless opacity.
Here are the black windows and the snow,
delicious emotions, rogue energies, nested silences;
abandoned casinos of delirium where you exist,
the ghost of a ghost for centuries listening
to the inconsolable pulsation behind the stars.

To The Root of Itself

Chapel of salt,
the night sky inside of you.
This is the blue
and motherless honey
that comes to you.
Now you are naked, like the days
undressed of their names.
Music swims through music and through you
And this is what you have now.
And this is how you live
with this transparency and this ripening.
At last, you are like the snow
that is only snow
and the snow whose nude and holy
iridescence
belongs to no one.

To Eternity's Sunrise

Indentured to what remains
after the smoke clears.
Now that I'm a ghost ship,
a mausoleum made of steam
sold to the rain on the temple stairs
and all the places I am at once in the rain.
Now that I'm a secret I keep, even from myself,
invisible, a whisper
hypnotized by the clockwork of sorrow
and sold to wrecked pianos in the rain,
and wild lavender with the weeds by the freeway.
Now that everything releases me,
brilliant poverty, blowing snow,
bird on fire in a cage of changing bones.
Indentured to buried iridescences.
Sold to every dying breath. Ah
the light blossoming out of the light.

Solstice Poem

Derelict melody
mansion of clarity
we are just lost in long grass
There is a horizon hidden inside my life
from behind which my life keeps streaming
a still light on the lee side of the ridge line
where the little life sings to the big life
like a child lost in long grass
The voice, the moving silver energy there
is the wind between black buildings,
a song circling back on itself;
grief, like an eclipse,
a river, or a mirror.

Here is a song for Mother Sorrow

Mother nothing, sorrow, shepherd me.
Let me be bread, medicine, energy, presence.
In this very body
I will bear our bleeding history
high above timberline, into the clear light.

This is the second of three parts of Richard Cronshey's thirteen poem collection, Whose Nude and Holy Irridescence Belongs to No One.

Whose Nude and Holy Iridescence Belongs To No One: Thirteen Poems by Richard Cronshey, Part One

Overcome By Vertigo I Covet The Opalescence of the Diamond

For a long time you can feel that nothing is happening.
Snow falls and you look at the snow.
You look at the snow. You look at the beautiful
jeweled escalators of the snow cascading down and down.


Two Poems With Coffins

1

Fugitive, connoisseur of thirsts
the whole of being, an intricately ripening sphere,
a silence, exists enfolding you here
at the crossroads of the body
where we are now and put down
the strange weight we have been carrying,
sand dune, broken window, cricket, caress,
empty bottle, apparition, a bone, a voice.
Who was it that wished for this?
And where had we been taking it?
Here is your inheritance,
cerulean blue to cradle you,
breath to take you home.

2

To be human and go on blushing, applauding,
saying excuse me without understanding
how it started or stopping to ask;
believing somebody else knows,
not wanting to be alone.
Transcendental burlesque blossoming in mirrors, paraphernalia,
rainbows, dolorous sombreros, days.
The same presence everywhere. Look for her, she eludes you.
Not wanting to be the only one
with a little black coffin in your heart;
a little black coffin the size of a thumb
with nothing in it but wind.
For now take this black rock and don't stop polishing it.
A golden cricket lives in it, listen;
a tiny blue loom


To All Mothers
in memory of my mother, Rosemary Louise Cronshey

This human work, look at it :
an unaccountable ripening;
my life bearing me each moment into my life.
The inconsolable pulsation that carries me.
What is that
releasing bliss from bliss and breath from breath?
Basilicas of memory, affection and breath;
immaculate solitudes where the heart is set adrift,
and the heart within the heart, such a sweet and empty weaving.
I don't understand the things that make me live.
Finally, I'm not afraid of my mind,
the crazy dispossessed luciferian energies
ricocheting around inside me don't scare me anymore.
The demonic mariachis, truncated ecstasies, phantom pleasures, baby saints
crowding the stage in the impossible fallen down movie palace of my heart,
I know them pretty well now. Not one of them can destroy me!
Because I know I'm nothing! I'm nothing
but love and suffering, and so what?
I don't believe in anything but loss and tenderness anymore
and that's enough. I will move with its motion now in completeness
and now nothing can hurt me, not even grief!
I could never live an off-the-rack life, like them.
I just want to keep walking up and down this road a while.
Who built this third hand world
over wordless and holy human truth?
Why must we resuscitate this disaster day after day?
This human work.
Look at it!
This labor we must undertake, of living and dying
and taking heart
that gives us our magnificence,
that makes our death an aprilling.
How unlikely, how finally impossible it is
that I managed to get here at all,
exactly nowhere, with everything,
every single conceivable thing
spiraling around inside me
clambering to get out,
sending me out on the street in the middle of the night
to find you;
to tell you what I saw.

Richard Cronshey was born in Los Angeles in 1966. He is the author of Adagio of the Body (1990), Three Similar Instances (1992), Afternoon in The Museum of Late Things (1994) and Mutilated Currency (1997). Cronshey co-edited Bird Full of Rain (1999), a collection of the late Glenn Parker's poetry.

After graduation from the University of Utah, Cronshey traveled and worked in Asia and Eastern Europe for ten years. He now lives with his wife and two children in the US suburbs and works for hospice. Of these poems, Cronshey says:

These most recent poems arose out of the efforts of my mind to come to grips with itself through the discipline of meditation. I've been studying meditation for several years, not very successfully, under the supervision of a teacher. In my best moments poetry is a religious practice for me. It's religious in the sense of growing out of a wish to relink with the ground of being, and then to allow my actions to flow from that root, a form of contemplative prayer. My aspiration is to get to a point where I am living and writing without self consciousness, really selflessly. There is a quality of that in the writing I most love, the presence of primordial intelligence and generosity.