Welcome to Archive / Links
Carnelian
Is there a better way than poetry to welcome another session of Spring? Not when you're talking about poetry from the pens of Taylor Graham, Gary Raymond, Cheryl Snell, Marianne Moore and more and more... Time to take a walk through the flowers! On the business side of this enterprise, let me note again how important the submission guidelines are: I will NOT open emails with attachments ever again (a long virus story that need not be related). Also, please stick to the suggestion of 1-3 poems, okay? I have hundreds to read and weigh every month, and it puts me in a bad mood to see twenty haikus in a single sub. Include City / State (or something like that), even if you've sent me dozens, simply because it saves the time of having to hunt through earlier issues to fill in the blanks... Thank you for your kind patience in dealing with an irascible editor— The Editor On the cover: Girl With A Pearl Earring (detail) by Jan Vermeer oil on canvas 1665
Grace our mailing list, or request a link exchange: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
Volume 6 Issue 2 April 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Singles And Robert Frost Taylor Graham Somerset, CA Detour Cheryl Snell Washington, DC The Orchard King Thomas Reynolds Payola, KS Rummy Park, 41 (Validation) Rebecca Lu Kiernan Gulf Coast, FL My 67th Winter The World Turned To Glass Lynn Strongin Victoria, BC Canada The Senses Of Salt Patrick Carrington Avalon, NJ So Here We Are Again Gary Raymond Newport, UK What Mamma Said Wendy Taylor Carlisle Texarkana, TX Keeping Up Appearances Patricia Gomes New Bedforfd, MA Perspective Brett Pransky Columbus, OH Illusions C.W.Hawes Highland Township, IA Sink / Swim Cheryl Snell Washington, DC Poetry All-Stars Critics And Connoisseurs Marianne Moore Poets And Critics John Frederick Nims
**************************************************************************
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Send 1-3 original poems, any form or style, no longer than 100 lines (per). Author retains all rights. Cut / paste poems into the body of an e-mail (not as attachments or links to URLs). Simultaneous subs okay; previously published okay if you hold copyright; poems accepted/rejected (generally) as is. Include name/city/country; no screen names please (use pseudonyms if you prefer anonymity). No homework assignments or therapy exercises, thank you. Please query concerning poems longer than 100 lines, or articles / reviews for On These Premises.
Submissions which do not conform to these guidelines will be discarded unanswered.
Send to: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
*****************************************
back to table of contents ***************
POEMS:
Singles And Robert Frost by Taylor Graham They’re playing tennis by the rules: he with muscle— that astounding stroke— ligamented lines of forearm, wrist and elbow, shoulder; she with quick flicks of intuition, rarely out of bounds. This set, the sun is in her eyes. The manufactured net is fixed and stiff, forever perpendicular to asphalt. At lunch, they were discussing Frost. But in tennis, who cares if it rhymes? She likes hers slant. And isn’t it the swing of body against and through crisp air, and not the painted lines, that makes a green globe sing?
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Detour by Cheryl Snell The sky stuck with circles bleeds light onto a white-washed wall. A frozen moon feigns warmth; it’s cold under the streetlight. Shop flowers wilt when the man looks, springing to attention when he looks away. A window, for all its changes in matter, holds a mirror to lapses in logic. Leaning against his silhouette, the man narrows his eyes. Smoke bothers him, but he lights up anyway, a small bonfire flaring between his palms. Inches from his face, a tiny live coal singes the dark between leaves shaking off rain. Houses dotted with cellophane windows loom up through the maze of streets, not one of them expecting him.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
The Orchard King by Thomas Reynolds Sawmills are in my blood and caught shirts and severed limbs. Children who died young course through my brain down a dried-up riverbed. Listening to stones, I puff a gray ribbon of smoke in the shape of a boy. Locked inside forever, a fossil can only wait for some golden key. Deep in my eye lies a narrow road swirling with leaves. I climb the apple tree, decked in a full suit and flowing white beard. Cocked to the wind, I can hear an ant weeping in the grass. "Goodbye, goodbye," screams the hawk upon my breast. A flock of crows springs from my hand, clipping the wires strung between us.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Rummy Park, 41 (Validation) by Rebecca Lu Kiernan Champagne and blueberry pancakes at 3A.M., You read my poems on the internet. Nothing good can come of this. You say I want attention, And I write like I'm spread-eagle naked Daring strangers to say they see my pussy. You say the old stuff is too angry, The new stuff is haunting. I don't know which makes me angrier, You talking about me in ghost terms As if I'm already gone, Or as if you actually know me, As if I were ever here at all In this civil room of gossamer pastel blues, Peaches in a Chinese bowl, Heliotrope in a sea shell vase. The obvious is never stated. Bees get caught in my voice. You keep throwing your jacket Over my crotch, But you want to eat it too On the porch as the planes go by Because it tastes like you.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
My 67th Winter The World Turned To Glass by Lynn Strongin
Panels of water outside translucent as wax:
luminous as the old apothecary vase:
ancient casements, latched brass:
Yet I pass, as across the River Merci, to the opposite tree
glacial tracery:
Polar floes like those on the Hudson from my hospital bed
when I was 12 years old:
Buildings thin tall brick & wood leaning toward each other like foreheads of people praying
like winter-starved deer though it was summer, cold.
Thirst without limit
no salt too much
The thirst the gift.
*
The mink's
frozen
waterdish silks over with nightfall:
he will die before he drinks:.
Dreams of slaked thirst sink
In this 67th winter world turns to glass: brown-pink:
Yet it does not cut my vein, nor break nor shatter:
the silver mink frozen at the water's crust-pale brink.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
The Senses of Salt by Patrick Carrington I see the glory in his eyes as he lies dying, the pride of sons who knew his shoulders, the gleam of girls who whistled to his wind as he set sail. I hear the whimpers of his rods as they go crying through the night, of ropes in knots that smell of shipwrecks and tears of oceans as they wet and whip his hair. I feel the waving of the land as it offers him goodbye once more, well wishes from the craggy rocks and foggy coast that waited and was his second home. I know the creaking of the tired wood that held him in its arms for years, the yearning of his hooks, squalls that spit at him with dark denial, trials of burning oil and cracking skin. The stars are present in his glow as he lies coughing up the rains and salts of floating ways, bouncing on two beds of white and rolling in their hands. His days of drudge die with him and the miracles of brother storms send gulls to beg forgiveness as his candles light the moorings and take me out to sea.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
So Here We Are Again by Gary Raymond So here we are again, full of cool And knowing, with Billie Holiday Breezy and fuzzy through the smoke Your deep slanted grin The trilby matchstick men on the wall Tassled ruby lamp shades purple throws On camel furniture—awkward wooden scaffolds Every trail of smoke Every quiescent gin-lipped prophesy So here we are again, sad to say, Sad to be told, with cackling gulls Eeking at the morning tide You sit naked at the foot of the bed Dragging long and slow at a paper roll Half closed dark eyes pinch at hours Half open mouth creased and wordless Every trail of smoke Every moment we ever fought to lose So here we go again, truth be told, Over coffee as trilby matchstick men Dance lira and deep-eyed gypsy romance Long nothing stares around short Everythings—let me know—give us that I cannot swim in mud But your eyes—those lost ribald Eyes that shame the recalcitrant robe Peer from behind your short lost smiles So there we go again, I can but admit, My long sharp nose pressed against those lips Like a letter opener in a bag of hot coals My arms still perfumed my throat still moist You hair still static your cheeks still full And as you leave, the unpaid bill at my elbow, I see a crispness in the pavement puddles The slow lepton of the lonely strolls So I have another coffee I have another smoke
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
What Mamma Said by Wendy Taylor Carlisle It's all about your hips she said, your curls about an even tan your inner arm, your skin your down-soft hair then be demure listen she said its all about how to be lovely and invisible standing back waiting your turn she said it again and again darling its all about him
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Keeping Up Appearances by Patricia Gomes The clock tower fell into the back yard sending bricks and springs through the windows. Metallic rain that pierced and tore through to bone, lopping off a hand here and there. And still they dined. They dined because they'd always dined, as did the neighbors on all sides. Matching plates and glasses that came with vows, optimistic niceties. They dined in silence, imagining the debris as unused silverware and pretending the beef was fully cooked. They dined in silence— not one would dare ask the time.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Perspective by Brett Pransky Lying on my November lawn making leaf angels. Can’t help but notice how different the world looks a quarter-turn to the left. Down the street and up the block are now truly up and down and a sky, which was above my head, is now right in front of my face. I think I’ll stay among the angels, on top of the grass, because here, a quarter-turn to the left, God doesn’t feel so far away.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Illusions by C.W.Hawes Upon the table lies the fan made of brightly colored paper Sleeping peacefully in the chair of rattan the little girl illumined by the taper Made of brightly colored paper now faded with the mark of age The little girl illumined by the taper smiles serenely from out the page Now faded with the mark of age there's also a certain brittleness Smiles serenely from out the page unaware of her littleness There's also a certain brittleness a sign of the passing of time Unaware of her littleness unaware she passed her prime A sign of the passing of time sleeping peacefully in the chair of rattan Unaware she passed her prime upon the table lies the fan
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Sink / Swim by Cheryl Snell In the middle of the pool’s chlorinated circumference, you are the radius pointing toward shore, a stick figure of jutting collar bones and windmill limbs. The sun, crowded with glare, flips you facedown in the waves, eyes stung open, staring at a moon painted on the blue mosaic floor. Submerged objects are more distant than they appear, but it’s hard to know sunken from solitary when the universe is spinning in circles; and you here, trapped inside that mad geometry.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Critics And Connoisseurs by Marianne Moore
There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious
fastidiousness. Certain Ming
products, imperial floor-coverings of coach-
wheel yellow, are well enough in their way but I have seen something
that I like better—a
mere childish attempt to make an imperfectly bal-
lasted animal stand up,
similar determination to make a pup
eat his meat from the plate.
I remember a swan under the willows in Oxford
with flamingo-colored, maple-
leaflike feet. It reconnoitered like a battle-
ship. Disbelief and conscious fastidiousness were
ingredients in its
disinclination to move. Finally its hardihood was
not proof against its
proclivity to more fully appraise such bits
of food as the stream
bore counter to it; it made away with what I gave it
to eat. I have seen this swan and
I have seen you; I have seen ambition without
understanding in a variety of forms. Happening to stand
by an ant-hill, I have
seen a fastidious ant carrying a stick north, south,
east, west, till it turned on
itself, struck out from the flower-bed into the lawn,
and returned to the point
from which it had started. Then abandoning the stick as
useless and overtaxing its
jaws with a particle of whitewash—pill-like but
heavy, it again went through the same course of procedure.
What is
there in being able
to say that one has dominated the stream in an attitude of self-defense;
in proving that one has had the experience
of carrying a stick?
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Poets And Critics by John Frederick Nims One hound that trots. A thousand fleas that ride. Which way? A vote for each. The fleas decide.
***************************************** back to table of contents ***************
Carnelian V6 Iss2 April, 2006