Welcome to Links
Carnelian
Vive' le discours ...
Well, so much for the 'sophomore jinx'
and 'sloppy sequel' theology-- this issue's poetry illustrates beyond the
doubt of a shadow that there's life after birth; heady, hearty, and happenstance
as hell maybe, but life nonetheless. Which means, of course, that we continue
the pleasurable process of percolating perceptions through all the different
filters of poetic expression. Take a look at the works that have arrived
here over the last few months; there's an interesting interplay going on
between them, something beyond the craft of their creation-- thoughts alive
with a life of their own, even as they echo each other. These poets
don't just have something to say; they make it breathe ...
On the cover: Self-portrait with rose
background (detail) Oil on canvas 1875 Paul
Cezanne
Grace our mailing list, or request a link exchange: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
Volume 2 Issue 1
January 2002
TABLE
OF CONTENTS:
White In The Shadows
Michael R. Burch
Nashville, TN
Déjà
vu Duet
Jennifer Lagier
Marina, CA
Planes of View
Ian Andrews
Oldham, UK
Summer Romance
Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Texarkana, TX
Southern Comfort
Harvey Stanbrough
Pittsboro, IN
Alive Alive O!
Karin Henderson
Europe
Like Isadora D
Steve Delchamps
Chicago, IL
One More Lost Night
at The Fiery Hole
Jack Granath
Kansas City, MO
Living in the Moment
Jean Crane
Danville, CA
Hazelridge,
Detroit
Christina-marie Umscheid
Petoskey, MI
One-Way Ticket
David Anthony
Stoke Poges, UK
Sharp
Kathie Isaac-Luke
San Jose, CA
The Pattern
Steve Delchamps
Chicago, IL
Mesa in Sedona
Jean Crane
Danville, CA
**************************************************************************
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 a pseudonym if you prefer to remain anonymous). No homework assignments or therapy exercises, thank you. Queries welcome.
Submissions
which do not conform to these guidelines will be discarded & unanswered.
Send to: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
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POEMS:
White
in the Shadows
by Michael R. Burch
White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell
Love it is commonplace;
Tell Regret it is not so rare.
Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of infinite grace.
In such darkness, I fear
the past is a dangerous place.
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Déjà
vu Duet
by Jennifer Lagier
Some people are like that.
They split up and then they
think:
Hey, maybe we haven’t hurt
each other to the uttermost.
Let’s meet up and have a
drink.
--James Fenton
Stunted simians,
we sit at this sad bar
and exhume the past,
explore what still hurts,
which wounds remain bleeding.
You compliment my scars.
I admire your bruising.
All the while, we secretly contemplate
what untouched parts might respond
to renewed mutilation.
Weekly, we meet
to remove any protective scabs,
use mutually inflicted pain
as communication.
Let’s review it again and again,
probe what still twitches,
dissect any quivering,
overlooked wholeness.
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I peel the window from the wall
tired of the sight it barely affords
and unfurl it on some other boards.
The scene accosted through grimy chintz
makes frame and glass and putty wince
and though I agree with the window
it doesn't make either of us light.
A new wall, a new view
for the shiftable window to
abet, affect, give dim reflection to
then mutely protest as it is re-peeled
re-skewed, re-stuck, revealed
next to my closed collapsible door.
Yes--this one. This exit feels right.
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Summer Romance
by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
It wasn’t you telling me what to do over
and over
as the light leaked out of August, or
your lists and juxtapositions:
body parts, love names or the man I kissed
in the hibiscus garden.
The fact that you knew Astrolabe for who
he was and that rhinos
ejaculate for an immodest hour, only put
off the inevitable.
The stations of summer heated up our conversations:
sweat and the half-undressed, a girl’s
unspeakably white skin
beneath the turquoise surface, my bikini
top livid
across my breasts, vacations, children
shrill
on the patio, the carny coming to town,
the orders of snow peas,
squash, tomatoes, each in turn.
This morning, the dogs pant on the concrete
the torrid weather is nearly done.
The heat always ends around here
in a rainstorm, in a doublecross, in a
low-wattage smile.
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Southern
Comfort
by Harvey Stanbrough
One day he sat to write about Comfort
and all the proper things it would entail:
his comfy cottage-house; his picket fence;
a clothesline stretched out back; and
his good wife,
bending to her basket, hanging linens
(his and hers, their daughter’s and their
son’s);
two pups; a rangy cat; a parakeet;
and evenings spent before a cozy fire.
But he awoke: the cottage-house had burned,
the picket fence had melted, and the clothes
line had snapped, as had his wife, both
pups,
the cat, the parakeet, and both the kids—
something to do with volatility
and how the volatile should never try
to live a life inviolate of stress—
then he snapped too, and everything was
fine.
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Alive Alive
O! by
Karin Henderson
(This nonce form is read
by proceeding
through the lines of each
stanza as follows:
line 1 / line 11, followed
by lines 2 / 10, 3
/ 9,
4 / 8, 5 / 7; line 6, in
the middle, comes last. Ed.)
I had a life tonight
you returned from Dublin
we searched for names of galaxies
a map of the Universe unfolded
with birchwood burning amber
through old Irish whiskey
we discussed species of cockles
on Molly Malone's cart
and found the answer too
in a Guide to the Seashore
I have kept since childhood
I had a life tonight
I have kept since childhood
you returned from Dublin
in a Guide to the Seashore
we searched for names of galaxies
and found the answer too
a map of the Universe unfolded
on Molly Malone's cart
with birchwood burning amber
we discussed species of cockles
through old Irish whiskey
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Like Isadora
D by
Steve Delchamps
She wore
a scarf--darkly
long,
translucent, tucked
under tousled
hairline
of gel-scrunched curls.
He, baseball cap brim-forward,
courtly
asked a light.
Her winged reply to which,
not without twinkle:
This is a non-lighter-working day.
And he then, Wait--
rising up sudden,
moving
toward car-trunk, raising door,
rummaging--
I'll serenade you.
And she, demurring friendly:
Dude. I've
got a head-ache.
To them, a second brim.
Ensued some minutes'
banter,
twinkle-winged. All then preparing
to move on, the
scarfed cried
Shotgun! skipped to car-door, leaping
In, still smokely plumed and
bravely beautiful,
rode in state
with proud-laughing brims away.
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One
More Lost Night at The Fiery Hole
by Jack Granath
Standing passive by the maelstrom,
Hands a-pockets on the very lip,
I crush against the dancers as they come,
Yielding with a practiced backward step.
Up on the stage, the band is breaking loose,
All sweat and stumble, broken strings
and hair;
Their music rides the edge of one huge
mess,
But perfectly, a tapestried disaster.
Against which Julie, with her sidelong
look,
Julie, with her insult of a smile,
Comes pulsing, swinging, swaying to the
mike
And lets the wine of red abandon spill.
Another fight breaks out, the fratboys
swerve,
The music, confused, bumbles to a stop,
And bottles popping on the concrete serve
The rhythm that my nerves have taken up.
A punk-rock girl comes bloody from the
floor,
And I’m too old for this, too smart, too
sane,
But I turn nonchalantly from the door
As soon as Julie starts to sing again.
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Living
in the Moment
Jean Crane
Today the clouds were eerie,
bunched up in ominous shapes,
like El Greco’s View of Toledo
which, I am told, has duende,
that ghostly spirit who loves the dark,
waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It’s not easy living on this earth,
choosing between angels and devils,
mixing dread with joy in a single day.
If I could stand for a moment in the
vertical dimension embracing everything,
I would rejoice in silence. Now
I sit in my living room alone
as late afternoon sunshine
filters through shutters, a crystal
splinters into rainbows on the wall.
Light, dancing on tabletops
shines into corners. Everything
is alive.
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Hazelridge,
Detroit
by Christina-marie Umscheid
Dead dogs rot on abandoned lawns.
An electric cord dangles,
as a leash that strangled
someone's pet,
Houses are crumbled,
red clay with frightening eyes.
Victims are raped
in the silence of corners.
Broken chairs sit as witnesses.
Through cracks in
boarded windows prowlers can see
glass shattered so long ago
it looks like glittering sand.
Children pass
to and from school. Their
lessons are litter on this street.
One and one can equal death.
Danger has become art.
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One-Way Ticket
by David Anthony
They closed the line and just the track
remains.
The miners' railway where we used to play
in far-off summers when I came to stay
now echoes with the ghosts of long-gone
trains.
Cwm Cynfal and the Ceunant--wild terrains
so loved in childhood, missed in years
away--
will never change: when I returned today
they matched the images my mind sustains.
The rest is altered irretrievably.
My kin died years ago or else moved on--
no point in staying, once the work was
gone--
and folk there now do not remember me.
My ties are broken far beyond repair.
The line is closed and just the tracks
are there.
Note:
"Cwm Cynfal and the Ceunant":
the valley and gorge of the River Cynfal,
pronounced "Koom Kunval
and the Kuynant"
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I don't remember our parting
words, or the kiss, though
there must have been one.
When you climbed
the steps onto the train
you turned your head as though
you heard your name carried
on currents of air, interwoven
with the sounds of wheel on track,
the departures announced in several languages.
You almost looked back,
then you decided. I stood by
the tracks scanning the
windows for your face,
but I didn't see you--
I remember the precise angle
at which you turned your head
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The Pattern
by Steve Delchamps
My cousin cat,
who is middle-aged but spry,
from her nest in the bedclothes
casts a calm feline eye
on life, on death--all of that.
She participates, even while she dreams,
in an economics of rest and motion,
and daily pursues her art,
demanding steadfast devotion
to the practical science of sunbeams.
Her belly's firm outline is a template,
a pattern of all beauty that is animate,
all health worthy of aspiration.
(Indeed, where she lies my cousin
is a site of manifold admiration.)
And my bike-before-dawn,
vitamin-supplemented quest for 'homeostasis,'
when properly considered, is revealed
as merely a strained mimesis
of her stretch, her yawn.
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Before sunrise we stood, at the edge of
the mesa,
clutching mugs of coffee, as the dark
town below
waited in silence for light to rise in
the east,
faint, diffused glow. Slowly we turned
west
to watch the pinnacle on the far off mountain,
framed by darkened skies, receive the
warm touch
of incandescence, red rocks ablaze with
welcoming blush,
an unrobed woman surprised by her lover.
Our eyes caught awakening vermilion cliffs,
Indian
red crevices, terra cotta spires, dawn
spreading
like fire from right to left as light
swept magically
across the rugged range.
Each evening at sunset, we returned with
glasses
of chilled white wine, to drink to certainty,
watched the sun gather up her glory
like a mother calling in her children
at night,
leaving in place darkening shadows
sliding across the mountain face.
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Carnelian V2 Iss1 January, 2002