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Carnelian I know it's not just me— and the proof's in the pudding that follows. But I can't even begin to recount how often it's been tossed in my face, that I place too much value on the ' traditional' forms of poetry. How can I explain it? I could fall back on the fact that having the say-so on what goes into this magazine is enough, but it isn't, really. What's actually going on is, I have this inordinate admiration for the skills that forms require. Like a musician hearing another musician performing something musically difficult, I'm simply in awe of the ability to take a thought and couch it in someone else's terms. Sure, there's a lot of juvenilia, and far too many sloppy examples of metrical work, but the good stuff— the really good stuff— gnaws at my brain in a way that free verse just can't match. The layering, the interplay, and the clay of the words creating a functional form is much of what poetry is all about, and I'm not about to let it be papered over while there's a breath of it to be savored... So dig in to some of what you'll find in this issue and let it chew on the neurons a bit. And let's all be damn glad there's more with this came from... the Editor On the cover: Portrait of Alexander Pushkin (detail) by Orest Kiprensky oil on canvas 1827
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Volume 5 Issue 1 January 2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Suppose What We Call World Is Really The Mind? George Amabile Winnipeg, MB (Canada)
Phoenix In The Trees Lynne Knight Berkeley, CA
Encounter Michael Fantina Bernardsville, NJ
Without Borders: A Sonnet Laura LeHew Eugene, OR
Unspoken Dialogue Miriam Kotzin Philadelphia, PA
Pantoum Of The Opera Maggie Morley Kensington, CA
Heartwood Harvey Stanbrough Pittsboro, IN
Canzone For A Tower Richard Moore Belmont, MA
Choking On Ice Renee Miller Los Gatos, CA
Reflections On Autumn Vincent Livoti Boston, MA
Strangers Antonia Black Las Vegas, NV
For The Record Clay Vaughan Norfolk, VA
Poetry All Stars
from 'The Limmerick' Anonymous
Eve: Night Thoughts Judson Jerome
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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, or include as attachments (no links to URLs). Simultaneous subs okay; previously published also okay if you hold copyright; poems accepted/rejected (generally) as is. Include name/city/country; no screen names please (use pseudonyms if you prefer to remain anonymous). No homework assignments or therapy exercises, thank you. Please query concerning poems which exceed 100 lines, or articles for On These Premises.
Submissions which do not conform to these guidelines will be discarded unanswered.
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to: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
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POEMS:
Suppose What We Call World Is Really the Mind? by George Amabile A solipsistic proposition, of course. But explore it. Everything we thought of as there is here. We know what happens when we stare at things. Light hits the retina, calls forth a host of images from the brain. Rare birds, their brilliant plumage, even their coarse cries in our ears are translations we've made from a source we can never be sure of. And yet we have learned to care deeply for these constructed events. A horse we've trained responds to knee and rein. We prepare exquisite meals that sustain us. How does force applied to a stuck window let in the air if it's not there? Something is. And Norse gods are as real as a child's shining hair.
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Phoenix In The Trees by Lynne Knight
after Wolf Kahn's Field Of Trees
The trees are bursting into flame. Unreal,
the way they seem not trees at all but fire
that rises from the ground and swirls. I feel
the heat. I hear the crackling, higher, higher,
until it seems the world is one huge ball
of molten flame. And so it is. But there
along the edge, a narrow space where all
that hasn't burned still lives, a sort of prayer
arises out of green. Green prayer: how strange
to think of it that way. And yet it makes
a kind of sense. Prayer comes when there's a change
of heart— when everything that one forsakes
is somehow new again, and starts to grow
like forests after fire— green, aglow.
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Encounter by Michael Fantina Her love so like a fine Chablis Drunk deeply at some late soiree. A slattern to my dark marquis, She was an imp, some mindless stray. I slept with her, a trite cliche. She was the least. Absurd debris I'd culled her like some god the clay Of worlds remote. I spurned her plea And to her wide-eyed dark dismay I laughed at her fain, gustily. So like a goddess or banshee With slate gray eyes she did display Dark powers of immense degree, And with a curse swept me away To polar climes beyond the sea.
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Without Borders: A Sonnet by Laura LeHew Please, why can't you just see me? I know I don't look so good but can't you just tell me where to go, we need help. Nine times I left him— cut me right here. I was in the hospital, my son is at a friend's, she won't let me stay there. I'm no place to be. A woman on the run. And my friend she's a-scared. I walked to the shelters, the churches, I must. I need one hundred and eighty eight dollars. Cash so's me 'n my boy can catch the bus to Nevada. Gotta get a divorce. Look I need the cash. Nine times. I left 'em. This 'll be ten. Nine times. See this— where the knife went in?
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Unspoken Dialogue by Miriam Kotzin I. He Says Across the field the line of trees stands dark against the winter sky that's hanging low and gray. If I guess right, it's snow tonight, an ease into a subtle silence. These are days we pause. We mollify. Across the field the line of trees stands dark against the winter sky. It's just another sort of freeze; we've come to know them both, I sigh and bring in wood to keep it dry. I can do that, I know, to please. Across the field the line of trees stands dark against the winter sky. II. She Says Perhaps because the dusk has come upon us creeping down from gray and heavy skies, I may betray what's best concealed, my feeling numb. I'm almost sure that snow will come; it's in the air. I've known all day. Perhaps because the dusk has come, I've nothing left I want to say. I've work to do, and yet I drum my fingers, waiting. Yesterday the same. The room's in disarray. Our world's become unplumb. I've nothing left I want to say.
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Pantoum Of The Opera by Maggie Morley I can tell you, it’s no walk in the park, Scuttling along these damcold passageways, Condemned to prowl a rank amorphous dark, Watch prima donnas, popping from their stays, Scuttle along these damcold passageways, Where porky warblers, full of deviltry— Mad prima donnas, popping from their stays— Impugn each other’s art and ancestry. Those porky warblers, full of deviltry, Samson rips Delilah’s negligee Impugn each other’s art and ancestry, Zerlina snatches off Don Juan’s toupee. Samson rips Delilah’s negligee. Oberon sticks his foot out: Puck goes down! Zerlina snatches off Don Juan’s toupee, Mercutio stands on Juliet’s ball gown. Oberon sticks his foot out: Puck goes down! Mephisto gooses tender Marguerite, Mercutio stands on Juliet’s ball gown, And Parsifal pours glue on Wotan’s feet. Mephisto gooses tender Marguerite And what must I do? I must skulk around, While Parsifal pours glue on Wotan’s feet. And Abigail knocks off Nabucco’s crown. So what must I do? Well, I lurk around, Condemned to prowl a rank amorphous dark, While Abigail knocks off Nabucco’s crown: I can tell you, it’s no walk in the park!
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Heartwood by Harvey Stanbrough
I'm not sure where I am or where I'm going,
even whether I can move at all...
I
Sitting on the porch in the morning
or afternoon or evening— anytime
really, as long as the day is soft
and quiet— facing southwest, I pretend
the Sonoran is only a grain of sand away,
my foot touching sand that touches sand
that touches sand and so on 'til it touches
the sand in the Sonoran, where my soul
resides, if I have a soul at all.
II
The view is interrupted by the beauty
of a golden autumnal maple tree
and the graceful strands of a willow
weeping, weeping, as only a willow can,
branching fingers reaching for the ground,
perhaps to touch the sand that touches sand.
Who knows what thoughts and longings might reside
deep within the heartwood of the maple
or the willow in its solitude?
III
The apparent patience of those towering trees,
stoic in their lack of motion, graceful,
amazes me. In quiet solitude,
providing what they can— shade, beauty,
a metaphor illuminating life
and static growth— they interrupt the song
linking this tired heartwood and its soul,
forestalling any chance of finding grace.
I cannot see beyond the maple's gold.
IV
Do they ever strain beneath the ground
to uproot themselves and just go?
Something to ponder, sitting on the porch
facing southwest anytime the day
is soft and quiet. At least I know my soul—
if I have a soul at all— is just
a grain of sand away, my own roots straining,
touching sand that touches sand that touches
sand until I finally understand.
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Canzone for a Tower by Richard Moore
The valley buildings there, jammed in a dense
and unmoved audience,
beady with windows, may observe at will
— now nearly empty for the break at noon—
this full apartment project on the hill,
where toddlers, out of tune,
scream for their Cinderellas and Jack Horners
just out of sight around the great brick corners
of their childhood— or watch the older ones
with harmless toy burp-guns,
fathoming how to feel.
Deaths are imagined; bodies crumpling, real.
Sunlit below the hill, it looks so pretty,
that tidy dollhouse city,
with no bad smells here and no broken edges;
and there, almost man-sized, straight as a vector
among the lifelike, childlike buildings, wedges
their omnipotent protector,
the insurance company's tower, said to house and
busy in bright long rooms more than a thousand
employees, calculating every risk—
a stunted obelisk
that, rising joint by joint,
like fabled Babel, never achieved its point.
Great base begins, ascends, only to stop.
A gray roof sits on top.
A corrugated pyramid that pinches
inward, like foldings of an old box camera,
it only seems to add a few more inches.
Then, maybe to enamour a
poet who'd say, "Adequately endowed,
it might have poked up through the highest cloud,"
that roof, summoning one last gram of power,
sprouts up a tinier tower,
apparently intended
to show us how the real one would have ended.
How high, had it not been thus telescoped,
might the great tower have groped
out of financial soil, that seemed so fertile?
That shrunk pinnacle gives a sense of distance;
but the whole thing looks drawn in, like a turtle,
out of some scary existence.
Those camera-folds— do they stretch? Stretching taut,
what if, right now, it darted upward and caught
a sputnik? Science tells us there's a chance
a stone building might dance,
fly from its weight, defect
from its form, shriek some dreadful dialect.
Song, no; we’ll find in grand structures like this
no metamorphosis.
They lack an inner pulse,
these high-minded creations of adults.
The stunted angel's rich, but has no wings;
and under urban soot
it stays sensibly put;
there's no danger— except from a few, odd,
out-of-the-way, uninsurable things,
like, say, the Wrath of God.
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Choking On Ice by Renee Miller tough luck college drove me mad and manic cinched me scared spent nights on the prowl twice I lost balance head swam in chaos plummeted into pavement hard iced-up path frost scraped under shiny fingernails like glass midnight cocktails clumsy sad gestures least unattractive will do for sweat heat music flummox the kissing and touching with meaning air clogs my throat I am choking neck jilted foam from my lips limbs blundering stupid lavender neck spots fresh from the hanging
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Reflections on Autumn by Vincent Livoti This season finds me optimistic cherishing skims of spiky rimmed leaves the relief of dignity as they cover maple root shoulders knotted with age apparent nighttime seems massive the coming months pregnant full of room regret for wasted time I will learn to cook hollandaise sauce and locate constellations I will master song so that I can ring the sky (beautifully struggling for breath) as the ice-flows clog my throat
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Strangers by Antonia Black I was walking on clouds, fell through a hole in the sky, I landed in this bed with this stranger by my side, it swallowed me whole, this fake life this lie, until both sides of the bed are where strangers lie and yet it's stranger to think of the life I once led, before my limbs turned to lead, trapping me here in this bed and I wonder what happened to that life that passed me by, the girl that wandered free, the girl I used to be.
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For The Record by Clay Vaughan
Stinging from the cold
steel promise of
becoming one more
no one in my day
I think to begin to
make a plan
to save some small
and solid part of
me I’ve stashed away
in an unlocked safe
a filing drawer
maintained by year
within a given
stay by turn of mind
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These pages left to
find or not
are words that are
as close to maybe
someone’s heart
whose revelations
spoke to no one
more than what was once
revealed in writing
the disparate truths
of a slender life
mysterious with meaning
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from 'The Limmerick' Anonymous Said Einstein, "I have an equation Which science might call Rabelaisian. Let P be virginity Approaching infinity, And U be a constant, persuasion. "Now if P over U be inverted And the square root of U be inserted X times over P, The result, Q.E.D. Is a relative," Einstein asserted.
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Eve: Night Thoughts by Judson Jerome Okay, so the wheel bit was a grinding bore and fire a risk in the cave, never mind the dogs he brings home, and cows; but I can endure his knocking rocks for sparks and rolling logs. It's his words that get on my nerves, his incessant naming of every bird or bug or plant, his odd smirk as he commits a syllable, taming Nature with categories— as though the Word were God. Okay, so statements were bad enough, and accusations crossing, spoiling digestion. But then he invented the laugh. Next day he invented the question. I see it: he's busy building a verbal fence surrounding life and me. But already I counterplot: I'll make a poem of his sense. By night, as he dreams, I am inventing the lie.
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Carnelian V5 Iss1 January,
2005