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Carnelian
The Fates, The Furies, The Graces, The Muses; Gaia, Danae, Artemis, Ares, Apollo, Orpheus, Pandora—
nymphs, satyrs, sirens, faeries, oracles, minotaurs, griffons— Either it's your next-door neighbor's weekly
Dungeons & Dragons funfest, or else the latest New Age self-help guru's most recent guide to better love-
making through myth-faking ... people don't seem to quite recall ("Uh, Prometheus, yeah; isn't he the horse
with wings?") just how much of these characters and their mythical lives are a part of ourselves, even today.
Outside of the classical classroom, they're cartoons, caricatures who populate the horoscopes or promote
the happy meal tie-ins with whatever sword & sorcery movie happens to be current.
Fortune, however, has seen fit to leave us poets who know better ...
On the cover: Nymphs & Satyr (detail) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau oil on canvas 1873
Grace our mailing list, or request a link exchange: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
Volume 3 Issue 3 July 2003
TABLE
OF CONTENTS:
Isis At The Beach Michael Fantina Bernardsville, NJ
Sharon, Rose of Nancy Henry Gray, ME
Romeo And Juliet Taylor Graham Somerset, CA
Call of the Wild Stephen Oliver Sydney, Australia
Stumps Richard Moore Belmont, MA
Vowels of Birds Karin Henderson Oslo, Norway
The Noise Rustin Larson Fairfield, IA
Aperture Taylor Graham Somerset, CA
Dust Nancy Henry Gray, ME
Lithgow Stephen Oliver Sydney, Australia
Three Dots on the Hillside Aslaug Laastad Lygre
Translation by Karin Henderson Oslo, Norway
Last Day Rustin Larson Fairfield, IA
Poetry All Stars
The Night Dream Archibald MacLeish
The Approach To Thebes Stanley Kunitz
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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 (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. Please query concerning poems over 100 lines, translations, or articles for On These Premises.
Submissions which
do not conform to these guidelines will be discarded unanswered.
Send to: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
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POEMS:
Isis at the Beach by Michael Fantina I watch you, as all eyes, so tall and sleek, And nearly naked in your burnished tan, Though you walk royally, as if some plan Were in your heart. I barely hear you speak, The language unfamiliar: Coptic, Greek? I see the Nile, nude slaves, with each a fan, Who cool you as you rest on your divan, Arrayed in colored silks baroque, antique. You know my thoughts. You turn and smile. I hear your noiseless words that I should leave, Forget you and this meeting and the Nile, That I am just a daydreamer, naive. The goddess turns and walks this narrow strand, As once she did in that pharaonic land.
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Sharon, Rose of by Nancy Henry After a century of experiments and fallout, a canvas of pale eggshell offers a ghostly commentary on its own processes. He has information about the sensuous, telepathic capabilities of language and light. Why do we reach into ourselves to find the worst thing that can be thought? She is young enough for that, the way she shines. He calls her Child of my Ache, Honey of my Tongue, Silken Slipper. She calls him Reverend. Yes, indulge the grotesque, and find it's a piece of magic that glows—then it's gone. That's the hook, the love story. Remember, you'll never know how old she is. After, she strips him off and plunges into dark water, strokes away from him without a word.
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Romeo and Juliet by Taylor Graham should leave the city with their golden secret. She's had enough of a mother's weary voice reminding her about the nasty Montagues and her father listing every wrong down generations. Her own voice whispers how the poetry of love makes sweet the bloodiest tragedy, the last poisoned kiss. What can they do but dance? What can they do but rhyme their own poems with the thin air of bound feet and empty fingers? It's a step that holds them center stage, too lovely to just fly away.
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Call of the Wild by Stephen Oliver Nudge a molecule with heat. There are gaps in everything if you get close enough. Even the solid insides of sky boiling its pebble at noon. Rooftops and the crystalline structures of terra cotta. Slate for colder climates coloured the underside of waterfalls. The trapper diagonally crossing mountain streams, dragging skeins of snowmelt from deerskin boots, river stone locking under his feet. Hugely the grey mountain running out of spruce before, and behind him, paddocks of snow, small as patches— in places blurred, in others clear as water off a whetstone. Rutger Hauer has finally broken camp in Canadašs North heading into black bear country— feathered arrows of snow storms, and the feathered shaft that hits his chest ends it there in the wastes, gold nuggets left on the river bed.
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Stumps by Richard Moore
Moonlight pokes through my skylit ceiling;
there's wind outside the iced glass, feeling.
I walked today out in the snow-drenched wood,
not thinking of you,
only how hard and bare the dark trunks stood,
how tall they grew,
and found a torn-up stump, bleached as bone,
lying among brown weeds, alone,
with nothing like it anywhere in sight:
stub arms that grew,
still twisting palely outward into light,
and thought of you,
and how on walks we'd sometimes collect
dead things like this, lying broken, wrecked,
assuming strange shapes, as a man, a hand,
some creature of breath,
some fragment, forked limbs, or a hair's strand,
long after death,
as if they had to keep on growing....
These trees reach up so high, not knowing
how perilously they reach, nor where they'll arrive,
till the wind snags them
and tearing up chunks of stone, cracking, alive,
down to earth drags them.
It's hard to tell what I tangle still
here, where the wind howls where it will,
or you back there....Gnarled arms, each without leaf,
each one too short,
reach out from a bared, torn-up stump of grief,
sliver, abort.
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Vowels of Birds by Karin Henderson If my voice could reach you, it would speak the loving language of crows in the morning. You would wake to aa sounds, and your day would brighten in trilling ees of chaffinches, 'Will you be my sweetheart? Say yes!' At night, if you would like it, I might read, my poems whispering in wise oos of owls, 'For you, for you'. A lullaby of Latin from my bird book would make you drowsy later with its magic: 'Lullula, Bombycilla, Columba, Muscicapa, Bubo bubo' would hum you safe, my love, caress your ears, and sleep would come.
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The Noise by Rustin Larson It comes from the recklessness of the everyday: clawing at the insides of my coffin. I don't need an alarm to go off. I wake about the same time, not remembering too much— my seat in the theatre, the obstructed view, the past tense, too referral. I sit on the edge of the bed, reach for my glasses, everything an influence: the clock pointing at 6:45, the sound of someone walking through the grass, water running through pipes in the building, the smell of burning toast, the murmur of a couple arguing downstairs in—what language is it?— Persian? I dress carefully, thinking camouflage. It seems all right: a ball cap, sunglasses, an air of the well worn grave Sinatra sings from, the crackle of dusty aged vinyl, the dull needle holding its own at 33 1/3 rpm, the canyon of sound down which the flood of reality cascades. The first things I see outside are sunflowers and the sun; I see my car, looking like a neglected harmonica. I climb inside and create this noise, one person out of billions. But then I hear another tone, rumbling. I can feel it in the tips of my fingers as I turn the wheel onto the highway. Though I see no one else, only my eyes in the mirror, I can hear it, feel it.
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Aperture by Taylor Graham You said you wanted pictures of the dark: things better left unseen, like kids who toss the cat from a third-floor roof, spark- ing black fur all the way down to cross its lifeline, the ninth. No, only the third— for there it is again the next, and next night like a revenge, a haunting; unfeathered bird that drives a bad kid mad with light. You say you never were that kid. But still you're after the shots you know won't print on paper. As if you'd kept the shutter closed, they develop in the mind against the will, a secret passage that opens on some glint of what's imagined, and waits unexposed.
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Dust by Nancy Henry The night I decided not to go to divinity school we were playing spades in the haze from your many Marlboros. Midnight, steak fat and butter were congealing on cheap plates still on the table, our hamster running around loose picking up Scrabble tiles and old Cheerios— who can blame me for deciding I could not give myself to Karl Barth under these circumstances? Outside the snow is absolving the world my friend sends me a desperate email READ THIS!! she pleads referencing an article entitled 'Don't Commit Spiritual Suicide'. Here is a book which tells how to bring life to an old orchard. One suggestion: exploding dynamite right at the roots of the tired old trees. That's probably what I need. I want to give you an Anatomical Gift, I'm so into you, baby, I want you to write my autobiography. I want to sleep with you for the same reason rich people shoplift devour you like pilfered chocolate, leave greedy stains on my hands and chin apply you to my body like a costly stolen cream, just don't ask me is it you I love, or your wounds? I want to you to renew me like a library book you can't leave alone, or maybe can't find but won't admit it, then I can live beneath drifts of National Geographics and Runner's World breathing your dust. When I can't find you any other place I look for you between the saddlebrown covers of this book it's pages worn to satin and petals. How can I clean this room with your DNA everywhere? How can I disturb this sanctuary full of shit and diamonds?
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Lithgow by Stephen Oliver One clump of dark green pine, in coal country, behind the escarpment; in a hollow, the other side of town, along the Great Western, furrows of coal-bits, drift of steam, state houses, scattered about like spilled boxes. One clump of dark green pine, amongst tailings, by the pit-town that lies low as a stifled cough, into the hills black as tumours, into hill-shadow; further on, Lake Windermere, half appears, smudged hillocks, earth a dull yellow. One clump of dark green pine, nettles at the base, as thick as a door-mat, coppery glow against the sun's shield that drops over the Blue Mountains— mining-town behind, slurried, on this high dark falling off the rising ramparts.
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Three Dots on the Hillside by Aslaug Laastad Lygre (b.1910)
translated from Norwegian by Karin Henderson
Up here, from this clearing,
I can see the roof
over at Bridge Farm,
and if I climb a little further up the hill
I can see the yard, too.
When we go in for our meal at noon
I will lag behind a little
and then climb up to that pile of stones.
From there I can see the whole farm
over at Bridge.
And if I see a black dot
down in the field
it is probably just your father;
but if I see two dots,
you may be one of them;
but it might well just be your mother;
but if I see three dots,
one of them is bound to be you—
Isn't it time to go, I wonder—
If we wait much longer,
the folks at Bridge will go in to eat
before us.
Well, then I'll run back here
ahead of the others,
and climb up into that birch—
that way I can see their whole farm
over there.
And if there is a black dot
down in the field,
it is probably just your father;
but if I see two dots,
you might be one of them
—unless it is your mother, of course.
But if I see three dots,
one of them is bound to be you—
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Last Day by Rustin Larson Last day of May, my fingering hand callused, but my guitar leaning mute on the loveseat. The pocket calculator faces the caramel stone. The stuffed poppy lies tangled in jumprope. Julia's laundered jeans are folded over the arm of the sofa, their flower embroidery hidden. On TV they promise not to use nukes in their fight over Kashmir. 1985, I bought incense: Kashmiri Rose. I think I worshipped silently as it burned, and when it was all ash I splashed semen on my woman's cervix. I was meditative. Katie's here now playing her Game Boy— some virtual martial arts combat fought to disco music—the troops massing on the border—the sun healing our living room—the last day of May— a different century.
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The Night Dream by Archibald MacLeish Neither her voice, her name, Eyes, quietness neither, That moved through the light, that came Cold stalk in her teeth Bitten of some blue flower Knew I before nor saw. This was a dream. Ah, This was a dream. There was sun Laid on the cloths of a table. We drank together. Her mouth Was a lion's mouth out of jade Cold with a fable of water. Faces I could not see Watched me with gentleness. Grace Folded my body with wings. I cannot love you she said. My head she laid on her breast. As stillness with ringing of bees I was filled with a singing of praise. Knowledge filled me and peace. We were silent and not ashamed. Ah we were glad that day. They asked me but it was one Dead they meant and not I. She was beside me she said. We rode in a desert place. We were always happy. Her sleeves Jangled with jingling of gold. They told me the wind from the south Was the cold wind to be feared. We were galloping under the leaves— This was a dream. Ah This was a dream. And her mouth Was not your mouth nor her eyes, But the rivers were four and I knew As a secret between us, the way Hands touch, it was you.
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The Approach To Thebes by Stanley Kunitz In the zero of the night, in the lipping hour, Skin-time, knocking-time, when the heart is pearled And the moon squanders it uranian gold, She taunted me, who was all music's tongue, Philosophy's and wilderness's breed, Of shifting shape, half jungle-cat, half-dancer, Night's woman-petaled, lion-scented rose, To whom I gave, out a hero's need, The dolor of my thrust, my riddling answer, Whose force no lesser mortal knows. Dangerous? Yes, as nervous oracles foretold Who could not guess the secret taste of her: Impossible wine! I came into the world To fill a fate; am punished by my youth No more. What if dog-faced logic howls Was it art or magic multiplied my joy? Nature has reasons beyond true or false. We played like metaphysical animals Whose freedom made our knowledge bold Before the tragic curtain of the day: I can bear the dishonor now of growing old. Blinded and old, exiled, diseased, and scorned— The verdict's bitten on the brazen gates, For the gods grant each of us his lot, his term. Hail to the King of Thebes!—my self, ordained To satisfy the impulse of the worm, Bemummied in those famous incestuous sheets, The bloodiest flags of nations of the curse, To be hung from the balcony outside the room Where I encounter my most flagrant source. Children, grandchildren, my long posterity, To whom I bequeath the spiders of my dust, Believe me, whatever sordid tales you hear, Told by physicians or mendacious scribes, Of beardless folly, consanguineous lust, Formenting pestilence, rebellion, war, I come prepared, unwanting what I see, But tied to life. On the royal road to Thebes I had my luck, I met a lovely monster, And the story's this: I made the monster me.
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Carnelian V3 Iss3 July, 2003