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Carnelian
In summer, the song sings itself...— William Carlos Williams.
What more to say then, than what follows is the summer song of a dozen of your contemporaries, poems by
Janet Butler, Ben Mousley, Seánan Forbes and their fellows, who know what music may be warmly made
of words...
On The Cover: Self-Portrait In The Company Of Friends by Peter Paul Reubens oil on canvas 1602
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Volume 5 Issue 3 July 2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Penelope, As Her Thread Wears Thin Enriqueta Carrington Highland Park, NJ Restoration Jessica Baron Creede, CO The Walk Home Ben Mousley Swansea, UK Warm Ice Margaret Robinson Swarthmore, PA Balancing Pens In Belfast Patrick Carrington Avalon, NJ Victim Seánan Forbes London, UK A Few Hollow Seconds Speaking To Your Machine Nancy Henry Grey, ME Trickling Sand C W Hawes Highland Township, IA The Pit Janet Butler Perugia, Italy Letter To Randall H— Jack Granath Kansas City, MO Tambourine Sounds Stephen James Cullis St. Leonard's-on-sea, UK Metaphysically Fit Lee Evans Edgewater, MD Poetry All Stars Jealous Lovers Donald Hall [First fight. Then fiddle...] Gwendolyn Brooks **************************************************************************
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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
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Send to: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
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POEMS:
Penelope, As Her Thread Wears Thin by Enriqueta Carrington The tales I have to weave are hard on the ears So I unweave by night what I wove by day Will he return, having traveled twenty years? Only a sorceress could keep him away So by night I unwrite what I wrote by day It's in the nature of husbands to be late Only a sorceress could keep him away Is a sorceress immune to a wife's hate? It's in the nature of husbands to be late He'll be back, the scent of her fluids in his hair Is a sorceress immune to a wife's fate? I'm tied to this loom, while he has lust to spare He'll sail happily back, her scent in his hair The phantoms of darkness dissolve in the light Tied to woman's fate while he has joys to spare So what I weave by day I unwrite by night The phantoms of jealousy survive the light Will he return, having traveled twenty years? So what I write by day I unweave by night And the tales that I weave are hard on the ears
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Restoration by Jessica Baron Yes, we take this test, that with our bodies and breath we pretend less, we transpose into lead metal twisted spiral pipes of limbs. Press into me until you make a dent. Caress the smell of no longer absent. Remember it fresh: the sweat in darkness your head a mess of pleasure my legs quaking, quaking. In our best moment, we yell together, break the bread of reunion, establish tread on each other's impenetrable forests, and float on toward breakfast.
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The Walk Home by Ben Mousley Back in the days my grandfather, Arth Would often partake of a drop And one stormy night a long time ago He went out with his mates, on the pop Of the night itself I'll say no more; A typical stint on the ale It's the bit later on that made me laugh And the reason I'm telling this tale Now suffice it to say, by the end of the night They were all three sheets to the wind If drinking's a sin, you can safely say That that night they went out and sinned Now one of his mates, on his way home Had more of a task than the rest 'Cos crossing the moors, with a gutful of ale Can put a young chap to the test It was blowing a gale, and hammerin' down And the moors were a terrible sight With his hands in his coat, and his collar turned up He staggered off into the night He couldn't see more than three feet ahead As he battled his way through the storm His thoughts ran ahead to his open fire And getting back home in the warm Now all of a sudden he pulled up short As he sensed that all was not well He was colder now than a minute ago And what was that god-awful smell? Well he soon found out as he lowered his head And his eyes nearly popped out their sockets He was up to his neck in the bloody canal And he still had his hands in his pockets...
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Warm Ice by Margaret Robinson Mid-March greens go white as a tail flash of leaping doe. Flakes stack on leaves all night, vanishing pansies, killing delight, mounting a gray and black show. Mid-March greens go white for tips thrusting can't fight back, deal cold a finishing blow. Flakes stack on leaves all night, trace each dogwood bud, site of fires ready to glow. Mid-March greens go white as doves hunker down despite swirling—rest, wait out the foe. Flakes stack on leaves all night, lie fluffy yet sodden, polite— "Kiss, kiss," they say. "We'll soon go." Mid-March greens go white, flakes stack on leaves all night.
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Balancing Pens In Belfast by Patrick Carrington At night my roots push up my eyes in flurried flights toward skies of worried men whose bandages and muddied blood now hang from stars and drip in scarlet rain that grips and stains the marrow of my bed. They head through narrow rays of light on streets fresh-sprinkled by their bright new dressing. Unwrinkled now, again, in gloaming from the press of shining honor, by the youth and screaming worship of my streaming dreams. By day the seams and shadows of their ruin unstitch and steal my air and crush my bones, their powdered hair and homes that puff and fall in winter's winds and hands, the swinging noose of England choking rough and tumble songs they sang in tall and long defiance, defense of son and land. Page after page my pens trace out the lines my fathers drew, those murdered gods of endless hope, the ghosts that stretch their rope under my soles, balancing the lights and limits of my days and nights, stabbing holes of red into my skin and soul where their pulse writes.
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Victim by Seánan Forbes At least it was to the back of the head; I saw nothing, heard only the swift distortion of air behind my ear. Did you know me? Were we strangers in that fleet eternity? Was I a random choice, a happenstance, foot-tripping the wrong street at the right time for your brusque intervention, or was there plotting, or plodding silence trailing in my path? It may have been a bet, a means of earning status, some proof of virulence or strength. Passage for entry: my ending, trade for your onset. Maybe a quirk of face: looking like the one you’d like to end, but whom you cannot touch. A substitute for vengeance, misarrayed, miscarried, misplaced, and suddenly distorted. Now, for me, tags, drainage, cuts, refrigeration, the placing of telephone calls, the harsh inspection, none of that my worry. It would be a thing to know, however: that which moved the mind that moved the hand that punctuated my life with the fullest of stops.
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A Few Hollow Seconds Speaking to Your Machine by Nancy Henry He lifts your mutilated wings from the soil, transports you in a breath to crash unremarked against the moon. You sell rain whips on the thresholds of your dreams, frail aerials crushed and bent by the awkward weight of powerful consequence. I eat you up my love, am abashed and circumspect, ripe with lavender and whisked-up flies. Why be ashamed of the holy nakedness of the skin, why be full of bane at the shame-faced creations of the tongue? Look to charming things, the red bough, the metallic flamenco of rain, wet silken highway leading at once in both directions.
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Trickling Sand by C W Hawes Grains of sand trickling through the hour-glass One globe empties and the other fills Moment by moment the seasons pass The rains slowly melt away the hills One globe empties and the other fills A turn and the end is the beginning The rains slowly melt away the hills Yet the earth just keeps on spinning A turn and the end is the beginning Ouroboros swallows his tail Yet the earth just keeps on spinning There is peace and there is travail Ouroboros swallows his tail A circle has no beginning and no end There is peace and there is travail Some things we cannot comprehend A circle has no beginning and no end Winter is surely followed by the spring Some things we cannot comprehend There is only room for marvelling Winter is surely followed by the spring Moment by moment the seasons pass There is only room for marvelling Grains of sand trickling through the hour-glass
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The Pit by Janet Butler The pit banks where soul fights flesh spiraling down through blood lust and depths where desire reigns, plunging the regions of sodden flesh buttery soft squatting insatiable, satisfied carnality manifest before the cleansing breath and beast became man. The creature, however, lives on, spirit lurking just below the open thing, rising, red-eyed, tip-toed to taunt, to tease to tempt.
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Letter to Randall H— by Jack Granath
Dear ghost, what desecration brings you back
To mock the world and haunt poor Jack,
Striding through the fractured air,
Shaking crumpled snapshots from your hair?
What broken promise are you hunting out,
What brief, unpardonable doubt?
Ann Arbor's not an answer. It's a dream.
A twisted shape behind a bank of steam:
The train tracks and the crazy river,
The basement flats, the bars,
Whiskey lapped up in the Diag
Beneath a haze of stars,
Rain Dogs on the stereo,
Good dope and dumb delight,
Shakespeare shouted from a rooftop
Into a misty night,
The balcony at Dominick's,
The mad professor there,
Stumbling through a murk of words
With chalk dust in his hair.
It takes true failure to romanticize
A town that bled me from the eyes,
That scrubbed my pride-bound body cleaner
Than a child's surprise.
A child's surprise... Man, I was just a kid.
I didn't think the world could get much meaner,
But it did.
And now your voice comes crashing from the dead,
Despite the dream-thick years I've tried
To get down off this dizzy ride
And shoot out all the voices in my head.
Oh well, haunt on. Those days were better days.
Haunt me along those old, unlighted ways.
Catch me by the catastrophe
And haunt a little life back into me.
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Tambourine Sounds by Stephen James Cullis
But you have beautiful moves
Special passes fake ID
Don't leave me here behind
To ask myself why me?
You can't go through just yet
Can't pilot by myself
A lock thank god still set
Upon the midnight door
Another bottle on the shelf
Fresh moon shadows
Still submerge the early morning floor
I didn't tell you I'd stay long
Remember I was clear
When everything was confused
And wrong
Remember I wrapped you in my fear
Can't you bring me back to life?
Could you bring me back tonight?
This night when the moon's so near
So full of Isis light
The wounded daisies
Turn her west moon face
I have got to go
I can't stay here anymore
The tambourine sounds have left this place
But you said you would live forever
Not in so many words
You said it every morning
Sang it to the dawn birds
I heard it in your gestures
Saw it with my hands
I felt it in the visions
Out on low-tide sands
Can't you tell me I heard right
Could you tell me where I went wrong?
Go on, you can abbreviate
I know you can't stay long
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Metaphysically Fit by Lee Evans Around and round the Mall they go; And when they stop, nobody knows. In groups of two or three or four They power walk the shopping floors— Or so they think. If I should speak, I'd tell them that they've sprung a leak! Their Energy is spurting out, Like oil from some burst tanker spout. They walk to keep themselves in shape; To do so they must concentrate Upon a fixed idea of How And Who they are. So like a plow Each one strides briskly, cutting through Us loiterers, to pay their Dues. I may not know as much as they, But I can waste a better day Just strolling the world's Mall at large, Shoplifting Visions free of charge. My technique ain't no hocus pocus— They are simply much too focused, Blinded to the merchandise I pick and choose from at a price That all of them refuse to pay: The loss of speed! A fair exchange, To swap their warped mentalities For Wellness such as I conceive— Considering the benefits Of being Metaphysically Fit.
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Jealous Lovers by Donald Hall When he lies in the night away from her, the backs of his eyelids burn. He turns in the darkness as if it were an oven. The flesh parches and he lies awake thinking of everything wrong. In the morning when he goes to meet her, his heart struggles at his ribs like an animal trapped in its burrow. Then he sees her running to meet him, red-faced with hurry and cold. She stumbles over the snow. Her knees above the orange knee-socks bob in a froth of the hems of skirt and coat and petticoat. Her eyes have not shut all night.
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[First fight. Then fiddle..] by Gwendolyn Brooks First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string With feathery sorcery; muzzle the note With hurting love; the music that they wrote Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing For the dear instrument to bear. Devote The bow to silks and honey. Be remote A while from malice and from murdering. But first to arms, to armor. Carry hate In front of you and harmony behind. Be deaf to music and to beauty blind. Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late For having first to civilize a space Wherein to play your violin with grace.
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Carnelian V5 Iss3 July, 2005