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Carnelian
The summer night is like a perfection of thought. — Wallace Stevens Cruising into summer with a few thoughts perfected as poems by Clay Vaughan, Richard Moore, Jai Britton, Dylan Thomas, & company, here's hoping the warm nights and these fiery lines conspire to set you alight... —The Editor
On the cover: Sharecropper [detail] by Elizabeth Catlett woodcut 1968
Volume
6 Issue 3 July 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
What's left after Clay Vaughan Norfolk, VA We Are All Beggars Jai Britton Calgary, Alberta, Canada Summer House Richard Moore Belmont, MA Odysseus At Sea David Luntz New York, NY Revelations Lisa Zaran Mesa, AZ Writing The History Of Sexuality R. Dombrowski Phoenix, AZ [Sleep needles, seeking the weakening sigh] Jeremy O'Neal Kansas City, MO The Thing With Feathers David Thornbrugh Krakow, Poland The Milkmaid Taylor Graham Somerset, CA Warming David Anthony Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire,UK My Grown Daughter (A Dream) Clay Vaughan Norfolk, VA Drains, Machines, And Big Poetry David Flynn Glenrothes, FIfe, Scotland, UK Poetry All Stars To Marijuana Kenneth Koch Love In The Asylum Dylan Thomas **************************************************************************
Carnelian is no longer accepting submissions as this will be the final issue.
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POEMS:
What's left after by Clay Vaughan is my paralysis, and even something in need of diagnosis, consumed in resounding sadness despite it being unexplained except as a loneliness wrapped in a paradox, the rarest blanket of the strangest sort that's oddly comforting, toward what possible end? what random meaning? everyone's off on their own and a certain physical manifestation of their leaving invades what's left of my fertile, or furtive, imagination, having survived into a future that is seen as my subsisting in a place of mere truncation, an existence absent hope, and not experience, with anyone, or anything all visions thwarted and forever secret as to plans that might be made, every one of them bereft of revelation, except for the grueling taste in my mouth my raw and elusive flesh
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We Are All Beggars by Jai Britton
We are all beggars, each in his own way,
said a man once, and then he expired
knowing the last laugh rested on his tray.
You wish to smoke cigars, raft, perspire,
white-wash fences, build forts. Incredulate
and supposatorium upon great
thoughts, see also: theorem, re: postulate,
of why the sun might revolve around weight,
not motion, circling by force of habit.
I wish to keep you bound by a lexicon
of meaningless chatterbob, white rabbits,
icons, come-ons, symbol emoticons.
Let’s look for other suns to inhabit—
ones made of twine and strands of silicon.
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Summer House by Richard Moore
Is the sun gone? Shadows it made of leaves
no longer sway from darkness under eaves:
the summer's golden coin wears down to winter,
and skies of worthless lead
buy up the earth, now dead.
The wind bids, and the roof begins to splinter.
Shut up the shutters, love, and we'll admit
those yellow ecstasies were counterfeit;
but say, when house and heavens go erratic,
something persists, love, cramps
through buried cellar damps,
persists when the wind picks into the attic.
From webs that drift in corners of the gloom,
from shadows, walls sweating across the room,
the silence hangs, placid and deep abider,
and grips. In its caress
the damps ooze and confess
the rat, the worm, the weevil, and the spider.
A maze of useless pipe tangles and squirms
up into rafters like enormous worms.
Maybe there's rain above; these worms are flowing.
Look: a rat sips. He gnaws
holding between his paws
a mildewed seed. The air's not right for growing.
So don't be angry, love, that weevils bore
tunnels for dinner through our two-by-four.
They're gnawed too: tinier lives in them are swarming.
In little private nights
inside them, parasites,
secreting acids, keep them still performing.
While dynasties and summers pass unseen,
they work; they fear the light. But up between
the boards, light comes. When footsteps crossed that rafter,
all hairs bristled to hear
perilous sounds so near,
voices that spoke, and long forgotten laughter.
But that passed too. Here all is secure, love,
from change, growing, and dying up above.
A little circumscribed---but useful, clever.
Come wind, come sun, come rains,
the cellar still remains,
a part of earth, and earth might last forever.
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Odysseus At Sea by David Luntz There have been no birds for days. Only still gray sea and the weariness of silence. Sometimes, if he closes his eyes, he can swear he hears time’s dull metronome. But he’s not sure. Enraged he bellows into the void: Aeolos, give me some fucking wind. But who’s he kidding? It’s the nature of the gods to ignore you when you need them most. With nothing else to do, he recalls the art Circe taught him. What are they?, he asked, pointing to the symbols that burned like phosphorus across her chest. Signs by whose combination you can write words, she said. Would their knowledge give him the power of prophecy? No, she replied. Would they let him see the thoughts of other men? She shakes her head again. Then what use is it?, he pouts. You won’t know until you master it, she cooed. Which he now does with much difficulty, (like a butterfly struggling against a chrysalis) until he grasps it in all its radiance, beauty and transience. But he’s been tricked. This art cannot be conveniently forgotten or ignored. Like the tissues that spool a cocoon it has enveloped him. For days he watches thousands of butterflies threading the air. Then the wind came.
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Revelations by Lisa Zaran The older I get, the freer I feel. Wild like Calamity Jane. I've decided to let my hair grow down to my waist and pour poems out of me like she poured down drinks. From now on I'm going to eat. Leave the birdseed to the birds. Give me meat, thick as a man's forearm. Give me the breast of a chicken, the leg of a lamb. Give me Adam's rib. I want to carry it with me. Chew on the bone whenever the urge strikes me. From now on I'm going to burst through every door. Held by a breeze, my hair will rise all around my head, my cheeks will be flushed the color of pink grapefruit. I'll scrape meaning from the tiniest fleck of dust and blow it in any disbelievers face. I'll throw my money away on cigarettes and silk dresses that cling to my hips. Earn it back by selling kisses. The sweet taste of living on my lips. I'll bend the truth if I have to. From now on, everything I say will be considered a sort of undressing. Words will slide to the floor like underthings. When I leave, the loneliness of many men will fill the room. Even the walls will begin to sob and the ceiling will bow in despair. I've decided to grow my hair.
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Writing The History of Sexuality by R. Dombrowski
What led us to show, ostentatiously, that sex is
something we hide…And how have we come to be a
civilization so peculiar as to tell itself that…it has
long "sinned" against sex? Michel Foucault
The secret discourse of sex
lingers on the pulp, and the old,
French sage licks his lips
with every click of the keys—
the Lateran, the labia-ink,
the crescendo of jouissance
near the turn of the century.
Rereading Levertov, he concludes that
the cock comes too late:
stasis of smell
and electrolyzed hair,
its place on the page like paralysis, a stuffed specimen
hanging over the hearth of a vacant lodge.
Outside, the sign flashes against the horizon,
and the asphalt-steam mingles with exhaust.
VACANCY
and a stained paisley comforter;
the algae waters of baptism
behind rooms like arcades—
drive-thru confessionals
blessed monthly by bleach.
A horn wails, so he stands to part the curtains:
scopophelia and an oil smudge
on the pane,
particles of shame
landing gingerly between his feet.
He wears old trousers and an unbuttoned shirt
as he reads the sensations—
finger-to-word-to-page-to-crotch—
the unleashing of teeth and anatomy
in the worn burgundy chair.
And the room is unfazed, like it should be—
like, according to him, it's always been.
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[Sleep needles, seeking the weakening sigh] by Jeremy O'Neal Sleep needles, seeking the weakening sigh, Poised for stimulation to slip and go thin, But my desire's focused wild fire raging, Her skin a furnace, superheating the night. Hours sacrificed for this pressing want Seem nothing against such hunger for touch, Seem fleeting beneath this urgency's heat. All of me pools within ravenous hands, Bleeds through pores, intensified, insatiate, Transcends time's heaviness upon these eyes, All is now, here, between our tangled clasp. We clutch minutes and seconds from the air, Push them into our mouths with moistened lips, Extending this eve into a morning's gasp.
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The Thing With Feathers by David Thornbrugh Hope knows no odds against the impossible, paddles upstream against white water current and waterfall roar, keeps presses printing lottery numbers that fall like rain on hot rock, hope is the zoo monkey’s eyes clicking sideways as figures slide across cage bars, butt-flattened condom in teenage boy’s wallet, teenage girl checking panties’ white cotton for rust stains, three months out to sea and no sight of land, ears straining for the crash of wave on rock, fog horn, turning gull cry into children’s voices, hope fingers every coin slot of train station luggage locker, waits another five minutes for the lover who doesn’t show, hope keeps leaving messages, hope keeps getting out of bed, applying for jobs, studying for tests, asking strangers for change, hope keeps growing feathers that it never, ever gets ruffled.
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The Milkmaid by Taylor Graham
after Vermeer
She’s been measuring out that pitcher
almost forever. Look at her strong hands
and hefty stature. Once, even she
was young and slender. What does she
regret? Consider the downcast gaze.
She’s so very careful in her pouring.
A woman who knows the worth of a goat
that gives good milk; the worth
of husbands who don’t fritter the air
with foolish words. Look at her
lips, set and silent. Her eyes.
She’s giving strict measure with just
that pale light through the window.
She’s keeping her vision to herself.
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Warming by David Anthony The seasons’ course seems strange to me, more strange than I remember; wild flowers bloom unseasonably: primroses in November. The young pretend to blame us all. Well, youth’s a great dissembler: May was forever, I recall, and there was no November. These days I’ll take what Nature sends to hoard for dour December: a glow of warmth as autumn ends; primroses in November.
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My Grown Daughter (A Dream) by Clay Vaughan
Who would pronounce
the death of irony
has something
to answer for, here
Androd per Severance
I pass her in a Salvation Army
parking lot, she's at last
on her own, something
I'm ever mindful of
being her father, essentially
in absentia, albeit in reflection
precisely her, mirroring her, as she
so mirrors me, something she
would have no recognition of,
not even in her dreams.
But there she is, strangely
this surrogate me
in another time and
place that, yet, refuses me
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Drains, Machines and Big Poetry by David Flynn
Poetry is about expressing complex ideas
simply.
Not expressing simple ideas
complexly.
Truism is a damned liar!
Are we all expressing simple ideas
in denial?
Poets need to have a vested interest in lying
as they simplify the complex ideas
they experience vicariously.
Have you seen the invisible man, or woman, or poem?
It's impossible to say.
Invisibility is no respecter of gender or incompetence.
The blank space above contains poetic visions of breathtaking beauty.
Three lines of complex simplicity.
We are not professional idiots - just gifted amateurs
who confuse inspiration with desperation
in unequal combination.
Too good to share. Poetry in the air.
Scribble down a daydream before it fades away
and write a hectic poem
based on a reckless muse.
We could talk on and on about faulty machinery
or what we'll drag from the freezer for cremation.
But poetry is about big things.
Did anything B I G happen to you today?
Maybe it's too painful for poetry.
Let's focus on life and drains then,
and how one goes down the other.
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To Marijuana by Kenneth Koch
There is one wonderful moment
That I remember, when I had smoked you
I was sitting in front of a fire
In a fireplace and I was crazy about a woman
A new (i.e., recently appeared to me) human
So crazy that to show how great I was, it was,
Unmade I was, it was, I threw my glasses (eyeglasses)
Into the fire. When I went to look for them
Sometime after, they were gone and I was happy
Happy as I have ever been. If you could give me such dramatic glances
All life long I'd surely be a pothead but I also like
To wake up in the morning fresh and strong
And to write poems with my glasses on—
Without them, I'm unable to see.
Therefore I'm not sure what you should be to me,
Marijuana, in the times that are yet to come—
Merely a memory? I can remember the hum
And the catch in my throat your sensations present to me—
I don't know if that's enough— perhaps occasionally
A new bout with you, in the name of appetite, or love,
And occasionally bad (I'd guess) poetry— but then you never know,
do you?
In any case, thank you for that throwing thing,
For that eagle's wing, away from my reasonable beak.
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Love In The Asylum by Dylan Thomas
A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds
Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds
Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.
She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies
She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.
And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
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Carnelian V6 Iss3 July, 2006