Welcome to Archive / Links On These Premises
Carnelian
"Flesh-colored"—that's what shades
the poetry you'll find here: the flesh of animals, the flesh of fruit, the flesh
of masquerades and bluffs and brute force. The poet's eye blended with the shape
of the object and the whole piece then subjected to the glazing effect of an
audience. Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the Italian Renaissance artist whose painting
appears on the cover understood; look at the cornucopia of colors that make
his 'green' man flesh-colored—each one an 'explosure' of sensation. Would
that all our words should breathe so well...
Special treat this issue: an essay on rhyme and
meter [in On These Premises] and poems by the esteemed poet Richard Moore.
And while we're on the subject of treats, more fine poetry by Joshua Robbins,
Taylor Graham and J. B. Mulligan alongside many others ... Enjoy! The
Editor
On the cover: Vertumnus [detail] by Giuseppe Arcimboldo oil on panel (c. 1590)
Grace our mailing list, or request a link exchange: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
Volume 2 Issue 4 October 2002 TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Equinoctial Sonnet Joshua Robbins Springfield, OR Distant Lights J. B. Mulligan Washingtonville, NY Untitled Daniel Sumrall St Paul, MN The Heap Richard Moore Belmont, MA First Draft Taylor Graham Somerset, CA Mary's Lamb Geertjan Wielenga Vienna, Austria Dog Teeth Joshua Robbins Springfield, OR The Toll Richard Moore Belmont, MA Redolence Michael Burch Nashville, TN If This Is Forward, Leave Me Here Janet I. Buck Medford, OR Untitled Daniel Sumrall St Paul, MN The Second Going J. B. Mulligan Washingtonville, NY Poetry All Stars: The Moss Of His Skin Anne Sexton In Place Of A Curse John Ciardi
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Submissions which do not conform to these guidelines will be discarded unanswered.
Send to: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
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POEMS:
Equinoctial Sonnet by Joshua Robbins
This morning, consumed by celestial tilt-and-balance as the sun climbs from its
Languorous bed between Mt. Diablo's two horns, we watch the nearly October
Dawn dangle its lures of tact and repose on breeze-wire through the front oak's
Quicksilver branches, a handful here, a handful there of leaves tinged copper.
And I think of the day's other-side, how we'll gather below the stars' nocturnal
Parade, watch it render the zodiac's wheels visible, watch the moon's mug,
Pockmarked and mottled, stamp night's scroll, and through the oak's leaf-lattice
Luminescence like dripped sealing wax will puddle around our feet.
For now, we are not beset by the tug of opposites, and we wear our brief freedom
Like constellational moneychangers, glitz and glimmer in multi-colored tunics,
Weighing the disks of sun and moon like two coins on the pans of Libra's scales.
We are the essence of darkness stepping into darkness. That's how it mostly goes.
Blindly, we rummage around for an evener, for a quantifier of the distances between our
Do's and don'ts like the darkness that smothers the candle flame, the licked finger-tips.
for C.H.
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Distant Lights J. B. Mulligan
(Hart Crane)
Distant lights on the night sea shine and shimmer
beneath the glittery stars and the carbon sky.
Imperceptibly, the lights grow dimmer
as distance, like a wave, swells up and slides
away toward invisibility,
the unseen all that fills the other side
of the horizon. Waves abruptly slap
against the ship. The sea wind blows, moist
and gusty, growing stronger. A seagull flaps
nearby, thrusting toward the distant coast,
a faint shape briefly seen, alone, aloof,
resolute and mindless, wings of instinct
carrying it home to foaming reefs
and nesting rocks.
He stands toward the stern,
watching the wake unravel, three distinct
and spreading threads of white, the endless churn
of screw propellers spinning a wilting flower
into the night, the past, the wave-rocked sea,
a song, deep-throated rumbling, hive of bees
alive with pulsing music, vibrant power,
a poetry of gears and oil and iron,
of muscled stokers, smoke and pounding pistons.
He knows the song, the tumbling, changing rhythms,
and the fatal melody of silver strings
taut above a dark and depthless chasm,
stretched to breaking, to one perfect note
that would bridge the cavern, endlessly would sing
in echo through the hollow ages.
The boat
falls and rises, sways and dips, rushes
across the rushing sea, loudly crashes
down on cresting waves. The wafer moon,
thin, corroded, huge and ancient eye
in night's immense black monstrance, crowns the sky.
Its light sings secret words, carves shifting runes
in swiftly shifting slabs of surging water.
He stands alone at the rail, watches the ocean's
constant flow and flux, the stars' white glitter,
the stillness of the sky above the motion
of the sea, the world, the boat, his blazing mind,
burnt hard, cracked, collapsing, shattered sparks
of fiery words exploding in the dark.
The lights of land, like campfires left behind,
extinguish. Memories of flame, and flames
still hot enough to cut, consume him. Fire,
the forge, the holy tool that uses, burns
him out, a hollowness, an empty pyre
of scorched experience, of ashen dreams
and scattered moments, shards of ancient urns.
He hoists himself over the silver rail
and leaps upon the waves. The ocean swirls
around him, pulls him down to twisting darkness,
suffocated visions, whirling spasms
sliding into wheels of spinning bliss,
swelling peace in hollow shadowed chasms.
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Untitled by Daniel Sumrall There must be a moon that means nothing, one which neither looms nor hangs casting silver shadows like a cold dagger gleaming blood red and as drunken as low a.m. eyes stumbling through the further blue pitch, each beam an anonymous, ignorant gesture waning as unintentional as wine.
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The Heap by Richard Moore
All that you ever ask a tooth to do
is chew,
and maybe (if you're wealthy, vain, and twitty)
look pretty.
Why does it, then, like telescopes named "Hubble,"
make trouble
and, losing all its vigor and its clout,
fall out?
Perhaps the scientist can plumb this well
and tell.
"It's just another case of entropy,"
says he,
"Things (like bright colors mixed to muddy brown)
run down.
It's happening throughout the universe,
this curse,
so why not in (as east, west, north and south)
your mouth?"
O sir, I feel, now that I've understood,
so good.
With God's great compost heap I come to terms,
whose worms
shall render me, dark, deeper than all hurt,
to dirt.
All those who find that heap's creeping and crawling
appalling—
it's like my tooth, sirs, wobbling in its socket.
Don't knock it.
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First Draft by Taylor Graham A one-lane gravel road begs a certain concentration: one hand firmly on the steering while the other scribbles notes on the back of an envelope from Sears. And the eyes—well there's the twitch. The left keeps wandering from the safe tread between ditches as if it could help the right eye oversee the right hand guiding a pencil into clumsy English shorthand. And where's the focus of two eyes with different missions? This is the poor divided body trying to catch up with its mind that thinks it can compose (and afterwards de- cipher) this poem written on the run.
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Mary's Lamb by Geertjan Wielenga Mary had a little lamb, with fleece as white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went her lamb was sure to go. The English learn this verse in youth, it frolics from their tongues like truth, while narrative, strict-form and rhyme no longer fit our time. But words are formed in such a way that there are beats in what we say, and verses made of beat and rhyme will last beyond our time. Mary´s lamb, now stone-cold dead, still follows her within my head, will follow me where´er I go: with fleece as white as snow.
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Dog Teeth by Joshua Robbins Even in the black of a windowless room a dog's teeth remain white. This invisible fact is true no matter how the dark comes. Whether the moon bites into the sky's grip, falls, and shatters on the earth like a wine glass on kitchen tile, the shards painful as mirrors. Or whether the sun is lost as a prize sow in a forest or a wandering lunatic crawling naked through the rows of summer rye, filling his ears with earth to stop what he knows from leaking down the sides of his beard. And like the air that moves through the potted plants topping tombstones in a courtyard cemetery, invisible certainties like this are unending, make no sounds, carry no questions except those that can be heard by the worms boring into the dirt of tombstone shadows who respond saying: "Yes. Though we are blind we continue to labor."
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The Toll by Richard Moore Grinding my teeth? What's this about? Poems; and me, grinding them out. O cruel muse, when thou relentest, tell me, and I will tell my dentist.
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Redolence by Michael Burch Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills; cicadas sing, the tall elms gently sway, and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray; the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills what silence there once was; globed searchlights play. Green hanging plants adorn dark window sills and droop a bit, awaiting dawn's bright flares; mosquitoes whine; the solemn moth again flits by the damp gas lantern and endures the fumblings of night’s gray, half-hearted rain. And now the pact of night is made complete; the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time, the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.
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If This Is Forward, Leave Me Here by Janet I. Buck Gray/white halls form smelly casts— whole skeletons and bones inside. Itch and scale hidden beneath a chorus of moans. Bach plays on the intercom; Bingo games leave losers and no winning cards. Your eyes blink twice, demand I write a softer score for exiting this cruel earth than falling through brown paper bags, becoming stickers on a chart. Three pictures of your family stand planted on a corkboard slab. Marked by times you voided liquid— no one questions swamps of cotton under you. Across a crowded parking lot, blue sky plates stay packed with meals of elsewhere's joy. A grandfather's hands are idle tools invaded by widowing rust. The only noise at breakfast time— spoon to chin without thick pads, interloping tender flesh to soothe the broken instrument. Guilty chocolates melt in mounds. Flowers droop for company. "Three Fountains" is a nursing home. I'm curious where water is. Blue jays scratch the window panes, leaving stripes of blood on glass. If this is forward, leave me here. I look at you; you gaze at me. We wonder why they wanted in.
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Untitled by Daniel Sumrall At times the old words creep into my breath swelling in my tight throat dry, raw and chapped as though seared from burning water swallowed in a rush to forget all the once said and it rises up as a pull, a retch, that, no matter the lack of yellow bile sick, unsteadies the nerves to the point of twitch in every open-handed gesture made to resolve or retain the unsaid
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The Second Going by J. B. Mulligan
He came, as He comes to each of us, alone,
naked as Schwarzenegger on the screen,
in the empty parking lot of a mall, at midnight,
beneath a halogen bulb that hissed and dimmed
as He moved away, above the empty trees
of a cold December night, above the cars
sweeping the darkness from the Interstate,
above the scattered, diamond-crusted cities,
the little towns among the hills and fields,
the seas, the snowy wastelands north and south,
and down, down to a muddy trench in France,
as the mustard gas unfurled, and soldiers crawled,
choking and groaning, spitting bits of lung
into the brush, while men in masks rushed forward,
their bayonets like candles in the smoke.
Guns and cannons rattled, roared and cracked,
and a soldier fell, a boy in a uniform,
backward upon barbed wire; He hovered, close,
and saw the flame blow out in the soldier's eyes.
He wept, and took him up, and looked around:
soldiers ran past, toward Germany and Kuwait,
toward the ruptured cities of His land,
while newsmen armed with cameras and cold eyes
scurried over the sprawled, indifferent dead,
and the leaders stood together, smiling wisely.
"What is this?", He cried out, in the rage of love.
The leaders nodded, laughed, and turned away.
The battle-smoke was dissipating now,
and He saw before Him in the Chinese sun
men and women marching relentlessly onward;
He heard the brawling Russians crying out
for Brotherhood; He saw the smaller lands
unite behind some single, benevolent face—
and saw the systems change, and the castles remain,
richly furnished for fat and hungry men.
He saw those systems topple, like statues or walls
before a flood that swept away the stones
of the thieves' abode, and ripped from unmarked graves
the bones of children, and men who had dared to think;
that whiteness shone, accusing, in the sun.
"What is this?", He cried out, in the rage of love.
The surviving jackals fled howling toward
their mistresses and secret bank accounts.
He rose again, and soared across the years.
"Where are those who tend their fellow man?",
He called, and saw the union leaders stand
before the rifles of the owners' law—
and saw their plump successors at the trough;
He saw young doctors tremble as they walked
from bed to bed, from child to dying child—
and saw the men with medical plates on their cars
tucking the faces and fannies of wealthy wives.
So few who dragged the cart; so many rode.
"Where are those who build, who toil in the field?"
He saw the peasants bend to harvest rice,
the assembly lines, the rising towers of glass,
the diggers, weavers, haulers, sailors and clerks—
and men in satin suits with linen hands,
impeccable and frozen, bloated like toads,
the blood of others bulging in their wallets.
So many dragged the cart; so few who rode.
"What is this?", He cried out, in the rage of love.
"Where are the children?", He wept. He saw them play
in streets and fields, shoving and laughing and quick -
and saw them huddled in alleys, staring at needles.
He saw them watch a falcon ride the air -
and saw them wander cursing and hungry in packs.
He saw them read and wonder. He saw them die
in concentration camps and tottering huts.
He saw them hide beneath a kitchen table
while men in shrouds made mockery of His cross,
inflaming the night with songs of their own praise.
He cried out, wordless, in the rage of love.
"Where are those I sent to follow me?",
He howled. "To lead my sheep through the desert years?"
He saw the vagrant few who followed close,
sharing the feast of the heart, sharing the bread—
and He saw the TV towers gleam in the sun,
beaming the pudgy smiles and greedy hands
into the desperate eyes of the innocent poor,
into their pockets, snatching the food from their plates.
Praises were sung as preachers smiled and nodded.
Prayers were chanted as people bowed and paid.
"Where is Love?", He cried. "Where in this
is Love?"
He heard the ministers rail at whores,
and saw the young girls creeping from their rooms.
He saw the ravaging faithful of many lands
sacrifice their brothers on pure altars,
precise hatred as cold and sharp as a blade.
"Forgive me, Father", He cried, "for they have sinned.
They know not what I do." He leaped upon
the cross of night, and felt the nail and thorn
of every star—and heard the voices hammer
a steady beat as His head sank to his chest.
"His is the only truth. Please call and give."
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The Moss Of His Skin by Anne Sexton
Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next
to their dead fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the
goddess of the tribes …
Harold Feldman, "Children of the Desert"
Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958
It was only important
to smile and hold still,
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not to talk.
The black room took us
like a cave or a mouth
or an indoor belly.
I held my breath
and daddy was there,
his thumbs, his fat skull,
his teeth, his hair growing
like a field or a shawl.
I lay by the moss
of his skin until
it grew strange. My sisters
will never know that I fall
out of myself and pretend
that Allah will not see
how I hold my daddy
like an old stone tree.
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In Place of a Curse by John Ciardi At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected, I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who, having been slugged no harder than anyone else, never got up again, neither to fight back, nor to linger their jaws in painful admiration. They who are wholly broken, and they in whom mercy is understanding, I shall embrace at once and lead to pillows in heaven. But they who are the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters with the extortions of a mock-helplessness I shall take last to love, and never wholly. Let them all into Heaven—I abolish Hell— but let it be read over them as they enter: "Beware the calculations of the meek, who gambled nothing, gave nothing, and could never receive enough."
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Carnelian V2 Iss4 October, 2002