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Carnelian
Four years ago, I started this adventure with the notion of building a magazine where the glitz and grits were in the poems; where it wouldn't matter how many other publications a poet's work had appeared in, or which prizes they'd managed to collect. The focus here would be on the poem, on the poem, on the poem. And it seems to be working out well. To fill up the first two issues, I surfed the net, inviting certain poets to submit their work. Now submissions arrive from every continent (more than 30 countries to date) and almost every state in the USA. .. So who's to thank for all this fruitfulness, all this outpouring of poetry? No, not me... it's the voices that will not keep silent, the hands that will not sit still. They've made sixteen issues (now seventeen) happen, and I think seventeen thousand would not be enough to give them their due. We should all live so long... The Editor
On the cover: Repose (Nonchaloire) [detail] by John Singer Sargent oil on canvas 1911
Grace our mailing list, or request a link exchange: carnelian@sidewalkpress.net
Volume 5 Issue 4 October 2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Draft Of An Early Morning (Poem) Clay Vaughan Norfolk, VA
Memory Like Mud Shara Faskowitz Bangor, ME
Guttered Seánan Forbes London, UK
Proprioception Stephen Clay Dearborn Mission, KS
Edges Of The Day Patricia Wellingham-Jones Tehama, CA
Voice Is Hoarse, Eyes Are Dry Lara Verocchi Pawtucket, RI
The Calling Jeremy O'Neal Kansas City, MO
Lightly I Dance (Fragments From A Hospital Bed) Ben Hamborg Duluth, MN
Shangri-La Beckons J. A. Clemson Birmingham, UK
Breakers Jessica Baron Creede, CO
Even Shakespeare Is In This Boat Taylor Graham Somerset, CA
Giants Mary Rae Weston, FL
Poetry All Stars
Venice: Lido Joseph Brodsky
Naming The Animals Anthony Hecht
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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 pseudonyms if you prefer to remain anonymous). No homework assignments or therapy exercises, thank you. Please query concerning poems longer than 100 lines, 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:
Draft Of An Early Morning (Poem) by Clay Vaughan Did you ever have to make up your mind? The Lovin' Spoonful echoing in my protracted adolescent head in the early proverbial morning dark before the jazzy radio of dawn. If not mixing my metaphors, I'm at least mixing musical genres, but I'm also making a point, I think but what? Attempting not to be about what I'm coming to grips with here what this younger girl of my recent dreams has left with me, having once again fed me reasons not to realize the beginning of an end that I have no right to anyway, a departed youth clawing at the edge or rounding a bend, that is of no longer living in a moment of infinite discovery something she is wanting to give me back again, and that of the happily perpetual contradiction that living in the moment provides
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Memory Like Mud by Shara Faskowitz
(Glosa On Coole Park)
Walking back amid the ghost of bones,
the memory of dance, of telephones
and words in unclear invitation
smudged with chance, of what we thought
might be and was or wasn't said,
the metaphors that might have laughed
or whispered lies instead, but always
floated hope in bubbles blown for prayer.
Today a season ends, another starts anew
with me still here, but there's no more of you.
I kept you warm, our promise in September
leaned against a chilly sky. Indian summer
passed and by and by the snow burnt ash
of what we might have been. Spring falls
again in drips and drops of syncopated rain,
our time sunk somewhere in the mud.
Now only poems remain.
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Guttered by Seánan Forbes His words reflect the pavement. The aftertastes of ink and metal flood his mouth. His cheek is pillowed in the spillage of his internal pen; he has been drunk, and leaking. His words, pooled and clotting, bear a foul sheen of oil, scraps of tossage from passing cars, the indifferent footprints of strangers and dogs. He blinks, tries to shut his eyes, to reclaim a recent, unremembered dream. His words flicker, stagnant in the faltering street light, and hiss slow deaths: stained with grit and usage, his children, which he had thought would speak the stars.
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Proprioception by Stephen Clay Dearborn
I'm aware of my tongue, Linus confessed to Charlie Brown.
And so, suddenly, was our hero, upon reading this particular panel in an old paperback—aware not only of his
tongue and its precise position in his mouth, but of the location at all given times of each of his components.
He became efficient, and was as effortlessly conscious of that as he was of, say, the way his left foot pointed
slightly outward when he sat at a table to write.
He took to walking for hours at a time, reveling in the interplay of his motions and his movings. Over time he
grew leaner—and more graceful, as though reducing his volume concentrated his sense of self-ownership.
Finally, he mastered the art of raising one eyebrow, and the world fell at his feet, trying to make him happy
enough to lower it, or astonished enough at some act of generosity to raise the other one too.
One night, he came out of a restaurant—having kept his eyebrow up long enough to knock twenty dollars off
his bill—to find a man with a gun waiting for him in the parking lot.
The man with the gun arched his own eyebrow. He smiled in a way that suggested total awareness of his
cheek muscles.
I know all about proprioception, he said: the sense of ownership of one's body. I have followed you, with
increasingly efficient and elegant stealth. I know that people will give you anything you want to gain one
flawlessly executed nod of approval.
Now it's my turn, he said, and demonstrated perfect control of his right index finger.
To the last, even in the spasmodic beats before the dark settled in, our hero was aware of his tongue.
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Edges Of The Day by Patricia Wellingham-Jones The edges of the day— those times when you sit under shadowy trees with a drink in your hand and the promise of life ahead. With the thought of surviving another clock-span of heat while you wonder if you can do it again. Dew rimes each leaf, a mourning dove awakens, the day's chores don't seem impossible. Then the sun curdles the day, turns it to lumps of heavy dough, every step outdoors slogs through molasses. At the other end of the clock the south breeze shivers the leaves and we linger outside until we can't see. Tomorrow's orange ball in the sky starts the cycle again.
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Voice Is Hoarse, Eyes Are Dry by Lara Verocchi Tired of this weight. Need a lift a facial a mistress. Need to be snuck away in the night under a man's coat. Need the first time thick whine trembling delivery. New meter, new rhyme. Jupiter humming in my pocket. Poseidon licking my feet. An evening spent braiding Pele's hair building tents indoor out of furniture and sheets building bustle and breath stealing laughter building joy felt for years after. I have tasted all that is insipid. Give me piquant a racy dish to lick clean. Bring the elixir and I will sip it.
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The Calling by Jeremy O'Neal Come to me when The din of a thousand crow’s cries Heralds the encroaching, endless night. In the depthless black of this lifeless womb, Whisper to me litanies of light. Lover, sear upon these sightless eyes The crimson of your life-spark’s red. Come to me when The color of my veins go white, Scream to me a reaver’s end. When a touch can lovingly undo Maven time’s predatory taint And unlatch the tomb of this mind Within its dreaming state of undeath, Come to me then, When your warmth turns tangible feast, Where the eastern glow is but a myth, Come to me, Come to me then Or lover forget
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Lightly I Dance (Fragments From A Hospital Bed) by Ben Hamborg
Lightly I
Dance
Through dust swirled streets,
The wind whispering in my ears.
Through green-pine I gaze up at
Blonde beauty above,
Wondering if she sees my
Dreams
Guesses the
Truth.
Red-rimed stars light
Black-sky visions;
They re there, but I can't see them for
Dancing.
I'm whisked past young watchers with futures in mind;
I let the wind guide
I'm gone.
Lost
In a mist I'm too tired to touch
It's so
quiet
I can t even hear myself
sigh;
I'm so
alone
I can't even tell you
goodbye .
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Shangri-La Beckons by J. A. Clemson A siren-song Lulling sweet candy-rock. So sucked, we roll gently And with tangible slipstream Fall softly, nude, down a knoll. Closer, momentum travels up— Hems billow in bonnet-flight. Tyrannous, ochreous roars and curses Of deathly silence Pound bosom-flesh painted on Ophelia's shrill, piercing wails. Diseased now, Electra And Oedipus point, staring— Grinning now, too, with swarthy wit Smashed upon us all, a boulder: Milking a red-hot bronzed face basking, Incestuous together in nature, To nurture and to feel so bold within, to allude and feign normality. Passed now the slope, Gently rolled level and to amending end— Under sphere of inborn tendency Oft-regarded branch, we lie clutching each other, and find buried under the silt of our chins clear water. Peering back in the murk, verdurous characters, ourselves in different burnish, so buck-toothed and clad, embracing, a cruel joke of mime, a mock of clasp. Dare speak, they don't— They crash instead through us And turn azure, with care to stay And cite, Leering more.
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Breakers by Jessica Baron A hand holds me up as I intone the ocean, bellow out my tortured song. The room is a cave, the friends foes, the tide rising. Liquid floods my mouth. My tongue, thick and alone, attempts sound absent sorrow, each word closer to broken. Below the surface, I cut myself open so those close can reach over the billows that separate us and pull out a morsel of hopeless, They dissect it, clarify it, and restore each piece to my torso, close my breastbone and moan. Sympathy from their mouths pushing me forward, I hold the microphone under the water, roar through my revolt, blow it to sea.
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Even Shakespeare Is In This Boat by Taylor Graham Again tonight, it's raining. The old dog gazes brownly at the stereo, his tail sets up a rhythmic thumping in time to Maxine Sullivan lilting "birds do sing, hey ding a ding," jazzing As You Like It for our evening. And the cat upsides herself in my lap, purring dreams of white doves in this watery season, as a dark rain sweeps the window, wiping out the visible world outside this ark, this for-an-instant timeless globe.
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Giants by Mary Rae It is, some say, a wasteful shame to live among the giants, dead as they are tall, to pour bright dreams into a silver sieve and watch them turn to powder as they fall. How tiring to always think of up, and strain to suck a thin and deadly air. How sad, inviting Mr.Keats to sup, and have him act as if you were not there. Still, colossal minds will not erase, their wakeful eyes tracing graceful lines of jeweled planets spun in endless space according to inevitable design. And I, for one, think it far less sweet to triumph small than fail at giants' feet.
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Venice: Lido by Joseph Brodsky A rusty Romanian tanker, wallowing out in the azure like a down-at-heel shoe discarded with sighing pleasure. The crew, stripped to their pants—womanizers and wankers— now that they're in the south, sun themselves by the anchors, without a coin in their pockets to do the city, which closely resembles a distant pretty postcard pinned to the sunset; across the water, flocking clouds, the smell of sweaty armpits, guitars idly plucking. Ah, the Mediterranean! After your voids, a humble limb craves a labyrinth, a topographic tangle! A camel-like superstructure, on its decaying basis, through binoculars scans the promenade's oasis. Only by biting the sand, though, all tattoos faded, can the eye of the needle truly be negotiated to land at some white table, with a swarthy duckling of local stock, under a floral garland, and listen as wide-splayed palms, above the bathhouse pennant, rustle their soiled banknotes, anticipating payment.
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Naming The Animals by Anthony Hecht Having commanded Adam to bestow Names upon all the creatures, God withdrew To empyrean palaces of blue That warm and windless morning long ago, And seemed to take no notice of the vexed Look on the young man's face as he took thought Of all the miracles the Lord had wrought, Now to be labelled, dubbed, yclept, indexed. Before an addled mind and puddled brow, The feathered nation and the finny prey Passed by; there went biped and quadruped. Adam looked forth with bottomless dismay Into the tragic eyes of his first cow. And shyly ventured, "Thou shalt be called 'Fred.'"
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Carnelian V5 Iss4 October, 2005