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CA R T I E R ST R E E T RE V I E W

OC T O B E R 2 0 1 0

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CA R T I E R ST R E E T RE V I E W OC T O B E R 2 0 1 0

Editorial group:
Joy Leftow, principal editor
Dubblex, assistant editor
Brad Eubanks, staff
Thomas Hubbard, staff
Mike Finley, layout

COVER: The Temple, by Ashley Christudason

In this issue
Book Review: New and Selected Poems by John Yamrus...........................5
Phone interview with John Yamrus by Joy Leftow....................................11
Slow Lurches..............................................................................................15
Study in Synecdoche..................................................................................16
At Your Kitchen Table................................................................................17
To The State Electrical Worker Killed…
by Robert Masterson, spotlight poet of the month.....................................18
Hello! Hiroshima? Hello?
(Los Alamos calling)..................................................................................19
Book Review of Robert Masterson’s Artificial Rats and Electric Cats......20
The Aqua Sky, by Orna Ben-Shoshan
October's spotlight artist.............................................................................23
Mr. Black ................................................................................................24
Plastic Coyote .......................................................................................26
Sally Said ...................................................................................................27
A Precarious Blend ...................................................................................29
Blue Balcony, by Orna Ben-Shoshan.........................................................30
With Mermaid, by Henry Avignon ............................................................31

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The Excess Road .......................................................................................32
To the Kingdom of Aries, by Ashley Christudason....................................36
midnight music...........................................................................................38
The Prophets Dance by Orna Ben-Shoshan...............................................39
Clapham Junction.......................................................................................40
Useless........................................................................................................42
High Drifting Alarm...................................................................................43
Wake up on your own.................................................................................46
You Should Grow a Moustache..................................................................47
Time is Running Out, by Christopher Woods............................................49
We all die ...................................................................................................51
Broken Concrete, Lilacs, Thunder..............................................................53
Global Warming..........................................................................................54
Street Lamp and Red Leaves by Christopher Woods.................................55
Todd Moore’s latest collection, Reviewed by John Yamrus.......................56
Writers’ Guidelines.....................................................................................58
Old Friends.................................................................................................59
Ex-husband in Tennessee............................................................................61
The Rose, a video.......................................................................................62
another woman’s blog.................................................................................63
Better, by Frances Raven............................................................................64
Diane Bowen's eclectic art..........................................................................66
What the Devil will say in Spring: ............................................................67
Mumbai – Marine Drive.............................................................................68
from saxophone this breath.........................................................................69
When I Say I'm Tired of Writing................................................................71
He would have............................................................................................74
Mr. Antolini, #2..........................................................................................75
Groupthink..................................................................................................77
A Roman Laborer Counsels His Son..........................................................78
Life is too short for small talk....................................................................79

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"8 x11 Sheet"..............................................................................................81
The Measly Subtraction..............................................................................82
The Traveling Show....................................................................................83
Facebook.....................................................................................................84
Killing the Cat............................................................................................85
The Eleventh House, by Orna Ben-Shoshan..............................................86
Interview with spotlight artist Orna Ben-Shoshan
by Thomas Hubbard...................................................................................87
I’ll weep like Karamchedu!
Essay by Narender Bedide..........................................................................91
The Golden Navigator, by Orna Ben-Shoshan.........................................101
Dream Casting..........................................................................................102
Solitary Whiskey Tonight.........................................................................103

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Book Review: New and Selected Poems by John Yamrus
Reviewed by Joy Leftow

John Yamrus’ poetry is very humorous. Not expecting that I was caught by
surprise. While reading his book, New And Selected Poems published by
Lummox Press, I found myself laughing out loud and laughing so loud that
people nearby turned to look at me. Yamrus laughs at himself and us, the main
theme being, we’re all in this together. He uses his humor as a tool to wipe away
the artificial boundaries between us. He laughs if his muse is around or not
around and will sit and write even if his muse is late. The trick of it is ~ if you
want to be a writer you have to write. There’s no way around it.

the trick of it is
to be there
waiting
at the typewriter
when it happens.

and when it does,


if you
don’t write it down
and show it to someone

then
shame on you.

Yamrus’ poetry is about the little everyday things that take us through a normal
day, like where the dog is sitting and what he’s thinking while taking a dump or
when he’s annoyed at his hemorrhoids.

This time it’s hemorrhoids,


And they’ve been
Bleeding since Sunday

The doctor
Want me to have
Surgery,
But I’ve been
Putting it off

needless to say,
It’s a real

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Pain in the ass.

Poetry about hemorrhoids, hmm… Reminds me of when a neighbor bought my


book and later when she met me on the elevator, said, “I expected to read
beautiful lines about nature and the sky and instead I read all about your personal
problems.” So I guess that makes Yamrus and me poetry brethren.

How can any writer not examine himself? In my book that’s one of the
prerequisites of being a writer, like it is for a therapist or social worker. If you
don’t know your self how can you write about others with knowledge and
insight?

Aside from Yamrus' annoyance about people who 'wanna be writers' without
writing, there is his accompanying frustration with people who compare him to
Bukowski. In the poem, Bukowski's property, Yamrus writes:

this poem
isn't mine...
nothing
I do
or think
or write
is mine
it's all filtered down
through you
Mr. Bukowski...

and I wish
you'd
come here
and
take it
back.

Yamrus knows he's not Bukowski and doesn't want to be, or try to be. He can't
help being compared because he's taken a style and made it his own. There are
more poems too that deal with this poignant issue. In the poem, “Did I ever tell
you” ...

about the time


Linda said i was good
but that i'd never be
Bukowski? ...

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She said that i was good,
but i would never be great ...
because I wasn't mad
Bukowski (she said) was mad...
and he was
great.
i wrote back
saying that she was right...
Bukowski IS mad
and Bukowski IS great,
but if one of the qualifications
for being mad
and being great
was having to put up with the likes of her,

then i'd be more than happy


to settle for what i am
and what i'm
going to be.

that was 30 years ago,


and do you know what?

i'm still not mad


and i'm still not
great...

but, every now and then,


when the moon's just right
i'm not
half bad.

Now that's funny and reaches out to everyone. We all want to be accepted for
who we are without being judged.

In the poem “now that Bukowski’s dead,” Yamrus takes this further to sum up
the aftermath for where we’re all headed, our final destination as the universe
continues through its revolutions.

now,
they’ll pick his bones
like they did
with all the others

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and look for reasons
where there were
none…

and explanations
where there are
none…

where (more often


than not) there’s just
some slob
who lived his life
and wrote
and loved
and slept
and ate
and died

there’s
no mystery at all..

really…

just
ask
Bukowski.

On a recent Youtube video, Yamrus reads a recent poem about a person who
writes to him and asks him to write without discussing poetry or poets. This
poem is also in the book, “Dear John:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BpZu1scma8

In Yamrus’ poem he responds to his questioner:

i’m afraid i AM a writer,


and the only subject matter I have
is me. …

you can also


feel confident of finding poems
that talk about picking my nose,
going to the fridge for a beer
and watching my dog take a dump

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Well yes, what else does a writer have to contend with that has meaning other
than our-selves, our reflections on our interactions and the stories in our heads.

Yamrus watches himself watching the world and reports his view, a view made
seeable and more agreeable by the threads of humor running through. By the
same token, many academics may not like Yamrus’ style poetry because his
deviation from what we’ve been taught “real poetry” is and I really relate to that.

When I decided to take some non-matriculated poetry classes in the graduate


department at CCNY, the professor in charge (now deceased and even then a
certifiable alcoholic) never responded to my application. I was planning a
sabbatical and needed to know so I left several messages. Finally after several
weeks I got him on the phone.

“I have my concerns,” he said authoritatively but never clarified what they were.
What he did say was that I couldn’t take classes. Usually non-matriculated
students are accepted. I got the name of the Creative Writing Chairman and
spoke to him. He asked me to send a folder containing fiction, poetry, academic
writings, articles, literature reviews, brochures, and more. I did. The folder had
about a hundred pages all together. Three more of these overnight folders were
all “lost” and I hand delivered one with no response. Finally I made an entirely
new application for matriculation and sent ten pages of a story under my married
name, Lambert and was accepted within a week. Prejudice may have been at
work on several levels since my last name is clearly Jewish and when I used an
Anglo name with the same writing sample I was accepted quickly. Otherwise
someone should’ve recognized the story. I got my 2nd masters degree there only
because my options were limited in what I could pay and CCNY is still the
cheapest deal in town. I admit I left out the poetry and I also admit some people
hate my poetry, and in that way my work is similar to John Yamrus’.

I guess that’s why Yamrus’ poem stories about what people say about his poetry
really hit home after my experiences.

Yamrus also confronts his inner conflicts with humor. In dear anita;

The most recent poem


you sent
Is one of the best things
you’ve ever written

it’s got heart and soul,


intelligence,
warmth and wit

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it’s got
everything
my poetry seems to lack

please
don’t write to me again

you’ve done it so
much better than me

I don’t need
The competition
If you write to me again
i’ll refuse to open your letter

From here on in
i’m only going to read
Writers who have been dead
40 years or more

at least with them


i’ll have a
fighting chance.

The poems may appear very simple but that’s the trick. Many may say, “Oh I can
write like that,” but they don’t. Someone who is an expert at doing something
always makes it look easy to do but that doesn’t mean it is easy. His early
influences are Bukowski, who wrote narrative poetry also and Gerald Locklin
who also used self-effacement effectively. Yamrus may have been influenced but
he isn’t trying to be anyone else in his poetry. He takes risks, exposing himself
and the reader and that’s what it’s all about.

NEW AND SELECTED POEMS is John Yamrus' 18th book. He has now
published nearly 1,100 poems in magazines around the world and selections of
his poems have been translated into several languages including Spanish,
Swedish, Italian, French, Japanese and most recently Romanian. His newest
book is available on amazon.com.

Contact Yamrus c/o his publisher, Lummox Press...e-mailing them at:


poetraindog@gmail.com

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Phone interview with John Yamrus by Joy Leftow
After reading Yamrus latest poetry book New and Selected Poems, I asked to
interview him and he agreed. I wanted to interview him to understand how he
came to write poetry that makes me laugh out loud, as does much of his work.

CSR: How long have you been writing?


JY: This is actually my 40th year doing this. It’s hard to imagine that I’m now
into my 18th published book, with nearly 1,100 poems published in magazines.

CSR: How old were you when you were first published?
JY: I was 19 when my first chapbook came out. Young and stupid. Now, I guess
I’m just stupid.

CSR: Oh really? Are there any left?...


JY: (jumping in fast) Don’t even think about it! The copies I have left are boxed
up somewhere and they’re gonna stay there. I can’t say that I’m ashamed of my
early work. I mean, it must have been considered good enough for someone to
want to publish it, but I’m in such a different place these days. A completely
different writer from what I was back then. I’m ashamed of my early writing. It
was so pretentious. I’d guess it wasn’t until I was in my late 40s that I actually
started to hit my stride and know what I was doing with the poems. I guess it’s
true, what they say…you know…walking on water wasn’t built in a day.

CSR: How did you come to use humor as a device in your poetry?
JY: It didn’t start out like that. At first I was writing the same straight-faced
somber quiet poetry that most poets write. I wasn’t happy with it and felt
unsatisfied with my work, like something was missing. The humor part of it
comes naturally to me, and it’s an honest open way for me to communicate. It’s
also more interesting. I mean, god, there’s just way too many so-called writers
out there who take themselves and their poems way too seriously.

CSR: What’s the one thing you want people to know about your book?
JY: My poetry is real. There’s no unicorns in it. No dappled daisies…nothing
but blood and guts and bone. And with the humor added to it, I can make the
same points as I could in the serious stuff, but it was different. Easier to take. I
think the real breakthrough for me was when I figured out how to cross that gap
that exists between the writer and the reader…once I figured out how to make
THEM feel they were part of the poem, it was pretty easy after that.

CSR: Do you have a regimen you follow?


JY: I do. It’s not brain surgery. People ask me all the time how do you get into
this…publishing poetry…being in the magazines. I tell them it’s not a big deal

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and it’s not a mystery. The only secret to the whole thing is you’ve got to do it
every day. Do SOMETHING. Write a poem. Write a letter. Submit something
somewhere. Just DO something. That’s the whole secret to the thing. There!
You now owe me a million dollars.

CSR: I say the same thing on my blog –I love to write when the muse strikes
and if she doesn't strike, I write anyway and then, invariably, my muse joins
me.

JY: The important thing is writing. A writer writes. But, I’m not a writer. And
I’m certainly not a poet. I think if I were to put a label on myself I’d have to call
myself a song and dance man. Or a tight-rope walker.

CSR: Is your writing political?


JY: It depends on what you mean by political.

CSR: For me political means social commentary.


JY: That’s all my poetry is, is social commentary, beginning with myself as a
subject.

CSR: Yes like you say in your poem – the only subject matter you have is
you, because everything you see is filtered through who you are.

JY: Absolutely, and this is also where I made the breakthrough – once I figured
out that I’m the only subject I have…and once I figured out a way to make that
subject relatable, then I was home free. And hell, if I could make someone laugh
along the way? It doesn’t get any better than that.

CSR: Would you choose one poem from your book NEW AND SELECTED
POEMS and riff about it?

JR: Normally I hate doing this and hate especially going into an explanation and
introduction that will be longer than the poem. I've always felt that if you've got
to explain it, or set it up, then the poem's a failure. But in this case, since I'm
having such a good time with this interview, I'll make an exception and make my
explanation longer than the poem itself. Here's the poem:

after work

i come home,
walk into the kitchen
and throw my wallet
on the counter.

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then my pens,
my cards
and finally
my keys,
which
slide along the counter,
spin,
do a little dance
and finally
come to a stop.

some day

so will
i.

The poem (for me) kinda illustrates what I was talking about...making a
connection with the reader. Crossing over to their side of the street. This is an
example of one of those poems that clicked for me. I started out, like everyone
else, trying to write the great poem. The one, memorable poem. And it took me
years and years to learn that the great, big, memorable poem doesn't exist
anymore. Once I figured that out, that's when I switched gears and decided that I
was going to take my entire body of work and transform it into that great, big,
memorable poem. Kinda like how one drop of water doesn't really mean much,
but an ocean's a powerful thing.

Well, this poem just happened just the way it was written, but the kicker...the
part that takes it (in my mind, at least) from prose to poetry, is the illumination at
the end, where the speaker has that aha! moment where he puts it all together.
Out of a pretty mundane moment, a bit of a universal truth emerges, something
that we all sooner or later figure out. That's when I feel I'm doing my job with
my poems...when I'm keeping it small. Keeping it real. You'll never find any
dappled daisies or unicorns or babbling brooks in my poems. You'll find
everyday events that we can all relate to. Crossing the street onto the reader's
side. It was such a simple concept...but it took me 20 years to figure it out.

CSR: Wow – I’m so impressed but what I’m most impressed with and this is
what I want CSR readers to know – what I’m most impressed with -is how
much time I spent laughing out loud when I read the book. I laughed
reading on the train, in doctor’s offices and at home. Laughing is good for
the soul and healing. This book did it for me. Thanks much John. I had a
great time doing this interview. Any other words for CSR?

JY: Only a thanks to CSR for making it enjoyable, no pun intended. Oh, and I

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think we forgot to mention the name of my new book. It’s NEW AND
SELECTED POEMS. It’s available on Amazon. Christmas is coming. I’m
kinda prejudiced, but I really do think it’d make a great gift for any of the
readers in your life. There! That’s my shameless plug and I’m sticking to it!
I’ve always made it a point to push for sales on my books. I’ve always felt that I
owed it to those publishers who are crazy enough to shell out their hard-earned
money to put my stupid poems in print. So, we’re back to stupid again. I guess
that’s where I started and it’s as good a place as any to end.

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Slow Lurches
She watched him grow brutish when his outside affairs
ended. No other women. No other anger.

There hadn't been held hands in years,


and when she curtailed these ugly sparks of others,
there never would be.

Somehow, she has outlasted his eyes and thoughts.


In the mood, his jaw dangles loose, hyena for a nip,
and he grunts much, radish-nosed from drink.
The two of them are again monogamous and silver,
girding their vows like new discovered organs—

In the mood, he is soon spanking at her bullish rump,


chuckling for groped breasts, and shortly after,
as if a scab unsheeted by the thumbnail,
there is but a tender patch where once he knew the rough.

They have intermingled their adoration with resentment,


the only power either knows will keep the other.
Somehow, each year outlives the previous.
There is hard work in this, and no sparkle or love tinsel;
these are not pleased people, but calm.

~ Ray Succre

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son. He has
been published in Aesthetica, BlazeVOX, and Pank, as well as in numerous others
across as many countries. His novels Tatterdemalion (2008) and Amphisbaena (2009),
both through Cauliay, are widely available in print. A third novel, A Fine Young Day, is
forthcoming in Summer 2010. He tries hard.

http://raysuccre.blogspot.com

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Study in Synecdoche
Outside,
a tee-shirt leans beneath a hood of a Mustang,
an old gingham dress bends patiently
to pick up the rolled newspaper.
Nearby a lawnmower cuts its straight rows of grass.
Loose sounding wheels skid to a stop on the street.
Boots disappear around the sides of houses,
return with metal cans.
Slowly mailboxes fill with letters
to be unfilled in the night.

Inside,
slippers pad from stove to counter to table.
Orange juice flows from the carton spout.
The chicken breast defrosts near the toaster.
Butter melts, water boils.
Water runs in the bathroom—shrill and busily.
A hand opens a bedroom door.
For a moment the hallway is reminded of music.
Later, the music will disappear
like a good pair of socks.

~ David Breitkopf

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At Your Kitchen Table
Last night you said friendship
has its own meaning, its own rhythm.
You reached across the kitchen table,
with all its piles of papers and books,
and stroked my hair to remind me of our ages
and you laughed as if to say
(even as we averted our eyes)
our love was something that occurred years ago
and that now we were simply embellishing the facts.

~ David Breitkopf

David Breitkopf has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers for many years,
most recently with the American Banker. He also teaches tennis, and in the 1990s
performed professionally as a standup comic—filling out his eclectic background.
His literary works have been published in Poetry Miscellany, Sequoya Review,
Manhattan Literary Review, and the anthology “Tokens: Contemporary Poetry for the
Subway.”
dbrightcough@nyc.rr.com

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To The State Electrical Worker Killed …
by Robert Masterson, spotlight poet of the month
To the state electrical worker killed while working on a giant steel pylon
supporting the massive power lines spanning the Wei He River north of Xi’an,
Shaanxi Province, the People’s Republic of China, in the fall of 1985.

I still now as I did then wonder


what it must have looked like to you incandescent,
eyeballs ribboned with blue fire
and below you spreading all horizon,
the city slowly pulsed, hot and dusty for this late in the year,
everyone says so.

Who knows, who will ever know what caused your fatal spark,
the brilliant arc that clenched you tight, convulsed in one long spasm when
everything inside you jammed up with electricity rampant and when
you began to smolder, I wondered
if you even noticed you were on fire.

The river bridge was jammed both ways,


typical post-revolutionary rush hour
and a quarter of a million people stopped their bicycles
and put one leg on the pavement so they could safely stare up goggle-eyed
and open-mouthed at something different,
at a man two hundred feet in the air who twitched
and blackened and was never coming down.

The wrongness of this all is huge,


and still I consider what it must seem
To you there among the wires thrumming harsh, the river silver
and thin along the wide sandy bottom,
just diesel smoke from idle engines like mist in a scroll painting
One thousand years old, this same river and this same city,
now hanging in a temple in
the mountains far to the west.

~ Robert Masterson

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Originally published by Sotto Voce (2009).

Hello! Hiroshima? Hello?


(Los Alamos calling)

This city of blisters


is so much like my home town
except:
it always rains;
the girls on the street will cry into the arms of the boys
who look in different directions;
everyone speaks a different language
even when the meaning means the same things
because it's their way of listening for something different;
the fish in the restaurants is always very fresh
if not actually alive;
these trees are palm trees, though still ever green, and
so is the moss smearing itself across all the concrete walls.

Except for all these few things,


it's exactly the same as my home town
(also, the keloid scars on the back of the neck of the man on the stret car that
goes by the river that goes past the house where I live when I live there).

It's a double sunrise day in my hometown and


the mist or the fog or the smoke or whatever it is
comes out of the mountains and
threads itself through the ghosts of trees on its way to lower ground.

~ Robert Masterson

Robert Masterson is a writer/teacher living in Westchester County, New York. He is


author of Artificial Rats & Electric Cats (Camber Press, NY, 2008) and Trial by Water
(Dog Running Wild Press, NM, 1982). Masterson works as a professor/instructor of
English, writing, and film for such institutions as The University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, and The Harwood Institute, also in Albuquerque. Masterson spent most of
his childhood and graduated from high school in Los Alamos. Contact him at:

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rm505@aol.com

Book Review of Robert Masterson’s Artificial Rats and


Electric Cats
Review by David Breitkopf

Like many Westerners, China has been and remains an inscrutable country to
me. From its language, culture and long history, there’s too much of everything.
To get your mind around it is like trying to photograph the entire Great Wall with
one roll of film.
Robert Masterson’s memoir “Artificial Rats and Electric Cats” (Camber Press,
Inc., 2008), provides a roll of unusual snap shots from his time as a student there
when the communist country was in its early stages of economic liberalization,
and just prior to The Tiananmen Square Massacre, which looms at the book’s
margins.
Despite its subtitle, Communications from Transitional China, 1985-1986, the
stories/essays and poems in the book dwell on the miscommunications between
Westerners and Chinese, the lacunae that prevent any true communion between
East and West.
Masterson and his friends know just enough Chinese to get by and describe if
not quite fathom some of the country’s enigmatic customs. The struggle and
yearning of Chinese and Westerners to cross these impasses provide humor and
poignancy. At a nightclub where the band might follow “The Blue Danube
Waltz” with “a surreal version of Madonna's forbidden "Like a Virgin,” a
number of street toughs attempt to flirt in English with some Western girls. One
of them begins, "Hello…I am a boy."
"Hello," I answer, verbally interposing myself between the girls and our new
friend. "I am a boy, too."
"We are boys."
"We sure are. That's true. We are boys."
There we pause to take drags from cigarettes and to drink from green bottles.
"Hmm...I am…a table."
"Yes. Table. Absolutely. You are a table."
Officially, China considered western culture degenerate, and citizens could be
severely punished, even put to death for conduct or activities that were deemed

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Western such as “convulsive dancing.”
Yet the Chinese we meet in these pages are willing to take risks to experience
Western culture: a Chinese woman prisoner catches the narrator’s eye for a
moment as she is led away in a truck to her execution. The placard around her
neck states that her crimes were “excessive fascination with foreign videos, and
prostitution.” She appears to be in a drugged stupor, but when she sees the
narrator, she registers surprise.
“It was if somewhere still inside her some part of herself was still able to
exclaim, "Oh, look! A foreigner.”
Westerners, though, don’t appear to register the same surprise or yearning in
these chance encounters. The narrator “felt an urge to wave,” to the condemned
woman “to move my arm and my hand together in a synchronized and friendly
gesture,” but the urge was neither organic nor spontaneous, but mechanical and
too late.
In another story two foreigners encounter a woman selling ice cream. They opt
for “Face ice cream,” which most closely approximated their Western tastes.
The vendor is thrilled to have a chance to speak to them.
“I speak English,” she declares. But the two women foreigners dismiss the
vendor’s yearning, “Terrific…May we have the ice cream?”
Even in instances where Westerners initiate the rapprochement, the gap yawns.
The narrator and his friend attempt to advise a Chinese colleague who is having
difficulty impregnating his wife. The 22-hour trip back and forth from job to
home over the weekends leaves him exhausted. The foreigners suggest sleeping
on the train and having sex with his wife during the day. The man laughs
uproariously over such ludicrous ideas.
The book’s title comes from one of the longer pieces, which deals with a vermin
quota rule that required students to kill 6 rats per week, and produce 6 rat-tails as
proof. In a solution worthy of Philip K. Dick, students invent the dian mao, or
electric cat, a crude trap made of exposed wire. When a rat steps on the dian
mao, it explodes. But “since only the tail was required to pass inspection, the
subsequent mess was considered worth the extra work on clean-up days.”
Masterson’s writing can be concise, hard-edged, and funny. It also can veer to a
more florid, Beat style. It didn’t surprise me to find in his bio that he had an
MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in
Boulder, Colorado.
The book includes near the end a short news article written by a reporter for the
Miami Herald describing Masterson’s run-in with a number of Chinese who
severely beat him over a dispute following a bicycle accident. Masterson doesn’t

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write directly about the incident, nor explain why he doesn’t.
He notes in a postscript how much China has changed in the 20 years since he
was there, how it has become a more industrial and modern nation. Masterson
daydreams about leading a field trip of students back to the country to point out
some of his memorable snap shots that include things he couldn’t squeeze into
the main book such as “a naked Chinese boy asleep” on the back of a water
buffalo standing in paddy of rice shoots.
Masterson admits the meaning of his China experiences continues to elude him. I
suspect a new field trip would provide new snap shots and equally new
miscommunications.

David Breitkopf has been a reporter and editor of daily newspapers for many years. His
literary works have been published in Poetry Miscellany, Sequoya Review, Manhattan
Literary Review, the anthology “Tokens: Contemporary Poetry for the Subway,” and
most recently in the online magazine, “The Cynic.”

22
The Aqua Sky, by Orna Ben-Shoshan
October's spotlight artist

23
Mr. Black
I often think of two driveways
That once wrapped around a small house
A garage on the right side
An old rusted boat of a Buick Century parked just before it
1975 most likely, ranch green
And I think how at one point they broke it at the bend
Dug a hole, and filled it with a swimming pole
Reduced the man, old Mr. Black had become
Skin stretched tight over bones, breathing heavy, mechanical assisted by tubes
and tanks
From whole house, to a room with medical equipment, bed, T.V.

I never saw old mister black drive that boat


But I wonder now if he had driven that boat
Straight through the first and second garage doors
Run over the children’s and grandchildren’s bikes
The woodworking set he could not use any more because of his trembling hands
Ignoring the fact that at the curve of his driveway
A hole was dug, and a pool was placed
I can see old mister black drive that boat
How beautiful the scraping and crunching metallic noises
The splash of three elephants
Crossing the blue chlorine Nile
Victorious re-emerging of the wet rusted steel
Solve the curiosity of young men and cars crashing
The part of the movie where I would shake my head in approval
And whisper a cheer, “Yesssss” to the heroic display
Fence would bow down before the honorable weight of steel walled radial tires
Foreign car would be plowed onto the front lawn
Old Mr. Black would peel out in that old Buick Century
Like a bat of hell
The breathing tubes would fall to the sides and snap from the pressure
A distinctive laugh would be heard echoing off of the quiet rancher homes
Drive into the sunset, or as long as he could without help

24
Growing old can be painful
Not as painful as your own flesh and blood
Caretakers, slave drivers, architects, interior designers
Very careful they are to weed out the junk
Not the boxes of their old moldy clothes or baby toys
Pulled out of paid storage
More like the vintage subscriptions to Saucy Movie Tales and classic rusty cars.
Just drive Mr. Black
Don’t look back.

~ Mathew Vincent

25
Plastic Coyote
Scary son of a bitch
Back arched ready to pounce
Teeth blinding like headlights at night
Ears back preparing for flight

But he’s not advancing any further


Legs cut at the calves
Pole shoved into abdomen
Not fooling anyone
At least not for more than a second

The mean geese still keep their distance in respect


Funny they find the former fierce predator
Gossip among themselves
Never out loud or to his face

Wind kicks up and leaves dance in circles


Starts to rock like a rocking-horse on springs
Scary as he’ll ever be
Geese cautiously watch the stationary beast
Whisper behind his back
Admire from a nearer distance.

~ Matthew Vincent

Matthew Vincent was born and currently resides in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He has
been actively writing poetry and music for over ten years.
matthewvincent@comcast.net

26
Sally Said
Sally said that my knee bones stick out too far so that means I’m chicken footed.
She also said my family is dirt poor cause we got plastic wrap in the windows
instead of glass but momma said that plastic wrap costs more than glass so we
actually got more money and we change the plastic a lot and people with glass
only change it when it is broke. Sally said we’re friends but only sometimes
when nobody’s watching cause her mother sez that my momma’s trash cause
she’s got loads of kids but no husband and no money. And Sally’s mother said I
wouldn’t be no better ‘cause the apple don’t fall too far from the tree and Sally
don’t need no friends from that side of the track. Sally said she likes me anyway
but she hates my sister ‘cause my sister picks her nose and doesn’t wipe it with a
tissue when she sneezes. She also said my sister’s always got a scab on her knee
and it’s always bleedy because she picks that too and eats it but I never noticed.

Sally always asks me about my dad but I don’t know. When I ask momma she
sez he died in a war in England before I was born but Sally said that’s not true
‘cause her mother said there ain’t been no wars in England and my brother and
sister are younger than me. My momma said Sally’s mother don’t know what
she’s talking about ‘cause she ain’t worked a day in her life.

Momma told me I don’t need a friend like Sally and I should stick with my
brothers and sisters ‘cause they’re the only ones I can count on in the end and
she heard Sally’s mother was making a stink at the school ‘cause people like us
was moving into the neighborhood. I told Momma ‘bout Maria’s nose always
running and her knee always bleeding but she said she never noticed it neither.

I like Sally even though momma told me not to ‘cause she’s the only one at
school who lets me borrow her pencil and she sez that even though I’m chicken-
footed I got nice hair ‘cause it’s blond. She said if I wash it more often it might
be blonder but momma said that’s a load of crap and Sally’s just jealous ‘cause
she’s got mousy brown hair and her eyes are too close together. Momma said
that Sally’s mother is prejudiced against us cause our clothes are old and one day
Sally’d be just like her and I don’t need no friends if they’re gonna have their
noses up in the air.

Sally said she saw Maria kissing some fat boy behind the school and that Maria’s

27
probably pregnant because of it but she said her mother said my momma
wouldn’t even notice ‘cause she’s already got so many kids and they’d all
probably become tramps like her. Sally’s mother said my momma’s ignorant
‘cause she’s got holes in her shoes and does other people’s laundry but don’t do
her own.

One day I told Sally we probably shouldn’t be friends no more since her mother
don’t like my momma and my momma don’t like her mother but Sally said it
was okay because she didn’t mind. Sally said she felt sorry for me because her
mother told her people like me never get anywhere ‘cause even if I’m smart it
costs money to get an education and money is something that people like me just
don’t got. Sally said maybe if I washed my hair her brother would marry me but
her mother said she didn’t raise her son to marry trash and besides people like
me ain’t for marrying. Sally said she still thinks I got a chance but Maria don’t
‘cause of her knee and her nose and ‘cause of the fat boy and all. Momma said
it’s okay ‘cause you can’t depend on nobody anyway and Maria can’t get
pregnant from kissing.

~ Regina Walker

Regina Walker is a writer and psychotherapist in NYC. She can be reached at


cswcasac@aol.com.

28
A Precarious Blend

As my father sits smoking his pipe-


I watch the tendrils curl upward.
I smell the rich tobacco
That reminds me of North Carolina-
Momma’s home state.

He stares into space-


And takes a long draw-
A question mark-
Floats in my direction
Like an apparition.

What will we do now-


Who will take care of us-
Now that Momma is gone?
Who is this man-
That I call Daddy?

The vapor dissipates-


I stare into space, too-
I envision a foggy future-
While he remembers-
A luminous past.

We both have lost something-


But will we find each other?
Another question mark-
Goes up in smoke.

~ Beatrice M. Hogg

Beatrice M. Hogg grew up in western Pennsylvania. Her illiterate coal miner father
would have considered her MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles
to be a major waste of time and money.

29
Blue Balcony, by Orna Ben-Shoshan

30
With Mermaid, by Henry Avignon

Henry Avignon is a photographer and writer in Rochester, New York. In March Howling
Dog Press will release his first dual collection of poetry and photography, Dirty Poem,.
Selections of Henry's poetry can be found in the April issue of Ygdrasil.

31
henryavignon@gmail.com

The Excess Road


There's just one task left to complete. Sneaking through the scattered
dawn, up through the crisscrossing cement walkways of the hilltop campus, I
make my way to Donner Hall. Bright fragrances from the nearby apple orchard
billow over me as I reach my destination. The brick dormitory glows orange, a
smoldering fuse in the half-light.
I hadn't expected anyone to be here, but the hope that Justin was wrong
and that I could grab one last glance at her secretly nestled in the recesses of my
mind and pushed me here at this ungodly hour. My footsteps echo. The building
no longer has a pulse. All the underclassmen have fled home. The bare metal
skeletons of single beds lean against watery gray ash walls. Lined up near the
frames are the wooden bones left over from broken bunk beds. Wood and metal
lined alongside the black trash garbage bags. Shortly even these remnants will be
gone.
Elyssa’s door is open like so many times before but she is not there to
wave me in with a delicate hand or wink with a glint in her eyes. I gaze in to see
nothing but memories. Only ghosts remain. An apparition of her reclining on a
figment of a bed resolves in empty space. I take a deep breath as I brace against
the doorframe to stop from buckling over. As soon as her face seems real, the
vision disappears as if made of dust rolling away in a gust of Virginia air. No
specters of the past linger in the silence. Her flesh escaped me, her love escaped
me, and she left this place like everyone else dear to me.
Only the faculty are left on campus preparing for graduation and finishing
their paperwork. Also, I surmise, trying to cover up the details of the event that
smeared the school’s reputation this year. They’re not real . They exist in
another dimension, a higher dimension, right beside the netherworld I occupy.
The only thing I want now is to leave and not run into anyone.
I retrace my steps, like I'd done so many times before, the concrete
sidewalks bordered by Kentucky Bluegrass buzz and the excitement of hungry
black gnats. The day break floats in a steam bath of morning air. There is no
depth to the sky as the sun casts a wide net creeping up in the east. The
Appalachian piedmonts are no longer a barrier to the morning as dense waves of

32
sunlight begin to burn away the haze. The unrelenting waves are not easy to
wade through still being half-drunk, half-asleep and out of breath from scorching
my lungs with two packs of cigarettes a day. As I shuffle along, visions of
Elyssa in an alabaster sundress twirl in front of me. The daydream knits a veil
over my focus and in what seems like seconds I have crossed the entire campus.
I ache. My broken tooth throbs.
The metal fire proof side door to my dorm is unlocked. Everything is
unlocked but there is nothing to steal anyway and for the first time in weeks I
have my card key on me but it doesn’t matter. I yank on the handle and cool air
floods me as I enter. The metal fire door slams shut and seals as an echo bounces
up the stairwell and stays around for a few unnatural seconds longer than it
should. Things are louder when there is nothing around.
My calves quake as I strain to push my way up. The grated steel tips of
the stairs clack like tap shoes as I step on them. A deep sigh descends down
upon me from the second story landing. My landing. I know that sigh. It’s Jack.
My ever diligent RA. The last person I want to see. Jack’s narrow face, fixed
bird eyes as serious as a fire and brimstone preacher’s, and erect posture remind
me of my father when I was a little boy and he'd kneel down, grab my shoulders,
squeeze a little too hard and say, “You must clean the mess you make.” My
father didn't practice as he preached. He left lots of big messes but Jack cleaned
up messes. It was his specialty.
Hobbling up the last few flights, I lift my head up to stare him down.
Dressed in his Sunday best, he glares at me, through me, with his arms across his
sunken chest. He sighs again. I was numb but now I’m annoyed. Pity pisses me
off and I feel my ears getting hot.
“Joaquin, remember what I told you. Help is available. You’re a good
guy who got caught up in things out of your control. We all did,” Jack says.
“Control is an illusion. We never had control. You must've missed that
philosophy class Jack,”
With my last burst of energy, I bound up the last two stairs.
“I don’t believe that. You don’t believe that. We have control over our
choices,”
“Also illusion.”

33
“No, God gave man freewill, the ability to choose,” Jack said.
“I'm not going to get into the freewill thing now. It's not the time. Why
are you even up?” I ask.
“I always get up at this time. If you ever happened to rise at a reasonable
hour you might know … I’m sorry. You’re right. This isn't the time or place.”
he said slightly bowing his head.
“How very adult of you,” I nodded.
“I just wanted to tell you again you're a good person with tons a' talent. I
heard you and George play. You got a lot going. Don’t let it slip away,” he said
rushing forth to hug me. He smells like mint toothpaste and I probably smell
like a seedy bar to him.
“Thank you Jack. Goodbye.”
The tight embrace ended with him stepping back, his eyes welling up.
“Good bye Joaquin. Remember God has not abandoned you. I'll see you
next year. I hope.”
“Only a matter of time Jack.”
With that encounter, a memorial memory is invoked setting fire to my
synapses. This distraction is going to make getting ready harder. I hope it
doesn’t spur an attack. Sliding by, hands in my pockets, I stumble to my room
that only a few days ago was just a laundry hamper but now is clean as the day I
first stepped through the door. It greets me with cool fluid darkness.
Along the bare walls, my luggage consisting of black and green garbage
bags, moving boxes, and two suitcases are packed and stacked. I plummet down
onto my mattress dented with soft divots as the coils cringe and rebound with
metal squeaks and creaks. My shoes won’t slide off and I reach for the sheet that
is normally at my feet but it’s on the dirty floor. I’m too tired to pick it up and
flash to sleep.
A barrage of slamming car doors wake me up. After counting ten door
slam I stop. My jeans are twisted around my waist cutting off the circulation to
my groin as my beer stained t-shirt wrapped the other way chokes me. Both
dingy garments spin back into place as I roll out of the central pit of my bed to
go investigate.

34
Through the bug splatter on the outside of this second story hallway
window, I watch a mob of reporters assembling below. The parking lot of this
brick dormitory is full of strange news crews running around battling for space
under the morning sun. I wonder why they're here now? It’s been a while since
the shootings.

~ Joshua Lee Andrew

Joshua Lee Andrew Jones resides in coastal Connecticut near New York and works as a
freelance creative consultant. Currently he is working on a novel, a poetry collection
and a screenplay. Contact him at jonesian74@gmail.com

editors note: The above excerpt is from a novel in the works. The Excess Road is a
chronicle of Joaquin Chandler’s descent into the drug subculture of a small Virginia
party college.

35
To the Kingdom of Aries, by Ashley Christudason

36
Front page art and preceding page by Ashley Christudason.

Christudason is a visionary collage mixed media artist. He imagines a theme and


searches out images associated with them. He uses a collation process of many images
– all of which speak to him; he chooses a base picture upon which he layers what he
has collated.

An art piece may be layered 100-150 times. Pieces with more layers appear vastly
different from the images initially collated, for example we won’t discern there is a
picture of the 'Earth' used in it. In more intricate pieces, the layers are fused into ONE.

AC’s fans claim he’s an artist who channels higher sources, such as Hindu deities,
Extraterrestrials and a strange figure resembling Jesus Christ – images he never used
to create or layer the piece with!

37
midnight music

Pound the piano for me boys


Make the black & whites fly
I’m listenin’ to the past and
Damn them dead guys play I
Can almost hear the sweat
Bouncin’ off the ivory slick
Fingers & gently some too
'Cause Monk gone inside him
Self when the needle hits the
Groove & Fats & them others
Runnin' hot in a room runnin'
Cool with drink & blue smoke
Laden mood pure sound fast
Flowin' & dance the women
Lost in trance boys when all
The dead men swing & Jelly
Roll decodes the keys when
All the dead men wail

~ Kevin Eberhardt

Kevin Eberhardt has worked at a restaurant, shipyard, golf course, group home for
delinquent boys, a runaway shelter (boys & girls), been a civil servant / never been to
college / is married w/two kids / plays mediocre drums & harmonica / reads profusely /
loves music / and is an ex-recreational drunk / semi-hermitical / He was once born again
but it didn't take / plus he has a dog named Bob and plans to retire in 2 years.

www.roundingofthestone.blogspot.com

ke767@hotmail.com

38
The Prophets Dance by Orna Ben-Shoshan

39
Clapham Junction

As I sat on the train,


I looked at the shiny suitcase
that was perched on the overhead rack.
I was almost sure
that it would fall
and land on the heads of the women
beneath it.

Then a young woman came up to me


and asked, if she may
and I said that she perfectly could.

As she sat next to me,


I considered asking her,
What it was like
to be a beautiful young lady.
You see,
I will never know
but instead I just got my notebook out
and started to write about it instead.

Later on,
we reached Clapham junction
and I started to shuffle about in my seat.
She asked me if I wanted to get off.
I said no
and asked her if she wanted to get off.

40
I am sure that her eyes lit up as I looked away
and that was the end of another conversation.

~ Marc Carver

Marc Carver was born in England some forty odd years ago. In the last year he has
produced some two or three hundred poems. He has had thirty to forty poems of these
published in America. Some have been included in his first collection of poetry called
PURE which can be purchased at Amazon. He is currently working on a second
collection. When he is not writing he is performing his work, mainly in London. Please
go and see him and say hi.

kronski669@yahoo.co.uk

41
Useless
Yesterday,
a man told me
that he hopes to have maybe another twenty years of usefulness
doing his job.
I stared into his eyes
to make sure that he was being sincere
And knew that he believed in the words that came from his mouth.

I have never had any desire to be a useful man.


But I know people are rated this way.
The useful ladder.

I have sometimes put one foot on the rung


but it does not stay there very long.
I quickly take it off.

Later the man told me


that we had made a token gesture to fix the problem.
I told him,
That there was nothing wrong with tokenism
I had lived my whole life by it.
But although he had just met me
he knew that already.

~ Marc Carver

42
High Drifting Alarm
The train sways unsteadily, and
rolls over yet another high-stilted trestle.
Couplings clang, whistles blow as
my nervous stomach does a swan dive
splashing into a silver string of boiling water
a mile or so below.

Out my iron-windowed compartment


Northern landscape. Trees & water.
Water everywhere.
Not like the desert of L.A. at all.
Not like the harbor freeway.
Not full of frightened eyes rushing from work.
No, just trees. So many trees I feel dwarfed,
drowning in these encroaching trees.

Above the trees, hunched clouds


full of rain scrape their sexual bellies
across the green canopy of treetops.
Then
a patch of sunlight. a sudden furrowed
field --- a man in coveralls, a jaunty
straw hat & a bright orange
bandanna tied round his neck,
as he sits on a yellow tractor.

Wiping his brow, he stops to watch the


train. We see each other. He tips his
hat, By reflex, I open my hand in salute.
We connect.
We watch each other out of sight
until he's just a distant color

43
pressed into the impression of a landscape.
And in this moment, I wish to be him.

To fade away, fade faraway


atop his tractor, plowing
this field. I need to take up his life.
Snake-like I want to shuffle
off my dead skin, leave my dry life,
and discard my city dirt.

I could see in his eyes


or maybe I imagined it---he wished
he was the haunted one---sitting on the
train --- unshaved & speeding South.

Watching his dot of color


fade & disappear, I think of
the many people staring
right now at someone else,
wishing it were possible
to become them.
Needing ---
needing to leave everything--all of it
behind. To just check out.
To go forever missing ---
to give up on the harshness
give up on the pain
give up on the incertitude of breath
give up on the fear of eternal night
give up on a world grinding off its own flesh.

yes and again yes. . .

To live a new life as someone else,

44
someone without these damn darkling thoughts.

Unexpectedly, the train whistle


shrills ---- calling me back to myself
from far across Seattle Sound
and my train rushes forward===windows
on fire with the reflected sun.

~ Steve De France

Steve De France MFA hitch-hiked across America, rode rails on freight trains, worked as
a laborer with pick up gangs in Arizona, dug swimming pools in Texas, did 33 days in
the Pecos city jail as a vagarant, fought bulls in Mexico, and dove for salvage off a small
island on the coast of Mazatlan. De France has won writing awards in England and the
United States.

defrancepoetry@yahoo.com

45
Wake up on your own
Little unknown birds
make curves on the sky canvas.
A squirrel desirous of a longer look,
skips heartbeats in a play of proximity.
Morning seeps into my heart with a smile,
as you drool in my bed
with your tiptoe-friendly sleep.
I gaze beyond the balcony,
and then look at you,
'Simplicities' of the world pour inside me.

I blink slower,
I walk softer,
I smile brighter.

My union with this morning


will cease in some time--
a star will soon achieve prominence.
Wake up and join me in this revelry
Wake up by your own

As my love can't help but look in silence


at the oblivion of your smiling sleep.

~ Tanuj Solanki

Tanuj Solanki is a poet from India. He is 23. He writes when he has nothing on his mind
and also when he wants to say what is on his mind.
tanuj.solanki@gmail.com

46
You Should Grow a Moustache
You should grow a moustache to twitch
and stroke when dark ale bottoms out
in your pint glass. You should comb
your hair to conform to the sine wave

of your intellect. Casual talk


doesn’t amuse. When I confront you
over a book about which we do
or don’t agree I weigh every word.

Your eyewear frowns so narrowly


I wonder you can see through it.
Your green checked shirt, sleeves too long,
drapes you like a tent collapsed

on a boy scout. Can we befriend


the more relaxed parts of our minds,
or must we remain as brittle
as clamshells on a beach? A moustache

would soften your potential scorn,


tame it to fit a smaller space,
and would also filter the ale
that foams on your upper lip like
the memory of outgoing tide.
Now you’re off to Erie, Cleveland,
Toledo, Chicago—straining
every muscle as you map a route

right over my wheezing farewell.


Must you always be so abrupt?
Our glasses leave rings on the table,
but in this ratty brown tavern

47
no one cares. Have a good trip,
and think about growing a moustache,
a tough, abrasive one like Stalin’s
to both tickle and rule the world.

~ William Doreski

William Doreski’s most recent collection of poetry is Waiting for the Angel (2009). His
work has appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame
Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, and Natural Bridge.

48
Time is Running Out, by Christopher Woods

49
Christopher Woods is the author of a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY, and a
book of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK. He lives in Houston and in
Chappell Hill, Texas. More of his photos can be seen in his gallery, MOONBIRD HILL -
http://moonbirdhill.exposuremanager.com/

50
We all die
I keep running from death
But it stays on my right and left
It follows me daily
Drains me of energy
I can’t escape the day
When I'll be in the grave
Subjected to decay
Each sunrise I wonder will be the last one I see from my eyes
I can’t stop my demise
As gray hairs and wrinkles accumulate
I know time is getting late
So I try to create as I wait for my fate
There once was a time I wasn't here
And once again I'll disappear
This day I fear
I don’t know how far or near
Death follows us like shadow
Like red laser beams like poison tipped arrows
The clock's always ticking
Time's always running
Chasing us displacing us erasing us
So put on your best running shoes
Put the petal to the metal as you try to out run that bitch
There's no way to hit the off switch
As you realize this is it
Time is almost done and what have you done
We run and run and run but it still comes
It strikes some silently others violently
Everyday is filled with its scent
It's so unpleasant
Coffins and funerals
To the highest numerals
Is daily and usual
Wish there could be some way to slow down or stop time
It’s like that on coming train rolling on down the line
Death gets us all
Wealthy or impoverished we all get finished
From junkies to kings
Death takes its toll
Young and old
Let’s live while we got time

51
Before that train comes down the line
Running out of time running out of time
Everybody wonders how they're going to die
That’s why we slow down when we see an accident on a drive by
We all wonder how we'll end
Be it cancer, heart disease or suicide

~ DubbleX

DubbleX has been writing & playing music his entire life. He's been published by Street
Literature Review Magazine (paper) The Cartier Street Review, the Nov. 3rd Club,
Polarity, Mad Swirl, readerjack.com, and wheelhouse magazine. DubbleX writes & plays
music to stay sane.

52
Broken Concrete, Lilacs, Thunder
She and I dipped our rhubarb in jar lids of sugar
crunched stringy sour and sweet together
puckering our love-hungry tongues
eyes blue as flax flowers
hair slippery as corn silk.

One potato, two potato, three potato four


never look behind the door.

She was best of us all at not seeing


what silence said wasn’t there,
so skinny and small she blew away
in the first hot wind to come along
in the form of a cowboy on a palomino.

Hollyhocks and sweetpeas bobbed in their wake


and oh - what dust devils they did make!

leaving behind box canyons of doors,


ashes gritty in leftover mouths
hollow with hunger for words
in a land where even the idea of words
seemed absurd - five potato, six potato

seven potato
more

~ Diane Gage

Diane Gage tweets 50s-style haiku on Twitter from her 50s-era neighborhood known as
Birdland. Other recent publications include “Ode to Gravity” in Breathe: 101
Contemporary Odes (C&R Press).
www.publicaddress.us

53
Global Warming

The ice cap is melting


and polar bears have begun to mate
with grizzlies.

White
offspring
emerge

with black shadows


under their eyes,

long claws.

The bears look out


at too much sea
for a polar sire
and too few trees
for a grizzly sow.

They straddle the gap

adapt to a world

with diminishing
ice
and
snow.

Hunters’ helicopters whip choking air burn Alaskas of oil.

On the other slope of the pole: more of the same.

~ Diane Gage

54
Street Lamp and Red Leaves by Christopher Woods

55
Todd Moore’s latest collection, Reviewed by John Yamrus

THE RIDDLE OF THE WOODEN GUN, by Todd Moore


Lummox Press
P.O. Box 5301
San Pedro, California 90733
144 pages
$15.00
available from amazon.com or lummoxpress.com

All right, then, let me make this clear…over the last several weeks I’ve
sat down and started to write this review any number of times. I’ve got sitting in
front of me right now eight pages of notes that I’ve taken. The thing is, I want to
be objective. I don’t want the review to come off sounding like I’m an
unabashed fan of everything Todd Moore writes…but I just can’t help it. For my
money, he just happens to be one of only a handful of the current writers of
poetry who can seriously and honestly be considered great. There! My opinions
are out in the open. You know how I feel and so I can proceed with my review.
In a world filled up with copy-cat poets and writers who mistakenly try to
move their work forward by looking back over their shoulders, Todd’s work is
unique. He has a very definite voice all his own, and (more importantly) he has
something to say. That being said, in THE RIDDLE OF THE WOODEN GUN,
the latest installment of his now legendary and elusive Dillinger Series, he brings
the famous Depression Era Outlaw to life on paper like no one ever has or ever
will.
At the center of this poem is the famous wooden gun that Dillinger did or
didn’t use in his famous escape from Crown Point Prison in Indiana.
Interestingly, the legend of the wooden gun is the only thing in the whole
Dillinger tale of enough importance to be able to compete with John Dillinger
himself. But, in this current entry of Moore’s, it’s not only Dillinger who has a
wooden gun, practically everybody and his brother has one, knows a story about
one, or has come into contact with one. On the surface, this may sound like the
dumbest idea in the world for even a short poem…don’t even mention an entire
144 page book-long poem. But that’s exactly where Moore’s talent comes into
play. He not only manages to pull it off, but in doing so, he also turns it into
compelling, page-turning poetry of a very high order. This quirky, unsettling
poem is filled with violence and raw emotion. It is also brilliant in its
conception and execution.
There really is no “story” to the poem per se, at least not in any strict
linear sense, there’s just this whole alternative reality to the thing that jumps

56
back and forth in time and location, constantly toying with the idea of Myth as a
force in and of itself. This myth (and the gun associated with it) seems to
somehow be rooted at the core of the entire Dillinger saga. It doesn’t matter one
bit that practically every scene in this book is made up out of whole cloth. It just
doesn’t matter, because it only ADDS to the myth.
For me, one of the most interesting things about this book from a
technical standpoint is the way Moore attacks his subject and lays his words out
on the page. Sure, this is a poem/novel…or a novel pretending it’s a poem…but
Moore’s lines and the way he uses his page come across as lean and hard as the
Great Depression and as deadly and mean as Dillinger himself. The question
you’ve got to ask yourself is a book-long poem about the Depression relevant?
Read your newspapers. Is John Dillinger relevant? Ask Johnny Depp.
The coolest thing about all this is Todd Moore’s known all this for 30
years. We’re just catching up. If you’ve never read any of the poems in the
Dillinger series, this is as good a place as any to start. After all, at the end of the
day this may only be a poem about a mythical wooden gun, but be forewarned…
this one’s a real killer.

John Yamrus has been publishing poetry for 40 years. His newest book of poems,
NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, is available from amazon.
JYamrus@aol.com

57
Writers’ Guidelines
(found poem in the listings of Poet’s Market)
We want experimental concrete cut-up post-syntactic poems
skillful language strong images and sense of place
no sappy greeting card stuff
no children in sexual situations
no wicked mothers or fathers
no right-wing hate-mongering

We welcome beat post-beat Dada edgy


anything interesting original important
nothing religious no work by adults no porn
no haikus or limericks no ageism sexism racism
nothing sentimental obscure or self-absorbed
no flowers or butterflies no dead kitty elegies

Send us your best Western rural poetry


That knocks us off our feet
we want unusual perceptive risk-taking imagistic
minimal expansionist positive upbeat
no scatological prurient or political
no poor taste

We want seers witchdoctors alchemists maniacs


we want to hear your inner shapeshifter
in howls growls and moans
no singsong rhyming crap
no polemics no gratuitous grotesques
no somber surrealism no weeping melancholy

No previously published poems


no simultaneous submissions
no style subject or form restrictions
no limitations at all we take all types
order a back issue or subscribe
publication is payment

~ Joan Mazza

58
Old Friends
Terraced on a hillside, weather weary houses stand
like people posed on tiered bleachers for a portrait.
Gable
to gable and glassily peering at each other from
across
the street, they’ve passed tens-of-thousands of
days together. Rain lashed, wind battered,
snowed-in and sun blistered, they recall horses
tethered to porch railings,
long-silenced factory trip-hammers rattling their
windows,
the knock of the ice man, and lively step of daily
milk deliveries.

They mark time in layers of rough alligatored


paint,
hollows worn in stone steps, newel posts polished
by generations of palms, floors scuffed by the ebb
and flow
of feet. Walls remember sobbing babies and
childish giggles, the last phlegm choked cough of a
cancer-wasted man and his wife’s shrieking wail.
They’ve witnessed spouses with raised voices
driving angry words like nails,
and the delicious, breathless moans of love-
making.

Almost a century older than any inhabitant could


ever hope to be, the houses take in a succession of

59
families, sheltering them like orphans. Landlords
and banks be damned,
the time worn dwellings demand immortality
granted
by residents who devoutly build homes by painting
clapboards, shingling roofs, repointing chimney
bricks,
and glazing windows.

~ David K. Leff

David K. Leff is a freelance writer from Collinsville, Connecticut. His essays and fiction
have appeared in newspapers and magazines. His nonfiction book, The Last
Undiscovered Place, was published by the University of Virginia Press and was a
Connecticut Book Award finalist. A second nonfiction book, Deep Travel, was recently
released by University of Iowa Press. A volume,The Price of Water, was published by
Antrim House. Leff graduated from the University Of Connecticut School Of Law and
was Deputy Commissioner at the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection
from 1996 to 2006.
onktaadn@comcast.net

60
Ex-husband in Tennessee

The last time I’ll see him, he’s on the porch


of his hundred-year-old house, gray wood rotting,
splintered chairs. I sit upwind of his cigarette.

His skin has a yellow tinge, his ankles white


and swollen, veins like a blue tattoo,
hair thin, face hanging.

We sit quietly, only the sound of the creek below,


rushing toward Forgetful Lake. I look at him
and remember when he laughed and kissed me,

we were teens, all of it dangerous, forbidden,


first man to touch me, blood rushing,
first hard loving.

I kiss his forehead,


tell him to take care of himself. We both know it’s
too late. His liver is hardened; he’s bleeding out.

~ Joan Mazza

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, sex therapist,


writing coach and seminar leader. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real
Self (Penguin/Putnam 1998), her work has appeared in Potomac Review, Möbius,
Permafrost, Slipstream, Timber Creek Review, Writer’s Digest, The Fourth River, the
minnesota review, Personal Journaling, and Playgirl. She now writes poetry full-time in
rural central Virginia.
www.JoanMazza.com

61
The Rose, a video

The Rose, a video by Mike Finley … click and see

Mike Finley of St. Paul helped with layout for this issue of CSR. He has busied himself
the past year creating spooky videos to go with his poems. Mike is a Pushcart awardee,
and a one-time talk-show host.

62
another woman’s blog

how stupid is your wife


not to read your blog,
not to google you
wonder why you have
naked pictures of girlfirends
on your hard
drive?
how stupid was i
to think your poems
were for me
when you
sent them out
like spam
to your baby bloggers?
“my wet petal,
you make me sweethard.
you give me such hope.
you blow my wind.”
my e.e. cumming,
who will fill the space
on your grouplist
now that i’ve
blocked you?

~ Liz Pressman

Liz Pressman is a poet, a playwright, a journalist and a Wiccan priestess. She writes
and spells underthetrees, underthemoon in New York City.
http://lovefoxglove.wordpress.com/
foxglovelove@yahoo.com

63
Better, by Frances Raven

64
65
Diane Bowen's eclectic art

Daddy -O between music and line -


it's how the body grooves –
a live drawing performance
at 55 Bar with Bill Sims Jr. band.

During a two-hour set, the band and I converse using music and drawing,
responding back and forth without actually watching each other but simply
listening and feeling our way. By using a clear plastic tarp I unfold and
eventually surround my self completely continuously drawing, using various
wax and oil sticks. In this way, the music and lines exist on the same plane "in
the air".

My work focuses on fragility, language and communication through drawing,


performance and installation. A line is the simplest and most complicated of marks, the
earliest marks made by humans in a cave. This is the intimate language of life.

diannebowenstudio@gmail.com
www.diannebowen.com

66
What the Devil will say in Spring:
Entomb me in your garden,
next to the sound of water.
Tie blue filament around me,
hang me from a bridge.
And sing.

~ Helen Vitoria

Helen Vitoria was born and raised in Greece, and now resides in a country cottage in
Effort, PA. She studied creative writing at NYU. She facilitates the Poetry Workshop of
the Pocono Writers. Her work has appeared in The Dirty Napkin and is forthcoming in
PANK. She is currently working on her first full length collection of poetry entitled Corn
Exchange.
hvitoria@msn.com

67
Mumbai – Marine Drive

Mumbai’s majority
live in slums.

And between the trans-gothic seafront manse and the overpass


limps an emaciated, weepy eyed stray dog.

Weeping at the cruelty—not of the resonant Raj bureaucracy,


but at the fact that the litter strewn sidewalks are made
of interlocking brick.

Interlocking brick shaped like dog biscuits.

~ Dave Besseling

Born and reared in Canada, Dave has apparently set out to expropriate the Jack of all
trades. He has exhibited his art with the likes of H.R Giger, designed furniture at the
behest of Thai royalty, and written for Rolling Stone. He has no idea what comes next.

68
from saxophone this breath
this admission. valves formation routings

a summons pour through a pouring


a celebration on the peduncle of flamboyance
cataract rebound developed to fit the horse
-- {a sing through}—
symbiosis of ride of ridership of the
announcement that pronounces
[to think through
branch(ing)(e)(s)
[to denude
consideration
flowthrough
outpour
respire saxophone://:lung
reed://:lung reed://:tongue
saxophone://:tongue saxophone://:reed

tongue lung lung tongue


-- lunge
lunge lung tongue / hung
saxophone a lung
breeze a lung
breezin
lungin

~ Heller Levinson

NOTE: The fourth line, “... to fit the horse,” refers to the fact that Adolphe Sax designed
the saxophone so that it could be played by a soldier while riding a horse. Sax felt that
the introduction of the saxophone to the military orchestra would enhance its efficacy.

Heller Levinson lives in NYC where he studies animal behavior. He has published in
over a hundred journals and magazine including Sulfur, Hunger, Talisman, First
Instensity, Laurel Review, Omega, The Wandering Hermit, Jacket, The Jivin' Ladybug,
etc. His most recent publication, Smelling Mary, is newly out from Howling Dog Press
and has been nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Griffin Prize.

www.hellerlevinson

69
Graffiti photo above taken by DubbleX in Washington Heights, New York City

70
When I Say I'm Tired of Writing

When I say I haven’t written a poem


in two months what I mean is

I can’t sleep thinking about my friend’s broken


nose in need of surgery—her husband’s mistress
showed up at the job unannounced—there’s no
metaphor for violence when it’s your face held up,
bloody, to the light. I won’t title this for two weeks,
nameless, unlike my cousin’s baby, Maria for three
months, aborted three days ago. I read more issues of
Vanity Fair than ever before sitting in the waiting room,
a young Asian man’s arms around his lover, crying.

No woman does this for fun, writing a poem,


an invasive procedure, all of you exposed and
expelled; I can’t write recuperating from latex
gloves that irritate me more than a split infinitive.
When I say I’m tired of writing, means I’m ready
for real-time love that ain’t bogged down in tropes
‘cause I finally found a woman who says what she
means. When I say I’ve put poetry on the back
burner, I’ve buried an uncle who meant more to me
than a three-minute slam poem mocking the
republican mafia; I’d like to unearth memories
of him without rhyme & wit on the tip of my tongue.

Ten months into the year, every poem’s a morgue


preoccupied with death: the coming of cancer,
lumpectomies, chemo scheduled in between open
mikes. I’ve seen women lose breasts as swiftly as
the elderly lose memory, seen cancer in remission
return like a boogey man to finish the job; suddenly
a poem making love to the sweet and supple curves
of a woman ends with her body embalmed in an elegy.

When I say I’m tired of writing, I mean I’d like


to be alone, though we’re never alone, ‘cause the dead
are as entitled as the living to sunsets from a front
porch in South Carolina, where Nanna’s first love
was lynched with a poem in his shirt pocket,
the strangled verse of the departed buried in the

71
dense cotton air of Orangeburg whose history I can’t
unwrite; an heirloom undesirable as a fetus, an
aborted memory caught between Nanna’s grief
and the dead-weight of my pen.

No metaphor for violence when it’s your face, bloody,


your breasts, when it’s your lover held up, bloody,
to the light, your words held up, bloody, and a poem or two

overdue.

~ Amber Atiya

Native Brooklynite Amber Atiya has read and performed at venues including the Cornelia
Street Cafe, Lehman College, and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Her work has appeared in
print and online publications such as the 2009 Brownstone Poets Anthology, Coloring
Book, an anthology of poetry and prose, and Word Riot. Her writing tackles issues of
race, sex, and sexuality, among other things, with honesty and wit.
s_mecca@hotmail.com

72
graffiti photostaken in Washington Heights, New York City by DubbleX

73
He would have

Much too much to say


He would lead me on
And teach me
The perfect ballet

I wouldn't speak mine


You see, I ever had
His words to say
With his rolling tongue
He'd keep them in my mouth

His touch was


The touch of Midas
So I would gather form
And just as soon
Would die away

In private, I would write poetry


Do words have lives?
I would wonder
Bless them if they do!
I’d say

~ Kush Arora

74
Mr. Antolini, #2
How clumsy climax is,
for too much is still confused,
like a lingering fever.

How much did I desire only to possess?


How much because Mother's paps soured?
How much because you were still the boy
I wanted to have been?

We can know only that my act is over.


The show was long.
Your "beautiful character" must now
go into a little box
to await someone else
who needs the performer.

It's just that I want to shout


across our glass
that I am grateful for your smiles,
angry that you smiled so seldom.

How strange to see what always has been:


I your teacher, you my student,
a good relationship, but lonely, transient.
The other was a dream I had from which....

75
but understandably you fidget.
In time you will know the heart's exaggerations,
but not from this teacher.

My box is ready. Our detachment may endure.

~ Louie Crew

Louie Crew, 72, an Alabama native, is an emeritus professor at Rutgers. He lives in East
Orange, NJ, with Ernest Clay, his husband of 35+ years.

As of today, editors have published 1,940 of Crew's poems and essays. Crew has
edited special issues of College English and Margins. He has written four poetry
volumes Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976) Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987),
Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ's Sake! (Dragon Disks,
2003).

The University of Michigan collects Crew's papers.

76
Groupthink
A neon-yellow fish steps out
of its vehicle and, not noticing
the absence of water, strides to the mailbox
and deposits a letter. A bird swoops by and,
with its waxy black feathers, catches the fish's
attention. The bird and the fish
have the same thought about each other:
“Where is your flock?” “Where is your school?”

The fish's letter, in the dark,


begins to search for others like itself,
to see who will be moving in the same direction.

~ Andrew Christ

Andrew Christ was born in Buffalo, New York, on October 6, 1966. A Midwesterner all
his life, he now lives in Midland, Michigan, where he's produced several videos featuring
poetry for public-access television. One video, the award-winning "Where Do the Roots
Go?" features Saginaw residents in an introduction to Theodore Roethke, the only poet
from Michigan to win a Pulitzer. In June 2005, he joined with other members of
Saginaw's poetry group, the River Junction Poets, and started Poets Birthday Readings
at the Saginaw Barnes & Noble bookstore.
riverjunctionpoets@gmail.com

77
A Roman Laborer Counsels His Son
Son, I want to tell you:
I am full of Rome. I am Rome.
The confidence of Rome escapes my mouth
here, now. The road I'm building, it is Rome.
The Greeks never built such roads. The Greeks built
statues and buildings. They built
philosophy and art and music and war
and excellence, always excellence.
They wanted excellence so much they tore
themselves apart trying to get it.
And then Rome conquered. Now Rome has them
and Rome has their slaves. We will fill the world
with Rome. I am an old man, and I
will not see it. For me it is a dream.
But the roads I build, they will live to see
the world full of Roman roads with Romans
traveling over them from Asia and
from Gaul, from Africa to all places
ships go. The Hebrews go over
Roman roads. The barbarians go
over Roman roads. Asians go.
Romas all. Filling the world with Rome.
They can call themselves whatever they like,
but when they live with Roman laws
and Roman customs, they are Roman.
They work for Rome. They pay Rome's army
and Rome's army goes and gets more like them.
There is no end. It cannot be otherwise.

~ Andrew Christ

78
Life is too short for small talk
for Larry Rivers

Lover's unfinished love on the unfinished canvas


That’s how you will be remembered
In my poem dedicated to your memory
Not totally edited, but in progress

Unfinished notes played on the saxophone


For Kaufman, for Ginsberg, for Corso
Born in the Bronx as Yitzroch Grossberg
Jamming at Julliard with Miles Davis

The road takes you over


The mind expanded landscape
Experiments into the land of Beats
To Nigeria and Asia
To half Hell, to full Hell and back

Painting portraits, playing sax, chasing ghosts


Making movies, purgatory partying
Getting married, bringing up daughters,
All in a life’s, wasteland
In a life of a beat

Larry was reading a poem about Frank O'Hara


Across the street at St. Mark's Church
Last words were fading
And suddenly he was gone, gone!

Neighbor for almost 3 decades


At a party at his loft on 13th street
Next to the unfinished paintings
My brain was trying to fill in the blanks.

79
The end of Bohemia in East Village
The ghost of Larry Rivers,

Playing jazz at the sunset


Left too early, from unfinished act
Unfinished conversation and
Unfinished feeling in my heart

~ Valery Oisteanu

Valery Oisteanu is an internationally flavored writer and artist born in Russia (1943) and
educated in Romania. He adopted Dada and Surrealism as a philosophy of art and life.
Immigrating to New York City in 1972, he has been writing in English for 37 years.
Oisteanu is well known to downtown NYC audiences and performs frequently in
theaters and clubs. He specializes in his original Zen Dada multi-media poetry and
music, his unmistakable style and show of "Jazzoetry."

80
"8 x11 Sheet"

A dying pen always delivers one


thick blemish before its final
ink trail fades away down
the left-side margin,
in a last scribbled
effort towards
literacy.

~ Sonia Halbach

Sonia Halbach, originally from Devils Lake, ND, is currently finishing up her BA in
English and Communications at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD. In 2007 she had
the opportunity to read one of her poems before the poet Maya Angelou and a crowd of
3500. Her poetry has been published in Chronogram, The Taylor Trust, Main Channel
Voices, and Breadcrumb Scabs.

81
The Measly Subtraction
Cab drivers will lie about anything,
especially money.
“I made two grand last
week.”
As if this explains
the holes in their
shoes,
the fact that they can’t afford
a razor
and have breath like
a maggoty rhinoceros.
I always wonder why it is so important
to impress the rest,
when we all have
to go home alone
and count our greasy bills
and do the measly subtraction
of rent and electricity
and food and beer.
They lie and lie and the
world goes round
like godless miles through
the city
only to end up back
in the same hole-
home.
We all want to be respected
even by those we do not respect
and even those who nobody respects
want the same thing and
feel the same pull,
the same strange question
of the self:
what will
my brother
think?

~ Mather Schneider

82
The Traveling Show
Mama Cat brings her three kittens
around in the mornings.
I watch them play in the bushes
for a while.
They attack each other and Mama too
who sometimes remembers
what it was like to be young.
Mostly Mama just eyes them proudly or
indifferently and
smacks them if they get too rowdy.
I lean down like a falling
statue
and pour milk into the
dirty bowl in the shade.
They bounce up to me like
new tennis balls
and I can touch them sometimes
like this
as they are lapping it up
I can touch them
they let me if I’m careful and
gentle
they are small and soft
like trembling flowers.
When every drop is gobbled up
they tumble away
through the fence
a traveling show
bidding farewell to the local
suckers.

~ Mather Schneider

Mather Schneider is a 39 year old cab driver living in Tucson, learning Spanish,
sweating. He is a writer and painter and my work has appeared in print since 1995. He
has a full-length book coming out by Interior Noise Press soon.
matherschneider@yahoo.com

83
Facebook
And there is always
Someone I may know
Someone I am advised to contact.
Some twit
On tweeter
Want to meet her?

I used to ask my neighbor


How to make soup.
I sat high on a chair
Waving from a city stoop.
And we were all
in the flesh
and all
in the loop.

~ Doug Holder

Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. His work has appeared in the
Long Island Quarterly, Poetrybay, Main St. Rag, Paradigm Journal, Poetica, Cyclamen
and Swords, and many others. He is the author of the poetry collection "The Man in the
Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" ( Cervena Barva Press) and recently released a collection
of interviews: "From the Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers." He
works as an adjunct professor at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass.

ibbetsonpress@msn.com

84
Killing the Cat

Both plants were still alive


when you left, but don't think
they died from missing you.
It was my own ambivalence.
I wasn't sure about the water
or light—too much might
kill them, not enough, too.
So I simply forgot them,
like the morning
you started your motor
without looking.

You hated that cat


from the start, her constant
meowing for attention, the way
she'd climb onto your chest
to bring you out of sleep.
When you put her out for good,
your plants flourished, safe
from her constant prying paws.
But nothing survives on its own,

least of all love. Now that you're gone,


I check the locks at least three times
before I go to bed—it's not safe
these days for a woman living
alone. But there were nights I slept
so soundly in your arms, like the black cat
curled inside the engine.

~ Lorie Allred

Lorie Allred received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska Fairbanks
in 1995. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as The New York Quarterly, Orbis,
The Sun, and The Evening Street Review. She just finished writing a novel for young
adults, and currently works as a librarian in North Carolina.

85
The Eleventh House, by Orna Ben-Shoshan

86
Interview with spotlight artist Orna Ben-Shoshan
by Thomas Hubbard

©2009 Thomas Hubbard

Orna Ben-Shoshan, a globally-known artist who paints scenes she "channels"


from beyond consciousness, spoke with me recently via an internet video
hookup, using her computer at her home in Raanana, Israel. She most graciously
shared with us a brief glimpse inside her amazing art. Here's the conversation as
nearly as I can report it.

TCSR: As you speak with us from your home in Raanana, Orna, will
you look around you and describe to us what you see?

ORNA: I'm sitting at my desk in an open area adjoining my studio. I can


see into the studio and down the hall.

TCSR: You're in Israel now, but didn't you live in the U.S. for a
while?

ORNA: I'm back in Israel for twelve years now, but I lived in the U.S. for
a long time, maybe fifteen years. I liked it there, in Massachusetts, but it's good
to be back home. I was born here in Israel. I grew up in the desert, in big,
empty spaces.

TCSR: How do you spend your spare time there?

ORNA: Spare time? Spare time? There is no spare time when you are
doing something you love. I take time occasionally for the beach, or my
friends. But mostly I work. I love my studio and my work. That's how I spend
my time, what I want to do.

TCSR: How did you learn to paint, Orna?

ORNA: I taught myself. I was trained in graphic design, and I've been
painting now for thirty years. Over this time I've learned how to articulate the
scenes that come to me, images I channel from some other reality. It's important
to me that other people see these, that other people feel the peace and comfort
and joy in them.

TCSR: Orna, the scenes I see in your art are unusual and for some
reason, somehow familiar at the same time. Can you say something about

87
the genesis of these images?

ORNA: They come to me by channeling, from somewhere away from us,


some other reality. I was seeing visions even back in high school. But in school,
I didn't paint anything I couldn't explain. So I ignored the visions and images.
My paintings were mostly social commentary until 1994, when my grandfather
died. Something opened then. I decided that up to that time I hadn't painted
what I was "supposed" to paint. And then it took time to perfect my articulation
of the images that were coming. But I'm a better painter now. And I know this
is the right thing for me.

TCSR: So you paint the visions that have come to you. But they must
be fleeting, and it takes time to paint them, I'm sure.

ORNA: True. It's important to capture the underlying energy of a vision.


When I'm given a glimpse of these places, these alternate realities, I merely
document what's there. I suppose I could decide not to do it, but I committed
myself so the public can see them too.

TCSR: Why is it important to you that the public see these images of
yours?

ORNA: Because it does something to people. It changes something for


them when they see my art. There's a kind of energy that people can take away
with them. Someone said that looking at one of my paintings is like having a
window into another dimension.

TCSR: How do folks usually react upon seeing your art, Orna?

ORNA: They are attracted to it. Let me tell you — recently I had an
exhibit in town. It was hot, a summer week and the air conditioner wasn't
working. I was worried people wouldn't stay, but they stayed anyway, to look at
all the paintings. These images give people something. Observing metaphysical
art induces lucidity and reduces stress, I think. People who view my artwork
often comment that they can deeply connect to what they see, even though they
do not necessarily understand it. For others it simply evokes positive and
uplifting feelings as they are influenced subconsciously. I am especially pleased
when I succeed to channel this knowledge and create a positive impact on the
viewer.

TCSR: It has been said that our reality is merely an agreement


among all peoples that this is the way things are, the way they work. That it
might be possible to enter some different reality, perhaps one of those you
have painted. So I wonder, if you could live in one of the visions you've

88
painted — live inside one of your paintings — which one would you choose?

ORNA: I don't know if I'd want to do that permanently. Right now I


prefer to live in this material world. But I like to visit those other realities
sometimes.

TCSR: Your art has a huge online presence. So Orna, we both know
that many artists are very private persons, and it occurs to me to wonder
how do you feel about having your art online.

ORNA: It makes me
very happy, because without
my website, without my online
presence, most of the world
wouldn't know about my art.

TCSR: And the digital


art on your website — I am
particularly impressed with
your re-interpretation of
DaVinci's famous Last
Supper painting, in which
you substitute at-term
pregnant women for all but
one of the men. Orna Ben-
Shoshan's Art Videos Do
you create that digital art by yourself, or do you have technical help with it?

ORNA: I create it. Remember, my formal training was in graphic design.


Those digital creations are simple for me.

TCSR: Well your website is huge and amazing as nearly as I can see.
And I note your King Solomon Cards. Are they something like Tarot cards?

ORNA: They are a different symbolism. About a year ago, I began


working with a mystic who knows King Solomon's symbols. You know, King
Solomon used signet rings to stamp these symbols onto documents. The
Kabbalistic Solomon's Symbols are known worldwide. Between this mystic and
myself, we have created the King Solomon Reading Cards, with a booklet
explaining the meanings, and people from all over the world have purchased
them. King Solomon Cards :: k-s-cards

TCSR: Well Orna, you have achieved a level of self-expression and


public recognition many only dream of. So for those of us impressed and

89
perhaps enthralled by your art, perhaps you have some advice?

ORNA: I can only say, be serious about what you do. Do it as best you
can; be a perfectionist. Express yourself in the best, most professional way
possible. And put energy into what you do — a lot of energy. It's not easy to be
a pro. My advice to other artists is: you must be willing to invest a huge effort
like I did in order to bring out your artwork to the public - it's a matter of
believing in what you do and realizing the importance of what you can teach
people.

TSCR: Thanks, Orna, for a wonderful conversation. And good luck


to you.

Note to publishers: This material is copyrighted by Thomas Hubbard. The Cartier Street
Review is hereby granted one-time serial rights for electronic and print versions.
Ownership remains with the author, who may re-publish it elsewhere.

Thomas Hubbard, retired writing instructor: Published in Red Ink, Arabesques Review:
International Poetry and Literature Journal, ToToπos Poetry International Fall 2006,
Albani: Indigenous Poetry and Other Voices International Poetry Anthology as well as in
numerous other print and online publications. He has read for the Distinguished Writer
Series in Tacoma; Presented Workshop at Whidbey Island Writers Conference;
Featured for Whatcom Poetry Series, Seattle Slam, Olympia Poetry Network, and
numerous other venues, and reviews books for Square Lake and Raven Chronicles. He
serves editorially on Raven Chronicles and Cartier Street Review. He writes poetry,
fiction and book reviews in a cabin on Blanchard Mountain, in the Washington
Chuckanuts.

90
I’ll weep like Karamchedu!
Essay by Narender Bedide
A television news report I'd seen a few years ago captured this strange tale of a
small clan of people living atop trees less than five hundred miles from my desk.
They ate, relaxed, slept and lived on the branches of peepul trees in a farm
adjoining a village. They belonged to a community of swineherds, people who
normally live inside villages or on their fringes. They interact with other
villagers every day and have a role to play in village life. They are not a part of
pre-history who forgot to erase themselves or evolve.
Their story illustrates the ineffable nature of reaches of marginality in Indian
society: the abyss of marginality could be lurking outside your door. A single
mis-step, and you could drop off the horizon.

Land and caste are dominant themes in poetry in Telugu, by poets from the Dalit
Bahujan (or the ‘lower’ castes) communities, because land, as little as a quarter
of an acre, means a firmer hold on rural economic life and caste determines your
chances of inheriting or acquiring land.

Narayanaswami laments as though he was talking to himself:

anytime
anywhere
land's the problem
the problem's only land
a little land for food
or for your death
the problem's wholly land

The problem of land plagues rural India: nearly half of its residents don't own
any while less than one-fifth own more than three-fifths of all arable land. Land
reforms after independence became a farcical exercise with large chunks of land
mysteriously disappearing from government records. In a land where space
scientists pray at temples before they launch satellites or missions to the moon,
those who don't own land are doubly disadvantaged. The rural economy centers
around agriculture, offering limited scope for regular jobs or livelihood choices
outside of farming. The caste ordering of society completes the job of
disenfranchising the poor from the Dalit Bahujan communities who form the
overwhelming majority of landless, leaving them with little say in the local
community, its religious and secular institutions. Political democracy has never
realized its fullest potential in rural India, with elections being the only visible
sign of its shadowy presence. The vote, not surprisingly, is the only entitlement

91
that the marginalized are familiar with and they make the best use of it in the
only way they know. Demand for labour peaks during harvest season and that's
the only time when farm workers can negotiate wages which are equal to or
higher than the minimum wages prescribed by the government, and that's the
knowledge that the lower caste voter uses during 'election season', trading his
vote for short term monetary or other gains. Vangapandu Prasada Rao, a
Maoist poet, calls upon people to shun this toothless ‘democratic’ ritual and join
the course of armed resistance:

look! watching the vote yatras and the promises


mother India wept
and in the tears
mother gave birth
to the sun of rebellion
won't you come, mate?

Nationalist propagandists see in the map of India a benevolent mother stretching


out her arms from Assam in the east to the Punjab and beyond in the west, the
tapering peninsula in the south forming her lower limbs and feet, the vast plains
in the centre her torso and Kashmir in the far north holding up her head. Tucked
away deep inside Mother India, somewhere near her loins, is Telangana,
formerly a part of the princely kingdom of Hyderabad, and now a part of the
mainly Telugu speaking state of Andhra Pradesh. Armed resistance had been a
recurring form of political assertion in the region: during 1946-51 over 5,000
peasants, tenants and landless farm workers led by the nascent Communist Party
of India had died fighting feudal militias, the army of the Nizam (the ruler of
Hyderabad) first and then the armed forces of the newly formed republic of
India. Later, beginning in the late sixties, a section of the mainstream communist
parties which had embraced parliamentary democracy, broke away and chose the
path of a guerilla warfare to ‘liberate’ the villages and overthrow the State.
Naxalism, named after the tribal hamlet in Bengal where it was born, soon
spread to Telangana. In one rousing poem written in the 70s, K. G.
Satyamurthy (writing as ‘Sivasagar’ or ‘Siva’s ocean’) charts the early history
(and geography) of the movement through some events or ‘battles’:

the bow and arrows hidden in the mahua trees' tresses


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

the spears hidden by the path to Lohar Jwala


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

the glistening swords dipped in the landlord's blood


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

92
the guns hidden in the Tulasikonda ravine
I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

the rifle snatched from the Garla train


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

the sepoy's throat slit in Rupaayi Konda


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

the martyrs' blood flowing in misty mountains valleys


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

the moonlight caught in the eyes of dark hills


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

the flowers that grew wild on the Budarisingi peaks


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

the heroism of Boddapadu- the lightning courage of Garuda Bhadra


I give you my brother! I give you my brother!

But the face and the voice of the Naxalite armed resistance movement across
Telangana and India has been the balladeer Gaddar who sings:

it will not stop, it will not stop, it will not stop


this war of the hungry will not stop
it will not stop, it will not stop, it will not stop
until the exploiters’ rule ends
this armed struggle will not stop
it will not stop, it will not stop, it will not stop
the plough that tilled the fields
says these fields are mine
the hands that planted the saplings
say these saplings are ours
the sickle that cut the crop
says this harvest is ours
it will not stop, it will not stop, it will not stop

The scriptures of the Hindus expressly forbid the shudras, the fourth varna in the
varna system of stratification, and the panchamas, or the fifth varna (which
actually fall outside the four varna system but is considered the lowest order in
the caste system) or the former ‘untouchables’ or outcastes, from reading or
writing, from any but the most rudimentary education. This proscription had
worked so well in the last two millennia that very few of the ancient and
medieval texts now available in Telugu, recently anointed a Classical Language
by the Government of India, were written by writers and poets belonging to
castes fitting those two varnas.

93
Dalits, formerly ‘untouchables’, are the most oppressed group of castes in India
along with Bahujans, who belong to the hundreds of shudra working castes
assigned hereditary occupations ranging from farming, weaving or pottery to
fishing, even such strange functions as singing/performing the ‘histories’ and
myths of the origin of castes higher up in the hierarchy! In the vast middle and
bottom of Hindu society, the practice of poetry itself represents a giant leap
across history. A freedom to imagine all other freedoms.
For the orthodox scholar this leap heralded the beginning, in Sivasagar’s words,
of the ‘chandala age’:

Shambhuka, smile on his lips,


is killing Rama.
Ekalavya with an axe
is chopping down Drona's thumb
Bali with his little feet
is stamping Vamana down to patala

Manu, piercing needles in his eyes


cutting his tongue
pouring lead in his ears
is rolling in the graveyard

standing on the butcher's knife of time


the Chandala roars
setting four hounds
on Adi Sankara
This poem refers to popular episodes featuring much revered characters from
Hindu mythology and turns them upside down: Rama, the Hindu avatar who
killed Shambhuka, a shudra, for reading the Vedas, Manu, the Hindu law giver,
who prescribed gruesome penalties for shudras who violated the prohibition on
reading, and so on, are being meted out the same penalties as their textual
victims. The wheel is being pushed back.
The Chandala (one of the derogatory names ‘untouchables’ were referred to in
Hindu texts), began around early twentieth century. Around the same time
Dr.Ambedkar also began his long struggle to wrest dignity for the Dalits from
the colonial rulers and more importantly from the ‘upper’ caste Hindu leadership
of the Indian National Congress. This movement gathered momentum in the
early sixties, marked by the struggle of the Dalit Bahujan poets against three
kinds of orthodoxies: the language orthodoxy which looked down upon any
transgression of rigid rules of prosody and even vocabulary among other things,
the ‘progressive’ orthodoxy promoted by the Marxist-left writers and poets who
bullied any writer who failed to agree with their ‘scientific’ class analysis of
Indian society into silence, and the caste orthodoxy which actually worked

94
through the mostly upper caste members of the first two classes.
Rejecting traditions in writing didn’t mean the Dalit Bahujans had to work in a
vacuum: they could draw upon a rich diverse reservoir of oral traditions, music
and theatrical forms that the Dalit Bahujans had accumulated over centuries.
Gaddar and Vangapandu Prasada Rao, for instance, refashioned old theatrical
traditions like the oggu kathas, burra kathas and yaksha gaanas into vibrant new
media that allowed them to sing and perform their poetry.
Song formed an integral part of the every day routine of the ‘productive classes’
as Kancha Ilaiah calls the Dalit Bahujans. It accompanied every chore, every
pain and disappointment as well as moments of celebration. In the poetry of the
Dalit Bahujans, one still hears the tambourine, the clash cymbals and the
ghungroos of the village performers, along with efflusion of raw dramatic
emotions. Joopaka Subhadra, in the following poem discusses how the Kongu,
the free end of the sari, doesn’t stand guard over the Dalit working woman: it’s a
tool, a companion, a comrade-in-drudgery. Much unlike the ghunghat (the Hindu
equivalent of the veil) draped over the head of an upper-caste woman.

kongu ties up my hunger


tucks my stomach in and watches
over me like maisamma of the tank
when work turns my sweat into a canal
she mops it up like a cool breeze
roots and vegetables, grains
and the komati's groceries
like the moon clutching together the stars
she is the shining bag that carries them on my head
in the fields and the paddies when i grow tired
she spreads out a bed to give me rest
when my grief streams from my eyes to the skies
she draws towards herself my eye babies
like a mother, and holds them, my dirt rag
when my husband reaches out in love or anger
like a ball of butter she always gets caught before I
from the insider or outsider, to aggression or violence
my kongu rag always succumbs first...
kissing my ears and cheeks
from cold stares, blazing looks
from the blasts of heat waves
from the sneakiness of rain drops
over the dawn of my face
the sapphires of my hair
she holds up an umbrella of senna flowers
offers cool relief like the shade of a tree
she becomes a warm fire and covers my shoulders
a pad for cool pots
that slake your thirst from a mile away

95
she burns her fingers
handling vessels on the stove
hugs my crying babies
like warm baby clothing
though she works cheerfully by my side all day in the quarry
she wipes the life streams
flowing from my body's sluices all night
like a cow nursing a new-born calf
she licks all dirt off my body
like a wicker wall
she hides the modugu stain spreading through my cloth
only when she becomes the snake charmer's been at my waist
do planting, harvesting, weeding and threshing
chores and songs screech into motion
in pleasure and sorrow, my dirt rag that rolls
in my hands, sweat, sides, bones, limbs
my work and songs, in crisis and comfort sticks to me
like dirt that falls on my feet, in my life path
my companion...slaving like the washerman's stone
when does she find any leisure?
she's not the patchy palloo that stands guard over my head
nor the hobbling stone... over my breast
how can i drag her into the bazaar
and set fire to her honour?

The first generation of Dalit Bahujan writers started out as members of various
left literary movements. In the sixties and seventies a great number joined the
various Naxalite factions, some like K. G. Satyamurthy (‘Sivasagar’) worked
even as active participants in armed struggles. Gaddar and Vangapandu Prasada
Rao worked in the overground cultural wing of one of the largest Naxalite
factions.
Steadily disillusioned by the upper-caste leadership many now openly question
their understanding of Indian social realities, and ridicule upper caste ideas that
caste plays no role in the continued marginalization of more and more Indians.
Ko.Pra asks the upper caste left revolutionaries:

sirs!
weren't we of the superstructure until yesterday
how would we have any base
without any foundation
how can there be any structure
true!

until now, building everything for you


became our only occupation

96
leaving us with no building of our own

and warns them:

wasn't it from your blows, sirs,


that we learnt how to retaliate?
the time will come
the time has to come
saved, like the sharpness of a knife,
the resentment so intently saved in our bellies
isn't it only now, sirs-
that it is gathering strength?
we are boycotting your courts
where those who should be in cages
sit on thrones and deliver judgments
the gun might be yours
but the hands that shall press the trigger are ours
we proudly declare!

Now, since the early eighties, steady streams of writers from the Dalit Bahujan
communities, many following an Ambedkarite rather than Marxist school of
thought, are valiantly pushing caste into mainstream discourse. Dr.Ambedkar
said:
‘…that the Caste System is not merely a division of
labour. It is also a division of labourers. Civilized society
undoubtedly needs division of labour. But in no civilized
society is division of labour accompanied by this
unnatural division of labourers into watertight
compartments. The Caste System is not merely a
division of labourers which is quite different from
division of labour—it is a hierarchy in which the
divisions of labourers are graded one above the other.
In no other country is the division of labour
accompanied by this gradation of labourers.’
He’d foreseen that political democracy would be meaningless without social
democracy. He questioned the tenuous Hindu identity of ‘untouchables’ and
rejected it altogether calling for ‘the annihilation of caste’. The Telugu poets who
claimed a new Dalit identity, rejected their own identities and history (or non-
history) in the process, thus remained dominated by upper caste Hindus.
Dr. Endloori Sudhakar attempts to restore meaning to all the history of the

97
oppressed Dalits which was never written through raising his grandfather (a
Madiga, whose traditional, caste-assigned occupation is tanning and working
with leather) to Godhood:
for having skinned the five spirits
by driving a nail into the sky
another into the patala
and soaking the hide in the seven seas you
deserve those sun and moon gods
as sandals for your feet!

Dr. Sudhakar uses the Five Spirits (the five elements), Patala (the netherworld),
the seven seas, the Sun and Moon Gods- all important themes in Hindu
cosmology, to build a grand memorial to the Madiga, banished to the fringes of
the village through all history and made to dispose of carcasses of dead animals
and other filth.

Sivasagar, in a very moving poem, laments all the bitterness and anguish
building among Dalits on the issue of periodic incidents of brutal, organized
violence and killing by upper caste oppressors in villages across the length of
India:

you, sarpanch babu! sir!


when he stopped
people washing their animals
in the tank
didn't you, with a whip
lash my son's chest
mark him with stains
in the cinema outside our village
for buying a big ticket*
and sitting alongside you
didn't you scheme
to cut his hands legs

was it your daughter who looked at him


or he who looked at her
I do not know but-
to kill lion-like Yesobu
you wove the noose
how can we forget this history!

98
All Dalits experience discrimination and exclusion especially in the villages in
some form almost every day. But organized violence also happens on a much
more regular basis than is reported by the media - on farms, schools, colleges,
places of worship and in their own homes. In Karamchedu, a prosperous village
in coastal Andhra Pradesh, a huge mob of thousands of upper caste Hindus,
outraged by a Dalit youth’s refusal to allow upper caste men to wash their cattle
in the tank used by the Dalits for drinking water (the upper castes have their own
tank) descended upon the Dalit part of the village and killed several residents.
This occurred in 1985.

The Dalits of Karamchedu refused to let the incident die, quietly, under the slow
uncaring wheels of the Indian justice system like many such horrors in the past.
Threats of more violence, badgering and bribing of witnesses, social boycotts --
they faced everything to fight for justice.
Karamchedu, a tragedy, also marked a new awakening in Dalit history:
my son's death
this isn't the first
many times in our village
he died and lived
to live he joined the army
as a corpse, he has returned alive
ayyo!
My mind's not in my mind
my mind's not in my mind
sir! In my eyes
the pyre dances
son! Yesoba! Yesoba!

Yesoba! My father!
for you
I'll weep like Karamchedu
for you
I'll weep like Chunduru
for you
I'll weep like Vempenta
I'll weep like yesterday's Gosayipalem!
To weep like Karamchedu is not to weep quietly, alone, like it used to be through
Dalit history. To weep like Karamchedu is to wail, to wake up the whole
neigbourhood and the world. To weep like Karamchedu is to make a big racket.

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Narender Bedide, 46, lives in Hyderabad, India. Has worked in the field of advertising
for nearly twenty years, or he thinks he did. Loves to blog, but caste takes over
everything he writes, and reads.

100
The Golden Navigator, by Orna Ben-Shoshan

101
Dream Casting
On the backs of pine beetles
burrowed beneath dense
tree bark
this journey is hidden.

The bedroom window’s hairline cracks


turn streetlights into muted prisms.
In the parking lot below,
talk of pancakes and bar fights.
I’m somewhere between it
and sleep, finally drifting off.

Next morning hands


cupped around coffee, I sit
a fresh persona.
Dust sparkles off lamplight,
sifts, and settles.

~ Charles Clifford Brooks III

Charles Clifford Brooks III has been published in The Dead Mule, Eclectica, Gloom
Cupboard, Cerebration, Underground Voices, Alba, Deep South, The Istanbul Literary
Review, Prick of the Spindle, Conversations, nibble, and Semaphore. He is currently
poetry editor for Literary Magic Magazine. Charles' poetry has been featured on the Joe
Milford Poetry Show. He believes every artist should join The Guerilla Poetics Project.
His first book of poetry, Whirling Metaphysics, will be published by Leaf Garden Press.

102
Solitary Whiskey Tonight
A beautiful woman, too young for me, really, but
more woman than I'd seen in a long damn time, and
smart and clean and loving and just a bit irrational
about some of the things I do or say, but she said she
loved my half-breed ass as much as I loved her.

She gave me a big hug at the door to her cabin, and


invited me in as I stood there on the porch holding
a cheap basket with two pair of her earrings, and
some other stuff, and her bowl with some of my own
quinua salad, so I stepped on inside and we made
small talk for about my two minute small-talk limit
then I handed her the stuff and explained how I'd
been missing my steel guitar, sitting by her couch
with the steel wedged between the strings and body,
a pick stuck through the strings up by the nut and
I picked it up like you'd pick up a dead hawk
beside the highway, then we hugged again and
I kissed the side of her neck just a little, "still friends?"

"Of course," she smiled like a rainbow smiles so


you won't notice the rain as much, and I bit my lip
hard, smiled and walked up to my car sitting there in
her driveway, wishing I had turned it around
before getting out and walking onto her porch.

~ Thomas Hubbard

103
The wind goes everywhere, and
here it is back again, with stories for us.
But who's listening?

~th

104

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