Truck's new driver for August

Many thanks to Elizabeth Switaj for taking Truck through the splashy, water-slick roads of July.


Our driver starting tomorrow, and for the entire month of August is rob mclennan. The keys, rob, are . . . well, I guess they're wherever Elizabeth they hid them. Buen viaje.

Surfacing

I'd thank everyone for the fish, but I'm a vegetarian. So long and thanks for all the seaweed, all the currents, all the salt.

I can't wait to see where Truck goes in August.

Just remember: the sea and its currents carry on.


Elizabeth Kate Switaj
Belfast
XXXI of July 2012

Siren

by Lazellion

Co(e)l|aboration

Mermaidry on Prezi

You can still participate.

"Pearls of the Ocean"

by Michelle Hyacinth

Mermaid Mother’s Milk

photo by Jurvetson (flickr)

Honey Dippers in NYC

by Alan Britt



The Honey Dippers arrived at La Guardia safe & sound,
souls firmly implanted on the platform leading to a runway
that ran beneath NYC, a sewer of sorts, but prepared
to levitate the first 6 rows & cause the last 8 to shed
the cultural masks that depress them each morning
at the foaming mirror.

                 ῼῼ    ῼῼ    ῼῼ    ῼῼ

For intermission they hired Lorca, Miguel Hernández,
Juan Ramón Jiménez & Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo
to keep the juices flowing.

                  ȱ   ȱ   ȱ   ȱ   ȱ   ȱ   ȱ   ȱ

Encore featured Duane, Eric & George on slide.

                    ж  ж  ж  ж

But the Dippers, carpe diem, scooped up leftovers
from previous Thanksgivings as though faith depended
upon them, which it did, & polished them against a
Marshall amp wandering the stage like the short chap
in Waiting for Godot but, otherwise, out to bend, twist
& de-crucify the word called love.






Alan Britt read poems at the World Trade Center/Tribute WTC Visitor Center in Manhattan/NYC, April 2012, at the We Are You Project (WeAreYouProject.Org) Wilmer Jennings Gallery, East Village/NYC, April 2012, and at New Jersey City University's Ten Year 9/11 Commemoration in Jersey City, NJ, September 2011. His poem, "September 11, 2001," appeared in International Gallerie: Poetry in Art/Art in Poetry Issue, v13 No.2 (India): 2011. His recent books are Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, The Robin Hood Book: Poets in Support of the Robin Hood Tax, by Caparison, United Kingdom, 2012; American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin: 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American writers, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008.

Politically speaking Alan has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds and oil. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur. In addition asks, please boycott Ringling Brothers Circus until they stop using and abusing elephants for their bizarre form of entertainment called the circus!


Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formally feral cats.

Links:
http://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/potw.html#fp1;
http://spectrumofpoeticfire.com/Reader%20Directory/Alan_Britt.htm; http://theliteraryunderground.org/wiki/index.php?title=Alan_Britt;
http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/morrison-on-saponia-and-britt/4556998367;
http://aliensareus.wordpress.com/ and
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=ttarezcab&v=001rUMZSB4OvtFAzyTcJtQzbO8B_vS9c5evaSstKkPGmEcjdmOOq3wQ7IplY9a_wMaJODvwC7O2R-lrmBto06w9uAel47rESQeVjSQeYdBJJC-pgeksV0L2VHkgsohQPsIy2LGwXnFwrfk%3D#LETTER.BLOCK6

Urban Siren

by Rising Damp

Pardon My Rhetoric

by Alan Britt



Well, why not?

The only thing stopping me
are the stars
& they’re too far away
to worry about.

Is/are leaves bruises
along the forearm.

Is/are trashed the fourth hurdle
& ended tits up.

Is/are crawled to the finish line, though.

Rumor has it that zebra smoke
curling a Christmas tin ashtray, attached,
smoke that is, attached to hand-cranked
London Shag, nose down, minding
its business, rumor has it
that this browsing broodmare
inched her way past splinters of moonlight
while migrating oboes & French horns
long enough to loosen the lining
around one’s brain.

The only thing stopping me, I say,
are the stars
& they’re too far away
to worry about.





Alan Britt read poems at the World Trade Center/Tribute WTC Visitor Center in Manhattan/NYC, April 2012, at the We Are You Project (WeAreYouProject.Org) Wilmer Jennings Gallery, East Village/NYC, April 2012, and at New Jersey City University's Ten Year 9/11 Commemoration in Jersey City, NJ, September 2011. His poem, "September 11, 2001," appeared in International Gallerie: Poetry in Art/Art in Poetry Issue, v13 No.2 (India): 2011. His recent books are Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, The Robin Hood Book: Poets in Support of the Robin Hood Tax, by Caparison, United Kingdom, 2012; American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin: 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American writers, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008.

Politically speaking Alan has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds and oil. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur. In addition asks, please boycott Ringling Brothers Circus until they stop using and abusing elephants for their bizarre form of entertainment called the circus!


Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formally feral cats.

Links:
http://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/potw.html#fp1;
http://spectrumofpoeticfire.com/Reader%20Directory/Alan_Britt.htm; http://theliteraryunderground.org/wiki/index.php?title=Alan_Britt;
http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/morrison-on-saponia-and-britt/4556998367;
http://aliensareus.wordpress.com/ and
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=ttarezcab&v=001rUMZSB4OvtFAzyTcJtQzbO8B_vS9c5evaSstKkPGmEcjdmOOq3wQ7IplY9a_wMaJODvwC7O2R-lrmBto06w9uAel47rESQeVjSQeYdBJJC-pgeksV0L2VHkgsohQPsIy2LGwXnFwrfk%3D#LETTER.BLOCK6

Trips

by Jessy Randall and Daniel M. Shapiro



The floor vibrates. I can't hear you.
In the basement, a box squints
as if trying to remember our faces.

Magma slurs its way up the stairs.
There's nothing that can stop it.

We climb crawling ivy to the attic,
where my stoic science book
clasps the solution. Page 136.

We sail our diamond boat into town,
singing songs of mermaids on fire.

This poem originally appeared in Star*Line, a print magazine.


Jessy Randall and Daniel M. Shapiro have been collaborating on projects since they were in middle school together. Their collection of poems, Interruptions, is currently available from Pecan Grove Press. 

“It was going on five in the morning”

by Scott Keeney



after André Breton

It was going on five in the morning
A galleon of fog dragged its chains across the ocean’s windowpanes
In the other direction in the distance
A glowworm
Lifted an island like a leaf
Flowering from a thousand fathoms a mother’s cry
Something was finished
Unforged in the foundry of the final
I think I’ve been falling for a long long time
Seaweed wound around my arms
Algae woven into my hair
And coral formed along my spine
Like the icicles around my sea-glass eyes
Another cry a shriek a squeal
Followed by a bell followed by a bell
The arcane bell
The antediluvian bell
Chained to the seabed the last mermaid
Her wrists in two-inch silver cuffs
Writhing relentless with everywhere eyes
Ringed by a thin spool of blood
And bits of scales drifting round like flower petals
A clatter of spears
Sends me away back up looking down
If I could shed my skin if I could carve myself out
If I could pierce this blue infinity’s black heart
Your blood and mine might mingle into one



Scott Keeney’s works have appeared most recently in Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green,Everyday Genius, Gobbet, On Barcelona, Stirring, and UCity Review.

Imagine Peace

by Alan Britt



(For John & Yoko)

Peace, a good start.

Makes the later stuff more manageable.

In the meantime, peace, peace of mind
leads to peace of lifestyle,
peace when it comes to disabling one’s neighbor
over corn, banana & oil futures,
peace over refugees for diamonds,
peace over genocide,
peace when it finally gets down
to who owns the water,
peace over who corners copper on Wall Street,
peace over troops sent to dress the wounds of war,
peace just when peace becomes a white speck
among ten thousand pearly specks
dotting the skin of one pale green apple.




Alan Britt read poems at the World Trade Center/Tribute WTC Visitor Center in Manhattan/NYC, April 2012, at the We Are You Project (WeAreYouProject.Org) Wilmer Jennings Gallery, East Village/NYC, April 2012, and at New Jersey City University's Ten Year 9/11 Commemoration in Jersey City, NJ, September 2011. His poem, "September 11, 2001," appeared in International Gallerie: Poetry in Art/Art in Poetry Issue, v13 No.2 (India): 2011. His recent books are Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, The Robin Hood Book: Poets in Support of the Robin Hood Tax, by Caparison, United Kingdom, 2012; American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin: 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American writers, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008.

Politically speaking Alan has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds and oil. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur. In addition asks, please boycott Ringling Brothers Circus until they stop using and abusing elephants for their bizarre form of entertainment called the circus!


Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formally feral cats.

Links:
http://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/potw.html#fp1;
http://spectrumofpoeticfire.com/Reader%20Directory/Alan_Britt.htm; http://theliteraryunderground.org/wiki/index.php?title=Alan_Britt;
http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/morrison-on-saponia-and-britt/4556998367;
http://aliensareus.wordpress.com/ and
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=ttarezcab&v=001rUMZSB4OvtFAzyTcJtQzbO8B_vS9c5evaSstKkPGmEcjdmOOq3wQ7IplY9a_wMaJODvwC7O2R-lrmBto06w9uAel47rESQeVjSQeYdBJJC-pgeksV0L2VHkgsohQPsIy2LGwXnFwrfk%3D#LETTER.BLOCK6

Mermaid Relief

by Craig Conley

Mermaids!

by V Smoothe

Seeking My Stars Again

by Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Came down from the trains
Came past trash cans 
                cascading Coke cans
Crawled down through shattered shells
                     with pieces of moon

Spread arms over breakers
    and floated out until I could believe
 stars

 that finally glided towards JFK
but I was shivering
                and pulled my arms back
                    kicked back to shore

I’ll try swimming out again
when more scales have grown between
my legs you ripped apart
                       to better find me

from Magdalene & the Mermaids (Paper Kite Press, 2009)

mermaid_2

by Tristan Waddington

Monster Gardens

by Scott Keeney



Anything but ornamental
we pegged each other
as a memorial
in nine utter parts—

eyebrows raised, lips
held tight, no need,
light heart, to spell
or spill things out.


2

A couple of sphinges
staring at each other
as if to carve an exit
into eternity—

What if Paul Bunyan,
having lost his Babe,
caught a woodsman
by the legs and
ripped him in half?


3

The castle built
on the elephant’s back,
the guide
banging the drum,

the legionnaire passed out
in the elephant’s trunk,
the empty eyes
and missing tusks.


4

Raptorial
yell, centripetal eyes, the moss-
winged dragon climbs
dog and lion
to seize the sky
from the idea of God.


5

Inside the mouth of hell,
that two-toothed Moloch,

the stone tongue forms
a picnic table.

We sit down to eat
the sandwiches we brought,

smile at each other
and our rational ways.


6

The sun is rising.
The nymph must be sleeping.

*

You who have travelled the world
come here and rest in
this bench like a basket
as it sinks into the earth.

*

The rotunda,
the owl.
We enter,
we who.

*

Come back when the sun is sleeping.
You know she won’t be there.


7

A mermaid with a shoe on her head—
we weren’t supposed to stare?—
with wings like sugar cookies and a tail
that slipped back into the ocean
some thirty miles away.

Now when we see Neptune
with his Age of Aquarius beard
we understand what he is
going through.


8

Cerberus wanders the Sacred Grove
with his detachable heads
that fall to the ground
whenever one barks.

Ceres will stop and put the heads
back on, but Venus—
those snouts
have torn her forearms off.


9

The temple brings boredom
compared to the Graces
embracing their bodies
in the cavern, the source
of all obscure thought.


Scott Keeney’s works have appeared most recently in Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Everyday Genius, Gobbet, On Barcelona, Stirring, and UCity Review.

Collaborative Prezi Poem

Help create a collaborative Prezi poem by following this link.

If you want some ideas about what a Prezi poem can do, have a look at these examples.

sea in her head cried the sea

by Bobbi Lurie


yes he fled
sunk himself deep
dead to the blue ends of the divided
dead on a rock
exposing the bone as in the dark knight
the white knight turned dark
for life
for life
does it
red canal of muscular strength slit swiftly
and love so easy to lose
twitching with fear
the ripeness and readiness for death
almost automatic in our souls
knife tip held to our throats
and about human love i say
it is most always
a contradiction
in terms



Bobbi Lurie's fourth poetry collection, "the morphine poems," will be published by Otoliths this summer. She is also the author of  "Grief Suite,"  "Letter from the Lawn" and "The Book I Never Read."

The US Government Responds to Truck

Truck's turn for submersion made waves even before it went underwater. On 26 June, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, no doubt aware of our direction for the month, put up a page denying that any evidence of mermaids or their kin has ever been found.

What, do you suppose, a belief in mermaids would displace?

Elizabeth Kate Switaj
Oxford
III of July 2012

Secret Brush Strokes

by Marcus Speh

Jungle beans. Arctic 

badgers. Green steaks. 

Following clouds. Tarnished 

vagabonds. Ludicrous 

fingers. Fantastic booleans. 

Waxing lyrically. Must stop. Back 

to basics. Verbs. Nouns. Places. 

Placemats. Cutlery. Action. Plot.

Poop.

I’m a gentle dragon’s fierce egg. 

Not quite clear who I’m going to be 

once I hatch, not even to me.

My heart’s got a spout 

and some red thing 

comes out of it. It 

walks next to me, 

talks reason, makes me 

fall in love.

(Witty writing tends to 

wilt unless it’s Wilde.)

At the harbor, he could

hear the muffled sounds

of a fog horn calling lost 

mermaids and footloose 

lovers by their true names.

Writing at home while rain fingers

sing Chorals on the window sill.

A young man madly in pursuit 

of sound, milking rather than 

playing the keyboard, shouts 

at invisible musical ghosts.

One day a girl almost

destroyed the world by

making a single secret

brush stroke.

Her lids fluttered uncontrollably 

as she struggled to leave 

the cocoon. The butterfly 

catcher put his finger on her 

tiny head and squished it. 

He had no need for fairies.

Stay with us or if you can’t, 

don’t, but then go where we 

can’t see you and if you can’t

do that, then don’t go, please.

MARCUS SPEH is a German writer who lives in Berlin and writes in English. His short fiction has been published in elimae, kill author, PANK and elsewhere. First published in 2009 at Metazen, his work has been nominated for a Micro Award, two Pushcart Prizes, two Best of the Net awards and two Million Writers Awards, and was longlisted for the Paris Literary Prize. Known as a staunch supporter of penguin rights and maitre d' of the legendary DADA venue Kaffe in Katmandu, he blogs in English at marcusspeh.com and in German at marcusspeh.de. MadHat Press will release Marcus' collection of short fiction, Thank You For Your Sperm, later this year.

Truck's July Stretch of Highway

Last week, an intense bout of rain left parts of Belfast under water. A photograph of a man kayaking down the street, a few blocks from where I live, went viral on Twitter (though the water in most parts of town seemed far too swift to breed infection). In another neighborhood, a man used his surfboard to transport trapped neighbors.

But the rain stopped, the queen left town, and the water went back to its usual courses.

This month, Truck is following that water, taking a turn for submersion (and if we're lucky, there will be a bit of subversion along the way too). The theme, interpreted broadly, is mermaids ands sirens. And you can still send submissions to me at ekswitaj@gmail.com; I would especially like to see responses to the work that will be posted in the next few weeks.

Even if you don't want to submit something formally, there will be opportunities for creative collaboration coming up. I hope you'll add to the currents.

Elizabeth Kate Switaj
Belfast
I of July 2012