John Tritica

At the Edge of Hearing Seeing

                                 for Richard Hample


        I am listening
    at the edge of hearing
leaves’ mottled
  shade flutters me
    a swallow-tail’s flyway
        parallel to the bike
    the brilliant wings alight
            on a sycamore

               ***

       industrial warehouses
            beside the bike path
    goat heads weeds wild grass
         out here a hummingbird
               finds no nectar
          hovers    then
               carries the wind
                   straight up

               ***

              a good reason
               this is a first
                      the bird’s
         lost along hard soil draught
             datura could grow here
                       but no seeds
                            no moisture
                                 a stiff wind
                                       in the face
                                 you ride
                             a bike along
                       a diversion channel
                  into the sun            

                                          -- John Tritica

Larry:

I've been painting my house & working the garden & not diligent about my e-mail--sorry. Thank you for using my poem--it's one that I like, situated in the high desert that is my place & home . . .  I loved seeing your archive--Steve Clay is terrific human being.  I once read in his gallery in Soho, which was closed a long time ago.  In any case, he's a great publisher, & an astute agent for landing archival materials.  What a fascinating collection of materials--thanks for sending this to me. . . .

John

(sneaking in at the last minute a poem by John Tritica 
and I thank you!)

Thank you to everyone for contributing and please please link to this July 2016 collection of poems and information . . . here it is for you all to use! If you click on your name and send that as a link (in the web address) your poem will show up. And thanks to Hal Johnson.
larry

Alan Casline

Larry, here is a poem . . . . 
Best, Alan Casline
(note: Alan lives in Albany, NY)

SARDINE (FOR WORKSHOP)
  
  sardines swimming small

          old salty says “sardines
                          pure with
                        no one to bait a hook
                                            that little"

we plant the spirit of something smaller
 the mesh of the spirit of something smaller

              a little like love
  the sardines squeeze their
  spirits for us
 spirits shaped like toothpaste
  spirits pushed out under pressure

              they are swimming with garbage


to protect all beings
                                  gather poets
  from our axletree broken wagon
  poets spilled on low-lying ground
we stop on the swale
just beyond us
             at sea    the rainbow
out over the emerald sea

swimming

             little taste for fish
          only
             vague how they, how they
come back again
                               a few left alone  

                           beauty sardines with
                         the beauty of swimming

  
"Sardine poem from August 4, 2009 reconfigured from Persian translation by machine — " Alan Casline (December 12, 2013)

Poets on the trail of "The Burning Springs" *(in NY) - photo from Casline's FB photos. (thanks.)

Alan Casline is second from the right. The gentleman on the right (unusual for him) is our friend John Roche . . .

Zachary Kluckman

The Buoyancy of Potbellied Boys

A sobering thought. Water

is stronger than I, for all my thick-shouldered girth. Frog stroke.

Kick back to move forward. The same philosophy our mother taught

for self-defense. Kick back. Swim, little fish, trust the current.

Avoid every hand with its hook. This is survival. Practice.

Young, I punched myself in the face.

Hard enough to crack bone. Prepared the taste of blood in my mouth.

No surprise when the older boys came to the fight. Choked my-

self to discover how long I could hold my breath, in case

I should find myself short of air, victim of violence or old age.

Asked my friend’s father, the Marine, to bind me with the best knots he knew.

                                   Broke loose, under 2 minutes

to freedom. You never understood this fear of captivity,

this need to prepare for every violence and ready defense. To kick

back. A sobering thought. Water is stronger than prayer.

Quicker to take you to god. I would have learned to swim,

If our teacher had not let you drown. Had not stared so hard

at our father’s thin body, she missed your move to the deep end.

You live there now, though I pulled you from the water. Sister,

the water was stronger.

                                   Pulled thrashing with fear

from the bottom, I never took another lesson. I pretend

my fight for the surface made me a swimmer. A devout minnow,

silver-finned like mother, with praise for the river. Pretend

the fist to the face, the blood in the knuckle, made me a man.

A sobering thought. A man’s past

can drown him as readily as water. Past 40, my knees are not

as strong as your memory. Your face under water. But my children

have never seen the mirror I carry near rivers, to remind myself of the sky.

Never seen the fight inside of their father. The pillow I hold over my face

to test my breath. A sobering thought. My need to defend them from

the fear, as fierce as their need to swim. Blood, once more,

the reason I jumped in the water.

Zachary Kluckman

"Zachary Kluckman, the National Poetry Awards 2015 Slam Organizer of the Year and 2014 Slam Artist of the Year, is a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Gold Medal Poetry Teacher and a founding organizer of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change program. The 2015 Slam of Enchantment Grand Slam Champion, Kluckman has appeared multiple times at the National And Individual World Poetry slams, as well as regional competitions, and has toured the nation performing and facilitating poetry workshops. He serves as Spoken Word Editor for the Pedestal magazine and has authored three poetry collections."

Bruce Holsapple

Hi Larry,

What I've been up to, besides no good:  I just submitted the page proofs and index for The Birth of the Imagination:  William Carlos Williams on Form to UNM Press.  The book is due out in November (2016).  I'm reading a lot on the sublime, Longinus, Kant and Burke, and on the Enlightenment.  The sublime, they believed, contains an element of terror, e.g. fear of God.  And I am attempting lately to restain the porch, but every time I'm begun painting the rain moves in. 

Cheers,
Bruce

Fear of God

A hullabaloo outside
a squall moving in
the winds howl over the roof
growl about the corners
bawl, yowl

I am so mortified
             melancholy
             mad

Is anyone not struggling?

Write out the grievances:
crushed sore shabby harassed
Why did I get smacked so bad
grumble, grumble
the various toxins available,
rattlesnake, black widow

weird dirt orange trick
tiger leg flicker stifled child
the felony tip glow
a match lit, sulfur tang
red clandestine decay

Why ask people to read such garbage
Light a candle, will you, Jack?
Because it produces in them an unholy dread
& it is sort of delightful

Okay, I had no ulterior purpose but to write
& confess, it breaks the fixation
the reportorial, What I thought was
What I believe she did
What I feel besides broken hearted

a relief to be rid of yourself
curl into a black cloud, rain
can almost rumble rumble
hear the storm clouds below
you mean above
I mean above & below

I mean I always carry raincoats when I travel
you never know when someone special
might knock

Well, you could step outside
& get banged as easily

Okay, but still you never know what pivotal event
fatal interview, you probably should
straighten your tie, pull aright
this could be the moment
you’re taken aside for questioning

Has your humor dried with age?
Yes, dried out, cracked

Bruce Holsapple


Review of Wayward Shadow and info about Bruce's many Audio Recordings of Poets!

Matthew Conley

“That tattoo”

That temporary tattoo
is permanently
too

That tat
so you:
-flat
-unnatural blue

That tat
                 it's true,
I have my own bone
zoo

Matthew Conley

I’m humming through a tiny airport at near 90 mph watching the smoke from the Dog’s Head
fire off to the northeast news kiosk.
Wait that can’t be right.
Maybe: I’m sleeping behind the wheel somewhere outside of Albuquerque, Arizona, once called
Tucson, New Mexico in another life. Yeah
that’s it: I’m steering a Subaru bed using a round pillow while a big orange snooze button keeps
kinking the horizon ahead.
My “Teacher’s Summer” is turning into a year-long sabbatical in this transitional place called the
southwestern United States. My desert home is just another stop on the road trip, but this time
I’m leaving my library behind me like an ant: follow the chemical trail hint of divorce and social
isolation.
For a decade I’ve been at the University of Arizona working with international students (the last
5 years) at the lowest acceptable (for American institutions of higher something) English
proficiency levels and it has been wonderful as in “full of wonder.” Having conversations with
young people from China & Saudi Arabia & Khazakstan & Angola & Mongolia is usually the
exact day I want to have on planet Earth. Occasionally attending workshops led by cutting-edge
experts working on problems I “solved” (hahaha) 3 years ago in the classroom. But when I spoke
up my speak up didn’t use the big words like their talk down. Yet.
And as much as America has been on fire this Summer of 2016, I have let my amicable end-of-
relationship proceedings be that much smaller in my mind. Life invites me to stress so to make
room I take brooms to my me. “Gone awaaaaay” are meat & alcohol. “Here to staaaaay” are
daily yoga & herbal tea. Preach a little & practice more. Now my last June in Tucson is behind me. That is something indeed.
Once the Sonoran sets me free I’ll 2nd Master’s Degree, this time in Education. Another U.S.
school, probably mid-Atlantic, a graying mid-90s Legacy wagon parked outside. Power to the
People This Summer “) -MjC
*
Matthew Conley was born in Walt Whitman’s hometown but prefers a tighter line. Most recently,

a poem of his appears in The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (University of Arizona
Press, 2016).

Judy Grahn

From old friend and former Placitas resident (a  time ago) Judy Grahn. And please see Judy Grahn.

Hi Larry, I spent a lot of time this month crying over the police murders of innocent black people, as well as the murders of Dallas police. Also reeling from the RNC misogyny expressed toward Hillary Clinton, and my guess is some of that wrath is infused with racist hysteria. News for me personally—finishing up another collection of poems for Red Hen Press due out next year, and working on stories that chase after spirit in nature, ways nature reaches out to us and we use her creatures to make meanings.  Very happy that two friends from high school! came to visit me for my birthday. A 60 plus year friendship, amazing. Recently someone asked me why I write poetry given that it doesn’t make any money and takes so much effort. I know the answer: because it saves my life (really) and also keeps me curious and optimistic. Love to you and Lenore, please keep on singing your song.
Judy Grahn, Ph.D.

Poet, Writer, Professor at Large

Here's a collage of images and a couple poems from ye olde Oriental Blue Streak in 1968, a mimeographed poetry magazine from duende press. The Centipede's Poem and In Larry's Room are 2 of the poems she generously contributed. Thank you, Judy. The top left photo is by Lynda Koolish from Crossing Cards. The top med photo was taken in Placitas where she was living . . . . book covers from books Judy sent me . . .

Max Finstein and others, loved Judy's poems in this issue . . . love, larry

Don McIver

Conspiracy

Somewhere

in the Rio Grande gorge, cottonwoods conspired with Russian Olives

pulled as much water out of the river before it merges with the Red.

Those pesky humans dumped chemicals,

mine tailings,

nitrate laden water,

agricultural runoff and top soil in their river.

They stopped it.

The trees conspired to change the flow of the river,

stored it up in new lakes,

had a highway of deer teamsters

carry the water down to the cottonwoods and Russian Olives

in small quantities and bottles

and not let anyone else have it.

Somewhere

in the depths of Elephant Butte, bass conspired with trout.

They tired of Jet Skis, tow boats,

water skiers and tubers,

top water lures and crank bait,

casual swimmers, three day weekend barbeques, 

and drunks.

The fish nibbled toes,

dragged innocent children down to the depths,

stuffed and mounted

them on water made walls.

Somewhere

in the Rio Grande Bosque, cranes conspired with ducks.

They turned on dogs, 

horseback riders, and joggers.

The cranes ignored the grain that BLM rangers left behind,

posted memos and trail signs,

organized field trips,

and erected educational walks for viewing:

bureaucrats,

bird watchers,

tourists,

and the elderly.

Somewhere

in El Paso, Texas and New Mexico water managers conspired to take more of the Rio water away from human farmers, pueblo communities, and the desert. If the courts can mediate a settlement, Albuquerque can sprawl even more; El Paso can grow even larger; and the natural communities and habitats that depend on the Rio can fend

for themselves.

Deeds are written; titles notarized for water, a naturally occurring chemical compound.

Don McIver

"Resting after bagging Mt. Wheeler 
(New Mexico's tallest peak)."

Don is a former member of the ABQ slam team, a host/producer of KUNM’s Spoken Word Hour, the author of The Noisy Pen, and editor of A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene. He’s performed all over the United States, produced, curated, and hosted poetry events big and small including the 2005 National Poetry Slam, and been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.  He's a teacher by trade at Central NewMexico Community College, where he also manages the tutoring center. For more information on Don, please visit his writing blog, Confessions a Human Nerve Ending.

Laurie Macrae

Laurie "grew up in Albuquerque, spent six formative years in the Bay Area during the sixties, and returned to New Mexico in 1969. She has been an activist all her life and a poet, periodically, since her teens, when she was mentored by Tuli Kupferberg and other Beat poets of the San Francisco scene.

She has spent almost 30 years as a librarian, mostly in NM but for 6 1/2 years in San Diego where she retired to pursue mental health activism. She writes, swims, and does battle with the behavioral health system, which is at best inadequate and at worst abandoning the population it should serve."

California Dream

Awake, a boat,

Sinew stretched

Between the hollows

of the bolstered bed

Grains of sand sift

in the sheets

The slings of sleep so recently adrift

Warmed by friction, ignite

The same quarrel

with each wave:

To sail into the deep 

Where ancient hunger

and dread collide

Where a swell,

plunderer of senses,

Seduces each synapse 

with undertow allure

And a beach

Benignly beckons

As Pacific turbulence dresses

For evening in

a flash of green

Or raise a clouded eye to dawn 

Again the damp sea air, the clutch 

Of my own arms 

Against the bluster of the day

Warped limbs planted

on a shifting deck 

Sucked from beneath me

By the rip of time, I stagger 

But I stand

Laurie Macrae

     Nov. 10, 2014 San Diego

Poem of Laurie's from Roosevelt Park Albuquerque days: http://www.dukecityfix.com/profiles/blogs/the-sunday-poem-laurie-macrae-roosevelt-park-theory-and-practice

And another, Baseball caps! http://www.dukecityfix.com/profiles/blogs/the-sunday-poem-laurie-macrae-the-reason-we-wear-our-baseball

Mementos! (Hope you don't mind my adding this, Laurie.)

This was choice, a lot of fun to do, thanks
to the Taos Poetry Circus friends.

John Macker

Hi Larry & thanks.

Guest edited latest Malpais Review w/14 Colorado poets: "there is nothing so beautiful as the sound of dreaming across borders" & wrote an essay on Venice West legend Tony Scibella. Also Herrera, abeyta, Camp, Stablein, Tani Arness, Kell Robertson, Simon Ortiz, etc etc. Nice issue. Also participating in panel discussion on Southwestern author Frank Waters with John Nizalowski & Alexander Blackburn up at the Harwood in Taos on Wed. Aug. 3rd. 7 p.m. Going to write an essay on Todd Moore for last Malpais. Busy working & worrying about the state of the world. Here's a poem about some things I've been thinking about.

Massacre

                    −for Joe Somoza

On any other Sunday if the kitchen

light had a voice it would sing

like Mavis Staples

all the birds would be

politely silenced by the poet

who sits in his

Las Cruces garden on mornings

like this for

twenty-two years

writing poems

in the shade of a tall tree

so he wouldn’t later on

lose his mind.

The rooster would crow dawn up

from polished black to soft blue

full-throated throughout the neighborhood

many of the children would go

politely and without incident to mass

my prayer flags would still have nine lives.

On any other Sunday,

nobody would rise haunted with the

ghost sickness or deny the Coyote within.

Anybody would believe the full moon

or at least the ghost of moon

as yellow as yarrow

as it traveled across the shores of our eyes

or June with its rampaging fahrenheits.

Each tree is an indeterminate amount of

time rooted deep

I think, therefore I think I’m an act of faith

unfathomable morning

I’m walking through cottonwood snow.

John Macker

                               

thanks for all you do, Larry. I very much like your latest books. Bravo.

well maybe life as a poet is worthwhile after all - thank you John

Geoffrey Young

NOWHERE

Is there a gun more dangerous

than the one whose owner
defends his god? Look

where we are now, worlds poisoned

by belief. How far is it to the horizon,

to the Sun going down, to Thou Shalt

Not? Grab something of value

from the burning house!

Be smart, be fearless, be focused

on present necessity, with liberty

and yogurt for all. Here’s my vote

for the equitable distribution of goods.

One pie, one family, one Earth, one knife, etc.

What’s a stack of cheese if we lose a planet?

 Geoffrey Young

i run a contemporary art gallery  (for the last 25 yrs). Geoffrey Young Gallery

i make my leetle books and do drawings, but only show other people's work.

my next show, Hanging Paper, is a group show.

will use the new colored pencil drawings in my next book (of short prose).

no title yet . . .

geoffrey young

geoffrey young

thank you, Geoff . . . 

Miriam Sagan

(and a photograph by Isabel Winson-Sagan) Miriam writes:

I'm blogging at Miriam's Well  which is always looking for work tied in to our interests. And I interview poets who have published a book. Email for blog submissions or interview questions is msagan1035@aol.com. The current theme is "Letter To My Younger Self."

Right now I'm at Herekeke on Lama Mountain, working with my daughter Isabel Winson-Sagan on an ongoing collaboration of text and image. Here is a poem.

The tattooed girl

draws the mountain

surprisingly soft-lined

fences and trees,

as a child

obsessed by rivers,

black and red ants

crawl over the bark

of an old piñon

traveling through gullies and canyons,

suminagashi lines

photograph by Isabel Winson-Sagan

on paper

pulled once

through ink floating on water

wet fractal

of a topo map

some place real yet imagined

right now

I might not even

see

Lama Mountain

Miriam Sagan

Katrina K Guarascio

How to be in love with a ghost

Sleep in his old t-shirt

savoring the scent trapped inside thread and collar.

Leave the smell of hair in pillow.

Mimic the sound of shutting doors

slapping goodbye.

Play a melody of afternoon thunderstorms

and chase the scent of rain

through the house.

Flick ash to pavement,

bare feet to sidewalk,

leave a trail from the rubble

that built your favorite mythology.

Refuse to release him

from mind and motion,

bite lower lip to keep words

from falling out.

Find a boy at the bar with the same shade of eyes

and a smile kind enough to resurrect the past.

Sing all the words to Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” in his ear

in a slow dance to last call.

Stare into eyes a little too long,

listen to stories with too much care thirsty for truths.

Tell him he reminds you of someone you used to know.

Then no longer hide bruises.

Show him the peaceful side of your nature,

the sleepless side of your soul.

Walk across the broken glass of beer bottles

to nudge him awake,

replace missing pages about last night

over a breakfast where you

laugh to loud to be in public,

still drunk from one another.

When he leaves

thank him for wearing the skin of memory

and gifting the kindness of patience.

Do not kiss him goodbye.

Reclaim evening habits,

curled in tattered wool sweater,

beer and cigarette,

tangled in all the parts of what once was.

Watch in solitude as the full moon creeps across the sky

and breathe in all that has come to pass.

Katrina Guarascio

Hi Larry,

I wish I was up to more poetry and writing wise. Right now, I am keeping myself busy updating my blog: katrinakguarascio.com and working on my novel. I've had few features this year but am hopeful to get out to more poetry readings in the future. I am the current editor of The Sunday Poem on the Duke City Fix and would love some submissions (hint! hint!) Send submissions to swimwithelephants@gmail.com

Kat

The Sunday Poem is an ongoing feature of Duke City Fix (I did a round of editing for it myself) and Katrina is the current editor. Here's a list of poems.

Hello and Love to All

Hal Johnson asked me and here I am for the month of July in 2016 and you might call this
LARRY AND FRIENDS since I just emailed for poems and any comment about "what you're up to" and most people sent in poems. To me this is further revelation that increasingly all poetry is local. Traditionally way back there were national entities of poetry, national poets even, but now there are entities within the national - poetry reading and publishing confabs in pockets entities just about everywhere. The populace of poets growing all around broken up into localities of us bards, bardic yawps everyplace. The locality I live and breathe in is Placitas Albuquerque Las Cruces Santa Fe Taos El Paso mainly but more often it's just plain ole Albuquerque-Placitas. The Facebook and email/website reaches are constantly extending and over time dear friends are in their own localities wherever increasingly.

So the poets here are some of the poets informed by the longstanding living locality plus the reachings out as everyone experiences, that growth - online, Facebook, music and "document" sites.

So welcome to all and thank you for sending poems and news and as long as my time allows (constantly being demanded on) please continue to send on here if you are indeed in some way a friend, a true acquaintance, surely you're welcome and I'll do my best. larrynewmex@gmail.com

For information about me it is embarrassingly all too available with more coming as I continue my project HEAR making much of my poetry work finally available. http://www.larrygoodell.com/  And I can't help but recommend my 3 new books from Beatlick Press. And thank you, Hal.

Rudolfo Anaya

Years ago Rudy and Patricia Anaya, along with David Johnson, Tony Mares, Jim Fisher and others, launched the Rio Grande Writer's Association which boosted poetry and all creative writing across the state and the SW . . . Voices of the Rio Grande came out of its first conference and it remains the groundbreaking anthology for us in these parts . . . thank you, Rudy . . . and thanks for sending this . . .

The Pulse of Life

It was the twelfth of June

            another hot and humid Florida night.

In Orlando young people gathered at the

            Pulse Club, enjoying camaraderie, the

            dance floor pulsating with life,

            dancers moving to syncopated music,

            Latin rhythms, good will embraces,

            laughter, friendships, plans for

            tomorrow, flashing smiles releasing

            stress in silent motions.

Then the pulse of life ended.

            A man on fire came from a dark,

            twisted place, methodically spraying

            death, massacring our LGBT

            dancers who fell like cut flowers.

Pulses died in 49 bloodied wrists,

            blood pressures plunged to zero,

            juices of life that would never

            flow into the future stained

            the sad dance floor.

Shock spread across the country,

            across the world, enough grief

            to last many lifetimes.  Lost lives

            cannot be replaced.

Orlando pulled together, offering

            condolences and help.  From here

            we sent flor y canto, oraciones,

            flowers and poems, prayers.

            Left bereaved on this senseless

            plain, we wondered who killed the

            Golden Rule, Love Your Neighbor.

We mourn our fallen comrades, our

            gay sisters and brothers, and after

            grieving we march to tear down the

            barricades of hate, bigotry,

            prejudices.  We march to tear down

            walls that separate.

                                                ©2016 Rudolfo Anaya

                                                6/19/16

Hi, Larry, good to hear from you. Yes you may use my poem in TRUCK . . . . New, just out, my new novel, THE SORROWS OF YOUNG ALFONSO, reviewed by David Stenburg in [The Albuquerque] Journal.  . . . Keep well my friend, Rudy. . . Keep well my friend,  Rudy