Jerome Rothenberg

TWO POEMS FROM DIVAGATIONS

 
divagations (23)
THE TRUTH OF SOLIPSISM

Each one holds a recollection of what he was: a
bush & a bird, a boy & a girl, a mute fish in the
sea.*                                                                                          * (Empedocles of Acragas)
The pavement feels warm to his feet,
his shoulders bearing the weight of the sky, his
chest* the weight* of his heart, still heavy inside          * his breast    * the fate
him.

Pebbles caught between his toes, a mash*                      * a mesh
that covers them, walking with the caution of
a cat.
From here the sea is almost at your door,
the waves remind you of a shadow world, a
purple surge* against a shore that’s nearly black.          * a rise
He walks inside the frame, my mind
surrounds* & holds him.                                                      * astounds
Less is more, enough is too much, either
is the same as or.
Earth’s sweat the sea, earth’s skin
the heave* of mountains, hollow cones of flesh              * the hide
with fire at their core, earth’s hair & teeth
bewilderment.
Bespattered & befuddled, be at peace.
At which the friend explores his inner
landscape, stumbling among stones, the more
to test his vitals, to emerge unsung.*                                 * unstrung
No moment can endure the shock of time*                      * of rhyme
as lost as you, the truth of solipsism turning all
we know to naught.

15.iii.12


divagations (24)
ENOUGH TO TAKE YOU DOWN

Varied the places that he knew, the false
encounters that we lived through.
I extend my hand, and you, unlearning
what was never* real, retreat, your back a                        * ever
ready* target.                                                                           * a steady
All life forever outside moves behind
a bolted door, the voices uppermost* that drift                * almost lost
into the shuttered* room & swirl around you.                  *shattered
We join together in a struggle, seeing
what the water* has washed up, the sewers                       * the slaughter
overflowing, leaving a debris & smell of dying
life.
A sticky surface
clinging to his boots,
raw paper,
brown & red in spots,
a broken cup,
a bag of bones
& blood,
a sculpted head
cracked down the center,
a dead dog, a condom
inside out,
a silver wig,
a smell of death
enough to take you down,
a black hole in your gut
through which the shit
pours freely,
shit on sidewalk, shit
on hands & mouth,
a honey wrap,
effluvium,
a surface
not exactly green,
an ace of spades
thrown down
atop the pile.
I who began to walk,                                                                * so many years    * to talk
before, now stand in front of you & turn to
stone.*                                                                                         * to bone

30.vi.12 

 

Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over eighty books of poetry and several assemblages of traditional and avant-garde poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred (Doubleday, University of California) and, with Pierre Joris and Jeffrey Robinson, Poems for the Millennium, volumes 1-3 (University of California). Recent books of poems include Triptych (New Directions), Gematria Complete (Marick), Concealments & Caprichos (Black Widow), and Retrievals: Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010 (Junction). He is now working on a global anthology of “outsider and subterranean poetry” and, with Heriberto Yépez, Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader for Black Widow Press. He has until recently been a professor of visual arts and literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Hezy Leskly, translated by Adriana X. Jacobs

from DEAR PERVERTS

JACK

Jack Johnson I’ll write you
a poem that will ruin
your health.
I want you to get sick, damn it.
I despise health and disease.
Gold is unregulated
Wax is unregulated
Mistakes are unregulated
Health is an unregulated
ghastly flower.
Jack Johnson I give you three priceless gifts:
                            a broken telephone
                               a torn notebook
                                  a poet’s shitty book
I give you three priceless gifts
that I would have given myself.

May a mute dog
               watch over you
               Jack Johnson
               forever and ever.

RIVKA

I strung together parables, Rivka’s parables
Rivka’s fearless
parables

as delectable as
peeled
orange

like a mid-
sentence period.

                           The parables of golden Rivka—
                           each
                           a slice
and each slice—a limpid fear.

You have a purse
full of chicken
             bones

a wart—and two more

a silver vacuum cleaner
and gilded trash bags.

Gottfried Benn was your friend
Celia Dropkin was your friend
I used to be your granddaughter
a parable-killer with rotten teeth.

Rivka looks forward to some peace and quiet.

ISAAC

Years back
Izik
was
my soulmate.
He died of AIDS.
Peter died of AIDS (boots, dancing)
Hans died of AIDS (opera)
Diogenes died of AIDS (Japan)
Ulysses died of AIDS (private collection)

Shulamit
was strangled by a cabbie from Suriname
(telephone cord)
I think Suriname’s the place, I’m not sure
about this.
They were all real people.

Years back
my friend Benny (Bernhard) and I used to hang around
one of Amsterdam’s canals
(Oh admirable canals!)
and I said to him: I have a feeling
that the plane that bombed Hiroshima
flew by and wiped out
Amsterdam’s
gay population.

Suddenly a thought struck,
yes, like lightning:
the name of the plane—or was it the bomb?—I can’t
remember exactly, plane
or bomb;
every
where
the name:
Enola Gay
(Oh admirable canals!)

Hezy Leskly (1952-1994) was born in Rehovot, Israel to Czech parents. After dropping out of high school, he devoted himself to an extensive study of dance and choreography. He lived for several years in Holland. Upon his return to Israel, he began a brief but productive career as a dance critic, playwright and choreographer. His first collection of poems, The Finger, appeared in 1986; by the time of his death of AIDS, he was regarded as one of Israel's major literary voices. The three poems included here are from his final book, Dear Perverts, published posthumously in 1994.

 

© Adriana X. Jacobs

Adriana X. Jacobs is a poet and translator of Hebrew and Spanish-language poetry and currently is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. Her poetry and translations have appeared in print and online in Drunken Boat, Peter Parasol, Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, and Metamorphoses, among others. She lives in New York City.

George Economou

WHO WANTS ICE CREAM?

At times it’s just a matter of fixation
and barely a performance of gustation.

Then there are the thirsty old friends, if you will,
who’d rather swill a favorite libation.

Most young and old, big and small, we must confess,
are nonetheless subject to its temptation.

Scoop on a cone or soft in a cup invites
many delights and cool sorts of sensation. 

Fore-savors of love will come with its flavors,
myriad favors from kiss to fellation.

Its Emperor is ours in every regard
with no holds barred or economization.



NARCISSUS SESTINA

Having never read a word of Ovid,
he looked the abyss in its face, “O Void,”
he apostrophized, “who make null and void
all for which we are hopeful and avid,
with powerful verses I will avoid
defeat by you, decree you, Void, voided.”

A voice replied from deep within the Void,
“All this claptrap might have been avoided
if only you had been sent to Havid
and taught there to read some words of Ovid
(never say Avid), the semi-ovoid
nosed poet you can’t afford to avoid.

For he can show you how to be avid
to detect me in yourself, be devoid
of all that double-trouble that Ovid
learned the hard way, to self-adorn can void
one in the long run; so become voided,
egg you on to your right end ab ovoid.”

“You’re proposing an already voided
merge by me, of me with you, for Ovid’s
words fully convince me that to avoid
trying to stand and balance an ovoid
on one end will wise me up, so avid’s
as avid does to brush you off me, Void.”

“You don’t get it, and still tap an avoid-
dance around the truth of us,” snapped the Void.
“And what’s this you say about an ovoid?
That’s more to add to the pile of voided
words in your pants. You haven’t read Ovid
remotely. Your last chance for an avid

grasp of my place in you’s to cry, ‘O Void,
I look us in the face and am avid
to declare our quarrel has been voided,’
and fear to know yourself no more, avoid
not the chill of my breath in yours.”––“Right, Void,”
he replied, “if my cure’s still to read Ovid!”


           Coda One

The poet, voided, avid to avoid
the ovoidal cold lord of his deep void,
and read a bit, not a lot of Ovid.


OR

           Coda Two

So the poet’s avid to read Ovid,
and chant, “O Void, our voice as one may void
what can be voided when not avoided.”








 
© Andrea Augé

The latest of George Economou's thirteen books of poems and translations is Ananios of Kleitor, published in 2009 by Shearsman, which will also bring out his Complete Plus, The Poems of C, P. Cavafy in English early in 2013, the year of the splendid Alexandrian's sesquicentennial.

Mervyn Taylor

COUNTRYSIDE

As many times as I’ve been there,
the roads remain strange, going east
when I think we’re headed south,
passing fields of the same farmers
who lift and shake their heads.

I’m sure I was born here, though
when I hold out my hand the fish
swim away, the men toast someone
behind a partition, and only one
aunt claims she still loves me.

The spaces behind houses carry
the light in spare pockets, and
a quiet holds the hills like rakes
at lunchtime. I dare not ask which

trace leads to the sea, innocent

wave washing the same sand: Man-
zanilla, Mayaro, Gasparee, only fifty
square miles, but it can go on forever,
machetes looking for something
to cut, besides cane.

HOLOLO

                                 for LeRoy

Let’s talk, my friend,
when the wind comes
across the mountain
to touch our faces, and

flowers in your yard
rise on their stems
to salute, and the cock
puffs the feathers

round his neck, the
hens walking away
as if to say not again,
not today. Let’s

talk about winters
in far-off lands, irate
husbands and windows
we jumped from,

let’s brew the pack
and play a game of
rummy, though
neither of us is any

good. Show me
a painting you’ve
been working on
that may or may not

be going well. Let’s
argue about a line,
a verse in a poem, the
cause of a fire that

has suddenly bloomed
on the hill. Let’s leave
some issues for another
day, otherwise what

would we do tomorrow,
when your rooster’s
tail grows too heavy for
his body, and the ladies

must remind him
when it’s time to crow.
Let’s talk until then
on important matters,

like the approximate
age of your eldest
turtle, like the day
that is dying outside.

THE LAST ROUND
                                    for Neal

This is what happened, after the doctors said
there was nothing more they could do. When
he had flown, back and forth across the Atlantic,
and one country said hospice, the other PH ward.

I hear, when he went home, he sold everything-
furniture, clothes, car. Opened the gate and let
the two Dobermans out- “Go, run for your lives!”
He does not know what happened to them. I

hear, when he speaks now, his voice is a rasp,
that powerful boxer’s body closed around it like
a bell around the clapper, his mind fogged up
like a rear window in winter. I remember his hard

right, when once he hit me and I realized there’s
no playing with a fighter, especially the one he
faces now, who keeps his hood on till the very last
minute, who closes in, knowing the dogs are gone.

WEST INDIAN AT THE FRONT DESK

It took a long time for the new tenant’s
furniture to arrive from Atlanta.
Every day she sat in the lobby looking out,
chain smoking and telling me all about
the move she was making. I listened,
and we ended up having an affair (which
began to sour the night I came to dinner
with books for classes the next day).
I’d assumed too much, she said. It ended
when some people in the building
threw a party, and my girlfriend came
to pick me up. I introduced them,
Virginia, meet Georgia, thinking
this is how it’s done in America.

 
 

© Cheryll Greene



 

Mervyn Taylor is the author of An Island of His Own, The Goat, and Gone Away, all from Junction Press, New York, and No Back Door (Shearsman, Bristol UK). He currently serves on the board of the Hudson Valley Writers Center. He divides his time between Brooklyn and Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Trevor Joyce

from THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE

incursions

of a hunting

king

enemy
assaults

voracious

birds and

insects

onslaughts

of wind

rain drought
or flood

entering

abruptly

at one

horizon

exiting

haphazardly

there is now

no appetite

for such 

calamities

in actuarial

circles

fundamental
unsettling

fortifies

those born during

the war were

the true leaders

earlier were broken

by regret

later spoiled

never allow

the state

of things settle

imperfectly

now that cohort

is exhausted

we require further

enormities

prognosticators

bring you

cedarwood

the widow

offers roasted

flour

poor folk
give oil

the wealthy

farmer from

his flock

selects

a lamb

all these

to praise you

that you may

skew the

probabilities

fix the game

virtuosos

of the funerary

sacrificial

diplomatic

and hospitable

arts

equilibrists

of lover

and beloved

exact their game

from the chaos

of wild potentialities

the true fan

anticipates

each variation

rush reserve

the client nods

and pays

an immense

force

somewhere

out there

driving grit

into and against

the structures

the room filled

with the green

stench of dust

and sand

inside doors

thudded in

their frames

with the violent

alterations

in pressure

© Mark Weiss

Trevor Joyce's most recent book is Courts of Air and Earth (Shearsman, Bristol UK). Rome's Wreck and The Immediate Future are both due shortly, from Cusp Books (Los Angeles) and RunAmok Press (Cork), respectively. He is the founder of the SoundEye Festival in Cork, Ireland, where he's usually to be found when he's not in Leamington Spa, England.

Joel Lewis

THE CURE

I knock at the mystery door and it opens

& there’s Stan Getz in a lovely cantaloupe polo shirt

the inevitable drink in hand, inviting me in:

“You’re Jewish right? I can tell.

You’ve got that open smile.” Welcome to my

mishpocheh, Stan. Kenny Barron playing solo piano up from the tape deck.

He shows me his latest album: “Stan Getz:

The Business of Visitation.” featuring Chet Baker on ham sandwich.

“It ties in so well with your interest in Gnosticism” I said.

The faint lettering of his air quotes seemed

like a geologic gesture: “Beautiful things

seem to come out of nowhere, but they don’t.”

He reached into a desk drawer for a Chesterfield.

“’Trane once said about me:’ Face it we all like to sound like that if we could,”

he paused as he gently blew out a smoke ring,

“but when I’m off I think:’ I don’t want to be the Jewish Lester Young.’”

AFTER PO CHU-I

Liberty Enlightening the World drifts

past my glasses, paced by Stan Getz’s

languid iPod take on “Tenderly”

& framed by Upper New York Bay’s

grisaille morning exterior.

Ten years of this particular

and vivid waterfront correspond

to the normal work week tension.

This afternoon, an elected official

will hand me a certificate

suitable for framing

recognizing my service to the people

of the approaching pear-shaped island

While I daydream those unwritten poems

floating through the Narrows

and down into the Atlantic Trench.

EAST OF THE SUN (& WEST OF PUNXSUTAWNEY)

They stick that tiny top hat

onto that scared rodent’s head

& the citizens of very interior Pennsylvania are delighted

that they too prefer the visible to the obvious.

As I was fiddling with my brand new uppers, I checked out my kind

of advent calendar, “Prestige Records 1950’s All-Stars”, & so happy birthday

Stan Getz on the day we jokingly reenact

the leftover lunch meat of Pagan Europe.

Getz, at his most sublime, seemed playing his audiences dreams:

masculine lushness dappled with bay rum aftershave.

He also did interesting things like bring the bossa nova

to the pre-Beatle masses, firing sidemen for farting on the bandstand

& holding up a Rexall’s with a water pistol. Drug-addled Stan failed at that

as the cashier ignored the junk jittery goniff to wait on an elderly gent.

Still, that ‘incredibly lovely sound’ stays in the air of this seccessionist grey morning.

It makes me wistful for Lucky Strikes, gabardine suits & cracked ice melting.

Asked by reporter Edward R. Murrow for the secret to his sound,

Stan sighed as he replied, “When I see things through my eyes,

I see things.”

LATE NOVEMBER, STATEN ISLAND

Foggy St. George sleeps the sleep

of late morning sloth

& there go the men with boyish haircuts.

Now a cop car parks on Slosson Terrace,

idling for those possessed by hidden agendas.

“The sun never enters my dreams,” says

a woman to her daughter clutching

a Top Tomato bag as they board

a Totenville bus. A peddler hawks

mini-Ganeshas in front

of the browning field minor league stadium

in advance of an evening festival.

Big orange Ferryboat Marchi drifts into Slip 2.

Two hours before: a Mesopotamia of advancing ankles.

Now old gents eat their pizzas into relief maps of Crete

before tossing them into the harbor.

The flags atop borough hall flap

to the beat of a new round of breeze.

I’ve been out here a long time

mildly defending the honor

of minor characters & their mild situations

& now moving along in the face of need,

cattycorner from the old lighthouse depot.

STEP LIGHTLY

Debark off the Sufferen-bound train

Garrett Mountain as the limit on my sight

& the stairs to the street a plunge to a city

where people have given up on space

putting their money on living through time

& where beggars try a novel take on pale face moi

“Can you help me out? I need 63 cents to get to Paramus

& nobody here speaks English!”

A beggar in a strange land gets himself a dollar bill.

The man in Paterson who can buy his children

Happy Meals & still have change in his pockets

is a little aristocrat & charged up

on Cianci Street cappucinno I pass

the Lou Costello Memorial

then stride uphill to the Great Falls.

No little lyric miracles today.

Boxing Day someplace else in the world

& could that be Clifford Brown’s “Sandu”

coming from the speakers of the green jalopy

parked by the entrance to Libby’s Lunch?

© Read Myles





Joel Lewis's most recent books are North River Rubdown (Accent Editions,2013) & Surrender When Leaving Coach (Hanging Loose, 2012). He is currently at work on a long poem project concerning the Hudson Palisades called "The True People", with sections published in "House Organ" and the Spring 2013 Blazevox journal. He lives on the high ground of Hoboken,N

Sally Fisher

LIBERTY ISLAND

                                   Captivity is Consciousness—
                                            So’s Liberty
                                                                    Emily Dickinson

1

On Stage

Durante
and crew
on chairs

rowing

Land! Land!
That’s the horizon
Let’s row for that then!


2

Skip Stones

like the Doge
at his ring toss

sea
oh sea

won’t you
marry me?


3

Cupped

in a cracked
ship

safe
in storm

far
from the rocks
of home


4

Drowning’s

what

a boat’s
about


5

If

we ever get home
it will be at sunrise

it will be
in a boat with eyes


6

A River

has no home

but a way
to get there

like the man sang
I’d rather be a river


7

Level

was the land
of my youth

I threw leaves
on the river

to prove
it moved


8

Quiet

as a cup
and saucer

elbows in my hands

while he tells
and tells

I am my cradle


9

Pharaoh’s Daughter

if I
go down
to the river

there will
be something
there

if I
don’t

there won’t


10

Cloud
breast
and cloud baby

adrift
wish
mouth to nipple
sift

very like


11

Narcisso

and I

seek his face
in the black water

I can’t find it

through mine

in the glass
over the canvas


12

I’m Here

to be the pane
of glass

between
orchids growing
and snowing


13

A Small Hall

is my eye
with a diamond’s
acoustics


14

I 

look down from
behind my eyes

I’ve climbed up inside
my own Liberty

see my huge arm
my torch


15

Memoirs

car wash!
tunnel of love!

everything happened
nothing hurt


16

Denunciations

the mailbox
is full of leaves

the lion’s mouth
is full of leaves


17

Leaves

throw their own party
on the way down


18

A Dragon

scoops
the wind

a boat
is born of a water hill
oar
digging in

not
the way things are
but how they move


19

Leonardo

made a credo

currents cupped
in cataract saucers
chaos rocked
in cradle water

water music

nonstop
coda


20

A Turtle

is a bound book

but a snake
is a mind and its wake   

© Bertha Rogers

Sally Fisher’s poems have appeared in Broadway Boogie, New Directions, Field, The Threepenny Review, Margie, Poetry East, Mid-American Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She has published two books for children (Viking and the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and a book about art for adults, The Square Halo (Harry N. Abrams). She is a student of improvisation, a stage clown, and a puppet builder and sometime performer. She lives in New York city where she makes her living as a freelance editor and print production consultant.

Douglas Barbour

‘A View of Buildings and Water’

will always be a palimpsest

     of transparencies

one city after another

     from above     noted

            in the moment  before

rivers     lakes     the ocean

     harboured     docks

            full or slowly emptying

     the mass of commerce

            striding forth

or armies     citizens

     will try to protect

&  always someone looks down

     upon such tiny movements

            the jammed rush before disaster

on horseback     or tank

     in the hills surround

or the green screen

     even higher     as

            the bombs fall

            the planes diverge

this singular view

     repeated through time

            across all boundaries

     impels respect     no

            matter the cause

or reason not     what cities

     have wrong

            headed     done

but remember    civitas

     that the possibilities

            about to disappear are ours

‘The Holy Ghost is but

                                    a pigeon’

                                                             

                                                                                           E D Blodgett

to feel your way back

into faith     a past

where good folk walked

to church    & then away

would be a good thing

perhaps     to say

& feel     that touch

of transcendence

to know so fully

god is always here

present & accounted for

accountant of   beyond

belief   a sturdy deposit

to be drawn on

throughout a long slow life

hearing those great wings

beating     the rhythm

of that life     or smaller

fluffing   in disdain

scurrying across a square

rivers & mountains

will we think

not end

in one lifetime

at least    they

do not change

or appear  still

the same

that melody

a little cynical

as science

 must become

faced with also

unchanging ignorance

no wish for change

no wish to

change changes

everything

© Sarah Lang






Douglas Barbour's many books of criticism and poetry include Fragmenting Body etc. (NeWest Press/Salt, 2000), Breath Takes (Wolsak & Wynn, 2002), and most recently Continuations and Continuations 2, with Sheila Murphy (University of Alberta Press, 2006/2012), and Recording Dates (Rubicon Press, 2012). He was inaugurated into the City of Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame in 2003. He writes a review blog on SF&F and contemporary poetry: http://eclectiruckus.wordpress.com/.