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dedicated to the art of the written word

volume 2, number 4
June 1996

================================
POETRY INK 2.04 / ISSN 1091-0999
================================

**Poetry Ink Electronic Literary Magazine**

~Dedicated to the Art of the Written Word~

Volume 2, Number 4
Issue 11
June 1996

POETRY INK
----------
**Editor & Publisher**
Matthew W. Schmeer

**Honorary Editor Emeritus**
John A. Freemyer

**Staff Artist**
Calvin Xavier

**eMail**
<[email protected]

**World Wide Web**
<http://atlantis.austin.apple.com/people.pages/wayneb/PoetryInk.html>

**snail mail**
Matthew W. Schmeer
POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS
6711-A Mitchell Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63139-3647 USA

**Literary Columnist**
Lawrence Revard <[email protected]>

**Chief Book Reviewer**
Phil Pearson <[email protected]>

**Web Page Maintainer**
Wayne Brissette <[email protected]>

**Logo & Icons designed by**
Geoffrey Hamilton <[email protected]>

Legal Stuff
-----------
POETRY INK is copyright (c) 1996 by POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS, a wholly
owned subsidiary of the imagination of Matthew W. Schmeer. POETRY INK
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Submission Information
----------------------

POETRY INK is a free electronic literary journal written by and for
writers and poets with access to the burgeoning global community known
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POETRY INK accepts submissions on a per-issue basis, with each issue
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Our Submission Requirements
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These submission guidelines are an abbreviated version of our complete
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>From The Editor's Desktop...
----------------------------
As always, POETRY INK is in a constant state of flux. This month, I
have both good news and bad news.

**The Good News**

It seems that with each issue of POETRY INK , this magazine just keeps
getting better and better. Admittedly, I have a biased viewpoint. But
I think many of you will agree that with each issue, POETRY INK
enriches the on-line experience as it (the magazine) grows in depth
and scope. This issue again breeds many changes to our content. Gone
are the Footnotes From Home, Belles Lettres, and Writing Exercises
features introduced in the past two issues. Due to overwhelming reader
requests, these features have been abandoned in favor of giving their
space toward featuring more poetry and short fiction. Gone as well are
the some-what cheesy clip art graphics which have "graced" our pages
in the past; henceforth we will concentrate on the written word, and
leave the doodlings to those who do it better.

We have more good news, too. This issue introduces two of three new
feature columnists, Lawrence Revard, Phil Pearson. Shaun Armour will
be joining them in Issue 12.

Lawrence is a graduate student at the University of Iowa's Writers'
Workshop for Poetry, and he is bringing to our pages a keen sense of
literary criticism POETRY INK has lacked. Until now. Lawrence's dad,
Carter, teaches English at Washington University, so Lawrence has
access to writers such as William Gass, Donald Finkel, and Mona Van
Duyn. As an active member of the Writer's Workshop, Lawrence also has
contact to some of the brightest stars in the poetry pantheon, such as
Jorie Graham, Helen Vendler, and Seamus Heaney, whom he features in
his inaugural column.

Phil lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he teaches in higher education
and fiddles around with computers. A Mac aficionado, he is also the
associate editor of "MacNow Magazine" . When not fishing for walleye
and perch in his favorite haunts, he maintains a keen interest in the
field of twentieth-century literature. And as a matter of fact, in
this issue he brings us his suggested summer reading list. Sure,
everybody cranks out a summer reading list this time of the year, but
not everybodys' is featured in POETRY INK !

Shaun is a regular contributor of poetry to these pages, and he
volunteered to submit the occasional book review and poetical
diatribe,too. As a self-described "graduate student of literature
earning a Ph.D. without benefit of a university", we think he is more
than adequately qualified to fill our pages with interesting
criticism. That, plus the fact that he is a Los Angeles native plopped
down into the big- bad-movie-stand-in-for-Chicago known as Toronto
also lets him inform us of the literary scene in one of Canada's
brightest cities.

**The Bad News**

With every piece of good news comes some bad news, so here's our
contribution: Our hard drive was hosed on April 20th during one of the
worst storms to hit the St. Louis area in twenty years.

Granted, the 80MB hard drive on our one and only computer, a Color
Classic, doesn't hold that much data in these days of bloated word
processors and sprawling system software, but we lost a lot of
submissions, and our subscription mailing list was a total loss. We
managed to contact those folks whose works had already been accepted
for publication and had them resubmit their work. My thanks to all who
were able to provide another copy of their contributions, as their's
are the works mainly featured in this issue. However, there were still
a lot of submissions we lost. If you sent in a submission after April
20th, chances are we have it on file, so don't worry. Otherwise, you
may want to resubmit your work for consideration.

Also, we were able to scrounge together a partial mailing list of
folks who have been long time subscriber to POETRY INK. If you were
previously on our eMail subscription list and didn't receive a copy of
this issue, or if you would like to subscribe to POETRY INK and
receive each issue in your eMail box, please see the Subscription
Service section, which immediately follows this column.

Now part of this hosing might have been due to the fact that we were
using Netscape Navigator 2.0 to download a few files from info-mac
after we had just upgraded the system software to System 7.5.3 . But,
hey, I'm just saying...

But in all seriousness, we are not without blood on our hands for this
tragedy--for we disobeyed the two cardinal rules of computing:

* Never work on your computer during a big bad electrical thunder
storm!

* Back-up your important files daily!

Yes, we were guilty as sin on that second one. We hadn't backed up our
files in over a month (gulp!), and suffice to say we have learned our
lesson for flaunting the laws of societal convention. We are now
backing up our files on a daily basis, and when it even looks vaguely
threatening outside, we turn off the computer and grab a book to read
(currently the "Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway").

However, seeing as this magazine is produced on a shoe-string budget,
we can't afford any storage solution other than the ubiquitous 1.4MB
floppy disk.

So now I get down on my knees and beg: If anyone is willing to donate
a new/used SyQuest drive and a few cartridges, we would definitely
appreciate it and we would eternally trumpet your greatness.
Especially if it was one of those sexy new EZ135s. We could also use a
Universal Power Source (UPS), and while I'm at it, I'll wish for a new
PCI PowerMac with a 4 gig hard drive loaded to the hilt with RAM as
well. And a pony. I want a pony, too.

Spill the Ink and May the Muse be Kind!

Matthew W. Schmeer, editor
<[email protected]>

Subscription Service
--------------------
It is now possible to have each issue of POETRY INK delivered to your
eMail account upon publication. This service is now available to all
readers regardless of computing platform.

Each issue of POETRY INK will be sent to your eMail account upon its
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If you wish to subscribe to POETRY INK, simply send an eMail message
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SUBSCRIBE POETRY INK: John Q. Public

You must follow this wording EXACTLY; otherwise our eMail macro will
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Please note that you will not receive the latest issue of POETRY INK
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One final caveat: if you have submitted work for consideration and
your work has been accepted, you were automatically assigned a
subscription to POETRY INK, and therefore these instructions do not
apply to you.

The Write Thing
---------------
_The Poet & The Scientist_

There were once two people traveling on a train, a scientist and a
poet, who were riding in the same compartment. They had never met
before, so naturally, there wasn't much conversation between the two.

The poet was minding his own business, looking out the window at the
beauty of the passing terrain.

The scientist was very uptight, trying to think of things he didn't
know so he could try to figure them out. Finally, the scientist was so
bored, that he said to the poet, "Hey, do you want to play a game?"

The poet, being content with what he was doing, ignored him and
continued looking out the window, humming quietly to himself. This
infuriated the scientist, who irritably asked again, "Hey, you, do you
want to play a game? I'll ask you a question, and if you get it
wrong, you give me $5. Then, you ask me a question, and if I can't
answer it, I'll give you $5."

The poet thought about this for a moment, but he decided against it,
seeing that the scientist was obviously a very bright man. He politely
turned down the scientist's offer.

The scientist, who, by this time was going mad, tried a final time.
"Look, I'll ask you a question, and if you can't answer it, you give
me $5. Them you ask me a question, and if I can't answer it, I'll give
you $50!"

Now, the poet was not that smart academically, but he wasn't totally
stupid. He readily accepted the offer. "Okay," the scientist said,
"what is the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon?"

The poet, obviously not knowing the answer, didn't stop to think about
the scientist's question. He took a $5 bill out of his pocket and
handed it to the scientist. The scientist happily accepted the bill
and promptly said, "Okay, now it's your turn."

The poet thought about this for a few minutes, then asked, "Alright,
what goes up a mountain on three legs, but comes down on four?"

The bright glow quickly vanished from the scientist's face. He thought
about this for a long time, taking out his note pad and making
numerous calculations. He finally gave up on his note pad and took out
his laptop, using his Multimedia Encyclopedia.

After about an hour of this, the poet quietly watching the mountains
of Colorado go by the whole time, the scientist finally gave up. He
reluctantly handed the poet a $50 bill. The poet accepted it
graciously, turning back to the window.

"Wait!" the scientist shouted. "You can't do this to me! What's the
answer?"

The poet looked at the scientist and calmly put a $5 bill into the
scientist's hand.

Notes From the Workshop Gulag
-----------------------------
by Lawrence Revard <[email protected]>

**Heaney and Vendler Visit Iowa City**
Tuesday, May 14, 1996:

It was a rainy day reminiscent of Dublin, or perhaps Boston in the
fall, when Helen Vendler and Seamus Heaney arrived in Iowa City to
clink champagne glasses with their comrade-in-award-gathering, Jorie
Graham. Vendler, winner of the Truman Capote Award for Criticism,
came to collect fifty thousand dollars. Heaney, still shaking the
millionaire gold-dust from his Nobel Laureate, came both to introduce
Vendler at her award ceremony and to regale a packed auditorium with
his sagacious charm. Graham, who teaches that the Writer's Workshop
and has been known to publish from time to time, was there to welcome
them.

Graham, Vendler, and Heaney should congratulate one another for a
winning year. Graham, who received a MacArthur grant in the '80's,
garnered a Pulitzer this year for "The Dream of the Unified Field".
Vendler's acclaim is extensive; from her position at Harvard, she has
authored and edited a string of books on poetry in recent years. Her
latest, "The Given and the Made", was the impetus for the award given
by the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop. But of the three
winners, Heaney is the gem. Heaney's recognition for excellent poetry
in such books as "Death of a Naturalist", "Wintering Out", "Field
Work", "Station Island", and others has proceeded steadily from the
mid-sixties and culminated in the Nobel this year. It was in part for
her extensive analysis of the Irishman's verse that Helen Vendler won
his admiration and a glowing introductory speech.

"She sells nobody short, she butters nobody up, and she leaves nobody
in doubt," Heaney declaimed convincingly at the close of his
introduction for Vendler. The award Vendler received was for service
to the poetic community and not, it should be noted, for pure service
to academia. With this award, "poets and fiction writers have the
chance to judge their judges," as all of the speakers at the awards
ceremony took time to comment. The Truman Capote Award is not your
average pat on the back for a critic. Heaney made particular mention
that Helen is a colleague in the academic atmosphere of Harvard
University, referring to her as his "colleague" and "friend." In doing
so, Heaney smiled: he had chosen to make his personal connection to
the critic a positive force and not a matter of insider trading. The
central appeal of Helen Vendler is the accessibility of her writing
and its attention to the voices of the poets themselves. As Heaney
further commented, "She [Vendler] is the ideal winner because over the
years she has managed to keep the generally literate audience of the
United States in touch with the demands and achievements of poetry."

Vendler was teary-eyed when she stepped up to the podium and was
compelled to retreat for a handkerchief. However, she was quick to
recover.

"Criticism...is first of all the desire to show an art work as the
marvelous thing it is. And, secondly, Criticism is the finding of
words adequate to that task of showing," she stated. With such words,
Vendler diffuses the traditional war between critics and poets.
Critics, she says, create an "energetic diffusion" of the ideas and
images of poetry, making it acceptable, understandable, and more
beautiful to succeeding and present audiences.

"You bring the poetry to the theory," Vendler commented to me after
the ceremony. Vendler's introduction to her 1988 book of criticism,
"The Music of What Happens", makes plain that she wishes to work by a
kind of inductive reasoning. It is this aspect of her work which gives
her such appeal and virtue. However, it is not clear at all if her
work truly attains a level of empirical discipline. When I questioned
her about her methodology and the influence of various recent
philosophical doctrines, she said, "I don't think any 'ism' could
explain all poetry... Of course philosophies have their influence...
Swedenborg influenced Coleridge and even Yeats, for example..."
Vendler went on to suggest that a critic uses the best tools at hand
for analysis, whatever their source. The question to ask yourself when
reading Vendler's reviews of contemporary poetry in the New Yorker and
elsewhere is: what tools has she chosen and why?

"I gave a speech to the Academy...and collected a few shillings, you
know," Heaney commented on the receiving the Nobel. He winked at us,
sipping his drink in the formal buzz of the reception room after the
award ceremony.

It is hard not to succumb to Heaney's charm. He stands tall, at least
six feet, and has deep-set, dark, twinkling eyes. His shock of white
and slightly unkempt hair testifies to his age. He does not waste
words; his speech emerges with a rumble and burr both familiar and
foreign for any American. Heaney listened with an admirable amount of
patience to the chit-chat of the young, admiring poets at the
reception introduced to him by Jorie Graham.

The University spared no expense for the reception. What with the
quiche-pockets, crackers, and chocolate truffles, I knew I would need
no dinner. Hungry graduate students and street riffraff moved in and
busily scarfed free victuals as Heaney, Graham, and Vendler linked
arms and slipped off under umbrellas to a waiting car. The buzz in the
room before and after their exit was not due to the hooch. A
atmosphere of accord and wonder held court, uncommon at academic or
poetic functions. Heaney and Vendler were respectable and personable.
They had come not to hawk their wares or grind their axes, but to
visit and tell us that the fantasy of making a living as a poet or a
critic of poetry was possible. But most amazingly, in the midst of all
this, it seemed that the critic and the two poets were honest-
to-goodness friends. In the small, squabbling world of scholarly
poetry and criticism, it is rare to be greeted with harmony.

Heaney's audience for his evening reading was too big. In defiance of
the palsied reputation of poetry readings, the turn-out was larger
than anyone had anticipated. Few or none of us were wearing black
turtle-necks and toting Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time".

The University, underestimating the broad appeal of the spoken word,
assigned an auditorium which, by eight o'clock, was over capacity. A
hurried relocation was conducted and a crowd of around two-hundred or
more eager poetry-lovers marched in columns through the rain, blocking
traffic in downtown Iowa City. If you know the size of Iowa City, you
will not be too impressed with this feat of mob-rule, but it was still
unusual. When a larger auditorium in MacBride Hall was conquered and
the audience settled, poet James Galvin performed the sacrificial
hyperbole of introduction, "Signature".

"Concerned with argument, but not judgment," and "stoic" were a few
phrases Galvin chose to depict Heaney's work. Perhaps the truest words
to describe him are patient and thoughtful, though this would not do
justice to Heaney's mesmerizing capacity for lyric. His poems are not
enormous, rangy productions, but compact and certain. Heaney read with
restrained inflections and an exceptionally clear, deep voice for a
just under an hour. His initial poems concerned his dim awareness of
World War II as a child, and touched extensively on his childhood in
Ireland, a center point in his literary forays. Later, Heaney read his
"Watchman" poem, inspired by a scene from Aeschylus' "Oresteia". It
was a disarmingly scholarly and detached piece. Heaney's introductions
to his works were brief, half-explanations, mingled with anecdotes
about receiving the Nobel and reading in various parts of the world.
For his finale, Heaney read a long, formal, rhyming poem dedicated to
the late Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. Nearing sixty years after time
spent teaching, lecturing, and writing in Berkeley, Boston, Dublin,
and Belfast, Heaney has made more than a few acquaintances. Doubtless,
Heaney is caught between some of his vanishing contemporaries and
mentors and the up-and-coming as he has received the distinction of
the Nobel. It was impossible to receive his somewhat sentimental final
poem with the same critical awareness that his free verse demands. On
the whole, however, Heaney held sway over his sizable audience with
exceptional poise. No one would grudge him his Nobel, nor his
preeminent position as international poet- scholar.

The evening drew to a close. I sat at a local bar waiting to see if
Heaney would accept an invitation from workshop students John Beer and
Michael Theune to drink with the riffraff. While there, I reflected on
the general success of the day and hoped that Heaney would make it
that much more remarkable with an appearance. With significant
disappointment I threw in the towel after a hour and half and stepped
out into the persistent drizzle, heading homewards. It seemed Heaney
was too busy; few of us had expected him to show.

To my embarrassment, I learned the following week that Heaney had
arrived with the head of the Workshop, Frank Conroy, in the hour after
my departure. To my knowledge, no Workshop students were actually
present for his arrival. Word also had it that Heaney had insisted on
visiting the bar and had been flattered by the turn-out at his
reading. The world of poetry is thankfully still small, and in it
Heaney and Vendler compose some of the the most distinct, open, and
friendly figures.

About the Columnist
*******************
Lawrence Revard is a graduate student at the University of Iowa's
Writer's Workshop for Poetry. He welcomes comments regarding his
writings for POETRY INK. He can be reached at the eMail address at the
beginning of this column. (Okay, you lazy bum, here it is:
<[email protected]>)

World Wide Words
----------------
by Phil Pearson <[email protected]>

**A Summer Reading List**

As a poet once wrote, "Summer sows murmurs of tiger and flame..." If I
may take poetic license with these evocative words, summer too sows
murmurs of albinos and ice. Summer's not just striking colors and
forest-fire heat; rather, summer's a season of cool drinks, of white
sails, of firefly phosphorescence. A time when words and books can
more easily latch on like cockleburs to the sweaty socks of our
too-busy-to-stop lives. Where poets and novelists and playwrights with
their cargo of ready-to-deliver words, their appetite for life and
death, eyes full of earth and sky, empty themselves before us, pockets
displayed inside out, talking about sunrise and sunset to our
too-much-so stuffed brains. Now's when they can catch us at the best
time. Minds unfettered. Our souls aloft on the hammock of life...

"A book list for summer reading," you say? A list for light and
serious readers alike. A list for dreamers and realists. Offbeat,
eclectic, purposefully not mainstream. Intriguing. Challenging. Mostly
a list of not-so-well-known authors. International in scope,
twentieth-century in time period. Around fifty total at last count.
Please hunt up a dozen at your local library. Pester your inter-loan
librarian. Dust off some jackets on the shelves. Write down a few
memorable passages. Share them with friends. Dogear. Reread with a
fond smile. Let them shake the person in your soul. Taste the sad
alcohol of their words. Become a waterwheel and let your mind run wet.
A minimalist, random presentation: draw your own conclusions. The
great Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo penned the following line: "May the
grass, the lichen, and the frog grow in your adverbs."

Anyway, I offer these writers and titles for your summertime perusal.

Conrad Aiken's musical prose and poetry
"Collected Short Stories" 1960
(try "A Man Alone at Lunch")
"Collected Poems" 1953

Sergei Esenin, Russian poet
Confessions of a Hooligan: Fifty Poems 1973

Anthony Powell
celebrated 12-book roman fleuve
"The Music of Time 1951-75"

Patrick White
"Voss" 1957

W.B. Yeats
(plays)
"The Countess Cathleen" 1892
"The Words Upon the Window Pane" 1934

Saul Bellow
"Seize the Day" 1956

Karin Boy, Swedish writer
try her dystopia "Kallocain" 1966

Luigi Pirandello
(many translations available...)
masterly short stories
& infamous plays: theater-inside-theater approach
"Six Characters in Search of an Author" 1924
"Each in His Own Way" 1924
"Tonight We Improvise" 1930

Ford Madox Ford
"The Good Soldier" 1915

Henry Green
entertaining, comic novels
"Living" 1929
"Party Going" 1939
"Loving" 1945

Nelson Algren
Chicago school of realism
"The Man with the Golden Arm" 1949

Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet
four heteronymic personalities...
"Selected Poems" 1971

Aime Cesaire, Martinique poet
"Return to My Native Land" 1968

Nathanael West
"Miss Lonelyhearts" 1933
"A Cool Million" 1934
"The Day of the Locust" 1939

Wright Morris
"The Works of Love" 1952
"The Deep Sleep" 1953
"In Orbit" 1967

Carlos Drummond De Andrade, Brazilian poet
many translations...

Pierre Reverdy
"Poems" 1968
Cubist-like poetry approach...

George Moore
"Celibate Lives" 1927

Junichiro Tanizaki, Japanese
"The Makioka Sisters" 1957

Henry Handel Richardson
"The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney" 1917-29
Australian masterpiece...

John Dos Passos
narrative originality-camera eye, newsreel...
"Manhattan Transfer" 1925

Federico Garcia Lorca
"Gipsy Ballads" 1950
read famous elegy for the Spanish bullfighter Mejeas...

Jaroslav Hasek, Czech novelist
"The Good Soldier Svejk" 1973
immoral, bawdy, blasphemous...

Georges Simenon, Belgian writer
any of the "Inspector Maigret" series...

Laura Riding Jackson, American poet
"Selected Poems" 1970

Emile Verhaeren, Flemish poet
F.S. Flint translations...

Joseph Conrad
"The Secret Agent" 1907

Antonio Machado, Spanish
lovable, humble poems...
"Eighty Poems" 1959

Henry Roth
"Call it Sleep" 1934; 1963

Arnold Bennett
"Riceyman Steps" 1923
classic English realist novel...

Albert Camus
"The Outsider" 1946
portrait of an alienated man...

Herman Hesse
"The Glass Bead Game" 1960
a difficult read...

Thomas Hardy
"The Dynasts" 1903-8
highly imaginative verse play...

Wyndham Lewis, English
a fascinating personality and artist
"The Human Age"tetralogy (set in hell):
"The Childermass" 1928, revised 1956, best of the four...
"The Apes of God" 1930 (Bloomsbury sendup...)
"The Revenge for Love" 1937
"Self-Condemned" 1954

Guillaume Apollinaire
"Alcools" 1964; 1965
read "The Song of the Ill-beloved"

Alfred Doblin, German novelist
"Berlin-Alexanderplatz" 1931

Cesar Vallejo, Peruvian poet
"The Complete Posthumous Poetry" 1978

Dashiell Hammett
"The Dain Curse" 1929
"The Glass Key" 1931
anonymous, colloquial narrators...

John Millington Synge, Irish dramatist
"The Playboy of the Western World" 1907
master of the poetic idiom...

Georg Trakl, Austrian poet
"Selected Poems" 1968

Attila Jozsef, Hungarian poet
Selected Poems 1973
check out "Ode"...

Robert Musil, Austrian novelist
"The Man Without Qualities" 1953-60
unfinished tome worthy of study...

Jules Romains
theory of unanimism: independent collectivity
"Men of Good Will" 1933-46
27-volume roman fleuve to keep you busy...

Paul Valery
differing Collected Works translations...
two great, longish poems:
"The Young Fate"
"The Cemetery by the Sea"

P.G. Wodehouse
"My Man Jeeves" 1919
"The Code of the Woosters" 1938
Bertie Wooster and Jeeves escapist high-jinks...

About the Columnist
*******************
Phil Pearson lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he teaches in higher
education and fiddles around with computers. A Mac aficionado, "MacNow
Magazine" Associate Editor, he enjoys multimedia authoring and
maintains a keen interest in the field of twentieth-century
literature. In his spare time, he can be found on a lake fishing for
yellow perch and the elusive walleye.

Featured Writer
----------------
Amy DeGeus
<[email protected]>
1 poem and an essay

_Sestina_

"I was looking for a job and then I found a job
and heaven knows I'm miserable now."
--Morrisey

Sunday night, and we drive past the Crobar,
The warehouse district dark save for streetlights.
A long line of hip hop kids in cool clothes
Slouching and surly; they're waiting to dance.
No thoughts of Monday; they don't have to work
They don't have to get up in the morning.

The thought of waiting, one in the morning
For a chance to pay them money, my clothes
Perhaps not retro enough, the streetlights
Casting us in shadows, all for a bar!
We are indignant. "I don't want to dance
that badly! I refuse to wait, that's work!"

Oblivious, or envious, that work
Used to be getting up in the morning
Instead of noon, or one; midnight's streetlights
Were our friends. We nursed our beers at the bar
Bemoaning our poverty; yet our clothes
Were always trendy enough to go dance.

Liquor and pounding bass lured us to dance
Like ancient wild creatures; our black clothes
A rebellious conformity. Morning
Brought last call and pickup lines that didn't work
On cool chicks like us; we closed every bar
And stumbled home through the Diag's streetlights.

Now, sometimes on my morning drive, streetlights,
Not sunlight, show me the way; and the bar
Of the tollbooth is one where the staff work
At six instead of going out for morning
Grand Slams at Denny's. The commute is a dance
Performed in heels, ties, and constricting clothes.

Shallowness haunts me--did Thoreau care what clothes
Covered his back? Did he dread each morning?
No! But we share one thing: a dislike for work,
Which pales you, and drains you, in its clumsy dance;
Which blinds your eyes to the brilliant streetlights
All for the promise of a shiny gold bar.

What good is money if you lose the dance?
I stumble through days in professional clothes,
Dim zombie memory searching for streetlights.

Featured Writer Essay
---------------------
Amy DeGeus lives in Chicago, Illinois. She works in prepress, likes to
mountain bikes, recently was coerced onto a bar's softball team, and
she says she actually kind of likes Lake Michigan's dead fish smell.
She reports that she lives two blocks from the Green Mill tavern,
which is home of the weekly, original, one-that started-it- all
**Uptown Poetry Slam!**

About _Sestina_, Amy writes:

This sestina was the third entry I submitted to the last POETRY INK
contest. It was also the third entry received for the entire contest.
I was surprised that no one else entered, because I had a great time
learning about and working in poetic forms. Free verse is fun and
expressive, but sometimes it feels too easy. It offers absolute
freedom, which can, ironically, induce complete paralysis. Working in
a form, on the other hand, is like driving with a good road map. Not
only does it show you your destination and how to get there, it also
displays alternate routes for arriving at the same destination.

I will admit to beginning this sestina by driving around blindly. I
quickly discovered that the sestina may look simple but in practice,
it's a very difficult form. A sestina is composed of six stanzas of
six lines each, and a closing stanza of three lines. The kicker is
that the same six words end the lines in each of the six stanzas. How
do you repeat the same words over and over without being repetitious?
And is that a rhetorical question? Oh, and I almost forgot that this,
being a form, requires at least an attempt at syllable count
consistency...and the last word of the last line of one stanza must
also be the last word of the first line of the next stanza. I told
myself, "Just write about something you did recently. If it sucks, at
least it was good practice and you can get on to the real thing."

The main question in my mind--which in the sestina goes unanswered
because I myself haven't found the answer yet--is: Why is it that in
college, we can't wait to go out and make some money, and later, when
we're making money, we long for the time (and fun) we had in college?
Oh, we thought we had no time--it was all spent studying or working
off steam from studying. But studying was our choice; our time was our
own to divvy as we wished. Whereas back in my temping days, and to a
much lesser extent today, where I have a job I love but I still must
show my face 8 hours a day, the same time of day, the same five days a
week, my time chunks are decided by others.

I don't know about everybody else, but I know that when I have a day
off, I am sometimes at a loss without a schedule of projects. Without
projects and deadlines, I am liable to sit on the couch all day
watching "Brady Bunch" reruns. This has actually happened. It's my
life, and in the end I must shoulder the blame for how I spend the
time. But I can't help but wonder--if my life were not so regimented,
would I feel as lost when facing a blank appointment book?

Once we enter the workplace, our streetlights are gone forever. We
might visit them occasionally, but pretty soon waiting in a line to
get into a club just to hear some kick-ass music seems like a waste of
time. It's hard to remember when waiting in line was only a slight
nuisance offset by yakking with your friends during the wait. Time
that is not spent producing something becomes seen as a waste of time.
The pressure to produce is so embedded in our thoughts that it leads
to inertia during non-working hours.

I used to join mosh pits at industrial music concerts. This was before
anybody outside of the music scene knew what moshing was. It was
dangerous and wild, but it was also free, and there was a sense of
community, in that if someone is knocked down, you help them up; if
someone stage dives, you help catch them; if someone is body surfing,
you don't let them fall. (Unfortunately, many guys never did get the
hang of, 'If a girl is body surfing, don't grope her.') Now I see the
mosh pit as our last expression of wildness. You don't see 9-to-5
adults in combat boots.

So now the editors at "Time" magazine and their ilk wring their hands
and moan about reckless youth banging into each other at concerts.
These ex-hippie columnists wonder, unaware that they have morphed from
donkey to elephant, 'What are they doing? We had causes, we had
ideals, we had sit-ins, for crying out loud! What is their purpose in
banging into each other?'

Well, maybe all the causes have been taken. Maybe their voices, less
numerous than the generation previous, are too low to be heard. Maybe
the media is business as usual, showering attention on freaky behavior
and ignoring the well-meaning, but untelegenic day-to-day work that
goes on in social, environmental, and political organizations.

Maybe the media folk have forgotten what it's like to dance for hours,
kiss your boyfriend on a bench by the river, pack eight people into a
car the size of a Chevette, go on carnival rides, eat churros y
chocolate, all in the same night, and stumble home, arm in arm for
support, in the brown hazy light of dawn.

According to the sestina, that's exactly what has happened.

Ajay M. Narayanan
-----------------
<[email protected]>
1 poem

_Inside or Out?_

The linen heaps loom tall,
dark and noisome.
The bell jar's been brandished about
ever too often.
Like its contents
it's yellowed and begun to pall;
Formalin's bad for the complexion.
To tinkle your private glass
is hardly in fashion.
Would you still confess ?

*****

Summer long I sucked in
the outer spheres, one by one
like bloody pomegranate seeds.
Inhaled whole lily ponds
fringed with guardian reeds
and tickled silly by fern fronds.
I fed on warm spangled breeze
scented with sunsets.
Winter long and fall
then, carried them all
like cold, hardboiled eggs.

Come spring, now, they sprout
and leap from my mouth.
I take no blame they reek of me.
Any mingled mutt or hound
enticed with a prize
of a single pickled trout
would truffle me out in a trice
from these and other accounts
of the inside or the out

The latter tinged
irretrievably with the first.
On white picket fences
I see my entrails slung out to rust.

Richard Epstein
---------------
<[email protected]>
2 poems

_Yeah, Lights_

This woman who is 93, she swears
that she was young once. Silly as she seems,
she now claims she has been your age and danced
under a fairy moon, whatever that is,
some same-sex astronomical effect
of medication, Alzheimer's, and pain,
perhaps. She says she has the photographs
to back it up, but boxed away; she's left
them all to you because you'll understand--
she told me just this morning. Being young,
you know what colored lights can do and dresses
that crinkle when they're touched by the right hands.
That's what she said. Talk about touched. She said
she wishes fairy lights for you. Yeah, right.

_St. Christopher of the Suburbs_

I was not a willing carrier; I came
to the ford alone, able to endure
some conversation, if I had to, for
the intermittent interchange of warmth.
No more, though: just some comfort for the night.
I did not plan to portage any children.
I did not mean to be some nitwit saint
stuck with suburban burdens, soon to be
stuck on the dashboards of the local cars.
Let kids build bridges. Better, let them stay
wherever they are before they're anywhere.
Do you know what it costs to buy them shoes?
Can you imagine how it racks your spine,
chauffeuring them, plashing a path across,
compresses the vertebrae, forces the discs
every which way? I'm saintly, friends, not crazy.
"Daddy," they call you while they need a lift,
then leave, and find themselves in distant towns.
A long way off, those towns, and full of villains.
I should have given them money for the fare.

J.W. Drake
----------
<[email protected]>
2 poems

_LBJ Ears_

I'm getting LBJ ears now,
I don't know why, maybe
I'll hang my boots on 'em
and listen for false steps,

or maybe Stetson "Ranger" hats
to hear somebody else
think for awhile. New lobes
like skillets where I'll

sell advertising space for
liberal causes, 'course, and
beer companies, and prime
Pedernales acreage

for HUD retirement mobile
home ranches built
by fresh Job Corps
graduates and their

gangs. And maybe on
the pinna and inside
I'll hire gummint-funded and certified
tattooers to inscribe the

names of all Texans
missing in action since
1845, that'll be the right
one, and on the

left the first 500,000 pages
of the Warren Report with
Spanky's and Audie's
and Sandra Day's

autographs on the
space left over. I might
go blind as all the new sounds
flood and drown my other

senses and deaden small
cortical countries
until hearing all I
see nothing.

Oh no. Oh no!
Oh nose for napalm!

_Beauty Does_

Things borrow their beauty
like paintings from nightmares
and freshfruit veranda mornings,
like some women.

She lolled apart,
drinking alone at the low table,
disturbing spilled ashes
with marble fingers,
legs spread slightly open
as she explored her purse
for a scratched lighter
and then forgot.

Nothing contained her, she
beat with it, borrowing her beauty
from the stricken objects
and startled dreams in her surround,
flooding veins with thick surprise,
dulling the room around
to cardboard forms
of oblique opacity.

She swore softly and
emptied the room of hope and power,
a perfect eyebrow raising
closed the show.

Beautiful things steal their beauty
from the things around them,
which grow pale and empty
until they leave, or
are gone.

John Freemyer
-------------
<[email protected]>
1 poem

_Then It Starts Up Again_

Fred Jacks orders waffles and then turns to me.
I'm sitting in the booth behind him.
I don't say anything to get him started.
He doesn't wait for me say hello.
He knows I won't.

He shrugs.
"It's frustrating to never be right," he says.
"Everything I do is wrong.
It's always my fault.
My sister wants me to babysit her brat.
If I can't do it, she says I'm ruining her life.
Her husband will leave her. Right.
My wife wants me to fix her car.
If I don't do it, she won't have a car.
She'll lose her job. This is important to her.
I'm good with car repairs.
I don't want to let her down.
But I have a life, too.
There are things I want to do.
You know what I mean?"

"Yes."
I'm trying to read the newspaper.
There's a story about a guy who was in a coma for five years.
He existed as a vegetable in a rest home.
Suddenly he came out of the coma one morning,
asking for breakfast.
He died from food poisoning before lunch.

Fred picks up his coffee cup.
He walks around his booth to sit at mine.

"The pressure and stress of this responsibility
and continuous blame wears away at me until
there's nothing left of me at the end of the day.
It's horrible.
I struggle with sleep. My insomnia is awful.
All I do is worry.
Then it starts up again in the morning
with more demands of my time and my money.
Today my wife wanted to borrow my car, the kids
wanted to watch my television, use my vcr-or
they want money!
Are they spending my money on drugs?
Where does it go?
Why are they trying to kill me?
They WILL kill me, I tell you!
Unless I can get away, get the hell away from here,
right now, they'll be my death!"

I push my empty plate off the paper placemat and slide
the paper toward Fred Jacks.
The placemat is printed with a map of the USA, showing
all 80 locations of the Regal Pancake Restaurants
of America.

I close my eyes and
circle my hand in the air

then jab my finger
though the map
ripping a hole through
Minnesota.

I say, "Move to Minnesota. Everyone is nice there.
It's not like out here. Nobody will bother you.
They're civilized."

Fred Jacks looks at the hole in the map and then at me.
Expressionless, he asks, "Are you crazy?"
Then he slowly stands up and walks out the door.

Probably half way to Minnesota
by now.

Juraj Sipos
-----------
<[email protected]>
2 poems, 1 short story

_Envy_

Pain has fallen down
from branches of a tree.
Ordeal comes.
We suffer.
We climb up.
Our palms are up.
It is magnificent
To have pockets
Waiting for it. The pain.
I push it up back on the tree.
It is a good prospect
For a masochist.
And I see it. The fire.
It gives me the most
When I see others to suffer.
I think I should climb up
The tower of Babel, too.
How I envy the Lord
His eyesight!

_In Quotation Marks_

My last hope has died away.
A full glass of it
Is drunk. It graciously
Extinguished the fire.
The fire of everlasting
Knowledge that
"I am here"
Forever.
Built in the quotation marks.
Do you see me?

" "

_Confession of a Fool_

When I started writing the first lines of this article, a bird arrived
in my room. It unhesitatingly jumped up on my shoulder and stayed with
me the whole night long.

This confession of mine is a very exclusive material as it is
empirical and true.

The events I underwent in my life gave birth to my new identity. I was
stigmatized by circumstances and I became a fool. The folly of me has
more arguments for defense: 1) a world of equal people would have no
sense and 2) fools have a different perception of reality that helps
them see such things other people can never think of. But there are
negative and positive fools. The negative fools propel winds for the
destruction of all humane principles; however, the positive fools are
creative and propel engines as ignition for spark plugs toward the
development of new ideas and new futures.

It all started in Australia where I emigrated in 1980 from
Czechoslovakia. The problems I experienced there might be caused by my
contact with wrong people. Vladimir was one of them. He was weird. He
was a Czech immigrant that had been in Australia since the 1950's--an
old dusty settler. He was bald, about 50 years old, and spoke of
unbelievable things! He spoke of Russians giving him their
citizenship, he spoke of his eating human flesh in a coterie of
friends where some people inexplicably disappeared. He told me that he
had been scared that one day he would be on their table. And in his
presence most of my personal things started disappearing (socks,
trousers, underpants, needles, keys, etc.), which has continued up to
now.

Sydney is famous mostly because of its beautiful Opera House and Bondi
Beach. There are three Bondis--Bondi Beach, Bondi Junction, and Bondi.
Both Vladimir and I were living in Bondi. He was the only thing to
catch hold of, as I had no friends in an unknown world of kangaroos.
On one occasion, when he went to Bondi Beach to buy cigarettes and I
stayed alone in his apartment, a man broke in with gun fire. As my
heart was oscillating up and down from stomach to throat, he, the
bastard, told me that he was only looking for his newlywed wife.
Perhaps it was only a threatening maneuver of Secret Services.

I worked as a storeman with very expensive microelectronic components.
One day on my way to work I noticed a very robust man following me in
the train. A few days later he suddenly turned up in my office and put
sunglasses on the table and left. It was beyond my comprehension, but
later someone attempted to murder me. It was a car that followed me on
a sidewalk several times, so under the pressure of distress and fear I
decided to go back home to Czechoslovakia. However, first I had to
visit the Czechoslovakian consulate. The consul was a nice man but he
could be just another danger for me, so I prepared for a very
exhausting talk with Vladimir.

It was in September 1981 when I visited him the last time and we had a
long conversation. I told him that he might be a source of my problems
with Secret Services. He refused my views and arrived at an unexpected
platform, speaking that I could be an origin of tremendous occult
powers that were going on around me and that could attract Secret
Services.

"If this is truth," I said, "then I should be able to lit this
electric bulb," I raised my hand in laughter and pointed at the
electric bulb and, to my amazement, I lit it--with my mental power. I
did this only as a joke and I was shocked to see that it worked.
Immediately after that I had a hallucination. Vladimir's face turned
into an image of a human skull and I was dry-mouthed with fear. I
predicted him death--I told him: "Soon you will go to Hell". He died
few days after and, as his neighbors told me, the police rummaged his
house shortly after he had passed away,looking for something of which
I only presume was the tape that we had been listening to. The content
of the tape was a chaos of the hell of English voices in the
pandemonium of telephone ringing. As we were listening to it, an
electric current of agony surged through me because, on the tape,
sounded a sharp voice in the Slovak language that spoke of my mission
far in the future. The tape was definitely not a hallucination--for
this Czech guy also heard it and confirmed it. It was only my hunch
that he could speak of the voices on the tape to other people as there
was this prediction concerning my future, which could also elicit
problems with Secret Services. Moreover, he might be one of them.
Though I do not exactly remember what the eruption of the English
voices screamed about, I presume that these voices were the future
recorded on the tape because I heard future dates, names of
nonexisting (future) magazines and names of American writers whom I
contacted ten years later. But let us go back to the burning candle.

Though I loved Fletcher Street, I knew it was the time to move. In the
same way, I loved Australia, but I knew it was the time to leave. It
was a hell of a hard burden for me and, alas, the situation got even
worse. As I was one day on my way home from work, an unknown man in
the car stopped me and, speaking the Czech language, told me to put my
hand in the window of his car. I thought that he wished to hand
something over to me. I put my hand in the window of his car, but he
suddenly closed the window, my hand arrested there. Then he revved the
car and propelled forward. I ran along with him as quick as I could
and luckily, after about 200 meters, I released my hand in deadly
sweat as I was desperately shaking it, so the window finally got
released a little. Then he stopped the car and shouted to me: "You're
good".

I soon moved from Fletcher Street in Bondi to Bon Accord Avenue in
Bondi Junction to one of my Slovak acquaintances who told me:
"Whatever is happening to you, you must solve it or else you may be in
a very serious trouble". After I moved to him, he and I were receiving
threatening phone calls. Several weeks passed and I was in terrible
condition of uncertainty and fear. Perhaps the only solution was to
disappear somewhere or to go in a hospital, so I made a final
decision. I spent three weeks in psychiatry and was given a diagnosis
of schizophrenia, which was particularly good for me as I planned to
return to Czechoslovakia, where there was the dictatorship of
hard-line communists, so I could avoid all the problems with the
regime. However, in 1986 the highest government institution at the
time took all my manuscripts from the publishing building where I
published a book of poetry. Again, I experienced fear.

I must say that I started to have extraordinary experiences that
happened to me and are happening now and then. This all had started in
Australia, where I experienced more enigmas of which I do not want to
write. But Vladimir was right--I am really enveloped by some unknown
supernatural powers. To be more accurate, I believe it is some
extremely powerful Supernatural Being (with a sense for devilish
humor) who is guarding and protecting me. This Supernatural Being is
giving me signs to the future and it all is exhibited in the form of
"disappearances" or of sudden "finding" or "weird computer bugging" of
things or of a bird's arrival or weird telephone ringing as if the
lines were mad and computers crazy. I believe that this Supernatural
Being shining above me is a Woman and She has in focus only the things
of everyday use like scissors, pens, diskettes, telephones, etc., and
She also gives me money, medicine or other important things when I
need them. If something like this happens, you must assure yourself
that it really did inexplicably appear or disappear, and when it is a
valuable thing, you would know that hardly ever would someone give it
to you; and if it disappeared, it was definitely stolen by human
beings! I see these signs as symbols. When scissors evaporate, it
could be a sign of losing something, someone; it could be a sign of
breaking a relationship with a friend or beloved thing. It really
works. For example, after losing a pen I received a very important
letter. No only we human beings have sense for humor.

Let me mention some more amazing experiences that happened with my
parents' death. In 1986 I lived alone in a one-room apartment. I am
absolutely sure that my senses were always telling me the truth and I
do not happen to be in the absence of mind. I had a one thousand-crown
bill in a book of poems written by Edith Sdergran. I suddenly found
out that "Someone" had added two hundred-crown (1+1) bills in the
book! I knew that this money had not been there before and only I had
a key to my apartment! In January 1987 I had other one-hundred bills
in a book (1+1+1+1+1), which all disappeared and "moved" to a
different place, where I had kept four thousand crowns, and the
transferred money "changed" to one five hundred-crown bill. My mother
died on April 5th 1987 (4 thousand [as month], 5 hundred [as day]),
and my father died nine months later, on January 2nd 1988 (1 thousand
in a book [as month] + 2 hundred [as day])--that is, two good years in
advance "Someone" had given me the exact dates of my parents' natural
death. In the book on the place where I found those two hundred crowns
was a weird poem with a flabbergasting message speaking of two spirits
and the mid-Atlantic. I think it was this Supernatural Being directly
speaking to me through the poem, which, together with the money
account, represents an oracle for my future.

Another experience happened to me and to my friend, who is a
professional mountaineer and who had led the first successful
Czechoslovakian expedition to Mount Everest (autumn, 1984). We meet
sometimes as friends. This time we met at his work. I did not have a
watch and he loaned me his. About three weeks later he called me and
suggested a visit. He was very embarrassed and his first questions
were like if anybody might listen to us when we had visited the last
time. After a while he told me that he had found the same watch he had
given me on the table at his work, and not one from his colleagues
knew anything about it. I had his watch and he had obtained a new one.
It must have turned up there from heaven!

Obviously, nobody believes this and I became a fool. It is a great
pity that there exist people who can never understand you. They can
never grasp that, due to borderland situations, a person like us
behaves differently. But we, folks standing only a little beyond the
verge of nonsensical borders, are proud of being fools. We are not
like ordinary human beings. We are original, authentic and even the
wise personages of this world confirm that there were more cases when
politicians, psychologists, editors or scientists made considerable
mistakes. The people who do not understand us do not know that
arrogance creates not only new Hitlers, Husseins, Stalins, but also
Buddhas, Jesuses, or new Joans of Arc. Therefore we should receive
fools in the same way as we are received by our beautiful universe.
Let me conclude with a citation from the Bible, 1 Corinthians
1:27--"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the
wise."

The bird on my shoulder inspired me. After all, we are all the folly
of the universe, but only few of us found out that it is better than
the folly of the world!

Ken F. Tsang
------------
<[email protected]>
1 poem

_Window Pain_
(or One Sock Is Black, The Other Is Tan)

I am here.
No
I was
here.
That was
until you made me

invisible.

You look towards me
but not at me.
Through me
like a window pane.

So now I have
disappeared.
What can I do
now that
I am
not
here
?

Peter Kendall
-------------
<[email protected]>
2 poems

_You Chose to Go_

You chose to go for mere sensation:
the pastel strokes and hues
of picture book views. And something else:
a self that leaps, but does not look or long
for what I am. An image caught
and shut within that house you left behind.

Your self-making is a mirror. I see a child
livid in the trap of years I thought were sprung.
My thoughts released one by one: you were the last
to leave. I will not spring again
or swim upward to the light that flares
in airless space. I cannot breathe

your blinding rage. I will not break.
I do not shout or try. My anger
will not be said. I listen to the dead.
I cannot cry.

Church bells chime above your head.
You stand by the altar with a camera
witnessing a Christening, drawn
to the Crucifixion, measuring the dark
the candled shadows, the angles
of the cross-all perfectly composed.

My love's a revelation-it has no form
just hunger for your flesh. Your breast
no longer seeks my mouth. My rage
just feeds upon itself. I fall
but you hardly find the time to call.

It always shocked to watch you feed
that greed of yours for sensual meat,
that beer I once saw spasm at your lips
and spill in spreading damp upon your lap.

I feel desire. The man you watch
stirs within a distant storm of lust.
His dazzlement approaches.
It is a common god that calls. A god
that blurs our difference, the distance

between my flesh, his, and yours.
Our mouths share tongues, the pain
is sheathed in motion, my prick is bathed,
rocked tight within your grip. I want to speak
or weep but cannot think, or feel. The lush friction
makes me come in him, in you.

Our desires are the same. We want
the thunder crack, the lightning flash to pass
from flesh to flesh. But what is left?
Damp tissues by the bed. Soft strategies of talk.

Our sleep in separate arms divides
my loss from yours. We will not touch again.

You chose to go yet promised a return
and when you call the Pentecostal spirit speaks
in familiar tones, about common things:
work; who you saw; what you ate.
I rage politely among these pastel views.
Their beauty, yours, muffles my despair.

The phone shut in its cradle
now at rest. Your voice of scattered thoughts
I can forget. The pull of sleep
returns me to myself.
I cannot weep. I follow sheep
to a dead land far from where you are.

_The Plane of Memory_

I feel affection for the full-bodied flight above:
the slow glint of passage, the mantric drone
deepens and disturbs my senses, shaping
a remembrance I do not recognize or own.

I cannot place my feelings. A day perhaps
in dead time. Faded in the spaciousness
of Summers blending calm and loss.
I cannot understand this depth of sound.
The soft distracting moods of death.

At first it feels so gentle. I am a child
in a room of open windows, scented air
disturbed in the hush of distant trees
the breath of still uncertain ease.
My father sleeps. My mother reads.

My sadness here: the mirror and the walls
confused with fear and force I could not grasp.

As a child I felt the consequence of knowing.
A street-smart sense of cunning made me turn
back into the quiet afternoon. The Sunday sleep
of drowsy tables, muted chairs. Upstairs

my father read; my mother slept
In the faded reaches of a light
whose source embraced my youth
revealing age upon her face, a mask
of motion, ice-floes, melting into breath.

I could smell the air: sea-sour, salt.
I could sense in vision-depths
a blinding shape arise. I weakened
in this light, confusing loss
with hunger--not my own.

In the waters of the garden pond I saw the flash
and turned to see my house--cathedral'd
incandescent light. I could not shield
my sight, my thoughts went blind
my senses deafened by the roar
of speechless all-consuming awe.

The sadness of a half-remembered war
drones softly now above my head.
I sense the spill of eggs and hear their fall
wolf-whistling down upon the flowering world.
I watch the trip-wire flash of endings spread
from house to house. I feel released
ashamed, a force transforming all with death.
What have I done? What can I do
to be once more the child in you?

Madness is still horizoned, held
in the sun that sets upon my life.
Above, the plane drones softly
back into the past. I have not changed.
Calm blends with loss to shape
the dim cathedral of my age.

I sit among the drowsing chairs and look
upon the muted text of day, the cloudless
sky through which an evocation passes slow
possessing me with senses hardly owned.

Rick Lupert
-----------
<[email protected]>
2 poems

_I'm The Writer_

I'm the writer
I always have a pen
I play Scrabble just to keep in practice with all the words
I don't need to play Scrabble because I know all the words
People come up to me who I've never met before and say
"You're that writer guy"
My identity precedes me
Things I witness are not other people's experiences,
Rather they are material for my work
I use metaphors
My work screams to be interpreted
Sometimes it's so complicated,
I don't even understand what I've written
Some women worship the paper I write on
Some men worship the paper I write on
My mother worships the paper I write on
Both men and women ask to model nude for my poems
My work appears in many places
including but not limited to
Books, magazines, newspapers, bathroom walls, the inside of matchbooks
and the internet
Soon it will be beamed into outer space
for the benefit of culturally literate aliens
and God
The dictionary is my Bible
I am constantly quoting from it
I make people laugh
I piss people off
I offer a full range of emotions
Sometimes I leave the house without underwear
I do this to increase my consciousness
It always works
I'm the most conscious person I know
I'm the writer
I write
That's what I do

_Some Common Themes in My Poetry_
or, a Future Table of Contents

Mr. T.
Goldfish
Naked
Girlfriend
No Girlfriend
Will you be my girlfriend?
I wish she was my girlfriend
The plight of the negro and others oppressed
The Moon

Naked Mr. T.
Naked goldfish
Naked girlfriends
Will you be my naked girlfriend
Will you be my naked oppressed negro
Let's get naked and become negroes and fly to the moon.

Let us worship Mr. T.
But only if he's naked
and only if he brings along his girlfriend
and we establish a naked colony
on the moon.

Liberate the naked goldfish
by disguising them as Mr. T.
and other famous negroes
and hiding them in a secret underground hideaway
on the moon.

Let's all get Mohawks and eat Sushi.

Tristan Li Tom
--------------
<[email protected]>
1 poem

_Hatred Commences Upon the Pit of Folklore_

Through and throughout all of the
Torrid and horrid deep dark secrets.
From the pain and suffering,
The blood and struggle.
By way of the battlements and the trenches
Across the boarder
At the pit of our folklore.
Past the seething sugar coated writeoffs
We reach out of the violent holes of our souls
And away from the crust of our evilness
For something that is not there.
We lose control of our early tendencies for kindness.
We emerge--alive and kicking.

Shaun Armour
------------
<[email protected]>
2 poems

_Sam_

Sam turned forty today.
By my standards, an old man.
Gyroscopic death, twirling backwards to drag me down.
Sam washes dishes.
A hundred thousand, million dishes, his dishes.
So why do I want to mourn?
For Sam.
For nine years of desolate, rancid scraps of dreams, crumbling.
Not my dreams, no, not mine.
But those dishes, they keep piling up,
demanding his attention, his suspension
of Sam's truth.
No absolutes just dirty water, fetid sludge and burnt offerings.
Swollen, scalded fingers and mute submissions.
No transitions, nothing new, nothing else.
And I pour Sam I Am free drinks, smile and laugh,
"Happy Birthday Sammy, heard you won $500 in bingo last week,
That's great Sam! Don't look a day over thirty."
Scraping plates, scraping away the residue of a life,
and I want to shake him and scream,
"For God's sake Sam, get the hell out of here!"
Take off those fucking rubber gloves,
pawn them somewhere for a life.
Nine lousy years of scorched and cracked hands has gotta be worth
something.
Every day, five days a week you sit at my bar after your shift and I
give you
three beers.
And I know that's just the warm up.
How sedated do you have to get for your millionth plate?
Did anyone ever tell you that they loved you?
That you mattered?
Sam, your dying.
Don't you see it?
Through the steam, going down the drain in brown water.
What did you want to be when you grew up Sam?
Some questions just hurt to much to ask.
So I smile and say, "Happy Birthday Sam, let me buy you a drink."
Sam I am

_An Unlikely Colloquy_
(In which God enlists great minds to bring Neanderthal up to
theological speed)

Socrates presses his palms too his forehead, rocking slowly, anguished.
Grouses about the futility of method against simian obstinance.
And Freud can't take his eyes off the pestle, swirling within the gourd,
crushing whelks, carapace and all,
a crunchy, mucous laden treat licked salaciously through prognathous
grin.
Crouching unperturbed, our Neanderthal looks fettle and sybaritic.
He does not mean to offend, but these bald macaws won't stop
chattering.
His mind is all tangent, he thinks of feathers and fetishes.
Only Darwin sits quietly, giving credit where do,
realizing
the joke long before the others.
Nietzsche sulks, can't conciliate any of it, see's it, but won't feel
it.
Hairy arm, proffers sulking Friedrich the silent macaw, snail mash
surprise
But uprooted existentialism once again misses the opportunity for
concresence,
and Germanic decorum doesn't want to acknowledge hirsute sentience,
let alone the vision to know God,
besides he likes his escargot in drawn butter and white wine.
Out of habit our troglodytic forebear searches for lice within his coat,
but they did not make the journey with him to this verdant utopia.
He ponders for a moment why he misses them so.
Thinks about how his lice must have felt living upon his body,
thinks about how he feels towards the earth he roams.
Earth is good, earth is God.
Makes a prodigious mental leap, knows suddenly, certainly that he was
the lice God.
That they worshipped him, made temples within which to pray in the
crook of
his armpit, in the folds of his hairy genitals.
He feels sad that the lice have lost there God, and now he knows why he
misses them.
Wants to explain it all to poor Friedrich, but thinks it might be too
difficult.
Old Aquinas can't take it anymore, starts grabbing books from the
reference pile.
Hurls the Talmud, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, The Bible and
Curious George
Meets the Vicar
at our friend.
Cro Magnon Man sizes up the obese sage,
contemplates beating him about the head with his own ripped off arm,
eyes catch Curious George receiving confession from the Vicar,
as wind ruffles pages.
Grabs the book.
Rips of the cover, then the back, rips out the pages, flings them
skyward.
Aquinas sneers, "His ignorance is indefeasible, he even destroys books."
Darwin can't keep quiet anymore,"Oh, and you never tossed any on the
pyre?"
Socrates sighs, "I think it is quite impossible, that we can teach him
of
God. He has not the capacity for reason necessary for such an endeavor."
Nietzsche broods aloud, betraying his own bias,"Would that I didn't as
well."
Neanderthal sits contentedly, pleased that he has freed the little
monkey
from the inhuman confines of those two dimensional pages.
He watches the torn sheaves blow towards the trees, screams, "Whoop,
Gwubba!"
Which loosely translated, means, go play amongst the branches, little
monkey.
He turns to the other books, and gets to work.
There is much freeing to be done.

Wayne Brissette
---------------
<[email protected]>
3 poems

_Sorry_
for Anne

My heart weeps a dark song
for the one I need to let go.

Was Einstein right?
Could I travel the road upon which time changes?

I want the clock to change
I want the thoughts to change

For now only sorry
seems to come out.

_Stars_
for Teri

Under the stars
a kiss; nectar for humanity
I stand in awe
I'm in a fire
yet, you reach in to touch me.

Waves crash against my rocky soul
each bearing your name.
Like a library; wealth stored within
you weave a spell upon me
strong and powerful; more tenacious than my body has felt before.

Under the stars
I dream
Under the stars
we kiss
Under the stars
we touch

_By Chance_
for Teri

i stood alone with my secret
deep and dark
for it was nothing to write home about
nothing to share with friends

thousands of miles away
a gentle smile; a gentle voice
golden hair; a golden touch
within my heart my secret cries out
knowing what it can't have

a promise...
unwrap the secret,
toss aside the blackness burning deep at my soul

when the distance became none
i had my opportunity to let my secret free
open to the golden voice,
free
at least for a while
at least long enough to see the gentle smile

again the distance spread
again my secret sank silent and slow
back into the dark
back into my soul

by chance i asked
by chance i received
but was it by chance
or predetermined long before
i shared my secret with you?

About the Contributors
----------------------
Amy DeGeus is this issues's Featured Writer. Go to that section to
learn more about her.

Ajay M. Narayanan lives in Batavia, Illinois, where he moonlights as a
poet. He is a graduate student doing his thesis in experimental high
energy physics, and also enjoys running, photography, and kick boxing.

Richard Epstein calls Denver, Colorado home. A frequent contributor to
POETRY INK, Richard works in the exciting field of paraleagalism.

J.W. Drake (actually a pen name for John Hansel ) lives in Tucson,
Arizona. He lives with his dog and writes poetry when he's not writing
a detective novel, eating, sleeping, or working for somebody else
doing ads, PR, or website design/maintenance.

John Freemyer lives in Redding, California. He will soon be appearing
at a theater near you.

Juraj Sipos lives in Bratislava, Slovakia. He has published several
books of poetry in his own country, including "Under the Southern
Cross", as well as translations of American poets into Slovak.

Ken F. Tsang is a resident of Beaverton, Oregon, and a native of
Kirkcaldy, Scotland. He is a sophomore at Westview High School in
Portland. Ken enjoys playing ping-pong, listening to music, and
sleeping.

Peter Kendall has lived in Nishinomiya-shi, Hyogo-ken, Japan for 12
years. He is presently working as chief instructor of language school.
He would prefer to be full-time poet with a 24 hour Net connection to
the Source Of All Creativity. He doesn't want money; he wants God -
just once - to single him out in the crowd and give him his 15 minutes
in the spotlight.

Rick Lupert hails from Encino, California. Rick has hosted a weekly
open reading at the Cobalt Cafe in Los Angeles for the last two years,
has appeared several times in "Caffeine" magazine and "Blue Satellite
Literary Journal", is the author of "Paris: It's The Cheese" (a
chapbook of poems written recently in Paris), and believes that the
holes in Swiss Cheese have certain erotic capabilities.

Tristan Li Tom lives in Berkeley, California. He writes poetry, prose,
screenplays (his short screenplay "I Feel Better Already" was recently
selected to be made into a film), articles (look for his articles in
the BMUG newsletter, for example) and more. Tristan likes to write and
hopes to someday make money with his writing. He is looking for the
meaning of life and hopes to eventually find it somewhere on the 'net.

Shaun Armour lives in Toronto, Canada. He is currently in the process
of writing a novel, and likes bowling shirts and has his own pool cue;
alas, he cannot yet eat fifty eggs. He will soon start writing a
regular column for POETRY INK.

Wayne Brissette marks his return address as Austin, Texas. A frequent
contributor to POETRY INK, Wayne also maintains our web page when he
isn't working for Apple Computer as a technical writer.

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