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                dedicated to the art of the written word



================================
POETRY INK 2.05 / ISSN 1091-0999
================================

 **Poetry Ink Electronic Literary Magazine**

 ~Dedicated to the Art of the Written Word~

 Volume 2, Number 5
 Issue 12 (August 1996)


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Masthead
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Belles Lettres
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 A place for reader comments, criticism, and other assorted feedback.



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

 **Fanfare for Science, Mortal Enemy to Poets:**
 **The Evolution of a Theory**


 The benevolent ruler of the critical etat and first star of my last
 report, Helen Vendler, illustrates how academics set standards for
 poetry. There are many avenues of influence upon poetry. Still, what
 becomes the critical theory of the day in academia shapes or
 interprets contemporary poetry. Awards are given with an eye for
 such critical theory. In other words, money goes to that poetry
 which reflects established values of critical theory. Having viewed
 exactly such an award ceremony in my last report from the Iowa
 Gulag, I now cast a roving eye toward a less heralded aspect of
 literary theory: evolution.

 Joseph Carroll, a professor at the University of Missouri--St Louis,
 published a book in 1995 entitled _Evolution and Literary Theory_.
 Carroll's bold, polemical stance in his book undoubtedly holds
 little attraction for poets enmeshed in current Poststructuralist
 critical theory. I contacted Professor Carroll over eMail and asked
 him about the future influence of his book.

 "My book is a drop of foam breaking away from a vast swell. It will
 not go wholly unheeded," Carroll said modestly.

 The idea that poetry and science could complement one another has
 long been part of this century's critical backbone. Walt Whitman,
 venerable progenitor of modern American poetry, stated this in
 _Democratic Vistas_:

 "As fuel to flame, and flame to the heavens, so must wealth,
 science, materialism--even this democracy of which we make so
 much--unerringly feed the highest mind, the soul.... Then may we
 attain to a poetry worthy the immortal soul of man, and which, while
 absorbing materials, and, in their own sense, the shows of Nature,
 will, above all, have, both directly and indirectly, a freeing,
 fluidizing, expanding, religious character, exulting with science,
 fructifying the moral elements, and stimulating aspirations and
 meditations on the unknown."

 Ezra Pound, Whitman's cantankerous successor, stated his wish for
 poetry to become the equal of science in "How to Read":

 "People regard literature as something vastly more flabby and
 floating and complicated and indefinite than, let us say,
 mathematics. Its subject-matter, the human consciousness, is more
 complicated than biology, is more complicated than are number and
 space. It is not, however, more complicated than biology, and no one
 ever supposed that it was. We apply a loose-leaf system to
 book-keeping so as to have the live items separated from the dead
 ones. In the study of physics we begin with simple mechanisms,
 wedge, lever and fulcrum, pulley and inclined plane, all of them
 still as useful as when they were first invented."

 Despite Pound's hopelessly misguided desire to reduce language to a
 systematized science, it is true that many poets have turned to the
 discoveries of science to activate their ideas and metaphors. Hart
 Crane, Robert Frost, Loren Eiseley, and many, many other poets have
 enjambed the discoveries of science and the technological advances
 of this century with eloquence. Meanwhile economics, linguistics,
 psychology, anthropology, and a huge host of other academic
 disciplines have turned their steely edges to splice the written
 word of our poetic canon. But despite this, no single methodology
 has emerged for literary theory or dominated the poetic voice of
 this or any nation. Some scientists began to feel that the
 profitable advances of their fields were going unnoticed and
 uncelebrated in poetry. Richard P. Feynman, Nobel Laureate in
 physics, lamented poetry's antipathy to science in his essay,
 _The Value of Science_:

 "The value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to
 hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is
 not yet a scientific age."

 But Mr. Feynman was wrong: poetry has worked with the idea of science
 since the inception of scientific method at the hands of Francis
 Bacon. Bacon was known for as much for his literary endeavors as for
 his experiments and books of unbounded aspiration. Science continues
 to influence our poetry. But critical theory has planted its standards
 at some distance from certain aspects of science, evolution one of
 them. Matching such a nebulous theory as evolution to our literary
 inheritance and ongoing linguistic acrobatics is a stupendous feat.
 Yet in _Evolution and Literary Theory_ Carroll contends that it is a
 possible and necessary step for literary theory.

 "...I argue for the view that knowledge is a biological phenomenon,
 that literature is a form of knowledge, and that literature is thus
 itself a biological phenomenon."

 Sound simple? It's not. Carroll's project, in his view, requires a
 full debunking of the current theories of Poststructuralism: most
 notably, Carroll attacks Derrida, Foucault, Fredric Jameson, Paul de
 Man, and others as nihilistic rhetoricians. It is Carroll's
 observation that Poststructuralists are hostile to the values of
 empirical science. Thus, twenty years of theory stand in the way of
 any motion toward science on the critic's part.

 Charges of nihilism have often been levied against deconstruction
 and Derrida. I asked Carroll whether he was suggesting we simply
 ignore Derrida or consider the philosopher an outright liar. Carroll
 responded as follows:

 "...I would put the emphasis on stating that Derrida is an outright
 liar. The central critical point I make about Poststructuralist
 methodology is very simply that Poststructuralists habitually and
 characteristically talk out of both sides of their mouths. In the
 chapter on Derrida, I give a quotation where he denies that he ever
 made any apocalyptic pronouncements--along with a sampling of his
 apocalyptic pronouncements. This particular point is hard for a lot
 of people to get into focus. They find it hard to believe that
 responsible adults would make a professional career of equivocating
 fundamentally in such a way that they constantly make absurd claims
 (for their radical zing) and just as constantly take them back (for
 safety). But this is in fact the strange truth of the matter. I like
 the remark (forgotten who made it) on this to the effect that,
 'There's the part where you say it, and the part where you take it
 back.'"

 Professor Carroll also expresses considerable animosity towards
 those aspects of multiculturalism which espouse the nihilism of
 Poststructuralism. How's that for a mouthful? I asked Carroll
 whether multiculturalism currently had some intrinsic value for
 academia. With vim, vigor, and an icy edge, he responded:

 "I'm not sure precisely what you mean by 'multiculturalism.' If you
 mean an effort to study and understand the world-wide array of
 cultures, appreciating their peculiarities but also striving to
 analyze them within the framework of a universal human nature, I'm
 all for it. If you mean the systematic effort to degrade the
 achievements of Western civilization (or the culture of the modern
 industrial/technological world, which includes Asia) and
 systematically to hype the achievements of more primitive peoples;
 if you mean the single-minded hostility to all normative structures
 ('power') and the automatic valorization of groups deemed 'marginal'
 to those structures, I'm not sympathetic to it. I dislike the ethos
 itself, and I especially dislike the dishonesty that is endemic to
 it."

 Carroll is fighting for a new critical methodology against
 overwhelming odds. Americans love underdogs, but it is hard to be
 sympathetic to the abstruse jargon of literary theory. It will be
 difficult for the academic community and the public participants of
 poetry to disentangle all the different lines of inquiry and
 judgment. Professor Carroll draws a line between the study of
 literature and the production of literature. In doing so, Carroll
 demonstrates how difficult it would be for his critical methodology
 to be the means by which our very subjective awards for achievement
 in literature are given.

 "I make a distinction," Carroll responded to one of my questions,
 "between 'literature' and 'the study of literature.' I'm not currently
 keen on mysticism myself, but it is one possible literary mode; it is
 one subjective perspective, a way of looking at the world. That's what
 literature is for--the articulation of personal perspectives. The
 study of literature, in contrast, is held more rigorously to the
 criteria of objective knowledge. Art and science are different
 things." But how different are art and science? Why should one be the
 method by which the other is judged? There is some continuity between
 the two elements as we perceive them. J. Robert Oppenheimer, in a
 speech given at Columbia University in 1954, drew strong parallels
 between the scientist's and the artist's place in the university and
 roles in society: "Both the man of science and the man of art live
 always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it; both always, as the
 measure of their creation, have had to do with the harmonization of
 what is new and what is familiar, with the balance between novelty and
 synthesis, with the struggle to make partial order in total chaos."

 It is probably impossible to bring my airy conjecture down to earth.
 I started by wondering whether evolution could be part of our means
 of evaluating literature in the future. Professor Carroll succinctly
 re-phrased my question: "A larger way to put the question would be:
 what effect will the whole vast movement of evolutionary study have
 on popular consciousness, and how will this eventually affect
 literature and the study of literature? In my more sanguine moments,
 as at the end of my book, I say it is just a matter of time. But
 then, folly is a hardy weed. Decades? Centuries? Who knows?"

 Who knows? I don't. But poets have a practical need to know how
 their work will be received and interpreted.


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]>
1 column, 2 reviews


**Portrait Of A Writer As A Would-Be Stylist**

 Should I put Keats' "negative capability" into practice?
 I think I'll commit myself intellectually to an avant-garde style.
 How about identifying stylistically with the downtrodden of society?
 Should I be an undogmatic, uncompromising, independent stylesetter?
 I will radically experiment then and suffer or reap the consequences.

 Shall I concentrate on stylish, trivial material to please my audience?
 Should I resist spontaneity in my writing for sellable professional
fluency?
 Might I present a tautly economic, spartan, antiliterary style?
 Would it be prudent to profess scorn for middlebrow values as part of my
 stylistics?
 Should I pursue an unobtrusive, inoffensive style that will not offend?

 No, I will write as a cerebral exhibitionist, full of sly, stylish
 equivocation.
 Should I sacrifice a serious high-style for a box-office low-style?
 I shall deliberately take a subjective, egocentric approach as a
stylist.
 Shall I thoroughly commit to pushing the envelope with the latest
modernist
 devices?
 Full of robust energy and fury, I will trick out my writing to look
"modern."


 Might I pass myself off as a cautious neo-classicist, a
middle-of-the-road
 stylist?
 I really want myself to be seen as an urbane cosmopolitan, a
sophisticated
 intellectual.
 I'm going to take a try-every-ism-out-there approach with regards to
style.
 Must I subdue my innate romanticism in favor of a philosophical style?
 Should my pyrotechnic linguistic compulsions come to the forefront?

 Technical brilliance before content, I say.
 Will I ultimately reject all stylistic options or approaches as somehow
flawed?
 To attempt to reconcile content with style should be my number one
priority.
 I will make myself aware of the stylistic currents of my generation
before I
 set off in pursuit of a style.
 Should one be naively idealistic about finding a style, or be a
hardboiled
 realist?
 Can I consciously impose style upon my material? If so, will my style
be true
 to my intent?

 Am I doomed to be a stylistic wanderer my entire career as a writer?
 How do I reconcile my disenchanted conformism with conventional
attitudes?
 Should I be respectful of stylistic influences?
 Is the medium the message, the message the medium, or something else?
 Might I pose as a vogue stylist of fashionable influences?
 Is style a zero-degree thing?
 Am I a conscientious would-be stylist in search of a style?



World Wide Words Poetry Review
------------------------------
_The Dream of the Unified Field_
by Jorie Graham
The Ecco Press, 199 pages

"'alive, yes-yes-but wingless this ~between~, wingless--'"

 The quoted line above sums up the reading experience of this inviting
 selection of Jorie Graham's poetry culled from five earlier books. One
 does wish, however, Graham would have included more as her selected
 poems show a surprising lack of variety for what we are told is a
 twenty-year span of work from 1974-1994. The copyright page only
 confuses matters by posting 1980 and 1995 copyrights, indicating a
 timespan of just fifteen years.

 If we examine the development of Graham's poetry for the last 15-20
 years, one of the most noticeable changes involves her use of a longer
 line in her later works. Her early writings come across as suggestive
 of Black Mountain poets like Charles Olson and Robert Creeley where we
 have the notion of poetry-as-voice, utterance, shorn of image and
 music, short-lined, attuned to the moment, self-obsessed. In fact,
 nearly all of Graham's poetry never escapes the solipsist "I"
 viewpoint, and the reader remains hard-pressed to find poems where she
 breaks away from the too-comfortable home of first-person point of
 view.

 This poetic approach, unfortunately, leaves one often "wingless" and
 "between," and wishing Graham would be more creatively liberal and
 less a slave to providing rather programmatic first-person accounts of
 nowness. Most of the contents from her first two published volumes,
 _Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts_ and _Erosion_, read amusical,
 breathy, phrase-laden, dashed off. You encounter clippy stanzas often
 containing lines of four words or less: "the memorial's/custodian,/
 sitting on the porch/beneath the arbor/sorting chick-peas/from
 pebbles/ into her cast-iron/pot./See what her hands/know--/they are
 its breath,/its mother." Here in this passage you get a revealing look
 at Graham's use of line-breaks too; she likes the dramatic, verbal
 shear, which her later poetry shows no signs of giving up, of going
 from phrase to phrase, thought to thought, in her over-compact stanza.

 Thankfully, the later poetry loosens up more with a sensible decision
 (witting?) to employ a longer-line approach that lets Graham's writing
 attain a better sustained intensity. At times, these later poems
 admirably capture a kind of Rilkean surrender to the inscape of
 consciousness, which remains simultaneously tuned to the outscape of
 historical time, "I"-time meeting "World"-time, found in the eleven
 _Duino Elegies_: "The storm.../settles, in my head, the wavering
 white/sleep, the instances--they stick, accrue,/grip up, connect, they
 do not melt,/I will not let them melt, they build, cloud and cloud,/I
 feel myself weak, I feel the thinking muscle-up-/outside, the
 talk-talk of the birds-outside,/strings and their roots, leaves inside
 the limbs,/in some spots the skin breaking--/but inside, no more
 exploding, no more smoldering, no more,/inside, a splinter colony, new
 world, possession/gripping down to form,/wilderness brought deep into
 my clearing,/out of the ooze of night,/." In poem after poem, Graham
 focuses continuously on these fractions of time and thought
 commingled, subjectively, freely associating, ever insistent and
 attentive to articulating precisely these ever-changing moments.

 Sometimes this poetic articulation breaks down though, becoming overly
 abstract and utterly imprecise. On page 146, "it" variants occur
 twenty-two times, and the word "x" appears six places. Five "thing"
 variations stick out like weeds on page 124. Should the reader not
 demand, or the writer not be held accountable for, better preciseness
 as to the tilled soil of language cultivated in
 _The Dream of the Unified Field_?

 On the inside front dust-jacket, a critic is quoted describing Jorie
 Graham's poetry being "reckless music." I'm not sure "reckless" fits,
 for Graham seems most purposeful, not insouciant at all. Maybe
 free-wheeling. Partly atonal. Or better yet, a cartwheeling music
 suggestive of the associative movement, non sequitur quality, and
 existentialist play of her overactive mind on the page. She too seems
 rather limited in both style and emotional range. Either too
 predictable stylistically from one poem to the next, or too same-toned
 as you advance from one stanza to the next. (You feel as though you
 could randomly turn to a new page and not tell you were in a different
 poem.) We get no acute Machado-like humbleness, no Vallejo-like
 anguish of spirit, no Lorca-like alienation.... Also, in a few poems
 silly stanzaic numbering intrudes and totally wrecks the reading.
 Graham appears more intent in her poetry on us seeing and hearing her
 skip a flat stone across a pond rather than having us watch the
 resulting rings slowly spread outward or stop to listen to the
 lingering resonance.

 Her own words ring self-prophetic and best impart her approach to
 poetry when she writes, "...how beautiful/an alphabet becomes when
 randomness sets in/." Nonetheless, one wishes as well for the
 patterned rings of life to unsettle some of the poetry of her
 beautiful alphabet in the future.



World Wide Words Book Review
----------------------------
_Independence Day_
by Richard Ford
Alfred A. Knopf, 451 pages

**"A Great American Novel?" Not.**

 Despite the _Publisher's Weekly_ dustjacket contention that "If it
 were possible to write a Great American Novel of this time in our
 lives, this is what it would look like," I would have preferred a much
 tauter edited, small-intent novel. In fact, the book suffers some as
 being too much Mom and Apple Pie-ish with its story line taking place
 over a 4th of July weekend with, of course, a trip to Cooperstown to
 visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. Anyone gagging yet?

 Frank Bascombe, an ex-sportswriter turned real-estate agent, narrates a
 multithemed tale which encompasses his "Existence Period" (the
 narrative refrain to this wears thin after the first few mentionings)
 and leads the reader through topics of divorce, race, urban terrorism,
 murder, self-reliance, father/son dynamics, and obviously,
 independence. Near the end of the novel, Frank offers up a
 book-gleaned notion of realty being "the 'True American profession
 coping hands-on with the fundamental spatial experience of life: more
 people, less space, fewer choices.'" The last line of
 _Independence Day_ reaffirms this sentiment: "I feel the push, pull, the
 weave and sway of others."

 For me, the ending paragraphs overstrain for lyrical impact, so much
 wanting that F. Scott Fitzgerald Gatsby-like finish. The last
 paragraph comes across as a cribbed Gatsby ending--the final line too
 much a Gatsby line. A man prey to the currents of time.

 Over the course of the 400+ pages, expect to be entertained, as well
 as bored in passages, by a first-person voice constantly adding
 asides, either dashed in or parenthetical. One is hard pressed at
 times to find a paragraph void of these irritating interruptions, and
 this intrusion takes away some of the pleasure of reading the book.

 Emotional epiphany for Ford often is instigated by sound, be it a
 phone ringing, a misdialed, wrong number intrusion, or the beat of
 marching-band drums off in the distance. In point of fact, many of his
 scene-ends predictably hinge on these moments. Pages 4, 159, 217, 312,
 336, 451. You get the picture.... Also, he has a penchant to
 overdescribe characters with long adjectival strings. For example,
 "She had a high, confident, thick-tongued, singsongy Alabama
 voice...and wore tight-wool skirts, iron-leg panty hose and pastel
 cashmere sweaters." You get an overkill of descriptive detail to read
 through, and some editing seems called for to rid us of some of this
 excess. One wishes his editor would have been more on the ball in
 producing a tauter book shorn of verbiage.

 Just for comparison, I find the writing from Georges Simenon's
 Bastille Day opening to his less-ambitious novel _Justice_ superior in
 execution to Ford's opening in _Independence Day_. Here's part of
 Simenon's beginning:

    "At the bottom of the hilly street, the shady square by the harbor
 still sported its decorations for Bastille Day, July 14, the palms
 were a sumptuous green in the light of the setting sun, and the flags
 hung as motionless as if painted on a backcloth.
    And nobody realized, as the red of sunset spread halfway across the
 sky and the blue in the other half gradually turned to green, as
 sounds became sharper, suddenly swelling, then as suddenly dying as
 though appalled by their incongruity, nobody realized that that
 moment--an ordinary moment for all the world to enjoy--belonged really
 to Petit Louis and to no one else, all the others being merely supers.
    On the beach, near the casino and the diving board, a few people
still
 lingered, lying stretched out in the sand. Mothers sauntered homeward,
 dragging little children in bright-colored bathing suits.
    Now and again a car would drive down the street, and then there would
 be a slamming of doors and cries of greeting as figures in white
 joined the other figures in white already sitting at the little tables
 in front of the Potiniere."

 Here's some of Ford's first two pages:

   "In Haddam, summer floats over tree-softened streets like a sweet
 lotion balm from a careless, languorous god, and the world falls in
 tune with its own mysterious anthems...
   Though back on my street, the first shaded block of Cleveland, sweet
 silence reigns. A block away, someone patiently bounces a driveway
 ball: squeak...then breathing...then a laugh, a cough... 'All
 ~riight~, that's the ~waaay~.' None of it too loud. In front of the
 Zumbros', two doors down, the street crew is finishing a quiet smoke
 before cranking their machines and unsettling the dust again. We're
 repaving this summer, putting in a new 'line,' resodding the neutral
 ground, setting new curbs, using our proud new tax dollars--the workers
 all Cape Verdeans and wily Hondurans from poorer towns north of here.
 Sergeantsville and Little York. They sit and stare silently beside
 their yellow front-loaders, ground flatteners and backhoes, their
 sleek private cars--Camaros and Chevy low-riders--parked around the
 corner, away from the dust and where it will be shady later on.
   And suddenly the carillon at St. Leo the Great begins: gong, gong,
 gong, gong, gong, gong, then a sweet, bright admonitory matinal air by
 old Wesley himself: 'Wake the day, ye who would be saved, wake the
 day, let your souls be laved.'
   Though all is not exactly kosher here, in spite of a good beginning.
 (When is anything ~exactly~ kosher?)
   I myself, Frank Bascombe..."

 We get three "sweet"s in Ford's opening scene. A bit cloying, yes?
 Ford, all too often, gives you an overabundance of sensory detail as
 part of the narrative. Simenon provides a more deft touch with regards
 to detail, tending to render a more stripped-down account to his
 reader. And what about the all those "s"es in the opening line here
 from Ford? Is "yellow front-loaders, ground flatteners and backhoes,
 their sleek private cars--Camaros and Chevy low-riders" or "gong, gong,
 gong, gong, gong, gong, then a sweet, bright adminitory matinal air"
 overwritten. I think so. I suspect Simenon would have crossed out a
 few gongs, and taken out "admonitory" as unneeded since we can see
 that tone expressed in the appended Wesley quote. One also remains
 unclear which Wesley Ford refers to. I guess we're meant to assume
 John, although Charles was the chief hymn-writer.

 A few other matters. The plot line regarding Paul Bascombe, Frank's
 15-year-old son, struck out with me. Readers of the novel will
 understand my use of "struck." I found Paul unconvincing as a
 character, too much an adult. He comes across more as an intellectual
 alter ego of a young Frank rather than as a fully realized individual
 creation. Also, Paul's denouement has me asking, "Why such a
 melodramatic, soap-opera-ish twist?"

 The Markhams' plot thread was a riot and had me turning pages waiting
 impatiently for them to show up again. Every real estate agent, I'm
 sure, would nod in recognition of what Joe and Phyllis represent, and
 Ford conceived and displays these clients-from-hell in a most engaging
 way. The repartee between them, and with Frank, is rendered by Ford
 with comic brilliance, but he underplays them, and I for one wished
 they would have been more center-stage, especially at the end where
 they rather inexplicably disappear.

 In addition, I thoroughly enjoyed the passages where Frank calls in
 and retrieves his waiting phone messages, as here Ford lets the words
 of his dialogue work for him to full effect without overtaxing his
 reader with excessive scene-setting detail. Instead, the reader's mind
 gets free leeway to create the imagined implications from the
 recordings.

 All in all, _Independence Day_ could have stood more sharper editing
 with attention to verbiage, superfluous scenes, stylistic choices, and
 plot lines. The beginning and ending stick out oddly for their
 stylistic lyricism, but the rest of Ford's novel, thank goodness, does
 not come close to even matching these strained passages. Certainly a
 recommended read for fiction-lovers for its scope, although
 over-ambitious, its fine comedy, and its thematic exploration of human
 independence. Most certainly not "A Great American Novel."



About the Columnist
*******************
 Phil Pearson hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he's involved in higher
 education and enjoys fiddling around with multimedia projects. A Mac
 aficionado, Editor-in-Chief of the popular "MacSurfer's Headline News"
 netsite and the upcoming _MacSurf Magazine_, he maintains a keen
 interest in twentieth-century poetry and fiction. In his quieter
 moments, he can often be found fishing for yellow perch and the
 elusive walleye.




Illiterati
----------
by Shaun Armour <[email protected]>>

 **"Le Grand Meaulnes"("The Wanderer") & "In the Skin of a Lion"**


"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested."
 --Sir Francis Bacon,
 "Of Studies," _Essays_ (1625)

 This is not a book review column. Anyone can offer their opinion about
 what is bad. I am going to do something much more arrogant and
 foolhardy. I am going to attempt to guide you to what I think are
 brilliant, powerful books. Novels that have been forgotten, or were
 never acknowledged. These are works that were short listed for awards
 nobody has ever heard of; or they were eclipsed by another of the
 authors works that caught the public's fancy. I will laud them with
 praise and beg you to read them. I'm probably even stupid enough to
 lend you my copy,the one that I went to seven used book shops to find.
 If great words aren't read, then they are just spots of ink on dead
 wood. Think of me as a literary pimp. Trust me, just spend a little
 time with these literary wallflowers and they will teach you to dance.

 To give myself a fighting chance of enticing you into reading one of
 my selections, I will be discussing two novels in each column.Of the
 two books, one will have been published at least thirty years ago,
 (this is an arbitrary number and in no way meant to suggest that
 thirty years makes it really old) while the other will be more recent,
 and generally small- or foreign-press. There is a method to this
 madness. The twentieth century has been an age of massive
 experimentation and cannibalization of the novelistic and poetic form.
 Certainly nothing has defined this experimentation as much as the
 wealth of work available in translation. Most authors are avid
 readers, and as much as every author covets and defends his or her
 voice, few deny the significance and power that other writers have
 played in the development of their literary style and freedom. With
 this in mind the two books discussed will often be linked
 thematically; hopefully, this will shed some insight into the
 development of ideas and how they are realized and evolve through the
 written word in our century.

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a
book!"
 --Henry David Thoreau
 "Reading", _Walden_ (1854)

 Alain-Fournier's "Le Grand Meaulnes", or "The Wanderer" as it is known
 in English, was published in France just prior to the First World War.
 Fournier drew widely from his personal experiences and youth in the
 French countryside of Nancay and Sologne to create his lyric and
 evocative tale of two young friends, Seurel and Meaulnes, and their
 ascension to manhood at the turn of the twentieth century. Sadly, "The
 Wanderer" was Fournier's only novel. Fournier was killed at the age of
 twenty-eight, in fighting at the front of Saint-Remy. His body was
 never recovered. It wasn't until nearly ten years after the war that
 his novel quietly began to be recognized as one of the century's
 masterpieces of French literature. "The Wanderer" is a simple,
 eloquent period piece, capturing an age of innocence in France at the
 turn of the century and prior to the Great War.

 Ostensibly, the novel is the story of Meaulnes, a charismatic, teenage
 student, who briefly runs away from school and becomes lost in the
 French countryside. While lost, Meaulnes stumbles upon an old chateau
 that is being used for a magical, and ill-fated wedding party.
 Meaulnes, tired and hungry, poses as one of the guests and learns that
 the young Master of the chateau, Frantz De Galais, has promised his
 betrothed an enchanted festival populated and dedicated to children,
 their games, and their desires. This strange party establishes the
 motif of the rest of the novel--the search for lost innocence and
 beauty. It is at the party that we learn that "The Wanderer" is also a
 love story. Meaulnes meets and falls in love with a young woman, but
 due to circumstances at the wedding party, he is forced to leave
 abruptly, and once again becomes hopelessly lost while trying to find
 his way home.

 The story is told by Meaulnes's friend and confidant, Seurel. Upon
 returning to school, Meaulnes slowly confides the tale of his journey
 to Seurel and draws him into the search for the lady of the chateau.
 It is this search--spanning many years--and the growth of the two
 young men which "The Wanderer" chronicles. An eloquent little trick is
 played on us by this book. The reader quickly comes to identify with
 Seurel, and like him is drawn into the mystery of the story. For the
 most part, Seurel is a passive character and is aware that the only
 magic in his own life is defined by his relationship to the tale of
 Meaulnes. His desire to take a more active part in the story is
 palpable as Seurel searches for clues and begins to unravel the
 mysterious threads that bind the tale. Seurel's moment arrives when
 Meaulnes is ready to give up the search for the lady of the chateau.
 It is Seurel, perhaps selfishly wanting to story to continue, who
 forces him to go on looking.

 "The Wanderer" is a languid book that begs to be read slowly in a
 quiet place. It is simple, but in no way simplistic. The strange
 festival early in the novel is the key and climax to the whole tale,
 and in many ways the rest of the story is a thoughtful, melancholic
 denouement. The whole work is suffused with a palpable feeling of
 reverie and nostalgia; indeed it is brought to us through Seurel's
 memories and reminiscences as if he is trying to bring closure to the
 tale through his final telling of it. In a strange way Seurel becomes
 the tragic figure of the story, never really living the adventure but
 forever being changed and defined by it.

 Michael Ondaatje uses a very similar style, but a radically different
 structure in creating his brilliant novel "In the Skin of a Lion".
 Like Alain-Fournier, Ondaatje sets his novel in the early part of the
 century, this time in the immigrant-filled city of Toronto, Canada.
 "In the Skin" is also a retelling of stories by the main character,
 Patrick Lewis. Patrick Lewis, like Seurel, is a man who's self has
 been created as a byproduct of the stories and lives of other
 characters in the book. Unlike Fournier however, Ondaatje has created
 a much more complex and enigmatic structure for his book. "In the
 Skin" begins by quoting from John Berger's, Booker Prize winning novel
 "G": "Never again will a single story be told as though it were the
 only one." Indeed Ondaatje defies many of the classic structures of
 the novel form, shifting tense, time and genre, like a literary
 acrobat. "In the Skin" doesn't so much tell a single straightforward
 narrative as it weaves a mosaic of little stories together into a
 grand, coherent design.

 Michael Ondaatje is one of Canada's greatest living poets. Born in Sri
 Lanka in 1943 he immigrated to Canada in 1962 and published his first
 book of poetry, "The Dainty Monsters" through Coach House Press in
 1967. (A sad note: Coach House--publishers of such celebrated Canadian
 authors as Margaret Atwood, Dany Laferriere, bpNichols and
 Ondaatje--announced they are going out of business due to government
 cuts to The Arts in Canada, as of the writing of this column).
 Ondaatje, while garnering many accolades and awards within Canada,
 including The Governor General's Award for Poetry, for his works, "The
 Collected Works of Billy the Kid" and "There's a Trick with a Knife
 I'm Learning to Do", was not widely known abroad until his 1992 novel,
 "The English Patient", won England's prestigious Booker Prize. "The
 English Patient's" success has catapulted Ondaatje to global
 prominence and given him the larger readership he has long deserved.

 It was with "In the Skin", however that Ondaatje masterfully segued
 his poetic perceptions into near lyric prose and introduced two of the
 main characters who would later appear in "The English Patient",
 Patrick Lewis's adoptive daughter Hana and the master thief
 Caravaggio. Ondaatje actually subtitled "In the Skin", "A Novel," just
 in case there was any doubt in the minds of his readers. Ondaatje
 initially started writing the novel about an historic Canadian figure,
 the millionaire Ambrose Small, who disappeared along with a million
 dollars in 1919. Small turned out to be a less than likable character
 to Ondaatje, who decided as a result, to focus the book on the hard
 working immigrant underclass of Toronto and the moving characters who
 populated it. In doing so, Ondaatje shifted the focus of his novel
 from the powerful to the meek and dispossessed. Ambrose Small faded
 into the background of the story, becoming one of many interconnected
 strands making up the web of the novel, and Patrick Lewis came forward
 as the fly in the center of that web.

 Patrick Lewis is the tabula rasa upon which the stories in the novel
 are painted. And the stories are many, varied and intricate. At times
 the stories read like historical fact, and indeed Ondaatje often
 supports his fiction with factual source material. But Ondaatje is
 also recreating a forgotten history, a history that has for the most
 part gone unrecorded. In one powerful scene he lists a series of
 companies that provided products for a massive public works project in
 Toronto, the companies are real ones, but the names of all the men who
 built the project, many who died in the process are not recorded
 anywhere in the historical record. Often, "In the Skin" is the story
 of these forgotten men and women, Nicholas Temelcoff, the immigrant
 daredevil bridge builder, Caravaggio the thief, Cato the anarchist
 labour organiser and the three women who help bring Patrick into full
 existence as a human.

 The female characters of the novel are in many ways the most powerful,
 fully actualised individuals. In Alain-Fournier's "The Wanderer",
 Meaulnes's love was more an image of female perfection then an actual
 being. Ondaatje uses the women, particularly Patrick's lovers, Alice
 and Clara in an entirely opposite fashion. Alice and Clara help to
 create Patrick, they draw him out of himself and into a world where he
 can create his own story and become part of a greater community.
 Ironically, Alice and Clara are both actresses, creators of character,
 and it is as if part of their ability to create reality through art
 are transferred to Patrick. Patrick is drawn into the world of these
 women, out of his own solitude, and once within that world, he begins
 to realise a greater potential for living and action.

 But what, you may ask, is "In the Skin" about? That is a very
 difficult question. Some novels defy a brief encapsulation. "In the
 Skin" is such a novel.  It can be read in many different ways. To an
 extent, like "The Wanderer", it is a coming of age novel, a love story
 and a tale about the loss of innocence. But more than "The Wanderer",
 it questions notions of the how we define the self, and how it is
 created. It is also a political novel, with strong post-colonialism
 roots, giving a voice to those whom history has relegated to two
 dimensional characterizations. "In the Skin" is also an incredibly
 beautiful poem. Ondaatje's phenomenal imagistic ability, his deftness
 and evocative rendering of gesture, his spare use of only the most
 powerful words, gives the novel a liquid flow, like the finest of
 poetry, even as the stories within twist and turn.

"Poetry gives off smoke but it doesn't die out. It acts kind of crazy,
flutteringly, when it chooses us."
 --Yevgeny Yevtushenko,
 "Stolen Apples" (1972)

 Both "The Wanderer" and "In the Skin of a Lion" are marked by many
 striking differences. Both books have a gentle, poetic quality and a
 sensitivity to honest, powerful characters that totally engages the
 reader. "The Wanderer", though, is written from a place of greater
 innocence than "In the Skin". It is rural and pastoral, and in many
 ways impossible to place the setting as twentieth century Europe. All
 the conflicts in the novel are emotional and internal. The irony of
 the central theme of the work--the loss of innocence--is palpable when
 read with history's hindsight. Perhaps Fournier, though never
 mentioning it in his novel, sensed the change of the industrial
 revolution and the build-up towards war in Europe. If so, "The
 Wanderer" then becomes a very subtle eulogy for a lost era, and a
 poignant one for a lost author. "In the Skin of a Lion", while dealing
 with roughly the same time period, is more a renunciation of the
 established history and a eulogy for those history has forgotten.
 Alain-Fournier is a romantic writer, his language and tone more a
 creation of the nineteenth century than the twentieth, while Ondaatje,
 though poetic, couples the romance of his words with a gritty realism,
 reminiscent of John Steinbeck. Ondaatje does not shirk from taking
 knowledge in the present and superimposing it over the past, to
 chastise, to understand and to learn.

 These are books to be read in the final days, the denouement of
 summer. They deserve to be read slowly, even languorously. Both books
 have a hint of magical realism to them, a little bit of enchantment
 that flutters at the periphery of vision, making your eye roam
 searchingly. "The Wanderer" has quietly stood the test of time, as "In
 the Skin of a Lion" is sure to do. You may need to search a little
 harder for "The Wanderer"; however, it's most recent edition was
 released through a division of Penguin in the 1980's. I have regularly
 seen it in better used-book shops and any self respecting library
 should be able to get it. "In the Skin of a Lion", with the success of
 "The English Patient", should now be widely available. Vintage Canada
 has recently re-released it in Canada, so I expect it should be easy
 to find in the United States and Europe. If for some reason you can't
 find either book...I'll probably lend you my copy.


About the Columnist
*******************
 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.



Featured Writer
---------------
Rick Lupert <[email protected]>
4 poems and an essay


 _Dirty Coffee_

 I hate drinking coffee in the morning
 Because coffee is a dirty drink.
 I hate getting dirty in the morning.
 The night is for dirt.
 I like being dirty at night.
 Sitting in the dirty dark,
 Surrounded by dirty people,
 Thinking dirty thoughts,
 Drinking dirty coffee.
 I like being dirty at night.
 In the morning,
 I'd rather have an orange.



 _Condoms, Cigarettes, and Vomiting_

 Condoms are expensive
 but maybe you can split the cost with your sexual partner
 Cigarettes are expensive
 but maybe you could split the cost with your lungs
 But that would be silly
 as neither of your lungs have jobs, or vocational training
 Maybe you could send your lungs to college
 so they could get good jobs
 And help to pay for those cigarettes
 But that would take too much time
 and you can't even afford to send yourself to college
 So maybe your lungs could get jobs as waiters or waitresses
 But that wouldn't work
 because no one wants to be served a slice of quiche by a disembodied
lung,
 especially one as charred and black as yours
 So maybe you'll have to pay for your cigarettes by yourself
 Or maybe you should just quite smoking
 as it's the most disgusting thing you can do
 Besides perhaps vomiting in public
 Though when you think about it,
 you realize that smoking can KILL you
 Whereas vomiting is cleansing
 Then your sexual partner breaks up with you
 So you have to pay for your condoms too
 Then you go broke and bankrupt
 Yes BOTH broke AND bankrupt
 Having to buy condoms and cigarettes all the time
 And soon you can't even afford those
 So you sit around all day
 And you spend most of your time vomiting.



 _Crossing The Street Is Dangerous_

 Crossing the street is dangerous
 in your car, on your feet
 Crossing the street is dangerous
 earthquakes, drive by shootings
 Crossing the street is dangerous
 debris falling from outer space, smog
 Crossing the street is dangerous
 spontaneous human combustion, heart failure
 Crossing the street is dangerous
 wild animals escaped from the zoo, nazis
 Crossing the street is dangerous
 I just got run over by an ambulance



 _Epic Penis Poem_

 Let me tell you about my penis.
 My penis is an exclusive secret agent of love.
 My penis is on the guest list of clubs that I can't get into.
 My penis arrives for dinner in a limousine provided by NBC,
 while I show up fifteen minutes later in a jalopy.
 My penis was invited to be the spokesperson for the
 Coca-Cola Corporation.
 My penis takes forty-five minute showers by itself.
 My penis appeared in several major motion pictures and is currently
 bidding for the lead role in the new Oliver Stone film expose of the
 Reagan administration.
 My penis speaks nine different languages and once negotiated a
 non-aggression pact between Ethiopia and a country right next to
Ethiopia.
 My penis can fly an airplane and if asked will explain what went wrong
 with the ValuJet flight in incredible technical detail.
 My penis comes equipped with several pop open compartments in which it
 stores a life raft, coffee maker, World Almanac and Book of Facts, hair
 care products, several bars of gold bullion, and breath freshener.
 My penis once conducted The William Tell Overture, Beethoven's Fifth
 Symphony, Also Sprach Zarathustra, and the theme to Star Wars.
 Once, while I was away on a business trip, my penis re-arranged all my
 furniture, alphabetized my compact discs, and ate my roommates left leg.
 My penis disguised itself as Santa Claus and got a job working in a mall
 during the holidays.
 My penis was invited to the White House for Dinner.  I got to go too.
 It said right on the invitation "Penis and Guest."
 My penis has been used as currency in developing nations.
 Sometimes my penis wears sunglasses to lay low and avoid the paparazzi.
 My penis spent a year dead for tax purposes.
 There will be a test on my penis at the end of the week.
 This has been the life story of my penis.
 My penis.



Featured Writer Essay
---------------------
 And now I shall write the essay which will accompany my poems in their
 position in this issue of POETRY INK. I am asked to provide some
 insights as to what the poems are about, and perhaps where I am coming
 from in having written them. Having put very little thought into this
 before, I will now make up some things, and through this process, you
 the reader, and I the writer, will discover together whatever it is
 that I may have meant when I wrote them. A poem by poem account if you
 will. (And I know you will because I overheard you talking about it
 earlier.) And now, I shall go off about a few things.

 **About Dirty Coffee**

 This poem is my response to the great societal addiction to drinking
 coffee in the morning. I hate drinking coffee in the morning. The very
 idea of using a substance to create a physical reaction (in this case,
 caffeine to wake me) makes me Pavlovistically cower in the corner.
 (THE corner.)  I can't understand people not being able to function
 without their first cup as anything else but a compulsive addictive
 behavior. (This is only added to by the fact that most people's
 morning coffee consists of what I affectionately call "office roast."
 This is bad coffee. Bad, bad coffee.) LET THE WORLD KNOW THAT EATING A
 GOOD AND HEALTHY BREAKFAST EVERYDAY IS THE KEY TO YOUR SUCCESS DURING
 THE DAY. Try an orange. It's for YOU in the morning. It has juice. It
 is JUICY. Now. Beyond that, I love coffee. Good coffee. It has to be
 good coffee; and the pleasure I derive from sitting in a coffee house
 at night drinking this strong, sludgy dirty beverage, banding together
 with other people drinking the same...other dirty sludgy people. It
 spawns so much creativity...and it is the only thing worse than the
 compulsive addictive behavior of drinking coffee in the morning.

 **About Condoms, Cigarettes and Vomiting**

 This poem is not about working in a restaurant. This is why when I
 submitted it a while back to an anthology of poems regarding working
 in a restaurant, it was not accepted.  Mainly this is about two
 things: 1) Smoking is bad, and 2) Sex is good. The vomiting is
 incidental. When I wrote this I was dating a woman who smoked and who
 required that I use condoms. This poem is about her. She never stopped
 smoking and eventually broke up with me. I have some condoms left over
 from the relationship. I will be happy to mail them to anyone who
 sends me their address. They are kind of old now. But maybe I could
 autograph them and you could keep them in a scrapbook. Let me know.

 **About Crossing The Street Is Dangerous**

 The previous two pieces are older works by me, and this poem, as well
 as the next, are fairly newer pieces. In this piece I experiment with
 a form of sorts. The repetition of the phrase "Crossing the street is
 dangerous" provides a rhythm to the piece, especially when read aloud,
 which I have discovered to be an effective technique of gripping an
 audience no matter what you are saying. This poem is more an exercise
 in this technique than a social commentary of some sort...but it does
 paint an absurd picture of our world...with an absurd outcome. My use
 of absurdity in my work comes from my love of everything Richard
 Brautigan has ever written. I think both this form and absurdity show
 up in the next piece as well.

 **About Epic Penis Poem**

 It seems that my penis has become a recurring character in my poems.
 Someone recently commented to me (after having read such a poem) that
 it lacked emotion and celebration. He said that I should "Sing a song
 of my penis." And so, I strapped on my...guitar, and out come this
 piece. It finishes off the creation of my penis as a character and
 goes in the most absurd directions possible. Sometimes I sit around
 and think of absurd things to think about. This poem is a result of
 this too. My mother recently asked me "Rick, are you sexually
 frustrated?" I answered her "No, why?" And then she answered "Because
 you're always writing about your penis." I tried to explain to her
 that it was all a celebration of my penis. But she doesn't understand
 my work. The last thing I really want to do is explain my penis to my
 mother. So, it's writing a letter to her on its own to try and work
 things out.

 **On me, otherwise and in general**

 I host a weekly open reading at a coffee house here in Los Angeles and
 have done so for over two years. I think that reading one's work out
 loud to other people is the best way to get feedback on it by gauging
 how people react. I also think that once you start going and reading
 your work at readings, you will be inspired to write more and more.
 Since I started doing this about 4 years ago, I have been fairly
 prolific, and have been published several times, in several places.

 Also, I recently returned from a trip to Paris out of which came a
 book called "Paris: It's The Cheese" which contains poetry written
 there, and a cassette called "Paris: It's The Cassette", which
 contains sounds, commentary and observations recorded there. In a
 couple of days I'm going away to a summer camp for a month. A friend
 of mine and fellow poet suggested that I make "Summer Camp: It's The
 Cassette". I probably won't do this. But it is an interesting idea.
 Please eMail me if you're interested in these things.

 My next project may be an anthology of my own work covering the last
 several years, or possibly a journal of penis related poetry for which
 I would seek submissions from anyone. I do this because I think it
 will be entertaining, and also because I like to use the word penis
 and submission in the same sentence. Ooh, that's twice.

 Also. Guitar playing 27 year old vegetarian Libra with 7 goldfish and
 a snail named Phyliss.

 Yours,

 Rick Lupert 7/18/96



John L. Arnold
--------------
<[email protected]>
2 poems


 _The Big Easy_

 Hit New Orleans,
       on the back of
 a produce truck.
      Runaway boy,

 Headed straight for,
      The Quarter
 Smell of light rain,
      on Magnolia

 Sun struggling
      to rise,
 after another,
      hard night.

 Big, fast, river
      rushing to its
 destiny with the sea.

 Little streets with
      doors leading to
 neglected courtyards.
      Dry fountains with
 wild flowers growing
      out of cracks.

 Lots of wrought iron,
      losing the eternal
 battle with rust.
      The fine smell of,
 Chicory coffee
      and Decadence
 in the heavy air.

 Hustlers of every type,
      and intention.
 Living on a Street
      named Lust.
 Scarlet women,
      painted faces and
 tired eyes.
      Dignity for sale,
 on every street corner.

      Grifters and drifters,
 inhabitants of the
      French Quarter
 just like the big river,
      making little,
 eddies and swirls,
      on the way to oblivion.



 _In The Shadow Of The Red Hawk_

 The Red Hawk circles,
    long, slow,
      sweeping turns,
         riding the ocean wind.

 Far below,
   his shadow
     moves over the land.

 To the West,
   the mighty Pacific,
      strikes the land mass
         in relentless assault.

 Endless lines of
   Aquamarine waves,
     roll onto the land mass.
       Soldiers to the front.

 The land rises up,
   forming a fortress,
     of thousand foot cliffs,
       the first line of defense.

 The Lords of the forest,
    mighty Redwood Trees,
       stand, tall and strong,
          as if in reserve against,
             the onslaught of the sea.

 The Red Hawk dives and climbs,
    over this mighty battle,
       His shadow sweeps across,
          black tail deer and grey fox.


 Seals and Otters,
    jump and play,
       in the swirling surf,
          unaware of the eternal struggle,
             between Land and Sea.

 Looking at this Epic scene,
    I am able to see myself,
        as if in a mirror.

 A bit of bone and flesh,
    my life and times,
       a fleeting moment,
          in the natural order of things.



W. Luther Jett
--------------
<[email protected]>
3 poems


 _At The Road's End_

 The small house waits
 in the center of nothing, lost
 amid the fields of corn
 with the river somewhere near -
 in each white wall,
 a window and an open door
 let in the light
 and the longing
 sigh of the restless wind.

 And no-one comes here,
 and no-one goes,
 and the days are all as one
 to the little house
 of white-washed stone,
 and the dust and the rain
 are all the same,
 and the sound of the river there
 is the morning and
 the evening prayer.

 And far, so far, above, the sky,
 spreading its great, pale wings
 beyond what any eye
 can see, or any heart betray.



 _A Simple Hymn_

 A flock of wild geese
 grazing in the slow rain
 beneath great, sad oaks.

 The wind at the edge of the sea.

 The Shenandoah hills
 in autumn, when fire
 born of frost kisses
 the ancient valleys.

 The steel rails keening beneath
 iron wheels, and the steam-
 whistle calling in the night.

 The water and the stars over it.

 Laughter that spills out
 of a drunken room as I
 walk past, like light
 from a broken lantern.

 The warm curve of your body against mine.

 The Chesapeake waters, blue
 in the sun, and the white
 sands of Chincoteague.

 The snows of March,
 that come before dawn
 and by noon-time
 have melted away.

 A sky heavy with unshed tears.

 Crocuses.

 Wild horses on the marsh
 beneath an opal moon.

 A woman singing in
 the afternoon yard,
 for no other reason
 than that it is afternoon
 and she is in the yard.

 Your eyes, the time we first met.

 The heartbeat
 of an unborn child,
 the heartbeat
 of the Unborn.



 _A Dream Of Lodz_

 A room of machines, high
 above the teeming
 cobbled stones - a shaft
 of narrow stairs - pushing past
 stolid onlookers into
 a bookshop where dust-worn
 tomes yellow on broken
 shelving, to the back room -
 the torn screendoor opening -
 down the iron fire
 escape and onto the pedestrian
 bridge -  all splintered grey
 wood and wire - the bodies
 surging across it -
 looking for my father -
 to find him before I am



Aaron Cary
----------
<[email protected]>
1 poem


 _for hannah_

 said the sun sets low
 behind westward mountains
 new face here
 beauty is evident

 under moonlit skies
 a piece of heaven's near

 if i could hold your hand
 holding heaven
 with a touch so soft
 a breeze blows gently

 could she be the one
 to dissolve al my sorrow
 anguish and pain
 come, fill my heart
 with love so pure



Nancy Depper
------------
<[email protected]>
1 poem


 _Portrait of The Girlfriend of the Artist_

 Not me, I'm not
 the hand-holder, the
 money lender
 but it's me he calls
 at midnight and I
 talk him down;
 but he calls.
 And I can speak to him;
 sometimes, I begged
 to be that girl.

 He approaches me
 like a fighter -
 dukes up
 all defenses
 but no punch in my direction
 though I know
 those fists are
 a shiny bouquet
 of blood and face bone.
 But he kisses me
 and physics take a hike
 he is a tempter and
 I, in weakness,
 imagine his spigot
 married to my rise
 my ass and his temper -
 potential, I think.

 We are couple enough
 for Chinese food
 at midnight but
 we wear pants to bed.
 But I wake up and
 he is kissing me again
 just for that moment
 then we are back to sleep.
 I never know
 if he is dreaming
 or if I am.

 I do not keep secrets well.
 He knows my feet
 and soft thighs, my
 breasts heavy like
 potato bread.
 And I have felt his thump
 of desire press against me
 but denied
 slow
 fast
 or furiously.

 So instead I
 try to see him
 as a tooth I had extracted,
 a bone I
 can do without
 (a hole my tongue
 cannot resist...)
 But he would not
 have me;
 push does not come to shove.
 His kiss is only mime,
 a fake and silent motion
 that still divines
 water to my lips
 only now, I dream
 of a bad taste in my mouth
 and no place
 to spit.



Jason Gullion
-------------
[email protected]
1 poem


 _King to Pawn_

 The mist settles low at the cemetery gates,
 pulling the life from my legs.
 I turn toward the breakers,
 look past the stone markers
 as the surf breaks over the graves.
 Lives gone remain in this place.
 The fog swirls with the salt air,
 pulling the breath from my lungs.
 The light of warning blinks from the tower.
 I drag myself up the twisting staircase,
 stumble into the beacon room.
 The steward and the cocktail-waitress are there.
 Their chess game is set: half-finished.
 They both reach for the rook.
 It is knocked down and
 the light goes out.



Matthew W. Schmeer
------------------
<[email protected]>
3 poems


 _eats_

 eating now nothing death
 crawls
 begging love and cancer
 breeding flesh
 in a palm extended
 nail upward falling



 _when she squeezes_

 when she squeezes it, it is jelly bursting
 because the redness of squeezing is
 time passing and no one knows how it goes
 i touched the cold hard surface of a sight unseen,
 the bone-cold chill like a tongue beneath me.
 it shines like the bald-headed bartender at the corner pub,
 smells like the time we watched the salmon mate;
 and it will happen to me, too,
 this languid turning of the plate, because she has said it shall be so.
 i call myself by another name;
 it is not for your ears to hear nor my lips to say
 but if you must know, it is thus:
 crisp paper burns chafes scars leaves and then remains yet is
 maggot
 and she tells her dirties to the young chinese man at the thai diner
 and i leave it where it lays, it is unclean
 and she is agonized by her fingernails bitten to the quick
 and the young chinese man stands in the crowd handing
 out samples of peking duck
 and i say hello and shake my head in that knowing way that she dislikes
 and she is afraid of the young chinese man's mother,
 frail in her sarong and crackling with the crinkles of age
 nothing makes it fall
 and the young chinese man wears a hat
 because it is winter
 and the sun
 does not like him.
 i tell him it is not okay for him
 due to to the fact that winter has passed,
 but he protests too much even in summer
 he says it is because this is the way it is done
 in san francisco, but the gays have beaten him to it.
 he is the black-tanned child of the sand
 and his skin is fire on the beach:
 my feet stamp him out, and move on.



 _Flies_

 she calls me and says this is the way it must be.
 funky, she
 calls it - the phone sweating to ring
 and
 the night
 cutting like
 the name of
 a rose falling
 to violets.
 sweet dying sweet dying sweet dying
 flower of night
 shades drawn shut
 to keep out
 the
 flies.



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


 _Call It Work_

 12:37 A.M.
 Queen car, hits air breaks, stops, swallows me up
 Connection one made, two more buses and I'm home free, well home at
least
 Eleven hours of waiting tables behind
 No more "May I recommend the phyllo wrapped escargot served atop a
 Red pepper coulis."
 Couldn't be servile or civil a minute longer, I'd kill first
 Finished my book on the trip to work, so I just stare
 Kind of bug eyed and languid
 Looking for some inspiration out the window
 On these late northern streets
 Oscillating between reverie, fatigue and thought
 Roll past the hospital, as always a coven of blue smocked
 Patients hovers outside
 Hooked up to intravenous drips, catheter tubes dangling between bare
knees
 Their standing by the emergency ambulance entrance, inhaling desperately
 Waiting in the snow flurries ,
 For bullet ridden smoking buddies to roll in and join them
 Fresh meat for the gossip mill of the diseased and dying
 "Folks, may I suggest the hacking lung cancer in a dijon beurre blanc."
 I check my smokes to see if I'll get through the night,
 And have a couple left for breakfast, damn, running low
 The dog lady gets on, draws my attention from the window,
 Can't help but notice her
 Stick thin, and like a million years old
 Dragging a skittish little pup on a choke chain
 Weirdest thing, this old woman, always gets on late at night,
 Seen her a half dozen times, never the same dog
 I don't know where the idea comes from, it just kinda creeps up and
 I stare horrified
 She's eating the poor damn things, I sense it, I smell it
 Like the SPCA is her own personal Meals on Wheels
 And I don't know who I feel more sorry for, her or the mutts
 "Ma'am, may I recommend the bastard mongrel with a wild mushroom
demi-sauce."
 Get off at Broadview, check for my transfer
 The bus arrives mercifully quick,
 Since the homeboys seem bored of terrorising the graveyard 7-Eleven
clerk,
 And appear to be refocusing their malignant attention upon myself
 My hand is buried in my pocket gripping my corkscrew and I'm thinking,
 "Don't fuck with me guys, I know how to use this thing."
 Twist, pull, POP!
 I get on the bus and I wonder if those guys know just how close they
came
 Short, and thank God, uneventful hop to Kingston Rd.
 Run for the my final connection, scream frustrated as it pulls away,
 "Fucker!"
 Then it stops again, doors open, and shit, I know he heard me
 But it's cold and late, and I'm almost too tired to care as I step on
 And that bus driver is looking at me like I'm a piece of crap
 I mumble a feeble "sorry",
 Knowing I've just offered one more reason for him to hate his job
 Get off at Main, aim for the fluorescence of the Dip and Sip
 Buy a cup of coffee, black, and a pack of du Maurier light, Kings
 Swear I'm going to stay up tonight and do some writing
 Leave my precious wife sleeping sweet and naked in the next room
 Dreaming of the click of computer keys and beautiful stories
 Going to pay my artistic dues through exhaustion and lack of spooning
 Finally home, strip as I climb the stairs to my flat,
 Leave a trail of red wine and food stains rumpled on the floor behind me
 Sit before the glowing monitor, in the dark, in my underwear,
 Smelling of sweat and restaurant
 Wondering just what the hell I'll write about
 Man, I'm thinking, this ain't art
 But hey, sometimes ya gotta call it work
 "Sir, might I recommend  the angst and compulsion with a
 Mango-pineapple fruit salsa?"



 _Infinity Minus One_

 Something soft breaks the back of the night
 Whirling and withering it's grief
 Like the rush of air that leaves the body with the soul
 Rises, dissipating as if to nothingness
 But it is not nothingness, it is dispersion
 It hovers this breath, on unseen eddies of wind and air
 Commingling naturally with dying gasps and sobs like pleas
 And the first air that replaces the amniotic fluid in the lungs of the
born
 It follows currents seemingly random
 Yet atoms collide and we know that somehow they have defined themselves
 Defined one another,
 Not fate, somehow planned with perfect detail
 This trickery of nature, quietly ironic
 Whispers in the gloaming
 Draw near and know what schemes the wind and water and earth have
devised
 How we took from ourselves the raw materials
 Divined through aeons as the proper tools
 To sculpt and harness a spark
 From which we brought forth the statue of loneliness
 We made you malleable, with will and instinct
 Sent you out, prepared only to return to the elements with which
 We created you
 Our purpose was not progeny or hubris at what we might craft
 But simpler and sadder
 For the secret of the wind and the water and the earth is the same as
yours
 We are isolated within the void
 Suspended within nothingness
 A universal mobile held together with the faintest strings of gravity
 And a prayer for concrescence
 With man we sought to know our self
 Redefining logic, giving you only a speck of time
 To riddle out the conundrum that our eternity makes insoluble
 We hoped for you to discover a purpose and a dignity
 That we might embrace for our long wait
 Instead we have hatched a chain of mysteries
 As we watch your minds and hearts fumble with the fabric of yourselves
 We welcome your breath back to the wind,
 Your tears to the water,
 Your bodies to the earth
 As only an anguished parent can
 Who wonders too late, why they ever let there children go
 And sometimes when we have felt too much
 The earth grieves in it's own way,
 To demand answers,
 To let you know that you are not alone
 And the one element that may know the truth?
 Fire will not talk



 _Slow Burn Thunderhead Run_

 Forehead pressed against cold glass
 Spatter of rain clattering with the wheels over cross tie and track
 You asleep in this transitory nuptial den
 My hand rests on the swell of your hip, fingertips rising and falling,
 With the swell of sleeps breath in your belly
 I would watch you in your tranquillity, see your grace,
 But God draws my attention,out over the plains,
 Where a wall of darkness envelops even the blackness of prairie night
 Even within our glass encased Pullman, the suck of
 The thunderheads can be felt
 Sequestered down some forgotten branch of our nerve endings,
 A primal barometer is registering the changes in our atmosphere,
 Pressure slips away and you sigh languidly, insinuating your
 Air into the night
 I light a cigarette, cup the flame, not from the wind outside,
 But so as not to startle you within your dreams
 I am expectant, like a small boy allowed to stay up too late
 To see something special
 When it comes I am filled with quiet awe, my cigarette does a slow burn
 Between my fingertips, forgotten
 Energy, hotter than the surface of the sun, rips the blackness apart
 Rips it to tatters
 I hear the sky rending, tearing apart it's own hidden seams
 An ineffable madman is furiously painting a canvas in silhouetted
blacks and
 Brilliant whites, hints of cold blue and ion charged incarnadine
 A cacophony of displaced air flooding in to fill it's own void is
 His overture.
 A holy shiver runs up my spine, the body informs the brain, begs to
 Understand
 It feels something like love
 I see you illuminated by all this in your repose
 I gather you into my arms, cradling ever so gently,
 Guiding you to this magnificent waking
 You slide out of dreams,
 I watch the lightning bolts flicker on the liquid surface of your eyes
 I feel your breath catch within a swirl of fear , reverence and wonder
 You look at me like a child, begging comprehension,
 But your gaze returns almost instantly to the window, fixed with mine
 Within our berth we pass hours silently watching
 Me cheek feels the hairs on your neck, rise and fall with the
 Luminous flashes
 And I know this night is ours alone
 I know that the roll of future thunderheads will bring thoughts of grace
 And love
 And me.



Thomas Dunnam
-------------
<[email protected]>
short fiction


 _Halfhuman Part 1_
 (Traded to Monte 7/13 for an Untitled Thing)

 Preliminary findings attendant to a document entailing conspiracy
 proceedings initiated against one M. Mouse, to be henceforth referred
 to in the body of this piece as THE RODENT, and one Hanuman Honzumon,
 to be from this instance on referred to by the improbable moniker HALF
 HUMAN, SEMI-DEMI-GOD, IMPERIAL AND AUSTERE PRIMATE.

 Background: Due to ontological factors allegorical to a biological
 clock panic, the divinity decided all of a sudden SHE wanted children.
 Posthaste was accomplished the pregnancy of a human male, the
 resulting and unique infant being a half-immortal monkey, namely the
 above-mentioned Hanuman, half-human, semi-demi-and-so-on, a. primate.

 The aforesaid offspring's consequent and ever-expanding program of
 creative destruction in collusion with a startlingly successful
 smaller member of the mammal tribe, in truth, a variety of
 dehabilitated RAT, whose primary faculties of speech, cognition, et.
 al. were in some as of yet not declassified manner artificially
 enhanced in the late 1920s at the biotech labs of Cisney Productions
 Inc. is the essence of this brief.

 Our thesis attempts to map the nature and extent of the intergalactic
 intrigue undertaken by this criminal partnership to manipulate the
 before-TV-entertainment-viral-happiness-infection industry. Enclosures
 include information pertinent to the judge's deliberations on the
 cleaning lady's petition to liquidate this squanderdom of species
 potential and a stronger, more pleasant ammonia.

 Hanuman's e-mail: "To Honzumon, Successful Advice-Giver, Well-Read and
 Smallish God: Please be suggestible to our recommendation to please
 visualize a future conference with THE RAT (who we refer to as "Black
 Buddha," for he is mysterious). Signed, Certain Monks."

 Narrative from surveillance: "In consequence of much effort at inner
 image-making, monkey god and teacher claims to have received a
 visitation, in a third-tier tourist bungalow, of the 'black
 bodhisattva's mind'."

 Notes from surveillance of aforesaid surveillance: "Our agent from
 Planet u.S,f-ak46 (YOURANUS) seems to be completely devoid of family
 values and was often seen motorcycling home from a late homoerotic
 breakfast with crossdressing members of an as of yet undefined species
 of what appear to be walking palm trees."

 From the Office of the Director: What are you smoking and you're all
 fired.

 Letter to the Director, dated Last Monday (sic): "To O.E.K. [read:
 'Our Esteemed King'], As you indubitably may or may not recall, we,
 your ever-submissive and not-worthy staff, are mainly composed of
 ethically challenged ex-Statsi, GPU, NSA, Chilean Armed Forces
 intelligence functionaries and their ilk. So would it not seem odd to
 Your Majesty if we, of all folks, could not find a sex link between
 investigation subjects mouse and monkey-boy? So! Anyway -- we recently
 picked up a rogue signal emitted from somebody's microwave in Thailand
 about the same time those two unspeakable maledictors were hanging out
 there; which, with His Highness's permission, we reprint below:

 Short burst from the Director: Permission denied. It's obvious you
 guys spend all my treasure surfing the skin pages and we'll never
 establish a connection existent between Mickey Mouse and Hanuman
 through your fucked-up ramblings-about. By the way, you're all slated
 for execution yesterday, so get your dress uniforms dry-cleaned and
 report a few hours prior to TAKEOFF to reception at Compound Happyland
 (you assholes!).

 Northern Thai transmissions (in translation) published in protest of
 latest Memo From The Chief:  Perfect Woman disrobes in Chiangmai
 street lined with Japanese electronics shops and Kentucky Fried
 Chickens, takes rod of Mercedes Benz's radio antenna between her
 pressed-together breasts in remembrance of the good times immediately
 following the chartering of City-State by joint venture between Cisney
 Inc. and Indo-European Languages Ltd. As car's tires melt into puddles
 of black jelly, and blood runs out tailpipe, Perfect Woman's
 attributes of universal compassion and unbeatable charm merge into
 substance like thick light radiating atop small cubic platform. The
 population ruminates on auto repair as technicians from nearby
 agricultural institute arrive to record event on videotape, "if it
 will take."

 Radio Cisney and The Hanuman Newsletter both carry banner headlines:
 (We Did It!). F.R.E.E.D.O.U.G.H., The Directorate's Fact-Gathering ARM
 has been exterminated roundly -- or soon will be!  Nothing pinned on
 yours truly.



Bruce Sherman
-------------
<[email protected]>


 _My Mother's China Shop_

 I smashed the front window
 of my mother's china shop
 crashed through with my body
 and my fists flailing
 teacups flying
 saucers sailing.

 I dusted the shelves
 in my mother's china shop
 carefully lifting each plate
 and wiping each vase
 replacing the fading flowers.

 I swept the aisles
 in my mother's china shop
 broom handle knocking
 priceless teapots off corners
 I hid the shards
 right where she'd find them.

 I left the town
 of my mother's china shop
 and sent her a letter bomb
 in the shape of a heart
 it exploded in her face
 a thousand pieces.

 Now I visit my Mother
 in her china shop
 and wonder what it is
 that draws me here
 perhaps the old musty smell
 or sweet tea brewed in back.
 I want to tell her all
 the things I've done and said
 But mostly I just sit
 smile at her carefully
 and drink my tea
 from a glued together cup.



Richard Garni
-------------
<[email protected]>
1 poem


 _Life and Crime and Thoughts, Also Hollywood_

 I
 in the newspaper today, there was an interesting article about
 marilyn monroe. in this article it stated that she was concerned
 that, while filming the misfits, she had inadvertently

 caused the death
 of clark gable
 by her perpetual

 tardiness on the set. recently a seance was conducted to ask clark
 gable in person whether or not he thought that it was

 her perpetual tardiness
 that had caused his death,
 sweet death

 no, clark gable stated emphatically. I was on a diet, it was very
 hot, it was a dumb script, and besides, he said with a wink, it
 wasn't her tardiness that caused my heart to beat

 no no
 it was not
 to be

 interesting, hm? well, soon enough, I was out of the grocery store
 and on to the jeweler. three bums asked me three times for three
 sums of money. I said: "no way," because, I said, "I have no money."
 and I continued to walk

 to
 the
 jeweler's


 II At The Jeweler

 before I knew it, I was at the jeweler's. there I compared the size,
 cut, and shape of a variety of different
 diamonds. then, in a spirit of elan vital, I produced a small ring
 from my pocket: a diamond in a horseshoe

 setting. "what is to be done?" I asked linda, the jeweler. she told
 me that

 it is a euro-cut diamond, at least eighty years old. you see the
 bottom? they used to cut them like that before they understood how
 to cut them to extend the full range of refraction. I would guess it
 is a "g" diamond, almost colorless, approximately 3/4-1 carat, and
 in rather poor condition. you say it belonged to your grandmother? I
 would estimate its value to be about $2000. I don't know, what would
 you like to do with it?

 it was at that moment that I realized that, outside of the grocer's,
 on my way to the jeweler's,

 "I had money."
 in fact
 "I had $2000
 in my pocket"

 in the shape of a small ring in a horseshoe setting, given to me by
 my grandmother, but worth $2000 in any event.

 quickly, I walked back to the grocery store. I began to sweat, and
 my heart raced. the day was unseasonably hot. I had a terrific pain
 in my throat and I almost felt as though I was suffering from
 vertigo.


 III
 I almost felt as though/ I was suffering from vertigo. suddenly I
 stopped, as though the traffic light had changed from green to red.
 I was still sweating, not quite out of breath: clark gable.

 marilyn monroe.

 I wondered if anyone would ask marilyn was it guilt

 that made you commit
 suicide,
 sweet, icy-cold

 suicide. I doubt it, I thought. but would clark gable? (asked?) but
 did clark gable? (had he/would he [ask])? they were or are still
 together. (?) they still are together. (...)

 on the set of the misfits, while her husband playwright arthur miller
 is not looking, clark gable slips something into her hand. the sun
 is blazing hot and the horses are restless under the western skies.
 she smiles.

 of course I am still running. when I find the first bum I tell him

 1) "I'm sorry."

 moments later, I find the second bum. I tell him

 2) "I really did have money."

 it is unseasonable hot. and I find the third bum. I feel as though
 I reach into my pocket, clutching the jewel box that is eighty years
 old. what is to be done? I open it up, with a certain elan and then

 3) "you can have this" I tell him

 (and put it gently in his hand)


 IV
 of course, there is

 nothing there

 to be seen


 V
 and the light

 changes

 from red

 to green.



brandi berry
------------
<[email protected]>
3 poems


 _fade_

 she forgets what obsession is like.
 glasses on their shelves gleam out
 at her every morning, + call her liar.
 night-times, stinking, she grins
 jack daniels in the dark, rubs
 sour-mash skin over untidy sheets -
 and dreams fitfully of houses,
 left alone in silvered melancholy;
 in the woods, in winter.

 she says every morning she will
 remember her dreams, and yet
 cybelene, driverless, and fat with fear,
 she will forget again come evening,
 and ask what obsession is like.
 all these grey nights keeping her warm
 through december, through march.

 until, obsessed and reeling, and wide awake
 she will go to the old house in the woods
 to see the daffodils blooming, in its yard -
 she will go, to see them fade.



 _undone_

 he greets me
 outside the airport: i'm fresh out of
 baggage claims; he's smiling, friendly,
 vanilla-kissed and soft-eyed. i'm tamed
 only by my carry-ons and the ugly,
 lurid luggage
 that i got for christmas last. he's got
 the radio tuned to my favorite station and
 a list of things not done. five
 days, i left; miserable and pink-fatted
 like the pork he left out overnight
 last saturday, oozing with germs.
 and here

 there's snow now on heavy bushes; the road
 opening up in front of us is grey, and slick,
 and it tastes like five days, gone, unchanged;
 he greets me with a smile and a list
 of things undone. not an hour before now
 i was landing, descending through silver smog
 to this city, unfamiliar as caracas or prague.
 i'm held down by my luggage, and i think:
 my connecting flight has ended, time to go home:
 home to hugs and i-missed-yous and chocolates,
 and things undone.



 _bleach_

 my cave is not a cave. rather,
 it is a place of fat colors,
 familiar things, posters of childhood
 and letters from girlscouts;
 bottle-caps and postcards, all cooled with
 the sick scent of sex, tainted with nyquil.

 no pirating lovers need dig out treasures here.
 my paper valentines, my stolen baubles - they
 rest in anonymity, strewn amongst lesser things,
 brighter lures, candlelit flowers.

 tissue-leaf curtains play hide and seek with
 the sun. it always wins, painting my eyes
 with blood-vessels and analgesic light, while
 my telephone rings and rings, unattended.

 my cave is a well-kept cave. i am
 in it too much, placing the talismans
 of days into their appointed spots,
 like mailing labels addressed to no one.

 i do not dream, in my cave. there is
 evidence of past dreams all around, but
 i am annoyed by their fastidiousness,
 their seeming lack of dust.

 among the flypaper and fingerpaints,
 i am ill-suited for sleep. one day soon i will
 bleach these walls, leave them bone-white,
 and sleep free in nothing but space and
 clean air, and the rising heat of summer.



C.A. Culver
-----------
<[email protected]>
1 poem


 _The Wedding_

 In a sense, I fought you
 from the beginning, battled
 that tiny curve at the inside
 dimension of your eye
 a slight facet
 the damaged me
 like a chest wound
 one bubbled painful breath
 after another.

 Innocence diminished
 to a hazed concept
 not worth inking a single sheet
 in explanation
 a novelty ignored in good conscience
 less important than buried oil
 before any harnessed explosion.

 It's all gone sad now
 run to colors picked with love
 by a dead woman for her child's room
 now peeled to reveal rotting plaster
 the bone cover of an architect's
 spatial dream.

 You took my tools with you
 bitter tempered alloys
 forgotten pre-mechanical shapes
 I am unforged.

 Remember my entrance, guileless
 and blue
 remember the careful geometry
 as I washed your back
 confine your night thoughts
 to your husband
 if you dare.

 But this cannot be done
 for this metaphor is the dark spore
 sprouting magnificent
 under the marriage bed.

 This is either toothsome
 or frightening
 feast or poison.

 Reality was a century
 of unmade beds, hot laundry
 peppered through and through
 with the smells of loud sunrises
 bulky reams of Russian authors
 the life unread
 on shelves we built.

 The century smelled of your lover
 after an exercise.

 The service will be a palliative
 a function, mathematically speaking
 but a weak plank
 the beginning of a warped dock.

 Invite the lake inside
 taste your fingertips
 taste the gathered greyness
 implode slowly.

 Ever the sun is vibrant
 ever the sun is dying.



John Freemyer
-------------
<[email protected]>
1 poem, 1 short story


 _Anagrams of POETRY INK_

 poetry ink
 poetry kin
 inept york
 irony kept
 perky into
 perky not i
 perky tin o
 perky ton i
 perky in to
 perky it no
 perky on it
 poker tiny
 print yoke
 print key o
 token pry i
 kent pry i o
 kent yip or
 kept yin or
 kern pity o
 kern yip to
 kite pry no
 kite pry on
 knit prey o
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 knot prey i
 knot pyre i
 pent york i
 perk tiny o
 perk toy in
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 perk yon it
 pert yin ok
 pike try no
 pike try on
 pine try ok
 pink rye to
 pink yet or
 pint key or
 pint rye ok
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 rink type o
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 trek yip no
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 type ink or
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 key nip rot
 key nor pit
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 key pin rot
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 key rip ton
 kin opt rye
 kin per toy
 kin pot rye
 kin pro yet
 kin pry toe
 kin rep toy
 kin rye top
 kit one pry
 kit per yon
 kit pro yen
 kit rep yon
 net pry ok i
 pen try ok i



 _Making Grandpa Happy_

 The hooker stepped out her apartment door and Linda followed down the
 sidewalk.

 "I'll pay you a lot of money," Linda said, breathless, catching up
 with her.

 "But I already told you," said the hooker, "I don't do women. There's
 other girls who do it. I don't!"

 "No. You don't understand. I'll pay you a lot of money if you'll help
 me look like you."

 The hooker stopped walking. She looked carefully at Linda for a moment
 then stepped under an awning to shade herself from the blazing
 afternoon sun.

 "Why the hell do you want to look like me?" Suddenly, quickly, she
 reached out her left hand and pressed Linda's crotch through her blue
 jeans.

 Linda leaped back. "What was that for?"

 "Just checking."

 "Why?"

 "You're already a woman. What d'you need me for? Just put on some
 makeup, get a sexy dress. You'll look all right."

 "You don't get it, do you!"

 "I do. You're going to a costume party, right? You wanna look like a
 hooker to impress your boyfriend. It's gotta be that kinda bullshit."

 Linda took a deep breath and nervously fanned her face. "It's nothing
 like you think." She ducked under the awning and stepped backward
 until her shoulder touched brick. "You've probably seen my grandfather
 around here. He's the old man who you never see without his cowboy
 hat. Well, see, he's got Alzheimer's disease. It's really a terrible
 disease, you know. He doesn't know what the heck he's doing. He hits
 me or beats me every night. It would kill him if I hit him back. He's
 so weak. I don't want to hit him back. He's my grandpa. You don't hit
 your grandpa."

 "But he's your problem. He's no problem of mine."

 "But you look so sexy," Linda said, fanning very quickly. "Can't you
 help me?"

 The woman put her hands on her hips and frowned. "You askin' for a
 date?"

 "Why would I want a date with you?"

 "Forget it. Just leave me alone." The hooker walked off as a gathering
 crowd scrutinized Linda.

 Linda was crying as she hurried to walk in step again with the hooker.

 "Listen to me, please. My grandfather won't hurt me if I look like
 you. Don't you get it? He wouldn't hurt a sexy woman. He used to spend
 all his time around here until he became too weak. This has been going
 on for years and years. I moved in with him and Grandma when my mom
 died and now I take care of him because he's sick."

 "Why d'you wanna look like me?"

 "I know it sounds crazy and sexist, but my grandfather hates me
 because I'm plain looking. As you can see, I'm not exciting looking.
 He loves hookers, like you. You must have seen him!"

 "Nobody wears a cowboy hat around here."

 "But HE does! I just told you HE does!" Tears twisted down her cheeks.

 "Stop crying. Listen, I'm sorry about you and your grandpa. But I
 still don't know why you're bothering me about a fuckin' makeover."

 "I'll pay you two hundred dollars to help me. All you have to do is
 make me look sexy. You don't usually get paid two hundred dollars, do
 you? Just show me how to look like a sexy woman."

 At first the hooker said nothing. Linda was relieved when she finally
 nodded.

 "You'll do it?"

 The woman stepped back and looked Linda over. "I can make you look
 hotter, but I don't know about making you look like me. You're kind of
 cute with them cheekbones of yours. You gotta show me money, though.
 You got two hundred dollars?"

 "I promise I do. Can you make me look sexy?"

 "First thing is, you gotta wear lipstick," said the hooker, strutting
 off down the street. "A girl needs to wear lipstick. It's more
 important than the shoes you wear."

 "I've never worn makeup."

 "Then you never lived."

 "I'm happy."

 "Uh-huh. You got a boyfriend?"

 "I'm not interested in boyfriends."

 "You got a girlfriend?"

 "I don't have any friends."

 "I believe it. What's your name, honey?"

 "Linda."

 "I'm Abigail."

 "Nice to meet you," Linda said.

 Inside Alfredo's Xotic Salon, Abigail guided Linda through a maze of
 racked costumes and boxes overflowing with sweat-stained secondhand
 lingerie. Then she pulled Linda aside.

 "You owe me two hundred dollars."

 Wedged in the shadows between two clothing racks, Linda wondered
 whether the hooker carried a knife or pistol. Probably both. She
 shuffled backwards into a wall of garish costumes, nearly falling.

 "You haven't done anything for me yet. Why should I pay you now?"

 "The thing is...you know...and I mean this...you need to pay me now."

 "This place is kind of weird. I don't think I like it."

 "I'm not doing nothin' till you pay."

 Linda dug into her pocket and brought out a wad of five twenty-dollar
 bills. "I'll give you one hundred now and--"

 "I want two hundred."

 Linda fanned her face. "This is my grandpa's money. He might need it
 for medicine. I'll give you two hundred when we're finished."

 "I'll fix you up with one outfit for one hundred." Abigail looked at
 her watch. "You've already wasted ten of my precious minutes. Let's
 go." Abigail whirled around and walked off between the towering racks.

 Linda appreciated the exaggerated squiggle in the woman's butt and
 tried squiggling her own butt a little with each step. She felt
 ridiculous and hoped no one was watching.

 "You can buy your red lipstick at any drug store," Abigail told Linda
 as they walked out into the store's showroom. "But you can't get these
 kinda clothes anywhere else. They got good wigs, too. You need one."

 "Red lipstick," Linda said, making a mental note. "I've seen it in the
 grocery store. Is it OK to buy it in the grocery store instead of the
 drug store? I don't usually go into the drug store unless I'm shopping
 with my--"

 Abigail slapped her hand on a glass tabletop. "Jesus! You're really a
 weird fuck, aren't you! Of course you can! Buy it anywhere, goddamn
 it!"

 "I didn't know. Sorry," Linda said. Then she asked, "Abigail, do you
 think maybe you could buy it for me? I'll pay you extra."

 "Forget it. Buy it yourself. Just try this on." Abigail yanked a
 glittering red dress off a hanger and threw it behind her. Linda
 caught the costume before it hit the floor. The cloth smelled awful. A
 whore wore this and returned it, Linda thought. It smells like sweat
 and cigarettes and liquor. I like this smell.

 "Where's the changing room?" Linda asked, glancing into the shadows of
 the cluttered room.

 "Put it on here."

 "Where?"

 Abigail grabbed Linda by both wrists and dragged her across the room.
 "I'm losing my temper with you, damn it . No wonder you don't got
 friends!"

 "You're hurting me."

 "Take off your clothes. Put them on the chair. Try on this dress. I'm
 outta here in five minutes."

 At home, later that evening, Linda stood in the kitchen, draping her
 jeans over the back of the kitchen chair. Then she slid into her
 costume.

 Reflected in the chrome toaster on the kitchen table, she watched
 herself metamorphose. She trembled with excitement while rolling
 shimmering nylons up her first-time shaved legs. I'm becoming a sex
 goddess. A sexually attractive woman.

 She fluffed the wig, sprayed it in place, and painted her lips with
 the reddest lipstick they sold at Thrifty Mart. Redder than Abigail
 had worn.

 The red dress fit tightly over a bra augmented with toilet paper. The
 red shoes were tight. Linda practiced walking, all the time watching
 her reflection in the toaster. I'm different. I'm a different person.
 It surprised her to see how much she resembled her mother. Mother had
 been so glamorous. Linda never imagined...

 She felt an unusual warmth in her stomach.

 Smiling cheerfully, Linda stepped out into the living room.

 Stretched out on the sofa, his facial muscles relaxed, Linda's
 grandfather looked much younger than he had in the morning. He
 appeared to grin because his large false teeth peeked out from behind
 dry lips.

 He's dreaming about a woman who looks like me. He won't hit me. He'll
 be nice. Men slobber over tramps like me.

 She switched off the television. In the convex glass of the blackened
 picture tube, Linda caught her reflection. Reflected in the distorting
 glass, she appeared to stand twenty feet tall.

 She looked at the shoes first, the high heels. She flexed her ankle
 and studied the exquisite lines created by her feet in the shoes. Then
 she stepped back and studied her long legs, her short dress, her bare
 shoulders.

 He won't dare hit me. I'm gorgeous. A sexually attractive woman.

 "Grandpa?" She nudged her grandfather's shoulder. Grandpa's upper
 teeth slipped out and rolled down onto the cushion. The old man didn't
 seem to be breathing.

 Linda kneeled and put her ear to grandfather's fragile chest.  "Feisty
 little whore!" Grandfather shouted, pushing Linda away. "Probably
 filched my wallet while I was sleeping."

 Linda stood back, allowing her grandfather to get a good look at her.

 "Where the hell's my hat? Did you filch my hat, baby? I ain't payin'
 if you filched my hat!" The old man fell back on the sofa.

 "Papa, do you know who I am? I'm Annie. I'm your daughter."

 Linda waited for a response. After a minute, she sat in the
 overstuffed chair across the room and watched Grandpa die. After two
 or three minutes, Linda went to the sofa and sat next to him and
 checked the old man's pulse to be sure.

 Linda leaned down and kissed her grandfather. As she pulled away, she
 noticed the stain of her lipstick on grandfather's lips. Linda kissed
 him again. Another stain had been painted on Grandpa's lips. Linda
 thought it looked cute. She felt sexy. Planting her sexy red lipstick
 on grandpa's face made Linda feel naughty and powerful. She suspected
 her kisses might bring Grandpa back to life.

 She stood and walked into the kitchen. Sitting next to the toaster,
 she lifted the phone and dialed 911. The woman said an ambulance would
 arrive in two minutes.

 Reflected in the toaster, Linda thought she looked very sexy. She
 crossed her legs and considered her red shoes and the exquisitely
 sculptured curves of her feet. She felt beautiful but she pulled off
 the wig, changed back into jeans and t-shirt, and wiped her lips with
 a paper napkin. Then she went back into the living room. There had
 been no resurrection.

 She wiped the kisses from her grandfather's face. And Linda ate the
 stained lipstick napkin and fell to her knees in prayer.



About the Contributors
----------------------
 Rick Lupert has hosted a weekly open reading in the Los Angeles area
 for two and a half years, has read as a featured reader all over Los
 Angeles (including at Lollapalooza), has been published several times,
 and feels that full frontal nudity is the direction that this nation
 should head in. And he does mean head.

 John L. Arnold lives in San Francisco, California and is employed as a
 tour guide for the Great Pacific Tour Company. His work has appeared
 in five issues of POETRY INK.

 W. Luther Jett has spent the past twenty-odd years in search of an
 answer to the question: "Why?" or more properly: "Who?". He has had
 variations on this question published in various magazines, including
 "Salon", "tomorrow magazine", "Liberty", "Syncopated City" and others,
 with further variations forthcoming in "Synaesthetic" and "Tales of
 the Stranger's Cafe". His work has also appeared in past issues of
 POETRY INK, and in "Afternoon", a journal published on the World Wide
 Web.

 Aaron Cary is a student at Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado.
 He has had one poem published in a local newsletter and nothing more.
 His hobbies include playing computer games on his Mac, repelling, and
 mountain biking.

 Nancy Depper is a San Francisco poet and the author of three chapbooks
 of poetry including "Bodies of Work" on manic d press, and the
 recently self-published "Mouthing". Her work has been in many
 anthologies including "The Berkeley Poetry Review", and in several
 U.S. and British disability arts journals. She is active in the
 disability rights movement as well as the Bay Area poetry scene, and
 was a member of the 1993 San Francisco Poetry Slam team.

 Jason Gullion lives in San Francisco, California. He tries not to
 spend his life tinkering with computers, but at least gets paid for
 it. He writes poetry and short stories. He loves photography, wine,
 beer (good beer) and skiing - probably in that order.

 Matthew W. Schmeer is the editor and publisher of this little magazine
 and likes to entertain his ego by occasionally including some of his
 poetic work in these pages.

 Shaun Armour is one of POETRY INK's literary correspondents. His
 poetic works have appeared in past issues of this magazine.

 Thomas Dunnam has been living and working in Japan for the last five
 years as a language consultant in Tokyo schools and companies. Before
 that, he was a public high school teacher in Dayton, Ohio. He was also
 a staff writer for a "Tokyo City Life" magazine, which "went under" in
 February 1996. Lately he's been experimenting with PlainTalk
 Text-to-Speech on the Macintosh and the works of Charles Bukowski and
 William S. Burroughs.

 Bruce Sherman works as an operating engineer on a merchant ship when
 he is not writing poetry or taking long-distance bicycle rides. He has
 been published in his union newspaper, in a book about poetry writing
 published by Harper Collins, and in several other publications.

 Richard "Ricky" Garni is a writer and fourth grade teacher presently
 at work on a grant to complete a travelogue to the desert resort of 29
 Palms, California. He has published poetry and prose in the following
 obscure publications: "No Exit", "Tight", "Poetry Motel", "The
 Quarterly", "Podunk Review", and others.  In addition, he has
 completed three little book manuscripts to date: "Michelle",
 "Peppermint", and "Soft White".

 brandi berry, a 23 year-old poet, spends her days working in the
 conventions department of an educational association in Washington,
 D.C. Currently, she has only edited or published in various college
 literary magazines (due to the various colleges she's attended) but
 hopes to begin self-publishing via web soon. She is working towards a
 degree in computer science because programming also has a beautiful
 sound to it when read.

 C.A. Culver lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has been
 previously published in "Matchstick", "Muddy River Poetry Review", and
 a local Minneapolis magazine called "WormBlower".

 John Freemyer is the Honorary Editor Emeritus of POETRY INK. John
 lives in Redding, California, where he isn't writing much this summer
 because his children are bored with their summer vacation.

 Calvin Xavier is one cool cat. He will be appearing soon at a theater
 near you.



Writing Rant
------------
by Calvin Xavier


 **Slamming the Open Mike**

 I am probably going to piss off a few people and generate a lot of
 eMail to POETRY INK with the next two sentences, but I am going to
 risk it anyway. Poetry is not poetry if it does not "hold up" on the
 page as it does on stage. And while poetry makes good therapy, in most
 cases therapy does not make good poetry.

 What I mean is that the current state of audience participatory poetry
 readings does not generate very much "real" poetry. True, these events
 create a lot of disjointed words and sentences and even convey some
 emotion. But poetry is not merely verbal communication shouted into a
 microphone at the local campus coffeehouse. Most poetry read at these
 events is not poetry at all; the poems aren't authentic, but merely
 hip and glib. Most of the folks there are writing to get a laugh for a
 clever line or twist of phrase or even (in most cases) just to feed
 their egos. Or maybe one of their friends bought them enough drinks to
 get them to the point where they have shed any self-doubt and are
 swaggering with bravado when they hit the stage and read aloud their
 poem about watching a dog get hit by a car and suddenly find they
 can't pronounce the word "coupe" without actually pronouncing the "e"
 (alright, alright, that was me at my first open mike during my
 freshman year of college so many years ago). But of course, there are
 always exceptions; once in a great while you find a poet who knows
 his/her stuff and wows the audience over. And there are three reasons
 for this: practice, practice, and practice.

 Poetry is a craft, and a craft takes practice and skill to perfect.
 The common theory is that poetry is, above all else, the conveyance of
 emotion using the written word. Coleridge's perception that poetry is
 "emotion recollected in tranquility" is close to the mark -- but I
 believe there is nothing tranquil about writing. It is a difficult,
 demanding, pain-in-the-ass addiction that poets do because if they
 don't, they are nothing. They do not exist if they do not write. I
 can't tell you how many times I have faced a blank page (which really
 shouldn't happen, because as Charles Bukowski once noted, "real
 writers don't get writer's block") only to start writing about the
 fact that I don't know what to write about or even gone to the
 opposite extreme of crossing out twenty pages of stuff written on a
 four a.m. coffee high after my wife and I had an argument regarding
 whether or not the cat should be put to sleep because he won't stop
 pissing on the blankets and rugs and then I stop and I think, "hey,
 get a clue -- it's only writing and no one's gonna know that what you
 write is complete crap unless you show it to somebody and then you can
 always say that they just 'don't get it' because you are 'writing over
 their heads'." And then you have to consider the fact that most poets
 don't write for an audience anyhow -- which is how it should be.
 Basically, writing is like taking a shit: you really don't want anyone
 around just in case what comes out really stinks.

 There ~is~ a reason I bring this up. For the most part, you don't hear
 traditional formulaic verse read at a Poetry Open Mike Night.

 I mean, come on: when was the last time someone read a sonnet as their
 entry at the most recent "slam" you attended? Everybody seems content
 to just vomit words on a page without any real cohesiveness and then
 defend it as "eclectic", "avant garde", or even worse, "post-modern".
 Now I don't know about you, but when I read something - especially
 poetry - I want some sense of meaning and emotion to be conveyed. And
 emotion on a page does not come about by some zit-faced bleached
 blonde dressed in black shouting the phrase "pussy whipped cheese
 Dorito" after smoking one too many clove cigarettes. I'm sorry, but it
 just doesn't work that way.

 Now the problem is that not enough folks who pretend themselves poets
 have read the classics (and this is probably the fault of the United
 States's lousy public education system, as is the burgeoning teen
 pregnancy rate, the failure of the War on Drugs, and the reason for
 Dwight Strawberry's slumping pitching career [as if you really think
 he'll last with the New York Yankees]). And it is also the fault of
 creative writing professors and teachers who don't require students to
 read great/classic poetic works before they encourage those same said
 students to put a pen to paper and "write what they feel".  I have an
 idea, Tonto: why don't we teach kids **how** to write poetry before we
 set them loose to overwhelm us with too many pages full of half-assed
 love droolings and angst-ridden waste? You can teach third and fourth
 graders more about poetry than you can a bunch of Maggie Espy wanabes.
 Just ask any poet working in a "Poetry In the Schools" program --
 young kids pick up the nuances of poetry's honesty.

 Now I happen to believe that the the ultimate free verse composition
 is Walt Whitman's _Song of Myself_ in "Leaves of Grass". In fact, Old
 Uncle Walt writes free verse so good that he makes free verse look
 easy enough for everybody and their brother to write. The problem is
 that free verse is not entirely free; the best free verse appears
 "free" when it is in fact built not upon meter and end rhyme, but upon
 other linguistic and grammatical features that do not reveal
 themselves to the scanning eye, but instead to the attentive ear.
 ~Free verse takes practice to perfect.~ You cannot slap a bunch of
 words on the page and call it poetry, even if you buy one of those
 **Magnetic Poetry** kits for $20 and spend the next week standing in
 front of your refrigerator playing with the tiles. At most, you are
 doing a writing exercise; at worst, you are wasting what little
 precious time you have left on this planet.

 So here's two suggestions:

 1) Go to your local bookshop and pick up a copy of John Hollander's
 "Rhyme's Reason" (about $7 the last time I checked) and Richard Hugo's
 "The Triggering Town" (ditto). Combined, these books will give you all
 you need to know about "the basics" regarding the craft of writing not
 only free verse, but traditional formulaic verse as well. Read them
 cover to cover. Treat them as as if they were the Sacred Texts of the
 Writing Cult.

 2) The next time you feel like writing, put down the goddamn pen, turn
 off the fucking computer, and pick up a book of poetry. Read a few
 poems and see if you have the desire to write. If you do, great, go
 for it. But do us all a favor and don't forget to wipe when you're
 done.



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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 (that part of the Internet getting all the media attention nowadays),
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 POETRY INK accepts submissions on a per-issue basis, with each issue
 published on a bi-monthly schedule for a total of six issues per
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 weeks if you sent your submission via snail mail).



Our Submission Guidelines
-------------------------
* Your name, eMail address, physical (snail mail) address, and
 telephone number must appear on each submission. Your name and eMail
 address will appear on any published work; the remainder of this
 information is only for our files and will not be released. You may
 omit including your telephone number if you are uncomfortable
 disclosing this information; however, please realize this means that
 if we need to reach you immediately regarding your submission, your
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* Electronic submissions should be submitted as either plain ASCII
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* Please keep poems under 3 printed pages apiece (page size = 8" x 11"
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* Please limit submissions to no more than 5 poems or 2 short stories
 per person per issue.

* Simultaneous submissions are okay, but please contact us if your
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* Please include a short biographical sketch (3 to 5 lines) with your
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 (These submission guidelines are an abbreviated version of our
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 outlined therein. For a copy of our complete submission guidelines,
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