YB

2011-03-12T18:47:00.000-08:00

Hi! Check out YB's brand new home, here.

The first three issues will continue to be housed where you are now. Check them out too!

Thanks for stopping by.

Issue 3: Index

2010-05-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

June 2010

Molly Gaudry
commentary (interview)

Kyle Hemmings
commentary

Frederick Jackson
commentary

Jeff Klooger
commentary

Dorothee Lang
commentary

Sherry O'Keefe
commentary

Sergio Ortiz
commentary

Sergio Ortiz

2010-05-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

Transparency

What are you made of,
mime with painted palms
and sweaty bare
feet? How much longer
can you take in the air
all that empty space, the caiman
leaves for you to breathe?
Frail frame, proceed
and tune the white organza
mesh for the screen-painting
your imagination seeks.
When the canvas dries
don’t forget to wipe
the crowded cell
in which you’ve
always lived.

commentary

2010-05-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

The poem “Transparency” is a reflection on how little input most of us receive from others to help us form ideas about ourselves, and boost our self-regard. So much is overlooked by family, friends and colleagues, that we are often left with the sensation of being locked up in a cage, an animal reminiscing about the freedom of the wild. We populate that cage with our imagination; an imagination that struggles to find a balance between fiction and reality. For some this sets into motion the creative impulse, but for others this struggle can lead to true isolation, apathy, and danger. Our imagination is both artist and predator. I believe the question that can help us keep a vigilant eye on this is: How transparent do we really believe our motives to be?

Sergio Ortiz is an educator, poet, and photographer. He has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a M.A. in philosophy from World University. His photographs will appear in The Neglected Ration and The Monongahela Review. He has been recently published, or is forthcoming in The Battered Suitcase, Zygote in my Coffee, Right Hand Pointing, Temenos, and others. Flutter Press published his chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk (2009). He is from Puerto Rico.

Sherry O'Keefe

2010-05-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Five White Pickup Trucks

I made a deal with myself when I saw five white pickups
in a row stopped at the Lake Elmo traffic light. My kids
say I don’t notice things. (But I am aware of patterns in
the street.) Four blue jeeps, three purple bugs strung out
at the light means I drive to work along a different route.

To notice things. To pay attention. Break up my routine.
This time I drove over the Rims, down into the valley on
a tore up road. I waved to the flagman with a pink ribbon
on his hazard-yellow vest. The dozer was carving so close
to Yellowstone Kelly’s Grave I shivered, yet noticed

the earthmover had rubber tires and a 12 foot wide blade. When
I worked in trucking, I was paid to pay attention. Oversize
permits, special routes, small red stop signs for the pilot car.
It was good to feel in synch again, to be present in the moment.
My change from the Burger King lady was warm in her cold hand,

little kids in the crosswalk skipped instead of walked. I pulled
into work, feeling vibrant and alert; joined the men looking out
the windows at our parking lot. Did I notice, they asked,
the circus was in town: three gray elephants being watered
50 feet from where I parked my truck.

commentary

2010-05-28T09:28:00.001-07:00

When I drive, I travel and when I say travel I mean my mind takes off. Almost always with music going on. Often I am right in the middle of a good song right before I arrive at work.

I drive past work and make a series of right hand turns (I am personally against left-hand turns. As this poem indicates, I was once a safety director for a heavy-haul carrier so I know Left Hand Turns Are More Risky. Plus I have an inner scaredycat issue going on) until the music stops.

Sometimes, the music never stops.

If the good song is still going on when I drive home, I park my ride (aka Derby but now we call him Jack on account of his punched-out left headlight area, as in one-eyed-jack). I sit inside and listen to the music until the traveling stops.

Inside my house, my dogs and my kids visit about what song they think Sherry/Mom is still listening to and when it might be that she will finally come into the house. I understand my cattle dog is sure I listen to “Inagodofdavida” nonstop, but the shepherd votes for “Avamariaohmeingott”. My kids know me best though; they know the radio was never even turned on.

Sherry O’Keefe, a descendant of Montana pioneers, a mother of two, sister to four, cousin to dozens, credits/blames her Irish upbringing for her story-telling ways. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Switched-on Gutenberg, Terrain.Org, Barnwood Poetry Review, Avatar Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Babel Fruit, Main Street Rag, and others. Her chapbook, Making Good Use of August was released in October 2009 from Finishing Line Press. While her manuscript, Loss of Ignition, is making the rounds, she blogs here.

Dorothee Lang

2010-05-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Society of Swans

She had drifted
           into this place before,
many times, her head ducked low,
           her thoughts surrounded
by a spiral of options
           they bestowed her,
drew her into their ring
           then left her
           forlorn
           like a new species
raised by the world
           in this bed of feathers,
eyes covered
           by a folding so warm
          & blind

commentary

2010-05-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

First there was the swan photo. When I took it, I was just a few steps away from the two swans. I am sure they noticed me, but they had this distanced, unimpressed air around them. There was something peculiar about that moment; one of the swans floating in the water, the other standing at the edge of the lake, and me, standing at the lakeside.

I knew I wanted to write about this mood, this edging in. I didn’t know where to start, though.

Fast forward a week, another waterside. Me there, with Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway. The green Penguin edition, with two penguins on the cover. I read the first thirty pages, then later browsed them again, noting down words, half-lines, in word play: even now, at this hour; beauty was behind, making it up, all this one, the motor car with its blinds drawn, passing invisibly....

The next day, I read on. And came across this line: “There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel.”

It was this attic room that took shape. And a woman. In a society of swans. That’s how the poem unfolded.

Dorothee Lang is a writer, web freelancer, traveller and gardener. She lives in Germany, edits the BluePrintReview and Daily s-Press, and keeps a sky diary. Sometimes she dreams of having wings. Recent publications include HA&L, elimae, Spiral Orb, a handful of stones, The, and eclectica. For more about her, visit her website.

Addendum by the Ed: more about Dorothee's poem, here.

Jeff Klooger

2010-05-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

Another Day

A mist of sand sweeps off the dunes.
Outside the lonely shack with the rattler’s tail
spinning in the desert breeze and slapping a tune
on the king of hearts, a bike leans on its own. Two more
will soon arrive, and the riders, hard men
with wild, flowing hair and death-dealing eyes,
will join their friend inside. That cop looks like a man
but talks like a woman. What does that mean? He/she will die soon
just the same, punched clear across the room
by a single round straight to the chest.
His/her partner too will die. Such things are
unavoidable out here, beyond the reach
of civil laws and customs. Later the cops will get one back,
blasting a bowser and a suspect together
in a cloud of orange flame. The burning man stumbles a bit,
confused at his strange fortune, then sinks down,
a heap of blackened evidence.

The next victim sings to his own tune, relaxed
and free at last in the back of a prison bus. In no time
the bikers arrive, shattering the day with hungry bullets,
tipping the bus into an oncoming truck, the twin behemoths
waltzing across the highway in a flurry of dust
and debris. Who would have thought our hero
could survive; but he does, he did, he will,
all the way to the sweet (not bitter) end, when he and his partner
will solve the whole damn mess with a few deft moves
and a shit-load of ammunition. It’s like that here
on the mean and hilly streets.

Elsewhere in black and white, a woman imagines
she’s in the presence of God, prays and dances and writhes
on her lonely bed. She blows a kiss, peers back
at her feet, trembles and rocks, tears off her clothes,
arches her back and sighs. It only ends
when the voice stops, when the apertures
that let the men observe her torment
slide shut.

The truth is we are all voyeurs, recording
the symptoms of night’s untreatable disease.
A convoy of limousines will close the deal
and lead us at last towards tomorrow’s thrill-packed instalment,
armed with a raft of brand new hopes and dreams, some pale regrets
and a brain-pan full of old obsessions.

commentary

2010-05-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

This poem is one of a series of television poems. It began life as automatic writing, a real time recording of what the television shows and what this viewer thinks and feels in response to what he sees. Then some time later, when all that watching and recording is over, rewriting begins. This is not so much a case of undoing what is already there, but of taking up, extending and developing themes that are already present, whether in the images themselves or the mind of the viewer, and also making what I hope is good poetry. I am not concerned about how much is imposed by me as viewer and how much is interpretation of the material viewed. It is probable that something of both will be revealed.

I find it is best to watch with the volume down. Switching channels when bored is inevitable, even if the practice may have deleterious effects on one’s concentration span if indulged in too habitually. In English we call this practice ‘channel surfing’; the French call it ‘zapping’. The philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis has coined the term zapanthropus to designate the sort of human beings who give themselves up to and are characterised by this habit.

I wonder whether all viewers are driven to make some sort of unifying sense, even if subconsciously, of the montage of story and image that they consume and in part construct. I wonder whether viewers should attempt to do so, or whether the more liberating approach is to allow the disparate and disjointed to remain disparate and disjointed. What sort of liberation would that be, and liberation for whom? And if we do endeavour to construct a meaning for the whole, can we be sure that this meaning is ours and not imposed upon us by others who only seem disparate but in fact have the same agenda, the same world-view, the same all-pervasive sensibility?

Jeff Klooger’s poetry has been published in his native Australia and internationally. Recently his work has appeared in The Liberal (UK), The Stinging Fly (Ireland), Sketch, dotdotdash, Cordite Poetry Review and Otoliths. His other interests are music and philosophy. His book on the ideas of the Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis was published in 2009.

Frederick Jackson

2010-05-28T07:46:00.001-07:00

Las Hormigas

They pour though this tiny hole
No larger than a pinhead

Down the tile grouting
And out across the countertop they flow

A tidy stream of living dots …

          ***

“WHAT DO ANTS HAVE TO DO WITH ART?!!!”

Yells dragon lady, top heavy
With bust, bangles, hairdo and makeup

Nearly knocking me out of my chair
And wrecking me for a week

          ***

Now I see this line of tourists
Filing down Matamoros Street

The block is short, the sidewalk narrow
And hewing to the wall they seem

The Word made Flesh, the providential

A…     r…
            n…     t…
                       s…
                                w…
                                          e…
                                                     r…

To the Lady’s question

commentary

2010-05-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

"Las Hormigas" developed in stages exactly as indicated by the hiatuses in the poem. First a fascination with the ants themselves, then the unhappy meeting with the dizzy matron-of-the arts in which I foolishly mentioned my latest endeavor, and then finally the surprise message from the beyond. It is interesting that had not this all occurred, I probably would not have in the end been able to follow through on the original impulse to write a poem just about the ants.

Frederick Jackson was born in San Francisco and grew up in and around New York City. In his early 20s while studying for a degree in physics and working summers as a merchant seaman, he discovered a passion for poetry. A volume, The Stem of One Colossal Flower, self-published in 1966, sold in several bookstores in Greenwich Village. One poem appeared in the poetry quarterly Athanor (New York, Spring, 1967). The author went on to receive a PhD in physical oceanography and had a several decades long career in science. After an early retirement in 1995 he returned to writing poetry. His collected work can be found here. He currently lives in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Kyle Hemmings

2010-05-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

The Colonel's Younger Lover

Among other things, all her lovers are stale, imitations of imitations. They hold umbrellas over Paris & have no sense of blue fifth jazz. When it rains, it doesn't necessarily pour a healthy broth. All wars are on hold. At the window, she is cabbage-patch sad and confides in toy dogs. Memory is a polka of exhausted I-told-you-so's. In the distance, there are insipid pinwheels that upon squinting turn out to be the neighbors. She turns. The maroon dress, one-piece and bought at a bargain, falls to the floor. Today, she gets naked for no one. The windows stay neutral like Switzerland. She's a demure alp of fog, a slip of misplaced vanity. At the knock on the door, everything will be alphabet clear, reassembled with the old stiches. The corners of the room recede in their erogenous dust. Sure.

commentary

2010-05-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

The piece came about while thinking of two books I reread recently - The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, and A Moveable Feast by Hemingway. I tried to work with this tension, the feeling of nothing coming out right, of being trapped in a vapid boring existence but still searching for that elusive blue fifth note of jazz, of life itself. And of course, I thought of Paris because everyone thinks of Paris when they think of love and rain. Or maybe not. At the poem's end, logic and routine take over, everything will become crystal clear and distant and that last word for me was a kind of echoing doubt that everything will fall into place.

Kyle Hemmings lives and works and dies in increments in New Jersey.

Molly Gaudry

2010-05-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter, Meg

for Meg Harris

You'd think, if your balloon lost

all its float, that maybe you'd be
sad, but look here, take note:
there is a lesson to be learned;
this girl's rising might be seen
as fearlessness, her toes, pointed
as they are, as arrows leading
the way, and the simple fact
that her skirt's hem isn't
fluttering, as proof that miracles
do happen and a yellow balloon
can act, in times of need, as an
anchor -- a bright bit of stability.

What is the Story of Legs?

for Tim Jones-Yelvington

What do you think is happening here?
To what extent is this image doctored,

posed, fabricated, and why? For what
reason? Or do you think it might be

a picture of some rare, beautiful truth?
I love those yellow shoes. That's no lie.

Who do you think these legs belong to?
What are the stories of those legs? How

did they get so golden-hued and strong?
How many others' legs have touched

those legs? What is the story of legs?
Have you ever considered your own?

I can't say I have, truth be told. But I
imagine this is not the case for many,

especially those who do not have them,
or do not have the use of them. What

does it mean to use? I am probably
guilty of abusing my legs, at one time

or another. And for this I feel ashamed
of my own impossible and meaningless

methods of destruction. These legs will
outlast me. The stories they could tell

you about who I am, was, might want
to be some day soon. Just ask them.

commentary (interview)

2010-05-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

"For $1.00, I Will Write You a Poem and Post it Here"

Let's not call this desperate. Let's not call this self-serving. Let's definitely not call this sad. Instead, let's call this "enterprising, exciting, intriguing."

Click here for the facts....

And here's Molly, answering some of my questions, via email:

me: I've included a link to the page on your blog describing the project (above), but I was wondering if you could tell me how you first came up with the idea. There must be easier ways to make a buck?

Molly. Let's see; I'm not quite sure where the idea came from. I'm sure it was all very sudden and "inspired," in a goofy sense of the word. I know I was disappointed and poor, and I knew that I might sit around and wallow, so rather than do that I thought, Hey, why not ask people for prompts? The most important thing at the time was to kickstart a creative time during which I could refocus on the writing; asking for a buck was a whim, but shortly thereafter I decided to add a PayPal button at the prompting of Amy King.

me: I was interested in your project initially because it seemed like a terrifying thing to attempt. Poetry to me has always seemed like something I do out of an internal, rather than an external, necessity. (Perhaps this is because of my lack of experience with writing classes or workshops.) I've since revised that viewpoint a little, and I think watching you go about this project may have had something to do with it. But still, I was wondering whether you had moments when you thought, well. I've got nothing to say about this. Nada. Zip.... If so - what did you do, if anything, to get past it?

Molly: Oh yeah, totally. There were a few that really stumped me. But I found those images from the FFFFound blog and just started writing, mostly by beginning with the image I saw. I never revised a poem; I wrote them all in the Blogger window; and as soon as it was done I hit "publish." Sometimes I found some of the poems the prompter had written and used those for inspiration. As to the other part of your question, about terror, I should add that I feel pretty free with poetry because my education is in fiction. Plus, these aren't poems meant for publication or revision--at least not when I set out to write them.

me: I picked the two poems I did for YB of course for subjective, private, personal reasons of my own. (And maybe a leg fixation that day?) Anyway, I notice that sometimes the stuff of mine that other people pick out is not necessarily my favourite stuff. Do you have any favourites among the poems?

Molly: My favorite is "Is to love an imperative infinitive?" I also like "A Bug, A Car, A Man: A Triptych."

me: When you started the project, did you have any idea you would get the response that you did?
(There are 65 poems to date - 28 May.)

Molly: I absolutely had no idea that so many people would respond. I noticed, too, that the more I posted in a big group or bunch, the more orders came in. It never failed: post ten poems, get five orders. Post one poem, no orders.

me: I think these poems, with the explanation of how they came about, would make a great book. Any offers?

Molly: There are tentative negotiations with Flatmancrooked, but I'm not sure the poems are strong enough for a collection, and I'm not sure they should be revised. I have to keep thinking about it.

me: Since I'm big on place, can you describe your view at the moment?

Molly: I'm looking at a brick wall, which is about fifteen feet beyond the kitchen window, which is about three feet before me. I'm sitting at the table with a coffee and a half-eaten bowl of cereal. Good morning!

Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart and the editor of Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative. She is Googleable.

Issue 2: Index

2009-11-30T21:13:00.000-08:00

December 2009

Lindsay Marianna Walker
commentary

Marguerite Scott-Copses
commentary

David Prater
commentary

Sherry O'Keefe
commentary

Corey Mesler
commentary

Jeff Crandall
commentary

Ryan W. Bradley
commentary

Lindsay Marianna Walker

2009-11-30T21:04:00.000-08:00

The Josephine Game

Port Maurice, April 1796

Josephine,
By what art have you learnt how to captivate all my faculties,
to concentrate in yourself my spiritual existence—
it is witchery, dear love, which will end only with me.
To live for Josephine, that is the history of my life.

I one you on Thursdays and at both elevens, and often
around dinner time.

I two you during evacuations
and afternoons when it rains. But not on Sunday mornings
or days when ladies
play Euchre.

I three of myself while you are thinking of food,
or the army, or a hidden switchback
trail back over the mountain.

I four to hate you like a steam piston hates. Though later,
love again, and the engine block.

I five someone with your kneecaps!

I six like the woman of another, though it’s probable
most of my days aren’t spent in pursuit
of the gardener.

I seven like a cattle catcher cow-powers
down train tracks.

I eight the slump that was in the ice chest
since Labor Day weekend. I feel old
and delirious and purple.

I nine all the bubbles in a bar of soap.

I ten you with holly-hocks. I ten you
with holly-hocks. I ten you
without remedy.

Josephine in the Tower

“The danger, on the contrary, lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap…”
--Albert Camus

Heights frighten me, or rather, I’m afraid of myself
at heights. I know why the road chicken crossed.
It’s what puts my palms to the stove burners,
my tongue to the blade. Not a question
of danger, but a call to the edge.
The fact of the cliff. Its
simple imperative,
jump.

Lindsay Marianna Walker Commentary

2009-11-30T20:53:00.000-08:00

6 Things I think when I think about "The Josephine Game:"

I used to make my parents play this game over and over when I was a kid and we lived near Chicago. Me: "I one the Sears Tower." Dad: "I two the Sears Tower," "blah blah blah" Dad: "I eight the Sears Tower." Me: "You ATE the Sears Tower? Hahahahaha." And every time it was hilarious. It still hasn't gotten old, in fact.

Euchre is a fun game. I wish more people played it everywhere.

Jaime Sabines

In stanza 8 "Slump" = "plums" (anagramish stanza from William Carlos Williams's "This is just to say." I stole it cause I love it.)

I knew a lady here in Mississippi who, during the Civil Right's movement, went down to the polls to vote. She had to "take a test" before casting her ballot. The question the city officials asked her was: "How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?" Seriously. Needless to say, she didn't get to vote. There were some other crazy ass questions she got asked, but I've forgotten them now, sadly.

If my love life had a footnote it would be stanza 2 of "Variations on a Theme By William Carlos Williams" by Kenneth Koch:

We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

4 things I think when I think about, "Josephine in the Tower:"

1. I used to watch a lot of Road Runner and Coyote cartoons when I was little - a lot.

2. Once a lady yelled at my little sister for horsing around near the edge of the Grand Canyon. My mom got mad at the lady. I observed the whole scene from a reasonably safe distance.

3. I am fascinated by people who lick peanut butter off the knife.

4. My little gas stove and its hand-sized burners.

Lindsay Marianna Walker is a Ph.D. student in English at the University of Southern Mississippi. A finalist for the 2009 Walt Whitman Award for her manuscript, the Josephine letters, she has served as Poetry Editor for the literary journal, Juked, since 2005. Her poems have appeared recently, or are forthcoming, in: The African American Review, Valley Voices, West Branch, The Southeast Review, Gulf Stream, and others. Winner of the Center for Writers 2009 Joan Johnson Award for Fiction, she has published stories in: Smokelong Quarterly, Pindeldyboz and 971 Menu. Her play "Boy Marries Hill" is included in Gary Garrison's guide to playwriting, A More Perfect Ten.

Marguerite Scott-Copses

2009-11-30T20:44:00.000-08:00

No. Final Answer.

A single sun, all else was orbit;
Spanish class was the back of his neck.

He'd have done me such a favor
To grab my wild arms, to make me toss the paintbrush,

the baton, the penning-it-even-now story
I wanted to write in his name's sake.

Had he held my hands, not in love,
but in earnestness, and said, "no,"

"no.... I don't"

I might not have believed in magic,
might not have insisted I could come back

from the next in a series of sad moments,
like the one, in my room, studying for pre-cal,

while we listened to the Smiths,
and drank Italian soda,

the back of my palm casual against his knee,
and how he picked it up, placed it back

in my lap, and mumbled, eyes on the page
"I can't concentrate with you touching me."

How hard to know then, what I still
don't know now, did he ever love me?

And how I still want to disguise that line,
to say it some other way--

Alguna vez me amas?
Que el nunca me amas?

What if I'd been brave enough to ask
yes or no, plain as this poem?

What if I'd been brave enough to listen
The sun, so silent in its sky.

Marguerite Scott-Copses Commentary

2009-11-30T20:38:00.001-08:00

I recently submitted a packet for the much-dreaded "third-year review" process at my university, and I put my current manuscript in what's called the "supplemental binder." It included this poem, and many others about adolescence and early discovery/loss. After having turned it in I felt so vulnerable...like I'd put my childhood wounds on display for the entire department. I talked to a good friend and colleague about this, and he joked that "Come Visit My Childhood Wounds," was the almost-title of his first book. I guess there are some things we just can't get over about those years. I'm fascinated by the ways in which adolescence is such a blur, something like what Virginia Woolf calls "being blown through the Tube," but how, also, time becomes so crystallized by key moments that roll over us again and again. I wonder about what our emotional memories do to these moments, how distorted and energy-charged they become through time. "No. Final Answer," is about one such memory. Cue the Smiths, "Well I wonder..."

Marguerite Scott-Copses is a native of Charleston, SC where she currently teaches composition and poetry at The College of Charleston. She earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from The Florida State University and her work has appeared in Feminist Studies, The Journal of Poetry Therapy and The Green Hills Literary Lantern. But, she thinks these career facts much less important than her role as a new mother. Her days are spent, mostly, juggling classes, jotting down new surprises on scratch pieces of paper, changing diapers, and laughing at the absurdities of love intersecting with stress.

David Prater

2009-11-30T20:25:00.000-08:00

The Germ! The Germ!

Love episode of a strange nature;
as usual, with badluck [sic] to meh.

- Bernard O’Dowd, writing to Walt Whitman.

i have a germ inside meh (love i have a gun
inside meh (bang i have a truth inside meh (

death i have a life inside meh (born i have
a seed inside meh (tree i have a leaf inside

meh (air i have a girl inside meh (oh i have
a heart inside meh (boom i have two germs

inside meh (blood i have a ghost inside meh
(peace i have a dream inside meh (depth i

have a charge inside meh (light i have a man
inside meh (shame i have a coup inside meh

(stop i have a breeze inside meh (chain i
have a fire inside meh (road i have a bomb

inside meh (we i have a past inside meh (no
i have a watch inside meh (yes i have a but

inside meh (worm i have a mole inside meh
(shock i have a plane inside meh (sky i have

a scene inside meh (egg i have a sun inside
meh (ah i have a you inside meh (love i have

a germ inside meh (love i have a germ!

David Prater Commentary

2009-11-30T20:20:00.000-08:00

"The Germ! The Germ!" is from an unpublished MS called Leaves of Glass, which is loosely based on correspondence between Walt Whitman and the Australian poet Bernard O'Dowd in the 1890s. In these letters, O'Dowd revealed much about his inner desires and passions. The title of the poem is taken from O'Dowd's poem "Cupid" in which he concludes:

"So that it live The Germ ! The Germ !
It matters not to me
If sheep or tiger, man or worm
Earth's victor-captain be."

David Prater's publications include The Happy Farang (self-published, 2000), We Will Disappear (papertiger media, 2007) and Morgenland (Vagabond Press, 2007). He is managing editor of the online poetry journal Cordite Poetry Review.

Sherry O'Keefe

2009-11-30T20:12:00.000-08:00

Leave it to Floyd at the County Ranch Supply Store

Because nothing changes in the back of Big R,
I come here to listen to the century-worn
floor creak each time a customer walks in,
mid-stride in ancient conversation. The merits
of a rabbit hutch, which pastures are short on salt licks,
temptations of sweet mix for a colt, bottles for orphaned lambs
Floyd’s name tag is peeling from his May-I-Help-You vest,
black marker on surgical tape, the ‘D’ no longer visible.

He sorts tomato packs, talking with a man
whose fishing hat says “Salmon, the other pink meat.”
He needs food for a rescued baby woodpecker,
and is worried it cannot see. Happens that Floyd
wrote a paper in sixth grade, he remembers
those babies are blind for thirty days. I envy that his past
is still with him today. When I was twelve I wrote a paper
about Twiggy with Jane, the girl with a dark space
in her house where all the boys went to kiss her. I sat
at the table, writing the paper for both of us.

Maybe if I had written about calla lilies
I’d understand now why nothing blooms
next to my kitchen sink. I’m reading
the bulb packaging when Floyd stops by
to help. He considers me before he tells me nothing
grows without contrast in its life. He says we all need
the night time cold, some daytime sun. Now
and then - a wind to toss our stalks.

Sherry O'Keefe Commentary

2009-11-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

every winter i plant a bulb in a pot and place it on my kitchen table. my kids were raised with blooming bulbs in the middle of winter. we would even bet when the plant would bloom: before christmas? after new year's? one winter, the bulb would not bloom. i was in a new home and thought perhaps i hadn't discovered the right pool of sunlight for it, so i moved the plant (with 28 inch stalks!) from here to there in my kitchen, but still no bloom. i could relate. i was not exactly blooming where i was either. the ranch supply store in this poem is in an old part of town. the ceilings are low and the floor groans. i love the sound of boot heels on the wooden floor— it's as though you've gone back in time and at any moment you'll hear the stage coach roll to a stop outside, with a bag of mail for the tiny post office across the street. if you linger in the store, you will gradually realize that you are not the only person in the store who has come to the store for a sense of comfort. this year, i have paperwhites from the store— the bulbs handpicked by floyd's nephew. guaranteed to bloom. want to bet we'll see blooms before the third snowfall?

Sherry O’Keefe, a descendant of Montana pioneers, a mother of two, sister to four, cousin to dozens, credits/blames her Irish upbringing for her story-telling ways. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Switched-on Gutenberg, Barnwood Poetry Review, Avatar Review, Babel Fruit, The High Desert Journal, Main Street Rag, and others. Her chapbook, Making Good Use of August was released in October 2009 from Finishing Line Press.

Corey Mesler

2009-11-30T19:58:00.000-08:00

Out Near the Chemical Plant

Out near the chemical plant,
where my father worked his whole life,
there are fields of corn, glistening,
green and yellow, full of life.
The sun catches stalks and they dance.
There is also a black fungus called ergot.
It is poisonous and hallucinogenic.
No one is blaming the chemical plant.
Now my father is gone and
the plant lives on, pumping out its
heady interfusions, creating God knows what,
in secret, after dark, with towers
of flame high above the Schlenk flasks,
and acid baths, and burettes, and alembics,
and men in white coats and badges,
who pledge their nights to experiment,
to the Company, to the very human belief
that there is better living through chemistry.

Corey Mesler Commentary

2009-11-30T19:54:00.001-08:00

My father really worked all his life for DuPont. The plant, where family could only visit one day a year, was a place of mystery for me. Also mysterious was what my father did all day. Or indeed what DuPont did all day. I knew it was something to do with chemicals so I imagined Dr. Jekyll’s lab. Now, my father is gone from the world but the chemical plant lives on. The ergot was added to the poem by my friend Rebecca who lives “out near the chemical plant.”

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published two novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006). His first full length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems (2008), is out from Foothills Publishing and his book of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations, appeared in March 2009. He also has two novels set to be published in the Spring of next year, The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (Bronx River Press) and Following Richard Brautigan (Livingston Press). He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and one of his poems was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He has two children, Toby, (1988), and Chloe, (1995). With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.

Jeff Crandall

2009-11-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

Jugular Ghazal

It isn’t when, where or why, but how I kill you.
Slingshot. Capgun. Reuger. Venom. Pow. I kill you.

Bible? Quran? Talmud? Book of Hours? Book of Days?
In my black robe, holier-than-thou, I kill you.

Such a lovely veil: Obey, Honor and Love.
With this unbroken vow I kill you.

Eat, eat. Flesh for the table flensed from the bone.
Fog within the abattoir thickens. Like a sow I kill you.

Don’t worry. Your death is merely play. It’s all stage
blood and applause. With a bow I kill you.

Seriously, my heart has never known this depth of joy, of
belonging, of self. Love, love, my love: now I kill you.

Losing Oz

“After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, . . .”

As if wracked by a great quake
(I am a china doll), the shifting
of tectonic plates (I fall, I fall)
the city rang like a bell.
Organ pipes and chandeliers of glass
cracked. A page tore, spilling out
the soft vowels of the buildings,
its ices and pomades,
its lithe green cats.

*

I’ve never learned to lion,
never been maned. (They mate for life.)
You struck my face, killing
all the cloudy little doves.
The fritterers, the flouncies
died inside. I remain
a coward inside my growl.
When you clenched your fist.
When the walls frowned.
When the cobalt candlestick
fell from its shelf.
When the door jamb rattled at the slam.
When my skull thrummed.
When the marrow shifted.
When the cobalt candlestick
rolled across the floor.
When you hissed and spit.
This is it.
When I sat with my hands, with my face.

*

Come to me wizard of loveliness,
come, witch of refusal,
with your faerie wing,
your harp that sings,
your black nails and
pails of black water.
I am your dousable flame,
your night-mist rake.
I am the listlessness
conjured by your very breath.
Dangle my strings.
Dance in your fine shoes,
your fine, heirloom shoes.
Tease the reeling moon and toss away
the brook’s moonlit cackle.
Her wounds are not our wounds.

*

Gnarled knuckle of the apple’s root
has popped even this brick up.
I stumble. Do you remember, once
upon another time, downtown, outside
a jazz bar: there were so many roads
heading off in every direction on the spin
of a compass—who could choose?
Roads that ended in carnivals, in lands where men
had two heads and women spoke
in tongues of fire. You chose gold
and we ran through fields of corn—
all the cornrow teeth chattering and chuckling.
We were sick with the joy of it,
gasping the laughter of our thick air. No one told us
no one in Oz is mortal.

*

In a land of emerald and adamant
the dark resilience
of a rubber gasket
is precious indeed.

*

Meteors, I believe, have done similar damage
to the moon. My feet
scrape through the shards of these streets.
(They cut him into tiny pieces
and threw him in the well.
But each piece remained alive.
He’s there still.)

Every door is hinged.
Every pot has bubbled over.
Every child has stopped crying.

And crows and crows are everywhere.
And what they’re enjoying is viscous and red.
And what they’re saying is: Yes,
this is our hour.
I am a coward.

*

Wind over the roofs, over the fields
weed-wild. All the lollipops dissolved in rain.
A stink of molasses blows through.
The roadsign said Somewhere or
Elsewhere or Stay here and I thanked him,
walking south
by southwest, I think. Pumpkins
ripen in the window boxes,
tightening their vines.
Every house is painted blue.
The road has ended at this.
I have only these brown shoes.

*

Home was never a gray farmhouse,
a pig sty full of pig shit,
a horse’s piss, a prig of a woman
on a bicycle killing my dog.
Home was a human puzzle. Four arms
entwined, a whirlwind
lifting a feather bed, a naked

waltz across the floorboards, fireplace
mad with colored paper and lighter fluid.
Home was where the hearth was,
where the heart—
where the hear—
the he—home was
O—
Me.
Here . . .

*

We have spilled our share of wine and wax,
plundered the rainbow’s cache of gold.
I have only these two worn shoes,
the stub-end of a broomstick.

Jeff Crandall Commentary

2009-11-30T19:42:00.001-08:00

Jugular Ghazal

Peter Pereira had given me a copy of Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English which had languished unread on my shelf for many years. Bored one night, I plucked it down and opened it up, to my delight and surprise. The editor Agha Shahid Ali and I seem to have the same sensibilities. I quickly knew that I wanted to rise to the challenge of writing one. And a correct ghazal at that (pronounced, as he tells us, "ghuzzle, the gh sound . . . excavated near unnoticeably from deep in the throat").

I don’t remember how/when the sonic line "--ow I kill you" came to me, but it did, and it revisited me every night before I went to bed for a good week. So finally I sat down at the computer and pounded out "Jugular Ghazal."

It is absolutely not a "correct" ghazal, because it violates one of the main tenets of the form: each couplet must be "autonomous, thematically and emotionally complete in itself." My enslavement to narrative has betrayed me here. But the poem does follow the correct rhyme scheme with the qafia (--ow) and radif (“I kill you”), surpasses the minimum five couplets, and evokes an "atmosphere of sadness and grief" while reflecting the form’s "dedication to love and the beloved", admittedly here on a rather creepy level.

Losing Oz

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot was a stultifying mystery to me for years, until the day I was emotionally devastated by the betrayal of my “life partner” (his words, not mine). Then each line of that poem stung with a depth of pain that I fully understood, as if arrows of Eros were being yanked out of my flesh. This is my version of the same experience, without the brilliant help of Ezra Pound (dang it!).

Jeff Crandall is a poet and glass artist living in Seattle.

Ryan W. Bradley

2009-11-30T19:27:00.000-08:00

Everywhere I Look is Pornography

I can't show you--
but outside something's happening,
out the window right now,
it's like an emergency
it's vibrant
it's not at all
like getting drunk with your in-laws
or puking on the lawn
in the morning,
it's more like naked women
in the sunlight, dancing,
but that's not it.

Death is Driving this Car

Oh baby,
you said -- oh baby
death is on your tail
like a license plate,

death is stuck
on you
like tread
on a tire.

Oh baby oh,

I said,
it's your turn
to drive.

Ryan W. Bradley Commentary

2009-11-30T19:22:00.000-08:00

Nothing quite brings out my "three drinks in at the bar" personality quite like reading Bukowski, which I tend to do in phases. In everyday life I put a lot of value on amusing people. There's nothing better than entertaining, making people laugh, but a lot of my writing tends to take more serious or somber turns. When I get in my bar mode, though, my smartass-ness starts to shine through. "Everywhere I Look is Pornography" and "Death is Driving this Car" are both by-products of this mood, which seems to ebb and flow with the year, coming and going like a transient hooker longing for my attention and money.

Ryan W. Bradley has fronted a punk band, done construction in the Arctic Circle, and now manages an independent children's bookstore. He received his MFA from Pacific University and his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a myriad of publications including The Oregonian, Third Wednesday, Sir! Magazine, and PANK. He lives in Southern Oregon with his wife and two sons and blogs at ryanwbradley.blogspot.com

Issue 1: Index

2009-06-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

June 2009

Molly Gaudry
commentary

Sean Patrick Hill
commentary

Sean Lovelace
commentary

Luca Penne
commentary

Meg Pokrass
commentary

Troy Urquhart
commentary

Rob Woodard
commentary

Rob Woodard

2009-06-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

PORT OF LONG BEACH BLUES

“This day has been so awesome,”
the last afternoon sunshine reminds me,
just before it turns into sunset—

“Why do you want to ask more of it than the moment?
Why do you want to ruin it with art?”

And as I ride my bike down the beach path looking out into
the cooling yellow sky, the green-brown ocean, and the gray
outer workings of the Port of Long Beach
I agree that art would definitely be a bad thing now

But I also know that that’s exactly what I’m going to do, go home
and fuck things up like this

It’s just who I am still

ORANGE CRUSH

For Gary Snyder

It’s hard to be an orange tree in Southern California
these days—

the community of groves all but gone
and so many of the remaining individuals locked
behind backyard cinderblocks,
alone, cut off
from friends, community,
encouragement, love …

But there are whispers amongst the survivors,
wild dreams moving throughout all
the Diaspora—

Notes and thoughts passed thru windblown leaf
and along the voices and wing beats
of grateful birds and insects;
propositions of alliance
with lemon cousins, cumquats,
and even pomegranate and avocado
joining in:

visions of cracked pavement
and houses tumbled down
row after row of brethren
sunshine and frost
good years and bad
but most importantly
space and freedom
freedom and space …

Plans of a long future like the brief past
when they were all brought here
to create a scented sky,
dream silhouettes in the
the marine dawn and
desert dusk,
and the propaganda
of abundance and health
that nearly destroyed
them all

Rob Woodard Commentary

2009-06-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

"Port of Long Beach" came out of my day-to-day life. When I find that I've been sitting too long at the computer, or that I just can't stand teaching anthropology and biology for one second longer, I get on my bike and head for the wilds of Long Beach, which usually means a jaunt along the coast. The stupid stinking gray-veined harbor looms like a polluting Goliath over this town. Any Long Beach poet who doesn't incorporate it at least occasionally into his or her work, as the saying goes, is probably a liar or a fool or both.

On "Orange Crush:" Southern California has been founded on lies: invasive plant and animal species, Hollywood films, and the belief that all the water we've stolen from the Owens Valley, Arizona, and Northern California is native to this place and therefore we deserve its bounty. The citrus trees of this region lie at the heart of this scam. This is partially their story, but mostly a fantasy: one lie triumphing over the others, mainly because it's more attractive than its competition. Oh yeah, I sent this poem to Gary Snyder and he said he liked it. This vindicates me as a poet and a man.

Rob Woodard was born in Anaheim, California, back when giants walked the earth and was raised mostly in the nearby Long Beach area, where he still lives today. He is the author of the novel Heaping Stones (2005 Burning Shore Press). His novels What Love Is and Backwaters of Beauty and his poetry book King of Long Beach are trapped in different stages of the endless publication process. His poems and other scribblings can be found all over the web. In a recent interview, Rob said he'd rather be his generation's Brian Wilson than its Charles Bukowski. Though no one really understood what he meant by this, soon after, Bukowski fans burned down his house and raped his girlfriend, just to be on the safe side.

Troy Urquhart

2009-06-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

Where We Might Be Welcome

And I start to think of doors as boundaries, as membranes,
as the places in the walls of cells where there is a keeping out or
letting in,
places where a man would stand sturdy and helmeted
demanding with a weapon in his hand: who goes there?

And we are made to answer in this ritual of self-identification
the threat now veiled behind the collusion of neighborhood watches,
behind the benign garb of genteel doormen who stand sentry with
jacket, clipboard, phone instead of armor, sign, and spear.

I start to think of doors as keeping in or letting out, each of them
a border where a dog would whimper, scratch, and whine,
tail tucked and then suddenly freed when at last you start for the door,
free the latch, and swing this wall of wood and glass and lock away.

As a line of leaving and arriving, a keeping of this space from that
that marks the moment of change between with you and without.
Or as a place of naming, where all must be identified to peepholes,
windows, intercoms that ask of every man approaching from the street:

who are you, sir? And there we stand, waiting at or in this margin,
made to speak, to name ourselves, to give our given names
before the threshold, the brink of a place
where we might be welcome.

I think of doors as a space of fitting in

keys, turning tumblers: the friction of bolt sliding toward free,

the release of home and welcome, the irony of dead bolts

demanding of their living lords: who goes there?

Or as a space of signs, of demands and declarations:
open or closed, no soliciting, no admittance, employees only,
men, women, please call again, ladies, gentlemen, not an exit,
or, sometimes, welcome.

Or as the keeping of a secret, a hand cupped around an ear,
containing voice within the walls of lobe and drum,

an enclosure that shuts all others out
and leaves us to the privacy of night and morning

when we wake before the world, the world outside of us
and us outside of time's demands, a moment when there is only this:
the curve of your hand, the curve of my ear,

your voice leaning in, saying I love you,
but I know that what you really mean is

you are welcome here.

Troy Urquhart Commentary

2009-06-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

In 2007, I took part in a panel investigating the issue of tolerance. I was writing about the prisoners held by the United States at Guántanamo Bay, Cuba, and after the panel had ended, I found myself reading Jacques Derrida's Of Hospitality.

About the threshold, Derrida writes: "Desire measures time since its abolition in the stranger's entering movement: the stranger, here the awaited guest, is not only someone to whom you say 'come,' but 'enter,' enter without waiting, make a pause in our home without waiting, hurry up and come in, 'come inside,' 'come within me,' not only toward me, but within me: occupy me, take place in me, which means, by the same token, also take my place, don't content yourself with coming to me or 'into my home.' Crossing the threshold is entering and not only approaching or coming."

Beside the desk in my study, there is a door, framed in wood but mostly glass. Some nights, I leave it open.

Troy Urquhart lives in central Florida and works at Montverde Academy, an independent boarding school where he teaches writing and American literature, mostly to students who aren't American. His work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in places like Tulip, Hobble Creek Review, The Corduroy Mtn., and Willows Wept Review. His chapbook Springtime Sea Bathing is scheduled to appear later this year from Carl Annarummo's small press, The Greying Ghost. He sometimes keeps a blog at http://notesfromthewonderground.blogspot.com/.

Meg Pokrass

2009-06-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

Taco

The guy called Taco,
his T-shirt
said Hazardous Roosters
loved skinny dipping,
bagged tangerines from his tree
that night we made for

Lake Cachuma,
his eyes tipping up,
long tadpoles-
a scar glowing a moon
around his belly.
How'd you do that? I asked

"now,"(he said laughing)
ladling water,
with my high pink heels.

Dr. V.

My foot is darker than the ocean.
It's turned blue - He promises
to stop the pain and I picture

him in a world
of shark's egg sacs,
he rolls them toward me-
unbreakable promises,
and there is nothing
to do but keep them warm.

When he calls
he sounds tired, blue gauze
covers his telephone voice.
I want to soothe him,
but that's not my role.

Bones and blue cartilage,
I can't help shivering,
picturing his office-
the sterile needle
between my toes
like a gift.

Meg Pokrass Commentary

2009-06-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

For me poetry is best written in dreams, finding that language. Or when I'm just waking up or exhausted at night - and less aware of making sense or being logical.

Meg Pokrass 's story "Leaving Hope Ranch" in 971 Menu was chosen for Wigleaf 's Top 50, 2009. "Lost and Found," in elimae, was chosen in May 2009 by Storyglossia for Short Story Month showcase. Her many stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gigantic, 3AM, The Pedestal, Toronto Quarterly, Mud Luscious, Juked, and many others. Meg serves as a staff editor for SmokeLong Quarterly, and is currently mentoring with Dzanc's Creative Writing Sessions. Her blog, with prompts and writing exercises can be found here.

Luca Penne

2009-06-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Green

My green grins across the room: a nasty grin, a grim day, even with the sun. Give me something to quiet my nerves—not this sudden flare, perhaps a green tea, though caffeine often makes me jittery.

Green is not spring; it is murderous and a little yellow in the heart. Green makes me see red. Yes, I envy green and the pleasures it gives. Give me the green, I say, and forget all the talk. Once green touches your fingertips, you can smell it for weeks and no amount of scrubbing can wash it from your skin.

Flutes come back with their slurred green whistles. The green band limps down the block. An SUV explodes green. The country is going green except for coal-burning plants, except for thousands of chimneys piping smoke to the heavens and millions of cars sputtering exhaust at the ozone. Green grins like a grinch, waiting to sucker another sucker.

Stop complaining, she says and pushes me away, horny as a toad. Now the sun disappears, and the sky rains cold hard cash.

Luca Penne Commentary

2009-06-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

I took a one-day workshop with a poet named Jeff Friedman, and he assigned us all to write a poem based on a color. Since it was spring, green naturally came to mind. I wrote a first draft very quickly and then in my next drafts green began to take on other meanings. I'm out of work again. I earn a living as a carpenter on projects like building barns. The great money rip off by the banks and Wall Street has made it impossible for me to earn a decent living. I can no longer afford to pay rent on my one-bedroom apartment so I've had to move in with a friend of my mother's. I guess that's why the cold hard cash image comes in at the end. I discovered that ending in the final draft. As the poem progressed, the color just kind of opened up for me. In successive drafts, I was able to find the rhythm, the music of the color. That’s important because I want my prose poems to be poems, not just stories.

Luca Penne runs a ski lift and builds barns in the summer, when there are barns to be built.

Sean Lovelace

2009-06-02T06:50:00.000-07:00

Meaning of Life # 27

“Words and eggs must be handled with care.”
Anne Sexton

Coffee drunk, vodka drunk, vitamin taken, and the children still curled like question marks in their beds, she meets a dog who comes to her door at six in the morning. The dog compliments her flowering shrubs, the tidy doormat; then says, “In this envelope is written your death-day. Like your birthday, only different. Would you like me to open it?” She feels the sun on her skin, tilts her head over shimmering rooftops, to the clouds: tungsten and pink and fanning out, a cheekbone’s blush. She shuts the door and returns to the kitchen to write a poem. She does this by planting potatoes in the coffee pot. She adds onion bulbs. The onions irritate the potatoes’ eyes; and words spring forth: spatula, mirror, blue dress, sky.

Meaning of Life # 22

Guardedly, but not too. Allow yourself Tuesdays, to be sob-shaken. If, during full sunlight, you see a fruit bat or raccoon, avoid. Follow the news, though never daily. Same with microbrews. A war rages, against imagination. Covert tattoos. Dogs crossing freeways. Thick air, clouds as ribs, ribcages. Honeycomb. The way bees construct perfect octagons. No straightedge, no ruler. Be careful the sting; the snares you set. Striking, a term for beauty, protest, cluster bombs, or curveball lunge. Exercise often. Your heart and mind. Your ability to recognize: none of this is practice. Take long walks, but never within shopping malls. If you must leap, do so. Dive. Surface. Breathe. Think high and far. On the other hand…Listen: if you act on secret desire, or do not—you will embrace regret. But try to be kind. To live as Ghandi or Jesus. MLK, RFK, JFK. Or John Lennon. And you will be shot down in the streets. Life is hard. So beware three things: numbers, and words.

Sean Lovelace Commentary

2009-06-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

I would say #27 came from the tension between family life and artistic life. Usually I drink when I feel this presence. This time I wrote a poem. I also think Sexton had great hair. I wish I had been her neighbor.

# 22. Well, I hesitate to discuss this one. Advice implies you know something. I know nothing. But this poem summarizes the best of the nothing I know. Feel free to ignore.

Rose Metal Press will release Sean Lovelace's flash fiction chapbook, How Some People Like Their Eggs, in summer 2009. He blogs at seanlovelace.com

Sean Patrick Hill

2009-06-02T06:20:00.000-07:00

Self-Portrait as George Gisze, Merchant

Nulla sine merore voluptas. 1532.

The countenance which you perceive
Is an accurate image
Of Gisze,

He says of my ritratto,
But won’t hint if it’s flattery
Or flattening.

Age: 34. The visage slants
An already impossible angle.
There is wear along my collar.

My moneybox slips towards a dip
In a warped fabric, just one further
Chaotic pattern or failed commission.

And always this peculiar glass vase
Of carnations precariously placed
Too near both edge and elbow.

I can hardly balance the claustrophobic cartography,
These books on slim shelves. “One’s tools
Of the trade,” all silver bells and tin whistles.

I’m ready to retire and let my hair grow.
‘No pleasure without sorrow,’
Signed Gisze.

Hard to believe I paid for this.
But always that cool countenance.
I’m 35 now, and what debt. What debt.

Sean Patrick Hill Commentary

2009-06-02T06:18:00.000-07:00

The ekphrastic poem "Self-Portrait as George Gisze, Merchant" comes from the 1532 oil-on-wood portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger. What was stunning about the portrait was simply the fact that the subject looks more or less like me. Or, exactly like me, depending on who you ask - and if you ask my wife, who first showed me the painting, she'll side with absolute likeness.

What also struck me was the Latin motto seen printed on the piece of paper hung on the wall, which I used as the epigraph, and is translated as "No pleasure without sorrow." This is a classic motif of the time, the worldly success presented with a reminder that it is ultimately temporary, fragile.

Several oddities are present, too; note the strange dip in the fabric to the lower right, almost an optical illusion, a kind of black hole into which all of his "tools of the trade" are slipping. Also, that glass vase really is "precariously placed," as if a single movement would send it to the floor, wrecked. And then, of course, there is the look of melancholy, almost. It is very subtle, but present.

All this was how I felt as I was attending my MA program at Portland State University (and this poem was part of my thesis). I felt like what I was doing was ultimately futile, that though I'd had some success it felt largely empty. That, and at 35 all I could think of was the debt I'd accumulated from tuition.

Craft-wise, I have to say I really like the line "There is wear along my collar." Why? Because it's just so simple, but to me it speaks the proverbial volumes. James Wright was quoted as saying -and I paraphrase - that the only way he could write was flatly. Yet, this is what I learned from Wright - the flat statement is far more poetic than your typical flighty line. Thus, I tried to make the poem (aside from a few embellishments) as flat-toned and sharp as I could.

The poem really is a "Self-Portrait" projected onto Gisze. I like the idea of that kind of substantial art, a long-lasting work that preserves a long-lasting human feeling of futility. Not that I necessarily feel that way now, but I can be sure it haunts me at times.

Sean Patrick Hill lives in Portland, Oregon, for now, and is a soon-to-be father. New poems will be appearing in New York Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, Diode, and Copper Nickel.

Molly Gaudry

2009-06-02T06:15:00.000-07:00

gratitude

is a sort of cousin to the feeling of the squeezing of a heart

think of our long summers and how we romped all over and through those groves and brought back over the years how many baskets of citruses we halved and squeezed until their juices flowed

ran down our chins

we could have macerated but we squeezed instead

when you left I gave up citrus

turned to the task of sewing for I could not bear the taking of a knife to cut a thing in two

to milk it like the tearing of a leaf along its veins until white beads emerge

could not bear

to bleed it like a cow or deer

and the idea of binding two or more parts to make a whole thing

to put together

stitch by stitch

became a way to remind that there are things in this world for which I could be grateful

which is not to say that my heart did not feel strained

or that what remained was not pulp

mission

when you left

I gave up the piano too

the actual direction of my life being a mystery until then

I suppose you could call what followed a mission

I sold everything

put the money in a purse

and threw it from the window

after

I closed and locked the window

reached to touch the carafe on the table

bent to smell the red roses from our anniversary

and slipped away

from then on I worked as a seamstress and lived in other peoples’ homes

courage

it is a series of choices we make that determine whether we are leaning toward steady

cool

or gracious

or whether we will be remarkable

because we have found courage

these answers are buoyant in the air

same as the smells of the open stomachs of the lambs after I slaughtered them

is it any surprise that after our return to the modern world and after those red roses for our anniversary those red roses in that carafe those red roses’ petals scattered on our bed with pink and white candles and how red roses red roses red roses and always with the roses and why not ever just a simple red leaf

but that was always the way with you

so was it any surprise that I turned to sewing

and eventually to making lace

and many years later to the making of fine Italian lace

bouquet

after a particularly bad storm I went outside and brought in all the flowers whose heads hung at crooked angles and with leftover thread that my employer could not possibly have missed mended those broken necks

it took all night

and in the morning I was exhausted

but that was the most beautiful bouquet I have ever seen

and there was not a red rose in it

Molly Gaudry Commentary

2009-06-02T06:10:00.000-07:00

These poems are excerpted from my forthcoming novella-in-verse, we take me apart (Mud Luscious Press 2009). Now in its sixth- and final - draft stages, this manuscript has undergone substantial revisions and bears no resemblance (but for its title) to the original. Drafts one through five, however, got me here - gave me this speaker’s voice (which was initially inspired by the narrator of Lydia Millet’s novel, My Happy Life), and brought me to this particular way of structuring the text: if this were more traditional prose, then where there should be commas, periods, or question marks are where I instead insert line breaks. The comma breaks, I feel, lend the “prose” a breathless, rushed quality, while also retaining space for pause; and the period and question mark breaks, I think, are here to jar the reader from the breathlessness so as to invite her or him to stop every so often, to return, re-read, and reflect. Overall, I like the speed with which the prose can be read; and an added benefit (in terms of character development), as a result of forgoing traditional exposition, is that although this speaker exists to tell her story within a certain time frame (yes, there is a narrative arc here), there is no way of knowing for sure how much time passes from this novella’s beginning to its end - a minute, perhaps, or less, or, on the other hand, maybe decades.

I am both nervous about admitting what I have to say next, and excited by it: this draft operates entirely as a word-association project. (Early drafts’ narratives felt too forced, and I wanted to free myself of “having” to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. I wanted the writing -the actual sitting down to write every day - to determine the narrative. I had the speaker’s voice, I had the emotional core of why she was telling her story, and I had the structure: all I needed was a constraint that, oddly enough, could free. So I turned to Gertrude Stein and Tender Buttons. I had thirty-six chapters, so I made a list with one through thirty-six on the left-hand side. I opened Tender Buttons, and I started writing the nouns and adjectives, in order and as they appeared, vertically on my list. The first word on the number-one line was “carafe,” the first word on the number-two line was “blind,” and the first word on the number-three line was “glass,” and so on. The idea was to use all the words in Tender Buttons, but by the time I got through “Food,” I had over fifty words on each line. I stopped with “less,” the final noun in “Food.” (Perhaps one day I will write a sequel inspired by “Rooms.”) In any case, I will share with you here the words from Tender Buttons that inspired these four poems (which are all on my list’s fifth line): in the poem “gratitude,” the words are cousin, squeezing, and cut; in “mission,” the words are piano, actual, direction, and purse; in “courage,” the words are cool, gracious, leaning, steady, remarkable, sewing, and lace; and in the poem “bouquet,” no words were used; “bouquet” emerged, like so many other poems in this project, as a response to the others.

My final note: these four sections do not appear consecutively in we take me apart, and I like to think that a reader could take any random sampling of the sections and put them together to create a cohesive, self-contained storyline. The multi-textuality of this final draft is exactly the type of organic byproduct that I hoped would occur when I, in desperation, asked Tender Buttons to rescue and guide me away from what I had when I knew it was not working.

Molly Gaudry publishes other writers' books at Willows Wept Press, edits Willows Wept Review, co-edits Twelve Stories, and is an associate editor for Keyhole Magazine. Find her online at http://mollygaudry.blogspot.com/.

YB =....???

2009-06-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Preferred pronunciation: "yib," "yeb," "yab," "yub," "why bee."*

Possible origins:

1. Yb. Ytterbium. Atomic number 70.

A malleable element with a silvery lustre, which was discovered in Ytterby, Sweden. This is a village in the Stockholm Archipelago. Many rare earth elements have been discovered there. Above is picture of a Ytterby quary.

2. yottabyte.

A unit of computer storage equal to one septillion bytes.

3. Young Buck.

AKA David Darnell Brown.

4. Youngstown Belt Railroad.

I don't know anything about the railroad, but Youngstown has produced four world champion boxers, including Kelly Pavlik and Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini. Earnie Shavers also fought out of Youngstown.

5. Yogi Bear.

6. Yogi Berra.

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

7. The initials taken from the previous name for this journal, which I discarded. *

*are rumored to be true.

Submission Guidelines

2009-06-01T05:25:00.000-07:00

YB has moved to a brand new site, here.

Issues 1-3 will still be archived here, but for issues 4 onwards, and updated submission guidelines, go to the new site.

Thanks!