Spoonful: A Gathering of Stone Soup Poets

2011-12-31T13:33:00.000-08:00

Photo by Edward S. Gault

Issue #4

Introduction by Chad Parenteau

Tribute to Mike Amado

Joanna Nealon Performs Two Poems

"Path of A Possum" by Gordon Marshall

Poems by

Greg Ford	Timothy Gager	Lo Galluccio	Melissa Guillet
Coleen T. Houlihan	John Landry	Shannon Mcginnis	Chad Parenteau
Erin Reardon	Su Red	Thea K. Scott	Luis Lazaro Tijerina
James Van Looy	Derek JG Williams	Rafael Woolf	Bios & Acks

2011-01-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

Photo by CC Arshagra and Marshall

In the past, we've done tributes as appendages to existing issues. In honor of the man who arguably helped make the poetry scene exist, this issue is not going to be the case.

Some of these poems have been heard on the open mike. Some were written in the early days of Jack Powers' death, some later. Some have been printed already. We're going to house to as many of them as we can.

I feel a greater sense of responsibility towards Stone Soup's past and it's continuation. Stone Soup friend Michael will be accepting anything he can for the Jack Powers/Stone Soup library at the University of Buffalo. In 2011, Stone Soup plans to submit to him, among other things, CD's with copies of past issues of Spoonful.

There will be new efforts to carry the memory of Jack Powers into the 21st century and the digital age he never got to participate in. This is among the first of them.

Submissions Welcome

2010-12-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

Contribute

Spoonful focuses on work primarily from"Stone Soup Poets"--poets that have contributed to our venue at any point in time--but we will be open to outside contributors as well.

Furthermore, Spoonful will maintain loose definition of what constitutes a Stone Soup Poet. It could be a regular open mike contributor at our weekly readings, a former regular or feature who has moved away from the Boston area, someone who is interested in featuring at Stone Soup, or just a regular reader of this journal. Please send with your submissions, a short cover letter detailing your credentials (or lack thereof).

Spoonful is unable to pay for accepted work at this time.

Current Deadline

Issue #5 is already in progress. Poets and artists have the opportunity to submit between now and July 1st.

Submission Guidelines

Spoonful currently accepts by email submission only. Please send 3-5 poems of various forms and length as Word attachments with the word "Submission: Poetry" in the subject heading to stonesouppoetry_at_yahoo.com.

Short works of fiction and non-fiction will also be considered. We are particularly looking for essays that touch on Stone Soup's history. Please send an inquiry email describing your prose piece and its length before sending it with the word "Proposed Longer Piece" in the subject heading.

Artwork is also being accepted. Illustrators, photographers, and artists of any kind are encouraged to send up to 10 JPEG submissions to the same address with the words "Submission: Artwork" in the subject heading to stonesouppoetry_at_yahoo.com. All titles (if any) should be part of the piece's JPEG file name.

Important

With your submissions, please also include as an attachment document a 2-5 sentence bio (longer bios will be edited at the editors' discretion and without notice). Also, please include any past publication credits for any and all of the poems submitted.

A Note On Prior Publication

Our editorial eye will be toward unpublished work but we will considered previously published poems on the basis of merit and/or the previous source (a defunct web journal, a prelude to a larger, new project, etc).

We encourage that you be forthright with a poem's publication history, if any. Spoonful retains the right to reject and remove from our site, without notice, works with previous publication credits intentionally omitted by the author.

Holding Work

Due to our small staff and resources, Spoonful generally does not carry over unaccepted work from one reading period to another. In other words, if the work is rejected for the Winter issue, it will normally not be carried over to be considered for the Spring issue. On the rare occasion that a poem is carried over to be considered for the next reading period, the poet will always be notified. Otherwise, unaccepted submissions will be deleted before the next reading period begins. A poet is always welcome to resubmit any previously rejected work to be considered for a new reading period.

Poem by Chad Parenteau

2010-12-18T09:11:00.000-08:00

Photo by CC Arshagra and Marshall

Jack

Between
one Catholic
to another
too many
take burdens
for granted
the crosses
round necks
too silly
to straddle
on shoulders.

Trouble role
playing favorite
savior is
God lets you,
surely dieing
for some
one’s sins
if only
your own.

Poem by Chad Parenteau

2010-08-14T21:17:00.000-07:00

Photo by Su Red

My Father Defies Death to Write Me A Letter 35
Years Later Whether or Not I Made It Past 64

Did you ever figure out
why you picked up cigarettes
at my apartments
by the slum house,
its jungle lawn catching
garbage tossed from windows?
Do you know I gave haven
in the state I would bite back
in the town I didn’t even want you
to marry into? Did you surmise
I was teaching you
to squeeze stone from stone
to make blood?
You wouldn’t be first to beg God
for blasphemies.

Do you think I’d chose
my dream house in Cambridge,
or even Franklin,
half-a-college town? It was Bellingham,
Massachusetts for Peter’s sake.
The town’s motto:
“Not The Bellingham in Washington.”
Why choose there for
my wife's museum quality home
where the police stop by
to share wine on our deck
and give confession.

Admit it.
You thought about my tenants
my driveway with cigarette butts
I sent you to pick up
the day you threw out
the heavy-breathing poets in your audience,
mummy-shuffling to compete
for a woman’s knee.
And your jobs,
your causes.
How many years did you spend
in position, running to from toppling
Roman-style columns
before you could stop
running,
before pride gasped This will hold.

Psst.

Remember the car crash I survived,
the self-made compact they pried me from,
the newspaper report I kept closer to my heart
than any campaign clipping.
Have you learned it yet about our family?
We're promoted to captains in our first shitstorm,
Amidst gossip, people have been fitting
you for straightjackets and coffins
since junior high.
Make these your hulls and sails,
pirate them to ride your own.

About The Journal

2009-12-30T18:01:00.000-08:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry was founded by Boston poet and activist Jack Powers in 1971, with weekly readings held in over thirteen different locations. In the course of its history, an estimated 100 titles were published under the Stone Soup name, from journals to poetry books by various authors. With the rising costs for Stone Soup to maintain a regular venue (currently at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery in Cambridge), Spoonful is taking advantage of the Internet and the generosity of Blogger to release a regular Internet tribute to the myriad of voices that contributed to Stone Soup throughout it's existence, with an eye towards possible print specials in the future.

Spoonful is always looking for volunteers to help with the journal (editing, reading, etc). Send all inquiries to stonesouppoetry_at_yahoo.com.

Contributor Links (In Progress)

2009-12-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

This page will serve as a way for Spoonful readers to access and/or contact poets from the journal. We will continue to add to this list with each subsequent issue. It is suggested that when contacting any of the contributors that you write "Spoonful" in the subject header.

Spoonful appreciates the contributions of longer standing members of the Stone Soup Poetry reading series who are not as connected with the internet yet still contribute to the online journal. Therefore, we have linked their names to the Stone Soup email address. All messages will be forwarded to the respective contributor.

A

B

Anne Brudevold (1)

C

Sam Cha (2)

Vincent Ciaccio (2)

James Conant (0, 1, 2)

D

Sarah N. Dipity (2)

E

F

G

Lo Gallucio (0)

Edward S. Gault (1, 2)

Steve Glines (1)

Marc Goldfinger (0, 1)

H

Walter Howard (1)

Doug Holder (0, 2)

Coleen T. Houlihan (0, 1, 2)

I

J

K

L

M

Gordon Marshall (0, 1, 2)

N

O

P

Chad Parenteau (0, 1)

Jack Powers (0, 1, 2)

Bill Perrault (0, 1, 2)

Deborah M. Priestly (0, 1, 2)

Q

R

Lisa Reade (1)

Sue Red (0)

S

Jade Sylvan (1, 2)

T

Ian Thal (0)

Adam Thielker (0)

U

V

W

Carol Weston (0, 1)

Cindy Williams (0, 1, 2)

X

Y

Z

Poem by Shannon Mcginnis

2009-06-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

Prayer Coven

This faith passed palm to palm like the salt
secret of bread, leavened and unleavened,
a tapestry of murmurs interwoven with tears
and fingers twined, like an ivy of strength.
So secret this gift of deep commune,
this power of prayer circles full of women
who understand the spiral down and up,
these adamant whispers, Amens,
desperate pleadings over husbands and children
empty pots and aching legs
reap answers so clearly drawn,
men have felt compelled to bridle them,
citing folly of temptress and witch.

Surely ghosts in the wombs of old women leap
at the salutation of the maiden,
knowing her secret promise,
and will call her blessed, bear her up in the circle
against judgment unwarranted.

Deep prayer pacing in dark night hours
while her household sleeps, unknowing and unconcerned,
cycles of blood and babies, secrets of bread and salt:
These are the teachings she keeps close to the womb
and is rewarded with the crisp sweet voice
of God in his signs and soft breathed still whispers
that men are too busy to hear.
There is medicine in the salt of her palms and tears,
potent with a knowing passed crone to maiden and on.

The archetypes she bears are too many:
White revival fan
busy over the bosom heaving with thanks and praise,
upraised palms over lips swollen and spoken dry with Pentacost,
full warm moist palms lifting the young to dance in spirit filled joy –
living stones
raising the promises of tomorrow
with arms made strong by the weight of their children,
not once temptresses, only ever the deceived innocent,
offering the sweet fruit out of love
and a wish to share these rare pure moments of knowing
with he who walked beside her and her God.

The blood and pain that brought her children
were even still sweet –
repentance and redemption at once.
That threshold of life her child passes over
is marked with the blood of her God’s covenant

And she teaches her daughters to listen
And pray.

For Mike Amado

2009-06-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

Photo by Chad Parenteau

Amaretto

White metal fury
Diva drying tears
Sound mime

Pantomime of Pan
Singer at cemetery
Gates, Keats

Was on your side
And Wilde,
Wilde was, too.

--Gordon Marshall

The Holy Fool

Tapping congas in a red shirt,
he brought music to all of us
from ordinary life
where magic does not rule.

Non-listeners did not challenge him
when he uttered his poems
directly from an open heart.
He was wiser than his years.

A transplant failed
and years in dialysis taught him
how to blur out time
when needed,
how to fly like an eagle
above his body.

He brought me back to youth
when animals and gypsies caught fire
and those who witnessed
became Holy Fools.

He was one, too,
turning ruin to beauty,
his mortal pain soaring
on careful wings.

--Carolyn Gregory

Praise (For Mike)

You would have wanted us to praise the golden sun
That shines its way through white glazed branches of winter
Singing hymns to the coyote, bear and possum

You would have wanted us to sing, dance and write poetry
With our hearts and souls, making medicine from music
And producing music from life, too surreal to memorize

I remember how you made me some earrings, rainbow
And you braided them just so and you mentioned
That most Native American people made things with their hands
They were beautiful reminding me of the wheel of life with feathers
Wings that fly without restraint into the expression of your being

So instead of saying good-bye to you, Mike, I want to welcome
Your spirit into the bright, welcoming clouds of heaven
Where the most glorious light is there neither to guide or define us
It just blesses our being with ultimate love,
And you would have wanted that too.

--Deborah Priestly

mike amado
jan 2, 2009

mike wrote, “no galaxy is malformed:
even trampled flowers pose with dignity.
I have shed all hostility to fire…
an arrow of light.”

we hold mike in our hearts, especially jack.
while we converse, jack drives mile after mile,
making sure mike is wherever the bards are.
their friendship a proverbial circle

when all else burns down to embers
and all the poems the piles of poems
and all the people who read and published
mikes’ work, so we might never lose

our own worth and I, like you, loved mike’s
tinted glasses, his black rock and roll shirts
his smoke signals, drum beats, his constant
bottle of green juice

his patience amid the ridiculous indifferences
the predictions of six months or six years to live.
mike’s courage like an invisible shield, protects everyone
he knows. the spoken word warrior rebuilt the pyramids

healing himself in a sick world
his smile slips past me into eternity
the second day of the new year

if only to say how brave, mike wrote,
“I know I walk with death, three blocks away
or three steps behind. shadow on my shoulder,
breath on my neck, he sneaks around in my note book.”

mike wrote, “ with nothing to fear, I jump out of myself,
fill the grand canyon, feel the vastness envelope me
until “me” is greater than myself. I’m not as big as I thought.
I persist in human form, an arrow of light”

mike wrote, “with the impact of gentle down
gratitude spirals outward.” and I, like you, loved mike

--Irene Koronas

Spirit

Live
as much as you can
Laugh
as much as you can
Sing
as much as you can
Play
as much as you can

Make your voice heard
Make your music heard
‘Cause you only got one chance
to live in this world
Make your note last
and permeate the sound
Make your laughter last
and you’ll never really leave
Make your voice last
and you’ll be immortal
like Elvis or Beethoven
The clouds will dance forever
The music will sing forever
until the last breath
of anyone alive

We know you sang
‘cause we heard your true song
Rhythm reciprocates
the dance in our memories
Don’t forget to laugh
Be joyful
Be youthful
Be alive
We only want to hear the rainbows
when they sing in the sky.

--Shannon O’Connor

Wait No Longer

Waiting for death, but without resignation,
Conjuring magic with bold syncopation,
A no-holds bard brought heavy-metal thunder
Down on demons and tore asunder
Worship of a plastic conformist choir
That tries to build a New Roman Empire.
Adding his part to the Muse’s symphony,
Wistful being defied ultimate malady.
Keeping his spark will make us stronger.
Reach for life; let’s wait no longer.

--Chris Robbins

2009-06-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

Stone Soup Issue #4

Editor
Chad Parenteau

Assistant Editor
Lynne Sticklor

Consulting Editors
Margaret Nairn
Jack Powers

Lead Artists
James Conant
Cindy Williams

Contributing Artists
Jane Chakravarthy
Edward S. Gault
Laurel Lambert
Bill Perrault
Michael E. Quigg
Su Red
Samantha Scott-Heron
Annie Wyndham

Jane Chakravarthy is a visual artist and poet. She enjoys reading books, writing poetry, painting, drinking coffee and copious amounts of red wine, not always in that order... She also enjoys vegan carrot cake! More of her work can be found at janechakravarthy.com

James Conant was recently the illustrator and cover artist for the anthology The Baby Chronicles.

Greg Ford writes: "1968: existential quandaries of post-adolescence with torpor giving way to long sojourn in classical China and art school and banishment and Satori at breakneck speed ’76 on Symphony Road. 1977: complete psychic collapse in dorms, corridors and day rooms of state hospitals until relief under the wand of wan woman under cinder sun with second wind and transpositions of the facts surrounding my situation status. 1984: appearance at City Hall…and bars and the basements of churches with first texts stabilized at the last possible minute there as well as elsewhere, more and more."

Timothy Gager is the author of eight books of poetry and fiction. He lives on www.timothygager.com/

Lo Galluccio is a writer and vocal artist living in Cambridge, who also teaches English as a Second Language.

Edward S. Gault has been active in Stone Soup Poetry, Open Bark, and Tapestry of Voices poetry events.

Carolyn Gregory has published poems and classical music reviews in American Poetry Review, Seattle Review, Bellowing Ark, Off the Coast, Main Street Rag, Wilderness House Literary Review, Stylus, and others. She has published two chapbooks and was featured in an award winning anthology. Her full length book, Open Letters, was published in 2009. Her next book, Scenario, is in the works.

Melissa Guillet’s work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Bloodroot Literary Magazine (Pushcart Nominee), Caduceus, The Cortland Review, Cyclamen & Sword, Dos Passos Review, Lalitamba, Language and Culture, Lavanderia, Muse, The Oklahoma Review, Sangam, Two Hawks Quarterly, Women. Period. and several chapbooks.

Coleen T. Houlihan is a writer living in the Boston area. For more of Coleen’s writing and to contact her, please visit her website at: http://www.coleenthoulihan.com/

Irene Koronas is the poetry editor for Wilderness House Literary Review. Her poetry has appeared in Clarion, Lummox, Free Verse, Posey, Presa :S: Press, and many on-line zines. She has published ten chap-books and has poems in several anthologies. Her two full length books are Self Portrait Drawn From Many (Ibbettson Street Press, 2007) and Pentakomo Cyprus (Cervana Barva Press, 2009).

Laurel Lambert is an Out of The Blue artist and participant in the gallery's open mikes. In 2009, she was the recipient of the first Jack Powers Stone Soup Savor Poetry Prize.

John Landry has returned from a month of earthquakes in Chile. His book who will prune the plum tree when I'm gone was published there by Editorial Cuneta. In April he reads in San Francisco for the launch of the first issue of the new journal Amerarcana.

Gordon Marshall has written poetry for 29 years—with a lengthy hiatus between 1996 and 2004. He was educated at Milton Academy and University of Massachusetts Boston, receiving his M.A. in English at the latter in 2005. He has published seven books of poetry, the latest being Black Mountain Funk (Shires, 2010). In addition, he writes jazz criticism for AllAboutJazz.com and All About Jazz—New York. He lives in Boston.

Shannon McGinnis is a poet, visual artist, and mom of two muses. A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, she began performing poetry in September of 1999. She is winner of Tulsa’s 2000 National Poetry Slam (NPS) team qualifying competition, a member of Tulsa’s first NPS team in 2000, winner of the Living Arts of Tulsa’s 2000 Poetry Slam, and a semi-finalist alternate for the Ozarks 2001 NPS team. A regular feature poet in her home town, she has also performed in Texas, Arkansas, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Oregon.

Joanna Nealon has five published books: The Lie And I, Poems Of The Zodiac, Said The Sage, The Fourth Kingdom, and Living It. Her poems have appeared in Stone Soup Gazette, Poiesis, The Aurorean, Medaphors, Ibbetson Street, and the anthology We Speak for Peace.

Shannon O’Connor has been published in Meeting House Magazine, The Wilderness House Literary Review and U.M.Ph. She spends her mornings writing and during the evenings, she smiles for the corporate machine. She currently attends The Bennington Writing Seminars, where she is working on her MFA in Fiction.

Chad Parenteau recently co-edited and contributed poems to The Baby Chronicles. His current projects include a new chapbook, a print anthology for Stone Soup Poetry, and co-editing another poetry anthology.

Bill Perrault went to the Universities of New England and Maine. His graduate thesis was on the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. He has published poems in Mothwing, Boston Poet, Stone Soup Anthology 2003, and Out Of The Blue Writers Unite. He reads his poetry throughout New England and has featured at the Lizard Lounge, Gypsypashn's venue, and Stone Soup. He was recently named Producer of the Year for LTC Channel 8 in Lowell for his weekly production of the Stone Soup Poetry TV series as well as other programs.

Deborah M. Priestly runs the Out of the Blue Art Gallery located in Cambridge, Mass at 106 Prospect Street with Tom Tipton, (founder, owner). She runs the Open Bark Poetry reading every Saturday night at the gallery. Her publication credits include Ibbetson Street, Spare Change, Poesy, Fresh!, Boston Poet, The Boston Herald, The Boston Girl Guide and Out of the Blue Writers Unite (which she also co-edited). She is the author of The Woman Has A Voice from Ibbetson Street Press, an eclectic combination of healing poetry and images of women in transition.

Michael E. Quigg is an poet and artist born, raised and living in the Boston area. He is the co-host of two internet radio shows including The SpeakEasy Cafe, a weekly open mic poetry show. Samples of his various works can be found at worksofq.net

Erin Reardon is a lover, a fighter and a rock star in her own head. Some say she’s a poet too. She’s still uncertain. She has been published at Silenced Press, Hecale, the Neo-Lampshadian Outpost, Spoonful, Quillbillies, and has pieces pending with Killpoet and Zygote in My Coffee. She has featured at Stone Soup and performed open mics at Stone Soup, Open Bark, The Cantab, The Lizard Lounge and will be participating in the week long Beat Poetry Festival in CT this summer.

Su Red is a photographer and writer from Somerville who has performed at various New England venues and currently focuses on her artistic photography. Her website showcases her talent in both areas. wellredcreations.com

Thea K. Scott divides her time between Las Vegas, Nevada and coastal North Carolina. Her publications of short stories and poems include The Tonopah Review, Clean Sheets, and The Writers' Place, where she garnered a win in an anthology competition. She was a scholarship attendee at the Johns Hopkins Conference on Craft in Florence, Italy, in 2007.

Samantha Scott-Heron, when not stealing names to hide her true identity, is a poet, artist, and musician hack from Somerville, MA. Her first published poem was nominated for a 1999 Pushcart Prize by Gravity Press. She has been published in 2 River View, Sundress.net, and Frogpond. In her zombie robot life, she makes a living in technology and has a degree in Information Systems. Spoonful is her first published illustration credit.

Lynne Sticklor, The Prize Lady, is a Performance & Visual Artist, Editor, Text & Graphics Designer and Poet. She is the sole creator of The Prize Lady Experience: a one-on-one performance art piece and a grand poetic theatrical show with chances to earn "Fabulous Prizes." She edited and designed oodles of books that were independently published by the poets as well as by Ibbetson Street Press and its imprint Singing Bone Press. She has been writing more poetry and damn! There's a book of her own forming a way to come out~

Cindy Williams is a 1985 graduate of the Art Institute of Houston. Purchase her art at www.etsy.com/shop/imageryandbeyond

Derek JG Williams is a Boston based writer and performer. His poetry has been featured at venues throughout the Northeast. In 2009, he released a widely praised album of poetry and music titled A Chorus of Cites. He’s most recently had poems published in the White Whale Review and The November 3rd Club. He can be reached at http://www.derekjgwilliams.com/

Annie Wyndham is a writer formerly of Cambridge, Mass., now living in Quebec.

"Path of A Possum" by Gordon Marshall

2009-06-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron

VI

So Jennifer nests
Waiting for her midwife
In Maine,

Watching the St. George flow,
Flow like democracy
Through a hobbled union

Switchback path of pebbles
Knotted with nettles,
Fire ants feeding on flesh

By the fire pit
Where she plays her guitar
In summer,

Farmhouse and cows
Visible across the banks,
Between which seals frolic

When the tide rises
Watering up the muddy flow
Up and inland.

Jen waits for the tides to flow
Fluids from the embryo,
Into life.

She hears the songs she wrote
Writing the songs her child will write,
Singing in her cradle

By the immense sunlight
Of her bedroom window
As the hawk in the glass

Marks the seasons,
Summer to spring
Winter to fall

Falling like this fall
When the Rove empire falls
And the Black revolution rises

Ringing in the chants of the field
And the blues,
And the rhythm of the chain gang

Changing the clothes of the babes
From stripes and straitjackets
To doctoral gowns

To mark the education of the soul
In new colors of thought
Blind colors of thought,

Blind as a newborn baby
Seeing only shadow moving
Like trees…

The trees well up with birdsong,
Like Charlie Parker Bird song,
Cutting through alleys in Harlem

Where crows chew up the rats
Like cats chew up the rats
Lick the luscious

Pockets of blood
Beneath the fur
And purr

Or the cats in country Maine
Who climb up the couch
And lick young Celia’s face

Like they lick Malia’s face
In Chicago—
Or Sasha’s,

Who slapped the vice president’s hand
Her fifth cousin, in a high five,
In 2005.

"Path of A Possum" By Gordon Marshall

2009-06-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron

V

Take down the Back River Bridge
From Hingham to East Weymouth,
Let the robin fly

As the crow flies,
Breaking the color barrier,
Orange as the day.

Suspend the stylus
From the broken record
Stuck on Butane James

Whipping his Famous Flames
With a holler and curse.
Call the nurse;

The Patriots got burned.
Brady walks with a cane
Like God,

Rides to the circus in a Cadillac
With Billy Barnum,
Patriarch of poets.

The sun is set to rise
At six,
This early November day.

Billy sees the cotton candy clouds
Clustering round the star
Taking cameo tinge.

Jennifer holds Celia in her body,
Cameo in her palm,
Cameo that was Ann’s and will be Celia’s,

Celia Ann’s.
Granny Ann who always hated Nixon
Knew he played marked cards.

Granny who conversed with Miss Lillian,
Jimmy Carter’s mother,
Who lauded Walter Mondale

For running with a woman,
Who always went Democrat
Except when she liked Dole.

Who wrestled with the question
Of living after life,
And saw she would live on through her students.

She saw that afterlife was earthbound,
Heaven tumbling in the winds
Whipping her strawberries

Like James Brown Whipping the Flames
At the Apollo
In 1960

Dawn of race riots
In Atlanta
And Alabama,

Granny using Kennedy
To define charisma
In her classroom in Connecticut

Watching his rise
Watching him die
A month after I was born.

She taught her students how to get involved
With Washington,
Even Wall Street,

Buying stock with them
And forwarding the liquidated sum
To each one ten years on.

These were the grassroots
She sowed throughout New England and New York,
Nesting the nation’s robin.

"Path of A Possum" by Gordon Marshall

2009-06-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron

IV

A garden opens up
In the desert,
Roses rife with thorns

Convolvulus, magnolia,
All you can think,
Dream, screaming

Yellow daisies,
Daffodils, Easter lilies,
It’s a flora-fest

A fauna feast, East
Of Eden…Read
My lips, tax

My senses,
This is sensible
And senseless,

The end
And chapter one.
My lips are chapped

From licking
My mouth dry
As ink.

The earth is dark
As coffee
The odor

As keen, collecting the atomized
Nectar of the blossoms
In a vapor free-for-all,

The high notes of the sepals
High as steeples
As roshis high on hashish

Seeking God
In Asia
Free from the wheel of life,

Cross-legged in incensed temples
Copper light coming in
Through the columns…

The conceit bring me too far.
I should be in Texas, the yellow rose
Reigning on its bush

Pushing people to love
Lush, rushing sap
Spending itself in wood.

The yellow rose is a mind
The size of a diamond,
And as hard

Core intense as concentrated coal,
Millennia old.
It could kill a man,

And has, and not for good
Alone, and not for bread
Any more than the thrill

Of red all over wrists
Splashing up the collar
Staining the linen like lipstick.

Respect that mind,
It’s a time bomb
In a tragic time,

Comic color,
The Hartford lawyer would say,
Writing off the damage,

Clean as a canary,
All the same as ashen as a raven
With clipped wing.

"Path of A Possum" by Gordon Marshall

2009-06-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron

III

To spit the seeds of the rose
On the road home,
Eat the waxy hips,

Zip the check to the war chest
Pedal to the metal,
The wild ride out again

To the fighting fields
Wielding a lance
A broken bayonet

Derringer sliding out
The ripped pocket,
Pills to kill the chill

In the other
At war with Allah
Who cannot die…

The Holy Cross
Crusaders
Cheek by jowl

With Clark in Worcester
Where Freud, Head Shrink
Brought the plague,

Know as well as I
The battle is with the flesh
Eye stuck on lipstick lips

Smeared
By retractable tubes
With the rosy wax

Softer than the rosehips
Belying their thorns
As the lips secrete the teeth.

The rosehip is edible.
The English used the pith for syrup,
As we use maples,

Or maple mixed with corn
More commonly,
The indentured maid

Smiling on the label
From Vermont,
Or the deep South…

The notes of colonial and civil
Rebellion blare from glass
Or plastic, poured on pancakes,

The great American way.
It’s the price you pay
For the breakfast of champions,

Arnold on Lake Champlain,
Lead-foot Lee
In Gettysburg and Virginia.

The rebel rubs his elbows
In the White House,
Even today,

Whipping his maverick horse
Into the prairie,
Eating pie.

Rebel, turncoat, turnkey,
Gizzards of a turkey
Guts of a possum,

The road kill of reason,
The killer on the road
Mind

Squirming like a toad
Killed on the road
Riding the desert storm.

"Path of A Possum" by Gordon Marshall

2009-06-30T08:55:00.001-07:00

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron

II

Now that the Cold War
Has witched the polar ice cap
What flows through hot hands?

Water of debate
With which combatants wrestle
Hand to hand to jaw

Push-pin on the map
Pulling pin from the grenade,
Socialism good

Yet so close to graft,
The battle itself becomes
Incorporation

Of the philosophy
That does so much for the fancy
And the drive.

One, more to the point,
That did such good for global strategy,
Unmasking Soviet imperialism

To Cape Horn:
It wore a channel, a canal,
However much it cost,

That saved the new Magellans
From scurvy before the mast
Taking up anchor in ice…

To battle against Islam is insane,
The mad feeding the mad
In a firewall that folds the fire

In itself, its own
Armageddon.
There is no mental value in crusade

Or worse, its double
The crushing of Asiatic splendor
That justifies whatever goes by holy,

In the name of the holy,
An evangelical absence of imagination
And wonder, in a Disney costume

Without the touch of Walt Disney’s own hand
Making the cartoon conscious of itself.
It’s a child taking the sugar out of his candy

And licking the lollipop
To spite the kids who don’t have one,
A kid who breaks his best friend’s Tonka truck

Because he’s sick of playing with it
A 64-year-old adult
Who still draws in coloring books,

Careful to stay in the lines,
Crayola sheep and camels,
The camels colored wrong.

It’s not the cause Walt Whitman
Nursed the Union for,
Sowing up skin and flesh in tents

On the Susquehanna,
Not the cause the South still hates us for
Voting and seeing red.

It’s division and indecision
Masked as incision,
A pyramid scheme in the land of pyramids

Reducing men to worse than slavery,
Policy that enslaves its makers’ minds
As much as their minions,

Rust that feeds on itself
Oil that runs away
Like rabbits.

"Path of A Possum" by Gordon Marshall

2009-06-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

"Path of A Possum" by Gordon Marshall

2009-06-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron

I

Black figure
Of a robin
Rests in a green pine

In 1971
In Hingham,
In my back yard.

I dream of stealing
The eggs,
Dream the tree itself

Is a ravenous bird,
Jealously jamming my finger
In its woody beak.

The emaciated children
Of Vietnam
From the TV screen

Sicken me, haunt my days.
Agent orange
May as well have been

A pal of Maxwell Smart,
So far was the war to me.
The Japs scared me shitless

When they bombed McHale
And Binghamton
On VHF

This at the time
Of US carpet bombing
In Hanoi,

Hawaii in 1941
Times ten,
In the name of a cause

I hadn’t the dimmest knowledge of
Let alone the fact itself,
Let alone the hippie protests

Flooding up
Even to the White House steps.
Yet it was the ideological battle

Fueling the music I heard
Dimly at first
On Saturday morning cartoons,

Even The Way-Outs on The Flintstones,
Jumping up like mushrooms
To trippy tunes—

Dimly at the onset, but soon
To take me through my
Days,

Stooped on my mother’s stool at the kitchen counter
Listening to the hits
On the tabletop radio.

What was war but pushing back the Germans,
The Charge of the Light Brigade,
On twilit fields.

Nixon the hapless beast
Was the first American hypocrite
I knew

Squelching the myth of the spy
I knew from Live and Let Die
Speeding an outboard motor

Across English gardens
The lost Beatle Paul
Pulsing out the theme

With a guitar as winning as ever
But heard with an ear in which the fruit
Of knowledge had dripped its hard liquor.

"Path of a Possum"

2009-06-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron

"Path of a Possum" began with the memory of a dream I had when I was seven, of stealing robin's eggs and the robin biting me. This led to other memories, largely of watching television. I reflected on how very powerful awareness of political situation seeps into a child's consciousness from the most innocent of settings, and how prejudice and true vision fight with each other dialectically.

Path of a Possum

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Introduction by Chad Parenteau

2009-06-30T01:01:00.000-07:00

James Conant/Cindy Williams

There are many things I could bring to your attention in Issue #4, but let's look at the bios section and check out the new titles bestowed on James Conant and Cindy Williams, whose collaboration graces the top of this page. Unlike most lateral promotions, it gives them no additional burdens and rewards them with recognition that they've been entitled to for a long time.

Moving forward, Spoonful will be premiering more artists, which has been my hope for a long time. But there must be due credit given to the two who were here before I even had the idea for Spoonful.

Cindy Williams was a fellow worker at Brigham and Women's Hospital. It was she whose ear I would erode slowly as I went on and on about my plan to self-publish a chapbook of poetry. But where would I find art for the cover? In an attempt to save her other ear, she brought in the sketchbooks of her boyfriend James Conant, who drew constantly when he wasn't waiting tables. I found a page with the illustration I wanted, and the rest is history (which fortunately can be summed up in a paragraph or two).

From our newly formed friendship, James has gone on to do my cover for Discarded: Poems for My Apartments, illustrate The Baby Chronicles (a persona anthology like no other) and contribute visual artwork to Spoonful and other online journals. And having long been aware of Cindy's exceptional photography (which specializes in the city with all its large and small details), it made perfect sense inviting her to join in.

Today, Cindy is working for a different hospital (as am I), and James is on hiatus, having recovered from knee surgery over the last year. I am grateful knowing that amidst all their life changes, they were still able to find time to share their creative talents, and I hope I can continue to showcase their work with more and more people.

This is the fifth issue of Spoonful Cindy and James have contributed to (remember we started from #0) and there will be more from them in the future, as they supply seemingly endless creative visuals to pair with our poets.

There are more artistic contributors than ever in this issue, and Spoonful will continue to debut artists, but I want to pay homage to who was here first.

Joanna Nealon Performs Two Poems

2009-06-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

Narcissus Speaks

Why mock me with my namesake flower?
I have no spring.
And long ago
I ceased to love my face,
Unkissed by Sun
Or anyone,
My compelled gaze
Pinning me close
To my ghost twin.

I envy the Wildflower Woman,
Who blesses weeds
And keeps her contented face
Held to the light,
So that each Dawn
Kisses her mouth
With tender grace.

Spring Again

I write a lot of poems in spring.
I want to grow things.
My seed is fire.
But my heart has no deep roots,
So my stems are stunted,
And my blossoms, "nipped in the bud".
I try to transpose these blighted blooms
Into words,
But they don't last,
Don't truly live.
I'm glad there are real flowers outside me,
And that spring is still so beautiful
In many places,
Even inside places.
That way I can get to visit spring
In other hearts
And sit in the gardens
Of other people's poems.

Poem by Chad Parenteau

2009-06-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

Photo by Chad Parenteau

Except

American Samoa's currency is ours except
when I shop, bills for change
like dead men's fists.
Broken fingers crumpled in my wallet.

Busses merry-go-round colors,
carouseling gallows,
post tsunami homes,
names defiant like “Island Pearl”
1 through 7 (highest I could find),
others ironic like "Titanic,"
visceral like "Blood."

By a shoreline, I hunt seashells.
Father sits in water,
quiet axis for sons to splash around.
One finds drowned tripod with no camera,
sets it up as if to film setting
of lethargic sun.

Father of two might live next to
shipwrecked car debris,
the house with "No Looting/Visitors Only"
painted on water-sieged walls.

Unlike children and tourists, I
still think the ocean is kind,
gives as much as takes.

Poem by Lo Galluccio

2009-06-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

Photo by Michael E. Quigg

I. “Charity is not puffed up”
St. Paul, I. Corinthians

To Dorchester through
Uphams Corner
and South Bay Mall--
where people of color
with groceries
and little girls with braided
hair beads--
Men in wheelchairs,
injured, crippled
How, by what?

The nocturnal bullets,
paralyzing labor.

Is it poverty -- the very
act of riding a bus
and lugging a stroller onto it
to shop?
The driver pulling
the ramp down and up,
me waiting and wondering
how the woman next
to me with Target bags
would react
if I asked her directions
to the Catholic Charities,
my interview to teach
immigrant Haitians English.

I hold my elbows across
a shiny brown urban
trench from Tello’s – going
out of business sale –
slip my white shades onto
my head. Oh yes, she answers,
I think that’s near my stop,
a yellow building, social
services…hmmm….
her smooth coffee skin
and bright lips, eyes
shaded by ultra-bans…
“I’ll ask the driver when
I get off and motion to
you how many more stops.”
I thank her with a smile.
She gets off the back
and shouts to the driver.
Then, just like she promised,
holds up two fingers
through the window--

could be a peace sign,
in a war-torn matrix
where the lines of division
occasionally blurr?

I feel my legs under me,
a tremor of not belonging,
as I descend the bus
onto Columbia Avenue,
a bleak stretch of houses.

II. Charity Re-considered

The Program Director
comes from Flatbush, Brooklyn
where I taught
night high school

after Adam left me
screaming/crying
on the street near his
Dad’s music studio
in mid-town –

“you son-of-a-bitch
moving to L.A.” -
vowing vengeance,
hugging the velvet
New York night to me
like a panther

landed on my feet
teaching “Things Fall Apart”
to troubled kids
in another ghetto.

Do I tell Sara
about the time I sank
onto the concrete at Midwood
and wept
for past lives

and the toughest girl
said, “Ms. G. are you all right?”

Or the field trip to see “Glory”
when Cory tried to pick up
the popcorn girl and
then threatened to bomb
the cinema when she
said, “No”.

My philosophy of education?
“Survival skills and life-long
adventure” the best, lamest
answer I can muster &

then all of a sudden
being responsible for someone
else’s menthol patch,
citizenship dues and correct
use of prepositions
leaves me feeling like

this ain’t the real movie.
These three bright women on salary
who drive into the Catholic Charities
in their economy cars –

No, the real movie, is that bus-ride
every day through the Dorchester
knockdown and those figures
in the All-Star textbook she shows me:

Monthly rent x 2 + security deposit = amount
to move in….
$700 x 2 + $700 = $2,100.

What is your worth, then, artist-child
and what the price you pay?

III. Back at Berlitz

Green and white confetti
blown through tubes
falls
while duck boats pass
my Japanese student
and me.
Boylston Street.
The cops in their motorcade
top off the Irish
medley of green Mardi Gras beads.
Kids painted kelly
shout “Fuck L.A.”
in clutches.

Junita Yamamichi
holds his digital Canon
up high, inspired
by the parade
in Boston, USA.
“In Tokyo,” he confides
“workers never get time
off in the afternoon like this.”

I feel a pang of protocol
wondering if this is too
much time off his Business I
lesson….No, he’s soaking
up American sports fanaticism…
the street’s the lesson.

Finally the African-American
warriors are seen waving,
posing like celebs
smoking cigars & send a ripple
of thrill; you wave as they point,
up at the float
wanting to be seen by the
giant winners.

Jack Nicholson and Magic J.
back in Cali aren’t happy.

“Yup, they’re partying, today,
those philistines in Boston.”

That green machine took our
Hollywood flash in foul shots
and rebounds.

Poem by Coleen T. Houlihan

2009-06-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

How May I Help You?

Lips are well slicked for the task.
I know I ask a lot; speaking is the easy part.
“Smile baby, baby! Say,
‘How may I help you?’”

When the tigers got all five claws
buried deep in an ass,
I beg myself to bray
in a pleasing tune.

Hiding behind red delicious
temptation, I chew my food slowly;
there’s a ‘Fuck you’ buried in my throat;
there’s a homicidal maniac eating with me.

How many ways
can a body be pulled?
They push past the pop.
Spanish inquisitors say

salvation is in the burning.
They disarticulate me
and leave me to dangle like a broken tree
or a pair of cheap glass earrings

swaying forgotten
on the ears of a little girl’s
‘Last Year’s Favorite Toy.’
They do it with a smile.

Is it any wonder
I don’t trust my own?

Poem by Rafael Woolf

2009-06-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Laurel Lambert

To Mother

There you were,
Slowly losing the battle with age.
You may die any month, now, God forbid.
All it will take is a severe infection or a few more strokes.

It was Sukkos.
I had brought in a rabbi to interpret whatever you said into Yiddish,
But you were too intimidated by him
To talk.

The last words I said to you were, "Good Moed."
When I kissed you goodbye, you kissed me back.
That may have been the end.

Did you get my letter?

I sang to you in Yiddish,
Song sheets in my hands.
I talked to you.
I played "Itsy-bitsy spider" with you,
Played with you, I realize,
As if you were a baby,
Running my forefinger over your face,
Pressing your nose and saying, "Bzzzzz."

I tickled you feet, because you used to love that,
But at one point, you told me to stop,
The only one of two times you spoke to me in English.

I did my best.

Poem by Luis Lázaro Tijerina

2009-06-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Annie Wyndham

The Ruins of Nuevo Cádiz

“After all, what is more important?
Food for one’s belly or a pearl?”
-- Cornelio Marcano, a native of Cubagua

The desert on this island flourishes with garbage piles
where once a Spanish city stood, thriving with pearl divers.
Slain like sting rays caught in the nets of fishermen,
their bodies thrown upon the city streets.
The simple and beautiful words of these slaves
are forever lost, while the thrashes of the whips
by the men who ruled them.
sear into the memory of Time.

The pungent aroma of garlic, the mutterings of old men,
beneath the flag of revolutionary Venezuela flapping
like a strong woman’s hand waving to the sea…
Limestone buildings, elegant, symmetrical—gone,
the wide avenues laid out by the Spaniards, vanished,
no longer in our consciousness
but in the wind, in the wind…

Poem by James Van Looy

2009-06-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

On the Road or Under It

Bye, bye Old lonesome Jack
if anybody gave a fuck anyway
it was you,
you were the one
on the road or under it,
you may never know Maggie Cassidy
but you certainly knew time
passing by all the niggertowns
at twice the speed of spite
blowing your whistle around the bend
from yourself the bum,
the America that drinks and stays home
always looking for home
somewhere at twice the speed of flight
old traveling Jack,
peddling and pawing after that moving train
always too late
but observing all the detail
and obsession of browns and grays
the bacteria and bacchae
of all the waiting rooms
waiting for a description to coalesce
into a prescription, Jack

Jack, your dharma
became our karma
for those here struggling
with Moloch in Babylon

Oh, Jack how could you die like that
we miss you so
drank to death
your own ulcer
festering in us, too
the pain of having to be
without ever just being
bye, bye old lonesome Jack bye, bye

Poem by Derek JG Williams

2009-06-09T09:56:00.000-07:00

Photo by Michael Quigg

Frontier

Like ground out cigarette butts,
Like radial tire tread,
His heels click
Against the grade of the highway,
Skating its twin yellow lines
With the lengths of his fingers
Outstretched like a magician.
There is a name for God
On his tongue
That he cannot speak
Without singing.

In each passing day
The world
Hides more than it reveals.
There are apples in his eyes.
He expects trees
To sprout roots from the seeds
Buried in his brain.
Blowing across mute tectonics
Are guitars budding in dirt,
Tuned by the wind.

In the desert he buried
The exquisite body of a cello
To press his ear to the ground
And hear the earth speak
In a language he understood
And knew how to answer.

He dreams in music.
His song is ever-playing,
It doesn’t know to end.
Doesn’t know that songs
Are meant to resolve
In two to four minute intervals.
His hands clap in rhythm,
His head shakes in rhythm,
His hips rotate and
Turn to the earth.

He knows the pharaoh’s dance.
He dances fierce tape loops
And delays and reverb,
Uses terms like
Rubato and modal and raga.
In tablatures of missing notes
Only the sound remains.

From the still boughs of buildings
You’ve seen him
Stumble home at two AM.
He has amplifier ears,
A microphone mouth.
When he plays
The shriven and lean lengths
Of his body writhe.
And when he sings
Each breath smells of basalt.

Poem by John Landry

2009-06-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

Winds of Change

Blue Jays return to leafless trees in a clamor
Cardinals quietly reoccupy the Briar
and above the Bridge swung open
Starling troupes vanish into their ballet
suddenly reappearing in the empty Sky

Pigeons dance around prospective Mates
Squirrels spiral keeping Rhythm on the Bark
Spring and Winter wrestle in the Air
the over-lapping Season has commenced
the Winds of Change have reached the Coast
soon again the Landscape will go green
Tides washing and new Grasses mulching
last year’s Footprints into Memory

Poem by Melissa Guillet

2009-06-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron

The Red Shoes

Fingers spider tap on the table -
restless dancers.
Give me some yarn,
and I’ll knit you a story
two hundred pearls long.

3 a.m., and the cobwebs
need dusting.
One, two, three, eight
red shoes disturb my sleep.

We spiders are always busy.
Work to do, work to do.

I am the envy of those
who sleep a third of their lives.
Bless me for my insanity;
I am more tired than they know.

This should be a gift -
eight red silk slippers
with threads burning,
neurons firing,
ideas created in fury.
These feet cannot resist the dance.
One needs comfortable shoes.

Finger legs fall faster
than hourglass sand,
typing in staccato
as I spool my guts,
then spill them,
my abdomen marked
by infinity.

Poem by Thea K. Scott

2009-06-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

Turning Points

Morocco, 1987, fleeing with what we could carry
under a shimmer of amethyst skies, amid Arab dialect.
My children followed me on the street, trusting,
waiting in Casablanca hotels for a freedom flight.
I was fearless before that, willing to shape-shift,
to move on a whim with faith, belief in life,
with hope lingering from youth and naivete
and dreams that dreams would come true.
In Maroc I searched the rubble for my missing child
and marrow-deep fear changed color of amethyst air.
It altered weight and depth and taste of breath,
and clawed and cut; made marks you’ll never see.
Never a good night’s sleep since then, without memory
of chilly concrete floors, and terror...
of gendarmes sur les coins de rue, cradling Mini-14's, Kalishnikovs,
robed men twisting shadows in the medina.
Life’s bitter on the tongue, now with hope
and soul well twisted beyond shape.
And I’ve lost faith in what I ever was... watching graves,
feasting on the night.

Poem by Erin Reardon

2009-06-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

Road Poem

Should I be grateful?
Because you filled my gas tank just before I lit the match?
Ain’t no baby baby babies gonna rock me to sleep tonight
Evil never sleeps, it never sleeps
Only bites down fierce on your amphetamine tongue
When you first looked at me
I felt like the last girl on Earth
And you can take that however you want

You see, there’s a highway stretched before us
Engine’s all but locked and loaded
Ready to rev and roll
This is how prophesies and legends get started
Mississippi swampland
Or trees that bend in a Cheyenne wind
We burn rubber and the steering wheel is screeching
Hubcaps wobble like spinning nickels on a Virginia motel room floor
The kind of place where you can still see chalk outlines
Of those who chased the demon dream before

And should I be anxious?
Saddlebags and hitching thumbs intact
Cause my baby baby baby’s gonna light up that road when dawn kisses the horizon
Evil never sleeps, it never sleeps
And we know too well that grief is a hard left turn
Into a canyon wide enough to swallow pick up trucks and netherworlds
I’ve been through these parts before
So you can let me off wherever you want

I’ll be ready. I’ll be ready.

Poem by Melissa Shook

2009-06-04T16:48:00.000-07:00

Near

In a dark, dirty, dangerous neighborhood, at a late 50’s New York
New Year’s party we’d crashed at an Avenue A, maybe B, walk-up
wall-to-wall with strangers, my Italian companion whispered “Corso”
and nodded through the crowd at a short nude man pissing in the fireplace.
Could that be true? Were there working fireplaces in those tenements?
I remember flames. Ginsberg must have lounged on the crowded couch
as we edged toward the kitchen counter lined with bottles.

My lover,
insistent on educating me through films and poets, never imagining
how easily I’d drift away and that a couple-of-college-years-one-abortion-
brief-marriage-quickie-divorce-pregnancy-and-my-baby-girl later
I’d wind up only blocks from where this party happened, living near
Ginsberg, Monk, Ciardi, Dworkin (or was it Rich?) who all
worked, read and played, at an easy distance I’d never travel.

Poem by Greg Ford

2009-06-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

"Divine Light" by Jane Chakravarthy

My Thing

No more equitable persona is open for adoption in my own air pocket. I am conversant with them all. I have watched them all go begging on no less elevated planes.

As if ink must flow, as if bitterness had never been painted once and for all by an old master’s rising insolence, the crowd suddenly has a heartbeat again, as if it were a summons to open the gate askew on that one word which is misery, to enter, and give forceful testimony as the ephemeris turns green with the wolves’ contrition.

Anticipating explosion, jubilant landslides, bonanzas, I return to the beginning, and torment, once more, the porpoise-backed ides of a stolen moment, until rippling like the orchestra’s wind section, like an invitation to take the air with my long hair streaming under the locomotive’s hood, with my cocked and floral armpits and the insight of a second-story man at my dungeon’s single station stop, until utterly confessed, at the focal point where the eyes of the Lacemaker meet, I have no need to ask, “What will it be like when it’s spring again?”

How serviceable of me to adjudicate between the roots and the leaves, to chart the sudden movements of the weathervane of the spoken word, everywhere we let fly—vibrating like a superman in this pillow talk’s deep-slept impersonality, searching, in this inexpedient experiment, for new ways to love the old you—to release my angel on the stumbling block.

Where the challenged-by-birth, the overheard-by-rote, the catlike mooncalf in the cheeky aqua light, the swiftly flowering Narcissus with his avocations, all who bear the password amongst the émigrés as their thing, also think of me.

Poem by Timothy Gager

2009-06-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

Hungover for Jury Duty

Maybe it was the beer I had at 4:30,
the day before my appointment,
leading to...more beer,
bourbon with hot lemon and honey
(for my cold) then scotch
on the rocks, a favorite
nightcap for the drive home,
take it slow buddy...take it slow.

8 AM at the Office of Deeds
I’ll say anything to go home,
I’m a liberal with a wrongful arrest record,
I’m a social worker and I’m needed,
I know the victim today,
which case?
All of them.

I’m guilty.
They’re all guilt today…
or innocent,
whichever comes quickest.

Poem by Su Red

2009-06-01T05:33:00.000-07:00

Photo by Su Red

In Tune

Vanilla beans don't
taste as sweet
as a perfect kiss
cashmere isn't so soft
as a loving touch
I tune my guitar to G,
open a bottle
and that Jameson wisdom
comes into play
as my sing-songy poets voice
recites these words to you
How is it that
the rain always seems
to know when to fall,
but the sun doesn't always
know when to shine?
Take me to where you
know it's warm, baby
Tune me to your favorite key
I'll be the perfect
Sunday morning song,
the one you play
sometimes on Wednesday
to calm you
and remind you
what loving feels like

2008-03-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

Photo by Christina Shook

Issue #3

Introduction by Chad Parenteau

Poems Performed by William J. Barnum

Poems by

2008-03-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

Stone Soup Issue #3

Editors
Chad Parenteau

Assistant Editor
Lynne Sticklor

Consulting Editors
Margaret Nairn
Jack Powers

Contributing Artists
James Conant
Edward S. Gault
Bill Perrault
Su Red
Melissa Shook
Luis L. Tijerina
Cindy Williams

Prior to his death in January of 2009, local poet, reviewer and venue host Mike Amado had numerous poetry collections published. The most recent was Rebuilding the Pyramids (Poems of Healing in a Sick World) from Ibbetson Street Press. Poems in tribute to Amado will be in the next issue of Spoonful.

William J. Barnum is a mime, actor and performance poet who has been part of the Boston poetry scene for decades. His publication credits include Out of The Blue Writers Unite and a collection of poetry, Of Rare Design.

Yonit Bousany is finishing her final year at Brandeis. Her poems have also appeared in Spoonful issues 1 and 2.

Anne Brudevold is compiling a huge Journey anthology, learning Indesign and is in a relationship with her computer.She was nominated for a Pushcart prize by Sacred Fools press--a perfect match. She's been published here and there lately, but is especially thankful to Chad and content to be in this issue of Spoonful.

James Conant has been living in Cambridge since 1991. He was given a slice of clay to keep himself busy when his work slowed down due to the unfortunate events of 9/11. Today, his sculptures are currently available at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery.

Susan Deer Cloud, a Métis mountain Indian, has been published in numerous journals & anthologies. Her latest book is The Last Ceremony (Foothills Press 2007).

Edward S. Gault has been active in Stone Soup Poetry, Open Bark, and Tapestry of Voices poetry events.

Marc D. Goldfinger is currently the poetry editor of Spare Change News. He is an active member of The Highway Poets, a group of motorcyclists that are published regularly. Marc has been published by Earth First!, The Buffalo News, the Ibbetson Press and Poiesis, just to name a few. Sometimes he falls apart and has to roam the streets to find loose pieces that will take the place of that which he has lost.

Paul Hapenny is a Multi-award winning Metis, Director, Playwright and Screenwriter based in Nova Scotia and Boston.

Gary Hicks is the author of a pen is like a piece. you pick it up. you use it and a contributor to Poets against the Killing Fields. For some 45 years, he has been a community organizer and activist, peace and justice advocate and at various times a teacher of children, young adults, and "grownups". He just passed his 62nd birthday and is feeling o.k. about that.

Coleen T. Houlihan is a novelist and poet who studied writing at Wellesley College. She has featured at Stone Soup, Best Sellers, Borders, the Sherman Cafe and Walden Poetry Series and published poetry in The Alewife, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ibbetson Street Press, Spare Change and abroad. Her poetry is diverse. She has written in the perspective of a child, a killer, a mother, animals and men. Her most recent chapbook, This Human Heart, is a collection of eight poems spanning several years and is full of the light and dark of life.

In 2008, Christopher Kain published a new collection of poems, homefront, and rereleased his first book, memory plays, which this issue's poem is excerpted from.

Lawrence Kessenich has published poetry in Chronogram, Cream City Review and Energy Review. His chapbook Strange News was Pudding House Publications this year. He briefly attended the graduate creative writing program at UMass-Amherst. He then became an editor at Houghton Mifflin, where he read for its annual poetry series and worked with the editors of Selected Poems of Anne Sexton and the author of Anne Sexton: A Biography, as well as authors of all kinds. He now makes his living as a marketing writer.

Linda Lerner's poems have recently appeared in The New York Quarterly, Louisiana Review, Paterson Literary Review, Onthebus, Home Planet News, South Boston Literary Review, Ragged Lion Anthology and Big Hammer.

The author of over 100 books, Lyn Lifshin's latest is LIGHT at the End: The Jesus Poems from Clevis Hook Press.

Gordon Marshall was born in New Haven, CT, in 1963. He received his B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from University of Massachusetts Boston. He has been published in Boston and in Toronto, Canada. His new book, Waterwheel, is available at the Grolier Bookstore in Harvard Square. He lives in Boston’s North End.

Gloria Monaghan is an Assistant Professor at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. She has finished two manuscripts of poetry and is working on a screenplay. She has two children and live on the south shore.

Shannon O’Connor received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts at Boston in 2007. She has published fiction in Up Dare and Chord, and poetry and fiction in the Wilderness House Literary Review. She is currently finishing her first novel.

Chad Parenteau has been published in The Endicott Review, Volume II of The Hay(na)Ku Anthology and French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets. His Chapbook, Discarded: Poems for My Apartments, was released by Cervena Barva Press in 2008.

In September 2007, to mark his 70th birthday, Stone Soup founder Jack Powers received a proclamation from the City of Boston for his contribution to the arts. His is work is forthcoming in the online journal Fox Chase Review.

Su Red has recently had her photography featured at Simon's Coffee House and Christopher's Restaurant. Visit her new website at www.wellredcreations.com

Lynne Sticklor, The Prize Lady, is a Performance & Visual Artist, Editor and Text & Graphics Designer Artist. She is the sole creator of The Prize Lady Experience: a one-on-one performance art piece and a grand poetic theatrical show with chances to earn "Fabulous Prizes." She is on-staff as an Editor and Designer in the book division of Ibbetson Street Press, with oodles of book credits under her belt.

Luis L. Tijerina is an artist and poet from Burlington, Vermont. His poems and collages have been published in Onion River Review.

Cindy Williams is a 1985 graduate of the Art Institute of Houston. She has had her photography published in Pettycoat Relaxer and High Horse.

Annie Wyndham is a writer formerly of Cambridge, Mass., now living in Quebec. Her poem "Cafe" was published in Coraddi.

William J. Barnum Performs Three Poems

2008-03-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Nothing

street window

inside out
is outside in
no matter which way

scouring tin
out and in
harmonize with a drink of gin
and abstinence will surely win
if we should swallow all our sin!

loud as tin
and soft as cotton
old days easily forgotten
remembered on our walls
all rotten
deceased!
before we were begotten

which ringers of the final bell
will never cease their sickness well
as much of gold is shining in
and beams of sun are turning back
as sun is lighting night with black

and all will vanish down a well

Jazz

cabbage
the light switch
no change
small range
perfected perspective
screaming history
nearer vexation than beaches born to waves
cypress to the third power
cats along faceless argumentative gardens
explode!
congratulations
antlers the roses
wall capture knives!
expectorate flower petals from craniums
inhale dove wings
relegate cliffs to monstrous hanging
a bed of nails for survivors of raw trails
rain rested alley of my thigh
climb
where i sigh

I Write

i write
afternoon into night
music to fright
feet into flight
systems to scatter
rules do not matter
coats empty sleeves
trees without leaves
please come back
return
everyone gone that i knew
hasten the stew
mix
who was there?
somewhere in air
stay alive!
nothing survives
carve into stone
so when not here
even though far
must fasten diffuse
into crowd of myself
all of them
i

Introduction by Chad Parenteau

2008-03-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

The issue's out.

No more excuses, only solutions. After any catching up we do for the rest of this year, Spoonful will come out in 2010 biannually. Maybe things will change in the future, but that's the plan for now.

Our friend Mike Amado passed away the day after 2009 began. The last poem he submitted to Spoonful appears in this issue. Stone Soup Poetry held a memorial open mike in the beginning of the year, and dedications to him will be presented in issue #4.

Poem by Anne Brudevold

2008-03-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

Photo by Anne Brudevold

A moment caught

afternoon,
he’s playing saxophone in the garden
Orpheus, evoking the late green of afternoon

at his feet in the Smurf pool
the baby’s plump as sun
she’s watching a hovering dragonfly
with terror and desire, old games
old as the waves of the sea, or the splashes
of the water in the Smurf pool

man and baby in this instant are given to myth
behind them shadows in the trees
graze like cows
the cows have eyes like meadows
the meadows explode into stars
An invisible wind pervades the moment like a drone
like sepia perfume
nostalgic, its seeds
bloom

Poem by Jack Powers

2008-03-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

Untitled

The Lord
Wants me
To be the best
Of my generation,
No excuses, that’s
what he wants.
It will be painful
Following His wishes
The highest tower
Is what he calls
Me to.
Surprise, I’m already
HERE!!
With my mother
And father,
In heaven
That’s a climax
We climb as they
Did,
Not to be our own
Caricatures
We lean into
The struggle.
We must get into
The task.
This task is ours,
Ultimately.
It’s not easy
To believe
But, if you don’t,
Heaven will be
Far from you!

Poem by Coleen T. Houlihan

2008-03-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

The Confession
In loving rip-off and honor of Allen Ginsberg

I am terrified of the thick cloak of clergy,
the ones who cannot remember the hollow hum
of insides, center of human universe,
hot cunt of earthly pleasure.
I have almost been defeated by the snarl of girls,
young with inexperience but enough years
under their belt to have discovered the amusement
at another girl’s expulsion.
I have loved men and then hated
the change in their affection when the lure
of pussy subsides and becomes real flesh, tight flesh;
seeing with flashlights the power of birth and blood and cum
and their own demise, and in it, a need to instigate mine.
I have run through the streets at dark,
a flesh and blood beast of mortality,
better than nothing and queen of my world.
I have heard, through my own ears, my voice
sound one way, then morph into a woman
possessed on tapes, screeching poetry,
trying to evoke Sexton’s madness,
rubbing into my pores Miller’s filth
and thinking this is what it felt like
to stroke Anais’ skin.
I have ingested the barf of nations waving
guns and flags. Swallowing, I have often found
the taste putrid, can remember from time to time
the occasions when it was sweet.
I have felt super power strength,
my legs two muscled boulders,
bullets grazing them like flies and then stumbled
and fell when I saw the eyes of a dead child—
some small dead thing, some testimony
to my inevitable death and powerlessness.
I have painted my nails for hours,
putting polish on, taking it off, too
purple, too red, too pink, too
scared and lonely if I am honest,
too choosy if I am not.
I have often wanted to run mad
knocking into celebrities and
‘people of note’ like a linebacker,
spitting and flicking my menstrual blood
in the upturned faces of proper people,
afraid I might turn the corner and bump into myself.
I have crawled on the floor with cats, cried over
dying bats, sprayed worms with Raid and watched
them wriggle in agony, such vivid
interpretation of so many humans’ dance.
I have envied the singular arguments of
schizophrenics, waved my own fists at ghosts
and shaken my head in psych class at
case studies of the mad.
I have hated other women, their tits
and legs and asses, their brains, and hair, and spirit
and laughed when others have laughed
and stood naked, cold, shaken and so ashamed
under the puritanical spotlight wondering how
it was I could be convinced to hate so strongly
all of the things I have loved.
I have elicited responses, stroked the back
of the lobster right next to the boiling pot,
relished in my ability to get others to love
and then skipped down the lane, past the
big bad wolf, past grandma and found myself
completely alone, not abandoned, simply lost and never found.
I have stirred the brew of treachery,
brought laughter with my words, ruined people’s
days, made children dance and found myself human.
I have fucked and been fucked, sucked
and been sucked, listened to sonnets composed,
composed sonnets listened to and wrung my hands
distraught that sweetness could be such
subterfuge when mixed with other people’s
impossible standards of living— old, old ways
which never worked but through stories
and words, keep going, and going, and going.
I have spent money I do not have buying things
I already do and thrown beloved items out, smiling
and clapping, imagining what it must be like to be
beholden to nothing and in that way
having control over everything.
I have taken pleasure in an photographer’s lips,
secretly touching tongue to tongue,
twirling curls over digits and
allowed my hands to be clapped
behind back, luxuriating in the gift
of being understood— if only for a moment
made three dimensional by an aficionado of the glossy flat.
I have defecated and been beautiful,
teased, plucked, pulled and been grotesque in
the artificiality, under the shadow of someone
else’s lack of originality.
I have made love to outsiders,
posed for pictures with the norm,
been comfortable in both worlds and made confused
by what the papers have had to say the next day.
I have fingered unread manuscripts that contained
the best of me and had useless words underlined and quoted.
I have, on occasion, closed my eyes to the present
and become a heaving, swaying, shackled, proud beast,
blinked, and gone running to Sacks Fifth Avenue
to buy perfume and distance…

So what does it mean when the devil was an angel
and God can cause someone to fall?
So many languages, impossible to understand them all.
With every orifice open I please and disgust the world.
Ah, but I am still standing— maggots quiver on edge
for the word—
Ah, but I am still standing…Not bad for this girl.

Poem by Annie Wyndham

2008-03-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Luis L. Tijerina

Little Sparrow

One grasps at love in desperate leaps,
clinging to life like a barnacle
on a doomed vessel,
destination unknown.

From a ravaged body, the defiant thrust
of one mighty voice
still pierces the airwaves.

La Môme Piaf ne regrette rien.

Poem by Linda Lerner

2008-03-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

Returning to Boston a Second Time

I swear I’ve never been back
told you then and I’m telling you now...
you too said never...
been five years and
we’d found our way back
but not THERE...
those narrow brick streets
I saw from a trolley yesterday
in Beacon Hill like the one
you photographed me on
standing beneath a ‘Do Not Enter Sign’
warned of what choice
had already taken from us before your death...
as for where I’ve been
the city’s name...call it coincidence
a lie of geography

Poem by Shannon O'Connor

2008-03-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

Unbeautiful

She could have been one
of the wandering masses
muttering to herself
as the world ignored her,
the dirt at the bottom
of your shoes,
the muck at the bottom
of the pigpen -

She would have been one
of the nullified nobodies
three inches away
from living in a cardboard box
behind a Chinese restaurant,
scrounging meat off
discarded teriyaki chicken wings
that the beautiful
tossed away without thinking
of the unbeautiful -

She is the shell
of a scallop
small, indistinguishable,
unnoticeable to the sky,
the wind
the stars,
the rain,
untouchable, but they don’t
understand what she feels is
not in her head.

Poem by Lyn Lifshin

2008-03-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

But Instead Has Gone Into Woods

A girl goes into the woods
and for what reason
disappears behind branches
and is never heard from again.
We don’t really know why,
she could have gone shopping
or had lunch with her mother
but instead has gone into
woods, alone, without the lover,
and not for leaves or flowers.
It was a clear bright day
very much like today.
It was today. Now you might
imagine I’m that girl,
it seems there are reasons. But
first consider: I don’t live
very near those trees and my
head is already wild with branches

Poem by Susan Deer Cloud

2008-03-18T16:49:00.000-07:00

Photo by Edward S. Gault

Black Lunch Bucket (for Ed Lopez)

It inspires me to write, but I must go to work so I can feed my kids.
I think I will sit in my truck and write in my journal when I get to the jobsite.

--Ed

January morning. We are emailing, sharing poems
on Sacred Worldwide Web. You tell me a poem of mine
has inspired you to write, but you must go to work so you
can feed your kids. Suddenly, I am one of your kids. I am
back in Catskills, same age as your son, Trin. I am that girl
padding softly out into kitchen dawn, watching her father
brew Eight o' Clock coffee in aluminum drip pot. She
breathes in steamy equatorial fragrance that one day
will be the bittersweet smell of nostalgia. They sit
at Formica table. He sips coffee. Winter light
follows his hand lifting a cup won at summer's carnival.
They have epicanthic eyes, live in America but peer
into each other from Asia. How to explain? It is why
they say nothing, don't have to. They speak
one word, "Goodbye." He trudges out kitchen door
in work clothes washed to translucence, swings black
lunch box like a fist for the endless day to come.

Only years later will that girl find her father's poems
in a shoebox once holding a Christmas gift of work shoes.
Poems from the War, poems addressed to her mother,
his Indian princess, and to their unborn first son –
poems that understood the terrible love a person has
when he might return to his beloved in a closed
coffin draped with an impotent flag. Poems smelling
faintly of new shoes wishing the feet in them would
never have to grow too tired. Poems dreaming
they could dance and not have their backs bowed
by long hours of work plus overtime. When you joke,
"Fuck working, lol," I am your daughter hearing
that revolution in your face that hides so much from me.
But we share green eyes, know the interior emerald forests
of each other and those wilds of rhyme we yearn to sing in.

January night. You email me Jpegs of Trin
sliding down the laughing snow of high pitched
roof, enraptured in his taboo act. Yes, I am one
of your kids. I am that child whose father leaves
his poetry behind so she can fly down the steeps
of life. So he can feed all his children the stars.

Poem by Chad Parenteau

2008-03-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

Photo by Su Red

Hail
(For my Mother)

Saturday,
Sunday masses
are easily skipped.

Praying
becomes much
easier to forget

when
even the
dying know more

than
whoever now
receives our prayers.

Sleeping,
she clenches
each rosary bead,

each
one equaling
a family member,

as
if it's
her hand alone,

her
nighttime grip,
keeping us together.

Poem by Christopher Kain

2008-03-17T07:05:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

when i was with Love
we had a daughter named Hope
she was the only good song
on our jukebox
the gem in our junkpile

Hope would cry in the morning
& in evenings hum herself
to sleep--love & i kept each other
awake with our restlessness

there was something beautiful
when Love held Hope in her arms
as if there wasn't any trouble
i lived on that

after Love & i left each other
i get Hope on certain appointed times
it's hard on her
because she's no longer Love's
& no longer mine

Poem by Gloria Monaghan

2008-03-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

Victory Garden

The lilac dust of cut flowers
falls malignant upon our shoulders
and we swear it will never happen again.

All that we begrudge
fits into a cat’s paw.

Poem by Paul Hapenny

2008-03-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

The Amsterdam Flower Market

I staggered
into
the Amsterdam Flower Market
from the east
the greasy Dutch dawn spitting drizzle
in my face

Drunk on cheap slibovitz
ativan
and self loathing
I watched two men
old and young
maybe father and son
unloading a wooden cart of
gorgeous purple and pink
and red and yellow and
blue and fuck knows what else
tulips

They didn’t talk
Didn’t they see
the beauty after beauty after beauty
that slowly chewed Van Gogh’s mind
or
are they like the dead eyed whore
in the neon window
opening her red light legs
at 5 am
hoping to snare a drunken tourist
like me
I offered her five Euros
out of pity
she told me in three languages
to stick the five Euros
up my condescending Yankee ass

The bottle was empty
vomit spilled
with self loathing
the men never talking
old and young
like a father and son
took the cart away leaving the
gorgeous purple and pink
and red and yellow and
blue and fuck knows what else
tulips

I couldn’t speak
but I could see
the beauty after beauty after beauty
that slowly chewed my mind
and what I thought was
Dutch dawn drizzle
were my tears

I staggered
off
past salvation of the Oude Kerk
praying for
a dead eyed whore
with red light legs
to pity

Two Poems by Gordon Marshall

2008-03-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

Photo of Deb Priestly and Gordon Marshall by Bill Perrault

New Orders
for Deb Priestley

You spin from blushing brush to fountain pen
Your brush dipped in the deepest wound of all,
The endless store of crimson in your soul
Flooding flora in your leonine den,
The ultra-violet couch against the window
Shining light in fusion on the wall
Out of the bright-blue studio picture stall.
Your thread of double love goes through a spindle
To stitch a sheet of lines, a quilt of borders,
A sampler that gives woman a voice,
A melody, a loving Sapphic laugh,
A new faith where she can take new orders,
A psychedelic Phantom V Rolls Royce
Like Lennon rode with Yoko: orb and staff.

Return
for Susan Deer Cloud

Exotic flower blown from native land,
Blue-stoned wood, where water over chalk
Cascades in arboreal worlds of the Mohawk,
Reciting, you raise a receiving hand
Illustrating filaments of words
That you mint into money as you talk
Amorous coins giving bounce to your walk
As you repay your people and their herds
Of buffalo; minks, foxes, wild horses,
Coyotes pushed into suburban places,
Wolves on the loose in the city square,
Jack rabbit ensnared, scared and sacred hare:
You give ethereal charge to earthy forces
Paint an animal stripe on human faces.

Poem by Gary Hicks

2008-03-14T09:56:00.000-07:00

Photo by Chad Parenteau

in dubious battle: notes on my
twentieth birthday in new hampshire

the war is growing
bigger and the silence
about it ever more
deafening. but in the
end, no situation is
eternal. even the
vacuum silence of
creation has produced
its big bang opposite.
the galaxies of suns
and stars still burn
brightly millions of
years later, to
brighten our pitchest
nights, to inspire
song that makes us
less afraid of
the dark. in heat
and light there is hope.

we are marching out
of the exeter, new
hampshire town square
some twenty of us.
the boys of the academy
whose draft deferments
are there for the asking
thanks to daddy, hoot
at us in derisio
from the rise overlooking
the square.

hoo-hah, hoo- hah
commies go home!

we begin a walk
that will take us
through newmarket
and into durham
and the university
of new hampshire.
already we have
been promised
a welcoming committee
of new hampshire's
finest young patriots.
but first we pass
down newmarket's
main street to the
taunts of mobilized
high schoolers.

retarded social rejects!
hoo-hah! hoo-hah!

half-time cadences
transferred from
the field and
given new words.

retarded social rejects!
hoo-hah! hoo-hah!

the young egged on
by their elders. the
young throwing eggs.
how many of these
will train to throw
grenades? travel to
lands they cannot even
locate on a map? how
many will die? how
many will return
alive? and what
tales will be told
of their lives? but
now they are children
egged on by their elders
throwing eggs at those
commie-queer-faggot-pacifists.

retarded social rejects!
hoo-hah, hoo-hah!

questions, like answers
blow in the winds and
are washed by the april
rains which presently
descend upon us. gale
forces drive the youthful
crowds into their shelters.
we continue down the road.

at the outskirts
of durham, a young
boy of about eight
rides up to us on
a bicycle. my mom
told me to wish
you all good luck
he says to jim
at the head of
our single column.
thanks, replies jim
who then asks:
what's up ahead?
couple of thousand
students, replies the boy.

today is my twentieth
birthday. it's been
a short, rough, brutish
life. and were i to die
today- and i could- these
past three months of
leafletting in the snow
leading to this
springtime of resistance
these three months of
work for something
other than this world
has made it all worthwhile.

but i don't die.
none of us die.
we march single file
up the sidewalk aside
main street. on main
street, and marching
in the opposite direction
at least hundreds of
students, stars and
stripes at their head.
they are so high
on their adrenelin
fueled patriotism. they
are so oblivious to
all around them. they
are looking for devils
with horns. they do
not see us pass them
walking single file
on the sidewalk, in
full view of them.
we are almost past them.
and then a singular cry:

there they are!

we are surrounded.
and now begins
the combat of well
and reasoned arguments
against brawn- edged
diatribe. the spiritual
versus the muscular
in a land where
no problem exists
that can't be solved
by ignorance and
the fist. the polemics
go around in circles.
this is good. i have
long learned from
the street that
the time to worry
is when the talking stops.

an ex- marine holds
up on his shoulders
his three- year-old
kewpie-doll-blond
daughter. he proclaims
that she is what
is being protected
from communism and
therefore the likes
of us. the old
would you want
your daughter to
marry one of them
rant live and
transplanted.

from an unexpected
corner, the voice of
another ex- marine
telling the first one:
you're full of shit.

silence.

i've been in
the corps too.
i was in santo domingo
last year. and let
me tell you i am ashamed
of what i saw and did.

the argument has
broadened out. from us
versus them, it's now
fact versus fiction
truth versus lies and
who's been lied to.
one can build upon
these differences
based upon reasoning.
the clenched fist
has yet to prove that
it can grasp anything.

but clenched fists
often have to be pried open.

it isn't three
hours later. some
of us are sitting
in a sandwich shop
over supper. outside
peering in the window
a mob of the hard core
faithful, stars and stripes
in their midst. live
free or die. an
excellent slogan
i think. but too good
to be wasted on patriotism.

we act quickly.
we pretend we are
exiting the back way.
we stand behind a
back wall, out of sight.
i peek around the wall.
no one at the
front window. they
think we've escaped
out the back. we all
march back through
the restaurant and
out the front door.
i slap a twenty into
the hand of the manager
in payment for the food.
and keep the change.

everyone else gets
across the street
and are en route
to dormitories where
they will be staying
with friends we
have made. the mob
comes back around
the corner and see
me alone. i make my
way back through
the restaurant, out
the back door, down
a path, across a small
footbridge. i hear the
patter of footsteps
but in the dark
i see no one. i reach
the dormitory up ahead
of me and sit on the
stone bench in front.
and i wait. and i wait.

five of them come
into sight. they see me.
they are approaching
me carefully. outnumbered
five to one, but god
only knows what runs
through the brains
of young white men
about the mythical
physical abilities
of the black man. and
i have decided to let
the aura of pacifism
about me disappear. i
plan to come out of
this alive. i will try
and be diplomatic. but
i do plan to come
out of this alive.

good evening, i say.
coldly. calmly. have
you come to talk
or fight?

they freeze.
talk or fight!
they have come
only to chase
and beat up. this
is not in their plan.
i continue: if you
want to talk, we
can probably find
someplace to talk
in this building.

a lounge, maybe?

and we talk through
the night. figuring
out that those who
disagree don't have
horns. assured that
the reds will not
parachute onto the
town squares of new
england. that there
are no commisars
walking the streets
of durham, new hampshire
counting the television
sets to be confiscated
for the red hordes
of chairman mao. most
important, that we
should be able to
discuss things out
from under the microscope
of the manchester union leader.
we can address the
issues of right and wrong.
we can agree. we can disagree.
we can struggle for
clarity where and when
we are confused.

at the end of
the night now become
four in the morning
the last holdout
for live free or die
challenges me to read
steinbeck's in dubious battle.
i've never heard of
steinbeck, i reply.
well, you should read him.
it's about what happens
to a guy who can't
think for himself
suggesting that i'm
being remote controlled.

i tell him i'll read
the book and bid
him goodnight.

in dubious battle. the
title alone is inviting.

Poem by Mike Amado

2008-03-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

"Chains" by James Conant

The Game Piece
". . . Chained in the Abyss for a Thousand Years"

This place is getting to me.
I rummage through the shelves
in the smoking room
for board games
that I don’t want to play.
I’m like the guy in the corner
culling the ash trays for stubs
that have a few puffs left.
They all call him Thorazine Seamus,
He talks to himself like
he stabbed himself in the back.
We’re in our own worlds,
gold fish in produce bags.
I found a game piece that was red
like the detonation of a nuclear bomb.
(I think that’s what it looks like.)
I saw it on the news.
They test them in the desert, underground.
They say the blast can ricochet
inside the earth for one month straight like
a tumor at one thousand miles per hour.
The game piece reminds me of the devil.
I’ll use it as a housing
for my demons.
I tie spokes of red string
around my devil like chains.
I broke open the catch in the shower drain,
dangled my devil down the pipe
that’ll serve as an abyss.
Will the pipe last for a millennium?
Will I be quartered forever?
Only one of us will leave here alive.

Poem by Lawrence Kessenich

2008-03-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

Possession

A small clapboard house in Cambridge displays a
realtor’s signpost, and atop the arm, where it normally
says, “For Sale,” it says, “Immediate Possession.”

I picture its new owners
calmly stepping through the
small front door into a
swirl of golden sawdust
spinning merrily off
the soft pine floor

see stair treads rising and
falling like piano keys
hear shutters flapping like
wings against the house sides
smell the ozone sweetness of
ancestral presences

The owners, bathed in gold dust
are as pleased as squirrels
in a pecan tree. He twirls
her ‘round the living room, the
room is alive, the room is
possessed. They have taken
immediate possession.

They will grow a wildflower
garden of heirs, who will love
this house as fiercely as this
house loves them, as fiercely
as the shiny ravens
squawking on the rooftop.

Generations will kick up
its dust, generations
will sweep its dust away
and still the house will live—
small, humble, self-possessed
possessing all who possess it.

Poem by William J. Barnum

2008-03-10T21:39:00.000-07:00

Photo by Chad Parenteau

Contaminated Beds

contaminated beds
are where
we learn
to burn our
flesh
by night
emerging into
light

now crowns today
with fire

precious
for our sight
is darkness to
an eye
which only stares
its brightest zone
through shadows
harboring
pennies

beneath
a white moon
leans into
temptation
we learned
from a loon

many days
woven into
wide world’s
womb
unravel

denude
us
within our
closed room

comparable
bonnets put
onto one
head

where days
hairy splendor
now hatless
are sped

lie down with
old bodies in
life’s final bed

toxicity
here shudders
sky with
shameless
steel

ascending
towers
stretch
spines
to feel
the wing
they’re
made of

until a dove
shall arc us
home beneath
our star once
more

companionway
towards
heaven
opens
seven’s gate

a floor above
elevates
to street
beneath
where truth
spawned
through gutters
of our youth
cuts cake at
a wedding

where we met
too late

Mississippi
delta waving
fronds
where geese
fly wingless
onto backs of
swans
return to purer
nature than their
mirror harms

frigid
temperature
precipices
this room inside
a darkened noon

wind
whipping
ankles

birds
returning
spring
from fallen
song
beneath their
ice-clad
wing
wish people’s
hope-fed feet
in tomorrow’s
summer heat

murky
melodies
maintain
their
plumb-line
straight as
any
lean lothario
singing in

her bungalow
to his love
so long ago

nocturnal
journeys
terrorize
the sun
until our
double
manifest
as one

torturous
prospects
give awnings
the breeze
re-awake-able
warnings
disturbing
our ease
foster
memories
vagrant
from night’s
treacherous seas

totaling
particulars

packing
journeys
into jars
exceptions
to a fool
are stars

exceeding
limits
crashing
doors
where
prisons
cannot
choose their
bars

coincidence
reminds
forgetting
in a corner
waiting for a
breath
to move
while holding
sorrow
winnows
truth from
laughter
as rough seas
crash into foam

temptation
angers
lightening

tongues
rattling
shutters

where a bull dog’s
gentle
kisses
smiling
telephones
hum
over
seas
of sorrow
on tomorrow’s wave

malleable
talking
from man-issued
tonsils
vanish
door-mouthed
ways
left
vacant
beneath
sky-ways

where
wheels
roll for
rain
landing
safely

meet Lord Death
with
escutcheoned
vest

predestined
faculties
back
project
forward
nothing
wondered

wander
towards
timidity
gains
secret
power
within
this sacred
hour

remember
railroad
ties
lie back
across
forgotten
track

where a
man
supplants
the Father of
All Love

Poem by Marc D. Goldfinger

2008-03-02T15:43:00.000-08:00

Illustration by James Conant

Splitting Wood In Hell

The things God cannot put
right have always come back
to me. When the piece of wood
split and fell on the toad

squeezing its internal organs
out through the gaping mouth
it continued to hop
towards me, its hot eyes

staring directly into mine.
I learned that morning eyes
can scream. Squeamishly, I took
a stick and tried to push

the insides outside back
into the toad. The eyes,
the eyes, the eyes never
ceased as the stick busted

the fragile organs would not
fit down the narrow throat
of the toad. I flipped
the maul over to sledge hammer

and prayed that toad into the ground.
My stomach twists, wrenches when
I dream about those eyes. I am
ready to have my mind revoked.

Poem by Yonit Bousany

2008-03-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

Illustration by James Conant

Yawar Fiesta

The city is on strike and
inside thirty Peruvian women sing
Happy Birthday in Spanish.
The cake is orange; outside, the
street is on fire; the wine is Chilean.
In Ica, a bus of Chilean tourists is
hijacked, their money is spent on
ice creams and birthday cake, the cake
is white. After each stanza
the women clap their hands
three times. When the song ends,
they sing again in Spanish.
Outside, the city is on strike.
In Arequipa, four are dead
by police hands; the hands are
red. In Spanish, the song is fast,
the cake, gone.

2008-01-31T23:00:00.000-08:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

Issue #2

Introduction by Chad Parenteau

A Tribute to Patricia Fillingham

A Visual Poem by Sarah N. Dipity

Poems by

2008-01-31T21:32:00.000-08:00

Stone Soup Issue #2

Editors
Chad Parenteau
Lynne Sticklor

Consulting Editors
Margaret Nairn
Jack Powers

Contributing Artists
Debra Cash

Vincent Ciaccio

James Conant

Edward S. Gault
Bill Perrault

Andy Schattner
Cindy Williams

Mike Amado is a performance poet, a percussionist and drummer who does lyrical, rhythm-based tomes attuned to the social and semi-political. His first volume of verse is Poems: Unearthed from Ashes (2006). He is the host at three poetry venues in Massachusetts. He has been performing for ten years and has featured numerous times in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has been published in the Wilderness House Literary Review, the Bagelbards Anthology 1&2, Apt magazine #12, and Down in the Dirt. To quote the author: "I don't Slam, I rock!"

William J. Barnum is a mime, actor and performance poet who has been part of the Boston poetry scene for decades. His publication credits include Out of The Blue Writers Unite and his collection of poetry, Of Rare Design.

Yonit Bousany is a junior at Brandeis University, majoring in Linguistics and Anthropology. Her poetry can also be found in the Brandeis literary journal, where the children play (Fall 2006).

Debra Cash, a well-known arts writer in the Boston area, is Patricia Fillingham's daughter-in-law. Patricia lived with Debra and her son David for the last three and a half years of her life.

Vincent Ciaccio is a research assistant at the Schepens Eye Research Institute in Boston. He is also a spokesperson for No Kidding!, an international social club.

James Conant has been living in Cambridge since 1991. He was given a slice of clay to keep himself busy when his work slowed down due to the unfortunate events of 9/11. Today, his sculptures are currently available at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery.

Thade Correa was born January 17, 1983 and grew up in Hammond, Indiana. He attended Indiana University Bloomington where he studied literature, piano, and music composition. His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, the Somerville News column "Lyrical Somerville," and Ibbetson Street. His prominent influences include Whitman, Rilke, Neruda, Ginsberg, Stevens, and Ashbery.

Sarah N. Dipity is a personification of the concept Serendipity. You can find this moniker of “you know who” on MySpace spreading the love on the Blogs. This poem is from her Visual Journal. When thoughts & expressions of her mind need to use more than language to express what happens in her life: Stickers, Art & Markers are the tools. This poem is about a boy who Sarah thought she lost to another woman. The typical “what does she have that I don’t have” lament. Read it down to up & as a whole.

Patricia Fillingham (May 4, 1924 to December 3, 2007) ran two poetry series in West Orange, New Jersey and New York City for 35 years. She also published poetry for 28 years with her Wart Hog Press imprint, first publishing the work of Cornelius Eady. Recieving degrees in electrical engineering and sociology, she and her husband were active members of the ACLU and early members of Amnesty International. "Drink Up" is from her most recent collection, Existential Blues. A posthumous collection of her poetry is currently in the works.

Edward S. Gault has been active in Stone Soup Poetry, Open Bark, and Tapestry of Voices poetry events.

Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire with his wife and two children. He is the author of Teaching Metaphors (sunnyoutside, 2007), Not So Profound (Green Bean Press, 2004), Frostbite (GBP, 2002) and seven chapbooks of poetry and fiction.

Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson St. Press. He recently was the guest of the Voices Israel organization, and he gave readings and ran workshops in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, and Netanya. His work has appeared in the new renaissance, the Voices Israel anthology, The League of Laboring Poets, Caesura, Home Planet News, Autumn Sky, Cherry Blossom Review, and others.

Coleen T. Houlihan is a novelist and poet who studied writing at Wellesley College . She has featured at Stone Soup, Best Sellers, Borders, the Sherman Cafe and Walden Poetry Series and published poetry in The Alewife, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ibbetson Street Press, Spare Change and abroad. Her poetry is diverse. She has written in the perspective of a child, a killer, a mother, animals and men. Her most recent chapbook This Human Heart is a collection of eight poems spanning several years and is full of the light and dark of life.

Laurel Lambert is an Out of The Blue artist and participant in the gallery's open mikes. Her work is available for sale at the gallery.

John Landry is poet laureate of New Bedford. He first read at Stone Soup's Sunday night series with John Wieners, Charley Shively, and Arlene Stone in the mid-1970's at the Cambridge site in Boston. His poems have appeared in Beatitude, Sliding Uteri, Xcp, North Coast Review, New College Review, onedit, Lights&Mirrors, Citizen 32, and others. In 1986, he read at the Library of Congress at the invitation of then Poetry Consultant/Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks.

Gordon Marshall is a 43-year-old poet who combines the romantic with the surreal. He draws his rhythms from jazz and from the psychedelic rock of the sixties, purifying his voice through these sounds. He finds their embryonic spirit in the poetry of the great romantic revolutionary Percy Bysshe Shelley, on whom he did his Master’s thesis in 2005. He is a jazz poet.

Margaret Nairn was born in Pennsylvania and raised on the Island of Guernsey in the British Channel Islands. Having lived in the Boston area for 21 years, she is now involved in furthering the cause of general health. She is part of the Collaborative Artworks group in Lynn, proud to be both a member and the president, amongst artists who struggle to overcome "difficulties" by making and selling art together. She lives in Watertown and has two cats.

Chad Parenteau was recently published in the anthology French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets. His Chapbook, Discarded: Poems for My Apartment, will be published by Cervena Barva Press later this year.

Bill Perrault went to the Universities of New England and Maine and wrote a graduate thesis on the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. He has published poems in Mothwing, Boston Poet, Stone Soup Anthology 2003, and Out Of The Blue Writers Unite. He reads his poetry throughout New England and has featured at the Lizard Lounge, Gypsypashn's venue, and Stone Soup. He was recently named Producer of the Year for LTC Channel 8 in Lowell for his weekly production of the Stone Soup Poetry TV series as well as other programs.

In September 2007, to mark his 70th birthday, Stone Soup founder Jack Powers received a proclamation from the City of Boston for his contribution to the arts. His poem in this issue is reprinted from issue #20 of Stone Soup Poetry, a journal he put out through his Stone Soup Press.

Deborah M. Priestly runs the Out of the Blue Art Gallery located in Cambridge, Mass at 106 Prospect Street with Tom Tipton, (founder, owner). She runs the Open Bark Poetry reading every Saturday night at the gallery. Her publication credits include Ibbetson Street, Spare Change, Poesy, Fresh!, Boston Poet, The Boston Herald, The Boston Girl Guide and Out of the Blue Writers Unite (which she also co-edited). She is the author of The Woman Has A Voice from Ibbetson Street Press, an eclectic combination of healing poetry and images of women in transition.

Christopher Robbins describes his poem for this issue as "a dada-revival poem that demonstrates how confusing the human world can be to autistic people."

Andy Schattner is Simon Schattner's brother. His photo depicts 125th street, the subject of Simon's poem in this issue.

Simon Schattner (June 14, 1957 to July, 2006) was born in New York City, in Manhattan. After moving to Montclair, N.J. and graduating from high school, he moved to Boston. He received a Bachelors Degree in English at the age of 29 and later earned a Masters Degree in Rehabilitation. In the years before his death, the most important goal of his life was the affirmation of his Jewish identity and the continuation of his musical and poetic creativity. He used his creative energy by performing music and poetry, while finding supportive artists with whom he connected. Much of his poetry reflects tension between city/suburban life--the rhythms, and aspirations.

Lynne Sticklor, The Prize Lady, is a Performance & Visual Artist, Editor and Text & Graphics Designer Artist. She is the sole creator of The Prize Lady Experience: a one-on-one performance art piece and a grand poetic theatrical show with chances to earn “Fabulous Prizes." She is on-staff as an Editor and Designer in the book division of Ibbetson Street Press, with oodles of book credits under her belt.

James Van Looy became involved with Stone Soup in the mid-70's when he lived on Beacon Hill, seeing performers such as Bill Barnum and Brother Blue. He studied mime for eight years with the Mirage Movement Theatre, eventually becoming a member of the troupe. He is currently the co-Artistic Director of Cosmic Spelunker Theatre.

Cindy Williams is a 1985 graduate of the Art Institute of Houston. She has had her photography published in Pettycoat Relaxer and High Horse.

For Patricia Fillingham

2008-01-30T16:23:00.000-08:00

Photo by Debra Cash

Patricia

Woman
Made by the war
Spitfires that shot down

Nazis
You caught words like mice
A calico cat, in a chimney.

--Gordon Marshall

She was a friend

We sat next to each other every week
We talked and shared. It was neat.
I remember when she came to Stone Soup
She had found a place to be in a group
She told me she was lonely with her husband gone
It's nice to have a friend, you feel you belong
She was telling me how she would publish my poetry
She didn't like the way I put poems in the center
Put them to the side, she'd say
And I'd say I like them that way
She always made sure she didn't bother me
Too close or blocking the way in front of me
She read that poem about her husband many times
Going to heaven finding someone else to love
Telling us that sometimes we don't know the here after
It's a mystery, life is a mystery, it was humorous
Her whole demeanor was somewhat curious
I always understood her poetry, it was clear
Simple and easy to understand all the time
A lot of poets don't make any sense
I cannot make out what they are saying
Or what the message is
But Patricia was always on the money
She will be missed by us at Stone Soup
We always remember our poets, always
In a way, she is here to stay with us

--Bill Perrault

Chosen Spirit of the Stars

To be one with sky
like you are now
speaking poetry to us still
through rain, sun and wind,
and what words were once lost
between us -- are now flowing freely
like a river,
through the grass and weeds,
and light and dark
your intimate stories
being told to the clouds,

my lively cats still jump
every time the front door opens,
for they believe it is you
you were a chosen spirit
to paint the sky with your poetry
so we cannot cry
old life pours away as new life
fills the soul
so your name Patricia is everywhere
and your blue eyes still shine like stars
dreaming up a whole new world.

--Deborah M. Priestly

For Patrica Fillingham

That Lovely Kind Face
The Voice.
The Words.
The Humor.
The Love.

I appreciated her so fully.
She had my attention locked.
So Present in the Poem.

And she could surprise!
Sexy thoughts.
To remind us that this is a Woman who had Lived.
Lived, Lived, Lived.
Fully. Honestly.

That Bent Body was ready to fly.

--Lynne Sticklor

Patricia Says
A found poem

This is your aged parent, or what’s left of her.
How are you, my pet?
There’s almost always a Walnut Street.
There’s almost always a School Street.
In New York City it’s so easy to find your way around!
That looks like an old mill.
I had a yellow lab and she and my grandmother were the two nicest people I ever met.
They took me into his room and showed me his bed and said “Daddy’s gone.”
I was young and stupid. I wouldn’t have divorced Bluebeard.
Isn’t that a beautiful tree?
Isn’t that a beautiful cloud?
I didn’t know there was a restaurant on this street. Did I like it? Good!
You don’t know how grateful I am to you.
I do love you.
Never underestimate the power of poetry.
It wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened.
Amusez-vous bien.

--Debra Cash

Smileys

It’s always when I get on the computer,
That you jump up into my lap.
Before I can even get the screen up,
Papa, I want smileys
So I tell you
As I have often told you
That the smileys are on their way-
They’re in their cars now,
And driving to our house.
Maybe they’re just stuck in traffic.
At long last (finally!) the screen does come up,
And I move the arrow over to
The yellow smile on the toolbar and click the mouse
And the box comes up with all your smileys.
I want the Kitty smileys, Papa.
I go to the animal section of the box and click it with the mouse
And all the cat smileys come up
And we scroll down to the bottom
To see every last one
(For the umpteenth ging quin killionth time);
Then there are the puppy smileys,
The bird smileys,
The fish smileys.
We go through them all
(Yes, umpteen ging quin killion times)
Like touring a virtual cartoon zoo.
I want the monkey smileys, Papa
But I thought you didn’t like the monkey smileys!?
Yet we see them anyway
I want the elephant smileys, Papa
I bring them up
I want the big elephants, Papa
How are we going to get a big elephant out of the computer?
Through the door, Papa
And you pointed to the smiley box on the screen
You remembered the story that I read to you on Christmas
About the girl who brought home the elephant
To grow up in her house*
We watch together as the little yellow smiley climbs up onto the elephant
And slides down its trunk, over and over again
Ging quin killion times.

* Anna’s Elephant by Patricia Fillingham

--Edward S. Gault

Introduction by Chad Parenteau

2008-01-30T15:54:00.000-08:00

Photo by Edward S. Gault

This issue is not an example of timeliness. That's all I'm certain of.

Tributes have been the core of the first two issues of Spoonful: Issues #0 and #1 (don't ask, just nod and go with it). For this issue, I had set out to have a more energetic and eclectic collection of work for Issue #2.

By the end of last year, I had lost my father to cancer and Stone Soup had lost another friend, Patricia Fillingham.

I could have skipped the tribute entirely and saved Patricia for another issue, but she deserves all the respect we can give her. So there is tribute in this issue as well. This issue also features work from the departed Simon Schattner, another friend of Stone Soup. A poem for my father is absent, to be saved for another time.

This issue is widely-ranged, though not the way I intended. A celebration to creativity: including poems I've heard on the Stone Soup open mike. Poems written by and dedicated to dearly departed souls. Which works define this issue more? In some ways, I'm so determined to get the issue out, I'm too frazzled to know.

I'm so grateful for the patience of the contributors, particularly those who knew about my personal struggles, while this issue was being created. I know you guys must be curious about this issue. So am I

And now, the unveiling.

An Illustrated Poem by Sarah N. Dipity

2008-01-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

Squeeze Tight

Visual Poem by Sarah N. Dipity

2008-01-29T18:55:00.000-08:00

Squeeze Tight

Poem by Jack Powers

2008-01-19T15:47:00.000-08:00

Illustration by James Conant

He wasn't sure how he happened to look up
and see her
but his insides just sort of
blew apart
because she wasn't alone, no
she was with someone else
again
and he saw that instant familiarity of hers
working it out of with another dude,
she, always, opening all the stops, all ways
thinking past him when they are together,
thrilled by what she makes people feel,
thrilled at movies of herself
they compose with their eyes,
all thrust and pull with her so
thoroughly corruptible looks
innocent sin sex loveliness
at the shack in the railroad yard,
the workers trooping through,
spending just a few minutes
not even taking off clothing,
all of them, passing her, stopping briefly
to use the exposed body,
that thing of shapes of crevices
that makes the veins stand out in men's foreheads,
that enlarges appetite so instantly,
she, enjoying so much that physical chemistry,
using herself,
in the back rows of 75 cent movies,
sliding soft thigh openings toward bewildered masturbators,
fleshing out a thousand fantasies,
bending, stretching, arching, swallowing,
accomodating what happens to men
when they look at her,
and he settles again
into that comfortable stroke
of self-pity
in front of the super reality
of an all-knowing,
ever-accusing mirror
that keeps saying
you are there, too.

Poem by Patricia Fillingham

2008-01-18T15:47:00.000-08:00

Photo by Vincent Ciaccio

Drink Up

The Romantic used to
Join the church,
Get on a horse
And slope off to kill a dragon,
And ten years later
Emerge from that forest to tell
Of his adventures, and he believed.
Where are our dragons?
What knight can count on getting lost
And found again with tales of wonder
That are not refuted?
The forests paths are concrete now,
Lighted by electricty,
And the dragon has become a trick
That is found, like the four-masted schooner,
At the bottom of a bottle.

Poem by Simon Schattner

2008-01-17T15:04:00.000-08:00

Photo by Andy Schattner

125th St. (Sometimes I remember)

Lying in my bed...Awake at night
sometimes I can remember
the light filtering up from the street
how many stories below?
Headlights swirling through the gnawing teeth of the Venetian blinds
rotating speckles of light, dancing with the shadows on the wall
clandestine radios playing hit tunes from 1957--?
police sirens mingling with angry voices from 125th St., early one Spring-
I arose and wandered out into the world
when innocence was just a passing name
for life before the change of climate
and I wondered
where my childhood had gone
when the lights passed by in the night
and the blind echoes of laughter on the pavement
raced enchanted against the paradox of Time
when Summer had left my veins-
I turned my back on the vainglorious asphalt of my spawning
longing to rush back and embrace it sanctimoniously
after Winter's languid dreams of suburban angst had consumed
my final bouncing streetwise mannerisms
and the last cry of the urban theatre
was left to wallow in its own restless ears-
Years later...
in the twilight of my youth
I wonder if my sacred rhapsodies are an illusion
or if memories can serve only one master

Poem by Sam Cha

2008-01-16T11:45:00.000-08:00

"Lost Day" by James Conant and Cindy Williams

Apophenia

I chose a day you'd be coming home late.
I stole down the dusty stairs from our
attic with the slanted ceiling spotted
with fruitfly corpses and out the heavy
door hidden in the back. Our names were
never written there, next to the doorbell
that would sometimes ring itself on rainy
days—I'd like to think that it was ringing
then, while I was walking down those stairs;
that thin ribbon of sound the bridge between
the absence below, the absence above.
What I know is that it was November,
that it was raining. My umbrella flapped
like a trapped blackbird until it gave up
and folded the wrong way, unnamed itself
into wet rag and steel that no longer knew
what to do with the rain. Neither did I,
so I just stood at the bus stop, let it
soak through. I thought that the cold I felt was
just water. I thought that I was standing
waiting for the bus. I was only
partially right. I don't know how to tell
this story. It'd be so easy to say
that what I really wanted was to buy
us a future at the mall, diamond hard
and as unassailable as platinum.
I am tempted to harp on the absence
of our names, to try to read some meaning
into the ghost ringing of our doorbell;
I feel the urge to talk about how you
and I folded out of recognition
like my cheap umbrella. But these are three
stone half-carat metaphors. They're pretty
but they don't fetch much when you try to sell
them back. The jewelers peer at them through their
lenses, add up the facets, look up, shrug.
No good. But I was twenty-five. I liked
grand gestures. That night I hid the ring in
the pocket of my least favorite pants,
hid the pants at the bottom of a pile
of dirty laundry. They stayed there for two
months. Every time we argued, I'd picture
the ring and smile. I can see myself now.
The world to come, I was thinking.
It would be worth everything.

Poem by Laurel Lambert

2008-01-15T10:36:00.000-08:00

"Ruined Bridge" by Edward S. Gault

Comes The Dawn

After a while you
learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and
chaining a soul, and you
learn that life doesn't mean
security and you begin to
accept your defeats with your
head up and your eyes open, with
the grace of a woman, not
the grief of a child. And
learn to build all
your roads on today because
tomorrow's ground is too uncertain
for plans, and futures have a way
of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much. So
you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers. And you
learn that you really can endure.
That you really do have worth.
And you learn. With every
goodbye you learn.

Poem by Margaret Nairn

2008-01-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

Fresh Grass

The look, the feel,
Of harmony
Is of an evanescence that
Prolongs the gift -- far past the
Tasting, to a savoring of light,
Of life, of longing.
When in the cherry orchard,
The nuns drift through blue evening,
With stools,
The cows know—soon
Their load lifts, and milked,
They are moved to fresh grass.
It is a grey call,
When along the cliffs,
Gulls wheel
And the pink granite crumbles
To a fall of scrabbled
Gravel
Amongst tufted yellow gorse
Where the wind grazes.
No blazing
Sunset moves you,
But fog drifting gently over
A damp face
With the horns lowing
At some distant rock and lighthouse.
It is a place you visit, where
Before,
Your soul drank, now
Recalled, it rests.
I see the dank shed as a key
That
Frees these moments,
For un-locked, the travesty
Bleeds
Into knowing,
‘Till the
Bloom purifies the wound,
Washing into water, all good, as food.
Let us bless this Eternity.

Poem by James Van Looy

2008-01-13T10:17:00.000-08:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

Cave Crazy

Perhaps, today’s crazy
was once exactly what was needed
to conjure the herd over the edge
or run reindeer into the ground
or just to intuit the next colossal storm
before it caught you ice-footed in the open.

Perhaps, today’s attention deficit disorder
was once exactly the leafy brained
attention to everything that allowed
one to pierce the jumble jungle forest
and keep a surplus in the larder.

Perhaps, today’s dyslexia
was once the ability to read
the sign of the spore backwards
as well as forwards, upside down
and write side up.

Perhaps, the deep hole of our minds
was once the cathedral caverns of earth
where space twirled and swirled round and round
like grand galaxies and gaseous nebulae
gravity found more in our dark matter
than the speed of light which might
penetrate the depths but never recover
obscured needs and births and rebirths
which glimmer in torch flame
in those deep, deep sanctuaries.

Poem by Doug Holder

2008-01-12T14:49:00.000-08:00

Illustration by James Conant

My Lines on Lines

I don't cross the line
I never get close
to the bottom line.

I tow the party line.
I never liked:
"What's my line?"

I stay within
an ordered line
chaos lurks outside
my thin blue line.

I am now
ready to cross
the borderline

in time
to cross
the finish line.

Poem by Bill Perrault

2008-01-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

"Those Little Devils" by James Conant

My drug for my soul

I need it to relax, to be me
Distorted and crazy
I will steal, kill, and die for it
I will humiliate, regurgitate, and retaliate for it
I will destroy my children for it
I will destroy everything that is dear and near to me for it
My drug is my God and my evil and devilish life
I think about getting high all the time
Staying high is my goal in life
I think, sleep, eat, drink, imagine, fantasize, and connive for it
Every second of my miserable life
I am the evil of myself made whole with my drug
Nothing is more important forever
Nothing, nothing, not even eternity
I need to condemn myself for what I am
I am the monster that evil is made of
Long live the evil that makes me whole
May you hate me for what I am
The devil made whole in a human addict
Can you hear me now?
I am in despair

Poem by Mike Amado

2008-01-10T13:17:00.000-08:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

OCD Buddhist Doing Dishes

Dishes undone by dinner,
Dinner done. Got to do the
Dishes by hand.
Hands in warm water,
Warm water plunk
Into stainless steel.
Sink slowly fills as
Suds soap up.
Suds and steam,
Soap and water, hand.
Aluminum scrubber
Clockwise to plate,
No rubber glove,
I need to feel.
This process,
A domestic ceremony.
Dishes air-dry, spots
Stamp china surface.
Spots: flaw for humility.
Monk and Shaman
Both know:
The last detail done
To a sand circle is
Always an omission
Or a mistake.

Poem by Thade Correa

2008-01-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

Photo by Vincent Ciaccio

Tonight

In the space beyond thought,
beyond these words,
our truest life exists.

Tonight we are standing
on a precipice, ashes in our mouths.
We wanted summer and the summer is gone.

One or two stars in the empty night.
All around us, questions spring up
like rootless trees, sting like autumn rain.

You and I believe in the possible,
that this journey has no beginning or end
and once more, tonight, this seems
to be all that matters.

Poem by Gordon Marshall

2008-01-08T16:22:00.000-08:00

Photo by Vincent Ciaccio

Maryrose

ocean herb in hair
her beach rose eyes are smiling
almonds on the sand

Poem by William J. Barnum

2008-01-07T08:45:00.000-08:00

Photo of Ian Thal by Bill Perrault

Marceau
make air to grow
and swallow years

then drench our
thin laughter with
your tears

your grimace of
a grin
lies frozen
on a groan

your gestures
cry
through Heaven
in our eyes
we see your
wings
till angels in
us sing

above a groveling
beast
there soars what’s
blest

from rainbows
and of light
in us

to challenge
night

your hand implies
our world
and folds the void
curled in
your palm

surrounding
all that’s
heard

Poem by Yonit Bousany

2008-01-06T00:33:00.000-08:00

Illustration by James Conant

A God poem

               Watching me spit out the chewed-up cap,
flip the pen over, and continue gnawing on the tail end,
he says,
               I like God poems.
I smile and glance down at my notebook
blotted with crimson lipstick,
echoing with Sanskrit chants,
the Capital Letters of buttons
pinned to Woodstock jean jackets.
               Hell, I steal in that notebook,
I dishonor my parents,
I sleep with my neighbors and then their wives.
I say “hell” and don’t think I’m going there.
                              He is still gazing at me.
                              I look up and
                                             feel something.
Then my mouth fills with blue ink
               and I spit up over the table.

Poem by Jade Sylvan

2008-01-05T00:24:00.000-08:00

Photo by Vincent Ciaccio

The Wise Man

The wise man waits on top of the mountain.

I climb and see him, gaunt and tight,
pale with white hair blazing, cracked hoary mouth,
dry tongue and eyes yellowed like ricepaper, parched.

His hand shaking, reaches to mine,
hot tears quiver, my lips cannot still themselves
but they open and my question spills
liquid fast from my chest.

I hold my breath as his mouth presses thin,
his eyes looking into mine like shining fire.

“Beautiful girl,” he says,

“The first century I sat up here, solitary,
I knew the wind’s voice better than my mother’s,
and the slow growing of the trees was my family,
and the churning of the clouds and the birds
in the sky was my story.

“The second, when I could not remember
the shock of the touch of a lover, I sat and was satisfied,
and I remembered the voice of my brother
the morning I climbed the mountain alone,
and felt no remorse at knowing it would never
vibrate through me again.

“The third, the moss began to grow on me
and the little creatures of the mountain
nested in my hair and in my lap,
and they were my friends until they fell to bones,
and never did I weep for their inevitable returns,
but sat, a rock, a stone, a statue, and alone.

“The fourth, and my mind became the sky,
and I spoke only by the whistling of the grasses,
and was nothing and everything and one,
and saw the rolling of the ages in the river’s watershapes.”

He coughs, ancient wheezing through black teeth.
Tears slide in thin lines down creased, caverned cheeks.
His hands squeeze my hands, his eyes hold my eyes.

“Those first five hundred years,
I would have told you your answer lay within.

“That the greatest wisdom lived
in the whisper of the breeze and the flow of the river.
That to know, you must withdraw, meditate, escape.

“But now I am an old man – older than the trees –
and all I want in my last moments is to get laid
and fall asleep wrapped in those powder arms of yours.

“Hear me out, now. I’m wise, you see, and look at you
in your glorious glowing arrogance with those ice eyes
and curved calves and hell, that ass! Christ.

“Come on now, doll. I haven’t had a bed
in half an eon, but the rocks here aren’t bad
if you spread the leaves the right way,
and the sky is empty and you are so young
and I am so old and I don’t have the answers
and I don’t have the answers and neither of us ever will.

“So why don’t you just pick up
that ragged skirt of yours
and let me at those infant thighs.
You are so young and beautiful
and I have been lonely for so long,
oh lonely for so long and now
this desire is all I know
so please, sweetheart,
please give daddy
some of that sugar
here in the void.
I am so lonely,
so lonely,
so lonely.”

Poem by Nathan Graziano

2008-01-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

One Day at a Time

What’s not to love about a cliché?

The Drunk will say in his lounge singer’s voice
as the guests at the Mexican restaurant
gather in a scrum around a plate of chicken nachos.
He slams his fourth frozen margarita
through a muscular straw, avoiding the salt.
French-kissing the glass’ rim until he’s huffing
tequila fumes. Meanwhile the handsome waiters
with bronzed-skin and chiseled chins,
shadowy beards and memories of bolo ties
run to him with a new drink before he can slur,

One day was yesterday.

In the evening the Shetland pony piñatas were hung
on meat hooks from The Drunk’s bedroom ceiling
where his looks of longing broke their backs,
spilling sangria like a god’s blood on his only white shirt.

Today starts tomorrow,

The Drunk will say and hoist his glass to the sun,
after torching five weeks of sobriety, with the ease
of Cortez kicking up his feet on an ottoman, raising a brow
and saying, “I might be immortal.” The Drunk’s laugh
lifts on the backs of the desert spirits and his former-self emerges
from the ashes of a burned wagon on the beaten path.

Time is the trap of consciousness,

The Drunk crunches on a corn chip to punctuate
as a pretty girl smiles in Spanish from a table
ablaze by the kitchen entrance. She has Aztec eyes
that call his bluff as the heat reaches his face
and the piñatas’ blood, the sweet sangria, rains
on the one-way street that will lead him back to tomorrow.

Poem by John Landry

2008-01-03T07:22:00.000-08:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

reclaiming my own happiness

if everything in your life is in place
except your heart…
you have a long way to go to get clear
of yourself

I take as my guide
a wandering cloud
whose fingers curl into its palm
into a come-hither gesture

from nothing recognizable
into another map of Cape Cod
to an eventual dissolve

Poem by Coleen T. Houlihan

2008-01-02T23:52:00.000-08:00

Illustration by James Conant

Girls Who Kill Themselves

Girls who kill themselves
have a small mirror hidden in their locker.
It looks like a cheap, store-bought reflector,
but in actuality it is a shard from the jealous Queen’s
broken looking-glass,
and it does nothing but cry.
For its truth is subjective,
a fact only understood with the aid of maturity
and time.
But girls who kill themselves
move fast like the wind.
They are the wild Mustang horses
which sometimes get caught and killed,
who don’t recognize freedom
until it is lost.
It is never right for such creatures
to have hollowed out eyes
because even though the mirror cries,
the eyes only see what the beaten queen believed
before she devised a plan to get off her knees.
Girls who kill themselves
see Sleeping Beauty’s punishment
as actually being the dream.

Poem by Chris Robbins

2008-01-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

"Scifi Shoe Store" by James Conant

Clear as Damon

The rules are clear
as damontage
of pick out on left
fielding questions of
what an autistic person goes
thru the wood-be sting
operation of meet
the pressing issues of
what does it menial
the time and spaced
out the door to the judges
chamber music of lies
and blackmailcall of the wild
jungle tree-swallowed
by a sharp-toothed
alligation in court
of law and ordered chaos.

2007-09-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

Issue #1

Introduction by Chad Parenteau

Featuring Tributes to

William J. Barnum

Jack Powers

Simon Schattner

John Wieners

Added Bonus: Bill Barnum's Classic Performance Poem "Cockatoo"
Afterwards, read "The Zannotated' Cockatoo'" by Rafael Woolf

Poems by

2007-09-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

Stone Soup Issue #1

Editors
Chad Parenteau
Lynne Sticklor

Consulting Editors
Margaret Nairn
Jack Powers

Lisa Reade

Contributing Artists
James Conant

Caleb Cole

Edward S. Gault
Bill Perrault
Cindy Williams

William J. Barnum is a mime, actor and performance poet who has been part of the Boston poetry scene for decades. His publication credits include Out of The Blue Writers Unite and a collection of poetry, Of Rare Design.

Yonit Bousany is a junior at Brandeis University, majoring in Linguistics and Anthropology. Her poetry can also be found in the Brandeis literary journal, where the children play (Fall 2006).

Anne Brudevold is the founder of Eden Waters Press, which will be releasing the first issue of its literary journal later this year. Her novel Hunter Moon is being serialized by the Wilderness House Literary Review.

Ann Carhart considers herself to be an old Cambridge poet but readily admits being born in Brooklyn and falling in love with poetry while living in the Village and attending NYU. She has an M.A. in Writing and one in Counseling/Psychology from Cambridge's Lesley University and an Ed.D. from UMass. Her poems have appeared in Cries of the Spirit, Heat City Review, Earth's Daughters, The Hartford Courant and Spare Change News. Ibbetson Street Press published her first book, Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! She is working on her next book, A Kid From Brooklyn.

Caleb Cole is a student at the New England School of Photography, where he learns to do neat things with lights and mirrors and the fine art of How to Make Anyone Look Good in a Picture. He is also a phenomenal vegetarian cook, and a natural redhead. He currently lives in Brighton with his fiancé and their three neurotic cats.

James Conant has been living in Cambridge since 1991. He was given a slice of clay to keep himself busy when his work slowed down due to the unfortunate events of 9/11. Today, his sculptures are currently available at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery.

Susan Deer Cloud, a Métis mountain Indian, has been published in numerous journals & anthologies. Her latest book is The Last Ceremony (Foothills Press 2007). This year she received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Her cat, Wu Wei, is not impressed.

Timothy Gager was a finalist in The Binnacle Ultra Short Award, the Bukowski Pint and Pen Competition and had a story notable in Story South's Million Writer Award (2006).

Edward S. Gault has been active in Stone Soup Poetry, Open Bark, and Tapestry of Voices poetry venues. His most Recent Photography exhibit Riverway was sponsored by Out of the Blue Art Gallery at the 1369 Coffee House at Inman Square in the Summer of 2007.

Steve Glines edits the Wilderness House Literary Review. He is Editor-In-Chief of the newly formed author and publishers service bureau, ISCS Press.

Marc D. Goldfinger is the poetry editor of Spare Change News and has been published quite a bit. He's just moving from one day to the next.

Paul Hapenny is a Multi-award winning Metis, Director, Playwright and Screenwriter based in Nova Scotia and Boston.

Coleen T. Houlihan is a novelist and poet who studied writing at Wellesley College . She has featured at Stone Soup, Best Sellers, Borders, The Sherman Cafe and Walden Poetry Series and published poetry in The Alewife, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Ibbetson Street, Spare Change and an erotic literary journal out of England . Her poetry can be described as sensual, magical, light and dark, with images so vivid you can lose yourself in her hauntingly beautiful world. She has released two chapbooks, the most recent titled, This Human Heart, a collection of eight poems spanning several years.

Walter Howard is a retired history professor, English teacher, and journalist. He is a member of the Longfellow Society, the Natick Writers, and the Wayland Poetry Workshop. His poems have appeared in Motive, Longfellow Journal, Ibbetson Street Press, Journal of Modern Writing, Endicott Review, and others.

John Landry is poet laureate of New Bedford. He first read at Stone Soup's Sunday night series with John Wieners, Charley Shively, and Arlene Stone in the mid-1970's at the Cambridge site in Boston. His poems have appeared in Beatitude, Sliding Uteri, Xcp, North Coast Review, New College Review, onedit, Lights&Mirrors, Citizen 32, and others. In 1986, he read at the Library of Congress at the invitation of then Poetry Consultant/Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks.

In her sixtieth year, Linda Larson has managed to bring out an autobiographical book of poetry encompassing, in the words of Howard Zinn "all the stuff of life, straight from the heart." Her poem "Under the Blanket" appears in her new book washing the stones.

Gordon Marshall is a 43-year-old poet who combines the romantic with the surreal. He draws his rhythms from jazz and from the psychedelic rock of the sixties, purifying his voice through these sounds. He finds their embryonic spirit in the poetry of the great romantic revolutionary Percy Bysshe Shelley, on whom he did his Master’s thesis in 2005. He is a jazz poet.

Ryan Miller is from Brockton. He is 22 years old. His poems have appeared in the New College Review in San Francisco. He has read at Stone Soup, the Joyce Ellen Gallery series hosted by Tom Weigel in New London, the Poetribe readings at the East Bridgewater Public Library, and at UMass Dartmouth.

Margaret Nairn was born in Pennsylvania and raised on the Island of Guernsey in the British Channel Islands. Having lived in the Boston area for 21 years, she is now involved in furthering the cause of general health. She is part of the Collaborative Artworks group in Lynn, proud to be both a member and the president, amongst artists who struggle to overcome "difficulties" by making and selling art together. She lives in Watertown and has two cats.

Joanna Nealon has five published books: The Lie And I, Poems Of The Zodiac, Said The Sage, The Fourth Kingdom, and Living It. Her poems have appeared in Stone Soup Gazette, Poiesis, The Aurorean, Medaphors, Ibbetson Street, and the anthology, We Speak for Peace.

Chad Parenteau was recently published in the anthology French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets. His Chapbook Discarded: Poems for My Apartment will be published by Cervena Barva Press in 2008.

Bill Perrault went to the Universities of New England and Maine and wrote a graduate thesis on the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. He has published poems in Mothwing, Boston Poet, Stone Soup Anthology 2003, and Out Of The Blue Writers Unite. He reads his poetry throughout New England and has featured at the Lizard Lounge, Gypsypashn's venue, and Stone Soup. He was recently named Producer of the Year for LTC Channel 8 in Lowell for his weekly production of the Stone Soup Poetry TV series as well as other programs. Inquires about his photos can be emailed to Spoonful.

This past September, to mark his 70th birthday, Stone Soup founder Jack Powers received a proclamation from the City of Boston for his contribution to the arts.

Deborah M. Priestly runs the Out of the Blue Art Gallery located in Cambridge, Mass at 106 Prospect Street with Tom Tipton, (founder, owner). She runs the Open Bark Poetry reading every Saturday night at the gallery. Her publication credits include Ibbetson Street, Spare Change, Poesy, Fresh!, Boston Poet, The Boston Herald, The Boston Girl Guide and Out of the Blue Writers Unite (which she also co-edited). She is the author of The Woman Has A Voice from Ibbetson Street Press, an eclectic combination of healing poetry and images of women in transition.

Lisa Reade is currently an undergraduate student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She spent the summer in Boston, writing and meeting other writers, and plans to study abroad in Tokyo, Japan in the spring of 2008.

Erin Reardon is a recovering Catholic, hypocrite, and nicotine addict. She has featured at Stone Soup as well as performed open mics at Open Bark, and the Lizard Lounge. She has been published in various online magazines including Hecale, and Silenced Press. She resides in Somerville and works in Cambridge. She likes beer and Irish whiskey. A lot.

Tom Sheehan’s fourth poetry book, This Rare Earth & Other Flights, was issued by Lit Pot Press in 2003. He has been nominated for eight Pushcart Prizes and a Silver Rose Award from ART for short story excellence. He is a veteran of the Korean War (31st Infantry Regiment), a Boston College graduate after Army service, and has been retired for 16 years.

Colorado T. Sky is the National Secretary of the Highway Poets, MCC. His work has appeared in local, national and international magazines, journals and anthologies, as well as two chapbooks of poetry, a spoken-word CD and a collection of short works, River of Stone, which was nominated for a Pulitzer in 2003. His current ride is a chopped 1969 "FLXCB" dresser.

Lynne Sticklor, The Prize Lady, is a Performance & Visual Artist, Editor and Text & Graphics Designer Artist. She is the sole creator of The Prize Lady Experience: a one-on-one performance art piece and a grand poetic theatrical show with chances to earn “Fabulous Prizes." She is on-staff as an Editor and Designer in the book division of Ibbetson Street Press, with credits including Stone Soup Anthology 2003, Fairytales & Misdemeanors, The Woman has a Voice, Hot Rain, and Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! and most recently washing the stones by Linda Larson.

Jade Sylvan lives and works in Boston. This one time she graduated from college, and this other time she met Kurt Vonnegut. "Trains" appears in her first chapbook, The Crossroad.

Tracy L. Strauss is a full-time lecturer in the Division of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College. She previously earned a Somerville Arts Council Literary Fellowship Award for her poetry.

James Van Looy became involved with Stone Soup in the mid-70's when he lived on Beacon Hill, seeing performers such as Bill Barnum and Brother Blue. He studied mime for eight years with the Mirage Movement Theatre, eventually becoming a member of the troupe. He is currently the co-Artistic Director of Cosmic Spelunker Theatre.

Carol Weston was chosen to perform for Stone Soup's 35th anniversary reading. Her poetry has been published in The Farleigh Literary Review, Bomb, Stone Soup Anthology 2003, and The Blind See Only This World.

Cindy Williams is a 1985 graduate of the Art Institute of Houston. She has had her photography published in Pettycoat Relaxer and High Horse.

Rafael Woolf has helped to edit the work of Bill Barnum in the past, putting together several manuscripts that have yet to be published. An earlier book of his poems, I Wish That My Room Had a Floor, was first published by Jack Powers' Stone Soup Press It was recently re-released by the editors of Boston Poet.

Introduction by Chad Parenteau

2007-09-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Felipe Victor Rodriguez salutes Jack Powers on his
70th birthday. Photo by Bill Perrault

The timing was something I cursed and later appreciated.

I’d planned to release issue #0 of Spoonful a year ago. I was able to successfully acquire and compile a good number of not only samples of poetry submitted and/or overhead during various open mikes, but also tributes to Stone Soup’s founder, Jack Powers. The learning process of choosing poems, pairing off artwork, and web design (a challenge for me, even with the training wheels that Blogger provides) took much longer than I’d expected. The projected Winter 2006 debut issue was moved to the end of summer, 2007.

Sometime after I released the issue, I realized that a celebration of Jack Powers' life was just around the corner, with his turning 70. Now I had the task of creating a tribute issue immediately following an issue that was essentially already, well, a tribute issue. A bit of an awkward procession, but I never thought for a second that I could skip a tribute during such an important time.

Still, it at least gave me direction, and I’d be a liar if I said I had a definite plan beyond Issue #0.

With this issue coming out during the autumn season, I started thinking about the autumn years of Jack, who is still writing and creating visual art. How many Stone Soup alumni were in similar positions that deserved similar tribute? Bill Barnum, of course, who still makes the open mikes at Out of The Blue and elsewhere every chance he has. And what about John Wieners, who had the anniversary of his death marked and his life celebrated at Stone Soup this past May? Then there are those who never made it to the autumn of their life (Simon Schattner, we miss you).

Of course, some of the poets writing the tributes as seen here were around from the start and deserve tributes of their own. It overwhelms and excites this editor to understand the wealth of Stone Soup's history and its contributors with a majority of the poets in this issue addressing life experiences and how they influence, for good or ill.

Thanks to editorial fiat, I've thrown my family in the equation with an individual contribution marking my father's continuing bout with cancer as he enters his own autumn years (though he's still so active, they might as well be called Indian Summer years, to use an old phrase being lent today to the very warm Fall we're having now). I dedicate this issue in part to him and my grandfather, who begins his own bout with the same illness.

Time for you to explore the work. To (mis)use a phrase I've heard before, a lot of living went into what you'll be reading in this issue.

"The Zannotated 'Cockatoo'" by Rafael Woolf

2007-09-29T22:28:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

As you know, most of Bill Barnum’s poems are really references to his own experiences. To do, say, “Cockatoo” thoroughly would take pages and pages. Here is just a sampling.

A cockatoo of rare design
perched on an awning over a bazaar
outside the palace

Bill Barnum played the lead in an all-male Swan Lake back in 1938, believe it or not, at the Metropolitan Opera House. One afternoon, during rehearsal, a freak gust blew the feathers of his costume into the wings—of the stage, that is. He found them perched, like a bird in their own right, on part of the stage set for Act One of Carmen: a square in Seville. The rest is history.

Laughter fills a Bowl of Lilacs.

Yes, there was an actual bowl of lilacs. Bill’s obnoxious landlord had come to bother him about something one day, and Bill’s cat (his forth, actually) playfully tried to sharpen its claws on the seat of the landlord’s pants. The cat’s claws were quite sharp already, and as the landlord whirled around to see what was happening, his pants and underpants split completely, exposing his entire arse. In a desperate attempt to hide the fact that he was laughing, Bill buried his face in the nearest thing handy, a bowl of lilacs. He quickly fabricated a story of an asthma attack and a little-known yoga breathing exercise for which bubbling water and the smell of flowers were absolutely essential.

Darkness Presides among daylight mourners at the sun hotel.

This was the funeral for Johnny the Dip, the pickpocket. He was quite beloved in that part of New York City in the thirties and forties, because at his honest job as a short-order cook, he made a chili that—if one believes the stories—has never been duplicated and never turned anyone down if they were out of money. He actually gave Bill the recipe on his death bed. Alas, Bill made the mistake of lending it to a Platonist who ate the recipe, because he said it was the ideal form of the actual dish. Never room with a philosophy major.

Irresponsible glass toy ball!

It did exist. It was (and actually remained) an ordinary Christmas toy until the winter that Bill decided to spend strengthening his personal “aura.” Evidently, Bill overdid it just a little, because one day, for five minutes only, his fingers repulsed anything he tried to grasp, including the glass ball. Bill recalls futilely chasing the ball back and forth under this dresser, muttering unwarranted generalizations about the ball’s personal character.

Men Spill sperm through same door’s rust.

Actually, this is probably not the first time it’s ever occurred. Bill was lying in bed, listening idly to what was going on in the rest of the building, when he heard two people next door, fumbling with a ladder. This was not unusual, but the next thing he heard was heavy breathing coming from both of them! He stuck his head out the door, and there they were, trying to lubricate the hinges of their door with their own sperm! When he asked what was going on, he received the curt reply, “We ran out of oil.” “Works for me,” he muttered, pulling his head back in.

Misnamed adventure in the nave of darkness.

This is the title of a very blasphemous off-off-off-off-Broadway play was in for exactly one night before they shut it down. The plot centered on a love tryst between a priest and a grave-digger in a grave. Since the grave-digger was female, the director actually didn’t think it would cause that much outcry. Bill played the grave.

P.S. None of this is true!

For William J. Barnum

2007-09-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

A Dram for Billy Barnum

Billy wired rupees from Bhutan to Cornwall
To fund the everlasting circus of Buddha and Barnum.
He pulled a panoply of stars across a bee field,
An origami gramophone on a falooka to Belize.
Through his white hair, a tiger moth travels.
It lands upon a flower in his hand.
He passes the flower to the flower girl at the wedding
Of William Blake and Emily Dickinson.
He plants a kiss on her eyes. This is his gift.

--Gordon Marshall

The Poet Always Dreams

A lonely black crow soars high
against white moon
swooping wings that carry time
radiant death, a face of stars
shadow drifting close to heart.

For now, you choose to fly
this dark incline
where future grows into myth
floating forward in eclipse
horizon bleeds its own tide.

--Deborah M. Priestly

For Simon Schattner

2007-09-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

The Target

Digging in the dirt.
It hurts.
It squirts
Zerts.

Write the dream
Of the scream:
That seems
Like a good theme.

I’m not that kind of guy.
I eat pie.
The kind in the sky.
You may well ask why.

I’m just killing time,
Looking for a rhyme.
Or a good time.
Got a dime?

Label the vials,
in the styles
Of the miles
of files.

--Gordon Marshall

Walking at Walden Pond...

you taught me
when language surrenders itself
to a kind look
to a quick touch
or a walk
it is then
we all come closer
together and then
when the chaos diminishes
once in a while
in the silence
love just appears.

Walking with Simon
it happened for me
that day at Walden Pond.

--Ann Carhart

Macaroons

I miss you Simon
And that silver Jewish star that hung
So loosely around your neck
The one you wore so proudly
It used to dance when you recited your poems
Or gave your long introductions of your identity
Poet, songwriter, spiritual guru – but we just
Knew you as Simon really – a legend
In your own image, always thankful
The last time we spoke,
I learned more about your past
The drinking, drugs and arrest but then
You discovered poetry and therapy
And that saved your life – we sat in Carberry’s
As I listened to your beyond any of your poems
A Simon I never knew – direct and even more sincere
I remember also how you loved macaroons
At the poetry readings, and you were so glad
That they were kosher – “you were thinking of me”
You said once, “you know how much I love these, I mean
I am too poor to keep kosher but I love these”
So I miss you Simon and your invented rhymes
And quirky sayings, you will always be here in my heart.

--Deborah M. Priestly

For Jack Powers

2007-09-29T16:55:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

Intro

Poetry is the graphic expression of insightful perspective. Masterful poetry requires expert literacy, insatiable curiosity, a sense of daring willingness to both explore and share, and a glad acceptance of responsibility--good, bad or indifferent--for blazing trails into hitherto unexplored territories both within and without.

This does not occur in a vacuum; each poet draws direction and inspiration from those who have gone before, each according to their own path, following a map a soul tracks etched in iron gall, felt-tip and rattlecan, graffiti inscribed on the mind and heart by those bold enough to go before, to lay the foundations for future poetic accomplishment. Jack Powers has laid foundations such as these.

I have followed trailblazers and pathfinders such as these, as have we all, and I am deeply and eternally indebted to them for their insight, their determination, their perseverance, their vision, their art and their craft, as are we all. My work is theirs as much as it is my own. Jack Powers has blazed trails such as these.

Poetry is an orphan. Touted as the highest form of language by dusty professors in musty classrooms, it is virtually ignored by what passes for mainstream literature, whose jaded tastes tend toward the formulaic romantic and horrific, mass printed junk food for the intellect and poison for the soul. Still, poets and poetry survive, lurking in the shadows of small pub circles and the corners of lyrical coffeehouses, leaving many to pen their fate, as Dylan described in his song "Hard Rain". From these corners, from the dust beside forgotten roads, from the inner reaches of the human soul, the vagabond spirit of poetry cries out for a home. Jack Powers has heard these cries and would not let them go unanswered.

Stone Soup is a home for Poets, and Jack Powers its Godfather.

--Colorado T. Sky

Pain

In the complex dark
Of a convoluted shell,
"The Pearl of Great price,"
A miniature Moon,
Formed from pain
Around the cruel irritant
That spurs all true creation.

And you are the pearl diver,
The only one
Who can bring this thing of beauty
To the surface of your consciousness,
This gift to all,
Into the light
Of beneficent Sun.

--Joanna Nealon

These Little Deaths…

Flying higher than the soul can trace
Extended to the scope of moon
There is no end to this flight
Like death, it is a destiny no doubt
Bits of light shed only a glimmer
Of harmony – I know I will die like this
Words that swell in the knot of my brain
Where am I? ho am I? And you--who are you?
There are paintings in these clouds above
I have seen their faces transform into promises
Beyond my memory, just before I fade
Into the depths of despair and these legs
Tremble with my arms – and this heart of mine
Is no longer divine. It will fade in time
Bring me back to the blue of this sky
Before my dreams became nightmares of today,
Before my dance became a disjointed rhyme,
I am here, there, with me, without you – in space,
And I never asked for this
I never wanted to live, to die like this,
Floating in a field that resembles a heaven
But it is always hell, and without the words …
Always grunts, screams and angry, wild thoughts
That gesture suicide, and is this life?
So many studies and cures, but not for this
I suffer in silence because no one wants to hear it
And Van Gogh painted these visions, temporal with flow
Believe in me, I understand why you let the bullet in
Your beautiful, beautiful mind – brushes still wet with
Cadmium reds bleeding a shame beyond any poem,
Fire to fire, dust to dust, fire to fire, dust to dust
Slice the canvas not the brain, I never wanted to go insane
Oh lift me up God, don’t bring me back down again
Shake up my veins, my arteries to leave my legs weak,
Dizzy in my own speak - too many pieces astray,
And all I can do these days is pray
These little deaths, angels with wings dripping tears.

--Deborah M. Priestly

Bird with Strings

A tall sixteen, Jack stands in Storyville
Charlie Parker hobbling out in a heroin glaze
Spinning a top of bebop, 1954.
He takes in the notes, notes the takes,
Just as he will, all the way down the line,
At Peter Piper’s, Charlie’s Tap, TT the
Bear’s Place, Out of the Blue
--For 37 years he has strung his soul with the sounds
Of the troubadours of Boston...
It’s thirty years after the baptism by jazz, 1984:
Next to the Red Hat, in a Beacon Hill church basement,
Those sound echo off the walls,
My sounds, reading my poem on Bird.
Jack takes in the echoes like a teacher
And follows with his tale
Of catching the deteriorated demon.

Another poet reads.
Scripture seeps through the talk,
Queries over Malachi, Noah, Nero.
“Where is Daniel Cantor?” Jack asks;
Daniel is spreading his Best Butter
On bread in Brookline.
Greg eats the bread at T Anthony’s
With coffee, cream no sugar.
Ed and Barbara and Don Quatrale
Are drinking sherry in the fens.

Acorns fell from a petrified oak.
The oak still stands,
23 years later,
Ringed and fat as a redwood.
From its outermost boughs a robin’s nest falls
Into Jack’s rapid hands.
He carries the nest into the wild, without cracking an egg,
Strumming his poet soul
Every step of the way,
Bird’s song rising to meet him.

--Gordon Marshall

Trust

A younger poet
"Gets to Know" WHAT Matters
I have two hours:
Validated;
But without that
Task I sought;
I wonder
That your handsome
Disposition
Lets me breathe forgiveness
In your home, when you're not
There.
I haven't brought a gift;
But things to share bulge from my bag.
Now;
My "Peaceful" mind explains
Your grace,
For,
Waiting on the stoop
Would have left me vanquished
In ways I could not have
Brooked nor bridged:
Your Art is like your heart--
And, yes,
I want to be it:
Glad to Free it;
Know I see it:
Your absence is a presence,
Except that when you're here,
I'm there.
Though, now that you've arrived,
My art; contrived, can only stare
In wonder at the branches that you bare.
The Bright Forsythia,
Oh, so Yellow, is a
"Moment,"
As only God
Can manufacture,
Into "Time"--
That
Has a meaning;
Now,
Believing;
I'm
Receiving,
In
Your Care.

--Margaret Nairn

For John Wieners

2007-09-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

Jack Powers and Jim Dunn Watch as Charley Shively
Commemorates John Wieners. Photo by Bill Perrault

Poem Beginning with a Line from
the Pen of John Joseph Wieners

I shall never be lonely again, because of the love that dwells
within poetry’s mouth
Music gives the transmitters a workout
which, once coaxed, no filters fit.
This song is an old misfortune.
I have spent my life trying
to stay out of my own way
I was caught by a tremor of strings
mingled with traffic

Work ethic notwithstanding
I ripen in your hands
the fruit of labor’s love.

What sieves through consciousness
dances in a borderless zone
between first and second natures
humbling the proclamations of State

I will not be your lamb tonight
who ladles the moon another broadcast
there are 3 sides to every coin
and who are angels to the eye transfixed
are alchemized and otherwise melted down to earth
where I first learned
Silence is my Mother Tongue
and Song my Second Language.

--John Landry

John Wieners—Reading From Ben Hur

I always saw you hurtling down
the blur of your hallucinogenic hill
and however I tried to speak
to you wild spectral-eyed world
you remained unapproachable mystery
all the more enigmatic when you appeared
at the Stone Soup events that founder Jack Powers
would always invite you to and, indeed list you
as central reader, honored guest, poet laureate, the man
at event after event where you would sometimes not arrive
but when you did would get up with wild hair floating about head,
quick eyes bounding the venue hall walls, glasses slipping down nose
still somehow not really there and at other times weary, anxious present
but always a haunting and legacy, too, of the times that spawned us all
the Black Mountain poets, the eclectic, electric bohemia, the depths
of the counter culture, institutional escapees, underground salvation:
I will always remember all ways you getting up and reading
for no particular reason from Wallace’s novel Ben Hur
your muttering stutter so sure of the importance
of those words we could hardly hear
but which your voice, your being
resonated with sign-if-I-cants
of the WORD, the Word
you knew so well, so well.

--James Van Looy

Poem by Joanna Nealon

2007-09-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

Illustration by James Conant

September

Return to the chapel of the holy Dawn,
Where you find your way into morning light,
Your mind tracing the gentle lines
Of all the love you have ever known;
The faces of children
And the flowers in their hands,
And your face,
Lifted to listening Angels,
Who waited by your window,
Breathing joy,
Because your belief was innocence.
Return,
Though innocence has fled,
And do not raise head from pillow
'Til you have sent your soul
To the kneeling-place of Day,
From where, arising,
You are free
To gather thistles
Or autumn roses.

Poem by Susan Deer Cloud

2007-09-23T20:41:00.000-07:00

"Toxic Cocktail" by Cindy Williams

One Night, Two Poets

discovered the countries of themselves
sharing wine in what appeared to be a garret.
“How did we get here?” – they howled
between kisses, twenty stories high
in an American city. A panther stared
out the window, remembering itself
before it became extinct. In Sky World
Grandmother Moon spun around as if
men had torn into her again, knocked
fullness off balance.

The poets drank naked.

The woman poet smiled, “Baudelaire wrote poems
while balling his black mistress in their Paris garret.
I’ve longed to try that with an Indian man.”
Paper possibilities flared through the window, pens
flowered like eagle feathers inside their hands. The man
let the wine bottle glisten to floor. The woman flung
clay cup at ceiling, wine laughing as Aurora Borealis
across winter paint. She spread her legs like wings
in a parallel universe. He grew a second body of light,
scattering stars inside her flying. Stars blossomed
into constellation. Nine months later
they gave their poem a name.

Poem by Colorado T. Sky

2007-09-22T22:36:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

Shoe Shine Shorty

Hiya. Hello. Hallelujah
Step up, getcha’a shine, suh!

Shoe Shine Shorty
smiled the sun and sang the rain
And watched the world dance by
From a lowslung boxcart frontrow seat
On the cracked and tilted concrete of
The sunnyside-up corner
Of Walk and Don't Walk, USA

Shoe Shine Shorty, he’d shown up
Along about the time
that Richard Nixon took his bow
(Dickie, with much less aplomb)

It was one bright day and there he was
“six foot minus thirty two,”
Marine Corps emblem in a goldcapped tooth
smiling cheeks so shiny black
they were purple, almost blue

It was basically a shoeshine stand
on babycoach and shoppingcart wheels
beneath a deep and warbling soul,
nine Kiwis, three brushes,
five rolled stained and knobby flannels
And a plastic squirtpint always filled
With what he called his “goose juice”

From under his red and gold umbrella
he’d used to smile and say
“The secret of a super shine is the way
the polish gets snapped and popped.
The goose juice is just to oil the way.”

Hiya. Hello. Hallelujah
Step up, getcha’a shine, suh!

“Doo doo, doo wah” he’d call aloud,
and they’d all turn around
“With a shine on your shoes….” He’d sing
“…and a melody in your heart” they’d think,
they’d feel they thought, and then
they’d think they knew.

Hiya. Hello. Hallelujah
Step up, getcha’a shine, suh!

first snow, he’d be gone
and by cruel April he’d be back
and the parade would once again begin
with no-one asking where he’d been
just glad that he was back
and the sidewalks shone a flashing black patina
compliments of Shorty, Shoe Shine Shorty,
and his goldtoothed purple smile

So it came quite suddenly
To all, that sunny bloodstained morning
And when finally the tale came out
There was barely a tear for Shorty
They were way too stunned for mourning

It must’ve been way past midnight
Maybe almost morning
With dawn yawning in the corner
where the universe sleeps

And the world crept quietly along
While Shorty, Shoe Shine Shorty
Went wheeling on drunkenly, singingly home

Popular supposition
And speculative conjecturation
Seems to figure that the skinheads
Caught him somewhere in the alley

Hiya. Hello. Hallelujah
Step up, getcha’a shine, suh!

and it wasn’t until the town was thronged
by stars and bars and bagpipe bands
that people found out all about
who Shoe Shine Shorty’d really been

they all stopped short when they all heard
Reverend Brother Preacherman
solemnly intone a Baptist blessing
for Lieutenant Quincy Roosevelt Washington Jones,
“a man and a half in half a man”
a servile soul both wild and free

sixty two dollars still in his shirt
his Marine Corps gold tooth missing
legs left lost in a Mekong swamp
brains bashed out in the Home of the Free

somewhere, out there, his medals jangle
like the bells of Notre Dame
and there he walks in painless light
and there his boots his boots are always shined

and after brief, though brutal, passage
a grand awakening in a shiny new land
a soul and a half
in a new-made man

Hiya. Hello. Hallelujah
Step up, getcha’a shine, suh!

Shoe Shine Shorty
Cried the sun and sang the rain
And left a shadow's echo on the corner where
He’d once watched the world dance by
From a lowslung boxcart frontrow seat
On the cracked concrete
On the sunnyside-up corner
of Walk and Don't Walk, USA

Poem by Tracy L. Strauss

2007-09-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

"High Star" by Cindy Williams

Homesickness

I keep finding myself
missing
something

displaced

unsettled
feeling
these pains

longing

my stomach
aches

hungry
for some far-off
familiar place,
the habitation
of Safety’s space

that does not exist
never did here
inside myself

I try to unlock
the double-bolted door,
my own house of dreams
that shut me, pushed me
into this dislocated state

outside
in the dark

the moths still flutter, burn
their delicate wings,
like masochistic magnets
drawn to the destructive light

that stayed on
all those nights
like a beacon

that shined
until my mother
flipped the switch.

I want to feel grounded,
to leave this uneasy air

let myself in with
the turn of my wrist,
feel the teeth of my key

give in the grooves, ease
inside that heartwarming embrace,
but all that is there is this
destitute structure, this realm

of false memory’s decay,
my own familial foundation
devoured by the dampness of time

molded by deceit
rotted to the core
the floor boards
destroyed

this is where
the truth lies

it’s all over

these walls, the numbness of beige,
stuck to the decorative paper
my father put up in the hall,
crooked, with the hands of abuse,
the brush and the glue
he used to shut my eyes

I yearn
to reside in
a region of
my self
my life
lost
long ago

corrupted
corroded
sold by this
home sickness.

Poem by Jack Powers

2007-09-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

7/22/03

With no weapons
We enter the fray,
Of Human emotion,
We lean on the sense
Of the God we were
Raised upon,
We believed from
Childhood,
All for one, One for all,
In the calamitous
Broken expectation,
Instead of arming
Ourselves,
We revealed ourselves,
With loving expression,
And,
The wars ceased,
Without collateral damage.

Poem by Ryan Miller

2007-09-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

Photo by Cindy Williams

About Being Alone And Alive, He's Got Little To Say

                        once frog pond there was a purple puffy coat
                   bundled woman feeding ducks, I approached thinking
              salutation, "theyre not biting huh?"      ha!      it spurted three
          times before she wisped her eyes to me cold pallid blue blossoming
      through milk, and a mangled finger to her purpled lips, defiantly:
"Ssssssshhhhh, you must pay me to talk to me," and so i walked on!

Poem by Timothy Gager

2007-09-18T22:37:00.000-07:00

"Nature's 1st Grade Drawing" by Cindy Williams

where i have been

I am still that boy
sitting on a curb
from sunrise,
to sunset
in a lifetime
that lasts a second
till darkness
tells me
you never waited
here for me

Poem by Tom Sheehan

2007-09-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

Artwork by James Conant

When All Your Life Goes Down

When all your life goes down
By the wayside, when the floorboards
Fall out, the walls disintegrate,
The jostled joists tear free
From every timber you’ve believed in,
Think of all the company you’ll have.

Darkness can be a broken femur, an arm
A tree fall happened to, a cousin who
Swan dived onto a lake-hidden log,
A perfect dog’s burial in the sepulcher
Of your own backyard, one young sister
Your father forgot to write a poem to
All the February of a violent storm.

Misery takes some handling, kid gloves,
Temperance of a barroom ax-smith,
One eye closing before the other.
It’s the ability to breathe uphill,
Or when the roof is coming down
Atop the last cubit of clean air
On an August afternoon of pain.

It’s not as if you are tired or empty
Or withdrawn, but now, when the chill
Air reigns over you, when the umbrella
Of darkness fills like a mushroom growing
In a sterile atmosphere, and your arms,
Usually hard as oak limbs or an old ash
They make bats from, go limp and flaccid,
When darkness monsters up like chocolate
Or corners or backstairs or scented attics
Buried under debris of sundry lives,
Think of the controversy of your success:
You are not alone in the visible realm.

"Cockatoo" by William J. Barnum

2007-09-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

Photo by Bill Perrault

A Cockatoo of rare design
                  perched
                                  on an awning over a bazaar
                                                  outside the
                                                  palace.

Vendors hawk wares along wharves and banks
                  where goldfinches and river trout
                                  disport themselves in the sun.

Spanish gentlemen
                  recline on benches.

Senoritas
                  promenade.
                                  Castanets in daylight—
                                  rivers flash and tremble.
                                  Laughter fills a bowl of lilacs.

Precious gems rain tears from all the petals.
Darkness presides among daylight mourners
at the Sun Hotel.
         Eiderown on ancient mattress, supporting
         the supine form of Hungarian breasts
         on a cello named “Irene.”

                  Outside, snowflakes whirl.
                  Irresponsible glass toy ball.
                  Christmas city on the mantelpiece of time.

This lap for golden coins on an altar built with fear.
Men spill sperm through same door’s
rust, unhinged down vacant halls, retreating feet.
disclaimed bottles, gutter-rolled
under shadows in the doorway’s lurch.

                                  A leaf,
                                                  a stone,
and rivers endlessly returning
upon seas to roll again.

Misnamed adventure in the
nave of darkness.
Jewels and minutes break
all clocked hands upon the sundial.

                                  madness
                                  clover
                                  hair
                                  hair
                                  hair and meadows
                                  lips
                                  teeth open pomegranates
                                  spill bleeding stones.

Madame, on twilight’s porch,
drinks a toast to Lochinvar,
shattering the night with broken glass!

                  Mannequins pastel
                  a ballet fresco.
                  Death’s museum
                  house window blinded,
                  light stream shuttered!
                  glass-blown flowers.

Phalanges pluck old harp vines
in the junkyard’s orchard.
Scabrous tunes harmonica’d
in drain pipe dazzle.

                              Fire escapes burn with sun fire
                              in the marijuana sky.
                              Dance on a bathtub’s broken rim!

                  Spectacled minotaurs
                  transfigured children prepare this
                  evening’s wind for old men with bottled sores,
                  while flower trumpets sing oblivion grass
                  to an empty sky.

Mike Amado	William J. Barnum	Yonit Bousany	Anne Brudevold
Susan Deer Cloud	Marc D. Goldfinger	Paul Hapenny	Gary Hicks
Coleen T. Houlihan	Christopher Kain	Lawrence Kessenich	Linda Lerner
Lyn Lifshin	Gordon Marshall	Gloria Monaghan	Shannon O'Connor
Chad Parenteau	Jack Powers	Annie Wyndham	Bios & Acks