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June 2017 Vol. II No. VI

Not your ordinary poetry magazine! If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!

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General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird ModPo & Experimental Poetry with Anthony Watkins International Poetry with Anthony Watkins Featured Poem of the month

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Better than Starbucks -- the Interview Stephen Scott Whitaker (@SScottWhitaker) is a member of National Book Critics Circle, and the managing editor for The Broadkill Review. His poems have appeared in Oxford Poetry, Grub Street, and Anderbo, among other journals. His first full length book of poems, All My Rowdy Friends, was a finalist for the 13th annual USA Book awards. His previous chapbooks include The Black Narrows, the Barleyhouse Letters, and the Dogfish Head Poetry Winner, and National Press Award winning Field Recordings.

Untitled I’ve seen mists wash over mountain pass Plunging headlong where no man can follow Ice caps tiptoe across cliffs at malicious angles Fear death on broken rocks. Where were you when I needed you Massive and interminable A jagged permanence of snowy peaks Carving the sky with grim purpose Morose without the singing birds Forgotten of the spring. The lichen doesn’t miss that holy spring of life Perched rocks can transcend days of loneliness An icicle stands watch against the cold Timeless, indifferent. No vigil shall I keep in the frozen waste No callous monolith am I But to adore thee with all my past.

Eric D. Laird, Ph.D. studied nano material engineering at Drexel University, Philadelphia. Currently work as a specialist with Breencolor Concentrate Inc., Lambertsville, New Jersey

Poetry Pages ..from the mad mind of the poet

...and now....

Publisher Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins shares his latest thoughts and/or poems about whatever crosses his mind

BTS: Where did Broadkill come from? SSW: The Broadkill Review was a natural extension for the literary scene that flourished, and still flourishes, on the upper Delmarva peninsula. In the beginning of the 21st century, say 2001 or so, Jamie Brown, the founder of the Broadkill Review, together with HA Maxson and Claudia Young began to publish chapbooks with Dogfish Head Brewery. All of that energy culminated with the John Milton Poetry Festival which took place in Milton, DE in December, on Milton's birthday. The name? The Broadkill is a river in the upper peninsula, and flows through Milton. The idea? Jamie Brown, the head honcho of the review, always wanted to publish his own journal. He put together one of the first pdf magazines in the business. The idea, to electronically distribute a printable magazine was cutting edge at the time. It still is, in many ways, the most efficient way to distribute the magazine. One can upload the pdf to a kindle, or nook, or read it through an ipad, or print it out. Of course, you can read it on a computer screen. The team? Currently HA Maxson edits and curates the fiction, Linda Blaskey edits and curates the poetry, Jamie directs our course, and I am acting as the facilitator, creating and managing our new website, which will host the journal.

The BTS Interview cont'd

Art Noble, Poet, Dead at 79 Poet/scholar Art Noble strode the planet for nearly eighty years, transmuting words into poetry and ordinary experiences into This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

magic. It was in mid-May when we lost this treasure. Born in Key West, Art loved poetry, rainbows, the work of Edgar Guest, the Sacred Female Principle, and dogs. This is not a standard obit, but it should be mentioned Art supported himself at various times by teaching ( high school and university levels), fashion modeling, and deep sea diving. Incredibly prolific, he served as a linchpin for the Night Heron poets and several other writing groups. His canon was published and broadcast on many social media platforms. He loved to listen to the work of other poets, and long remembered their memorable phrases. Metaphors, similes, and rhymes were his mountains, rivers, and meadows. Wherever he stood, a spontaneous poetry reading might break out. John Keats' epitaph was the moving, "He who lies here, his name was writ in water." I don't have that for you old friend, but I can offer this: Colorless photons, Stream through suspended moisture: Creates twin rainbows.

Art Noble 1938-2017 Poet

-Kevin McLaughlin

Copyright Better than Starbucks 2017, a poetry magazine 7711 Ashwood Lane, Lake Worth, Florida 33467 USA

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General Poetry Page with Suzanne Robinson Use links below to connect to other poetry sections

Translations with S. Ye Laird

Haiku Poetry with Kevin McLaughlin ModPo & Experimental Poetry Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch International Poetry Walk Gratitude Against lights, on either side I wished for a single dew, but you traffic honking Have given me a whole morning at the midway, the meridian, that too bright on gray I wished for a little cloud, but you double yellow, Have given me a boundless sky my mind in some dream state, hungering, I wished for a petal, but you Have given me an entire season & the traffic, the street a feast many horns, much whizzing traffic, I wished for a small tree, but you a symphony carnival, my heart Have given me a range of mountains some place else, perhaps with you So I have stopped making wishes & the cat close to your nose for a kiss, Just to feel grateful to you and all you two on the carpet rolling Yuan Changming, nine-time Pushcart and one-time Best of Net bolts beyond nominee, published monographs on translation before moving out of China. Currently, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan the hospital, that reel of Jose dying, in Vancouver; credits include Best of Best Canadian his lover’s eyes as sirens, a hearse Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1309 in my blood, yet I breathe in, blink, others. think of you & the cat & reach LIBRARY VISIT just like Jose I appear inside some other safe side. the library, rain is falling on me, but the books are dry, Preparations their covers captivate me; my reflection Here is the page of the sky----filters through them, grey to white before the V of geese. paging me to lives of others; It turns by several flocks at once, no fleshly ones inside, banners of dots going southward. till Monday nine a.m. Eyes follow as if reading sentences, the hieroglyphics of directions, My vision & as the sun sets there is dragon-orange of this cosy, bookish space with bloody Vermilion in these cumulus fades away, wisps of clouds. This site was created using WIX.com.windows washed with rain. Create your own for FREE >>

Now here is how the holy season merges its silk----Deliverance in the horizons' calendar between the living & the dead. It is thin as breath, that dimension of spirits, & we sing of our harvests' stock in the gardens being put to bed.

So resumes my walking in the gardens, regathering the colours, patterns, textures, scents and voices of a life long lived in books; then drawn again, I peer inside the library.

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. His latest P.O.D. amazon release is an art-text hybrid, "According to the Order of Nature (We too are Cosmos Made)", a work which takes to task the words which have been used against LGBT folks from time immemorial. In 2014 he began a webpage to gather links of his poetry being published in such zines as Great Works, Unlikely Stories, Quill & Parchment, etc., in one place: Poetry on the Line, Stephen Mead Uncertainty Suspended dust, Brownian-like, it doesn’t make much sense. How it must in random flight evolve to intelligence. Infinity of space, dark matter’s loom, parallel universes arising. Yet light erased, forever doomed upon event horizons. Life codified, nucleic acids define just who we are. Do we die, firm to flaccid and recycle through the stars? Where are we? There’s confusion and undefined dimensions. Perhaps we’ll see parallel illusions through wormhole extensions. Man’s capacity remains primitive, yet still we cast conjecture. The veracity is that we’re limited until some future lecture. But is it time or is it space that fills the cavity? The missing sign, the saving grace may simply be gravity. We may find we’ve disturbed our fleeting reality. As defined by Heisenberg, there’s always uncertainty.

Dr. James Nichols a physician and father of five children. James started writing as a form of therapy for the stressors of life and career. At 52, this Texan wants to live to see the day he can write more than work.

Mark Marusic lives and writes in Australia

"Cappuccino Escape” As icy breezes blow off indifferent waves, The biting chill of the hour Rivals the hollow chill deep inside. Watching rhythmic ripples under a moonless midnight sky, I remember…once alone, I’m now lonely, One pair of feet shuffling Against loose gravel, soft with rain, Once an assertion of independence, Now a vexing echo of a void. Too stubborn to cry, Too tired to scheme, I turn my tender eyes towards inviting lamps, Resolved to seek sweet solace In anonymous smiles And steamy, creamy foam.

Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copyeditor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He has a master's degree in interdisciplinary humanities from California State University Dominguez Hills. His interests include vegetarian cooking, the Russian language, Victorian horror fiction, wrestling, and 1960s pop music. CFO The winter vegetable of a man sits without expression behind his burl wood desk in what he calls a “Spartan” office, sizing people up through eyelids squinted as tightly together as the halves of walnut shells, one hand near a photograph of his trophy family, the other on “The Art of War,” using the inquisitor’s trick of maintaining silence in order to wring a confession (or in this case, a greeting) from the person opposite to him.

Kyle Heger, former managing editor of Communication World magazine, lives in Albany, CA. His writing has won a number of awards and been published in 44 publications, including Blue Collar Review, Nerve Cowboy and U.S. 1 Worksheets.



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Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin A passage by Bhikku Bodhi presented profound advice that was not directly aimed at the haiku writer; but it absolutely applies. Please give it a moment of consideration: “It might be assumed we are always aware of the present, but this is a mirage. Only seldom do we become aware of the present in the precise way required by the practice of mindfulness.” I have included this quote for one specific reason: haiku is the poetry of mindfulness. There are 10,000 opportunities to write a haiku every day. But not if we are distracted, fretting, or day dreaming. While I was on an afternoon jog at Halpatiokee Regional Park in Martin County, Florida, my thoughts strayed to the role and the need for a seasonal reference, a kigo in classical haiku. The form is quite specific. Casual musing is just one of the many benefits of jogging or running. Harold G. Henderson, one of the Western world’s earliest haiku proponents wrote, “The older haiku makers came to the conclusion that one experience common to all men was the change of weather with the different seasons, and so introduced into all their poems what is known as kigo, or season. That means there is in all of their poems a word or expression that indicates the time of year, and so forms a background for the picture they are trying to bring up in the reader’s mind. Such a kigo can be a definite naming of the season like “summer heat” or a mere suggestion like a reference to a plum blossom or to snow. The custom of kigo has hardened into an almost inviolable rule, and most modern collections of haiku arrange their contents according to the seasons.” Anyone who has followed this column knows I am a purist. I believe haiku is a set form with the superior verses adhering to a format developed in 17th century Japan. I’ve been critical of modern revisions. Maybe I’ve been wrong in some regards. Kigo is easy to include in your verse if you live in a temperate zone. Seasonal change is marked by vast changes. The seasons embody impermanence. But in the tropics and semitropics, the seasonal change, save for the length of daylight, is too minimal, maybe even none existent. In the Arctic and Antarctic, and areas of the globe, the change of seasons may be imperceptible or even non-existent. I do believe every effort must be made to include a Kigo in your 17 syllable insights. It enhances the poem. But I no longer believe it is an inviolable component.

The four verse below show the influence of a mind at rest. An agitated mind cannot perceive the beauty in the mundane, the splendor of non-duality. Haiku poets, in general, strive for personal serenity and compassion for all sentient beings. A meditation practice is a great aid to generating the sort of Big Mind that produces haiku, especially when the meditative state of mind lasts throughout the day. My belief is Mr. Davidson has a mature meditation practice. I especially enjoyed the image of “seaweed wreath coming in with the tide. Sun bleaching fish bones, Seaweed wreath coming with the tide, Lonesome song of gull. Moonlight at sunset, Exchanging gold for silver .Blue sky blushes red. Prickly pear on trail, Needle thorns protect nectar, Yellow flower blooms. Early summer rains: Rebirth of cypress swamp life, Cool breeze swaying reeds. This last poem by Mr. Davidson also has a noteworthy Kigo. Residents of the southeast will appreciate the reference to swamplife. -- Joseph Davidson

Ho, ho, joy and delight are also an essential element of the haiku’s essence. Many of the classical Japanese writers included humor and observations about human activities in their canons. So has Angie Davidson. A new activity in several local counties is the painting of rocks with pictures or inspiring words and hiding them at parks. I, myself, have found several. They bring a smile to your face when you come across one. The painter is performing a selfless act: the only intent is to spread happiness. Note Angie provides a good natured pun in the third line, an unusual technique in haiku. Tree with hidden gem Fun painting stones with art work, Martin County Rocks. As Earth spins in space, It gives off a cosmic song: Universal sound. -- Angie Dickinson Jane Corrigan sent us two haiku, both of which demonstrate her hands on approach to nature. Jane works for the Forestry Service in Maine. She, too, has the ability to convey the season and its specific beauty. Well tended garden, Snails feed on the tomatoes: The soil fertilized. The butterfly’s shadow, Skiiters around on the concrete: Soon it will migrate. -- Jane Corrigan

My first impulse reading Jenna Nichole “Jay Jay’” haiku chain was to publish three in June and three in July. I read them again. I realized that while they are individual haiku, well written haiku, they formed a distinct chain. The haiku we write demonstrate the way we see Collaborative synergy conveys those times the world, the way we smell, hear, and taste the when the whole is greater than the sum of its things of this planet. Haiku are a strong parts. I especially enjoyed that dignified Great reflection of your basic nature. If it is the most blue at the water’s edge. And that last line in compact, authentic form of expression, we can these linked pieces, “There do you see?” is a be grateful for writers like upstate New York sage-like question that comes close to defining resident David Rosen who invites us to share an awakened life. the sight of water lilies floating across a pond. . . I’ve always enjoyed verse that convey a sense of motion. Great blue Majesty, proud Water lily leaves At water’s edge. Uprooted by the storm’s winds, Float across the pond. Kingfisher’s reflections unbroken By beaks Snapping surface tension. This clear winter night, Crescent moon reveals new moon: Twilight smiles, the Mars just a red dot. Here are three of my own haiku in which I Reeds singing wind chime hymns -- David Rosen acknowledge the kigo is altogether missing, or For no human ears. you would have to be a long-time Floridian to That same joyful spirit is evident in a haiku detect it. Integration of the universal and the Sweetgrass charms sent in by Richard Mortenson. And, by particular are essential to haiku-vision. To some The senses like opium coincidence, there is a pun in the third line. On This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

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extent, these verse are salvaged by their appreciation of the phenomenal world.

Perfume. Violent sun rays Soften upon sifting Through web branches. Eyes flit open, Literal metaphors— “There, do you see?” -- Jenna-Nichole “Jay Jay” Conrad

Ficus excretes sap To ward off burrowing bugs: Thick aerial roots. Barrier island Reshaped by tides and weather. Protects a lagoon. Empty trash barrels: Catfish swim the riverbed. Devouring debris. -- Kevin McLaughlin Having questioned the absolute need for a Kigo, I now have the honor to publish a poem with the subtlest and strongest seasonal reference I have read in many years. The second line of Ms. Ignatowitsch’s haiku loaded with power: these three lines have the bonded attraction of molecules forming an atom. Her usage of “massing” also provides the reader with a cutting-word. Thunderstorms push heat Pressure multiplies massing Buds burst into bloom. -- Vera Ignatowitsch

It is becoming a monthly pleasure to cross the Atlantic to the Emerald Isle, Eire, and read the expansive poetry of astrophysicist Honorah Murphy. Her natural world encompasses the expanding Universe and earth’s smallest particles. Ms. Murphy added an interesting side note: The quark, an element of a nucleus, after its discovery, was named after a line from James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake:” Three quarks for Muster Mark.” Also she noted Joyce is the absolute antithesis of the haiku spirit. Ants circle their nest: Matter circles the Black Hole’s Event Horizon. Particles decay To lighter quarks and leptons: Three pink flamingoes. -- Honorah Murphy Most astronomical events take place unnoticed. On the morning of 9/21/2010, the planet Jupiter came closer to the Earth than it had in 50 years. Walking down to the street pre-dawn to get the newspaper, I love to spend a few minutes admiring the night sky. On that occasion, Jupiter was large, glowing steadily, located near the moon, to the lower left side. Once in fifty years, Jupiter glows near the moon: Sound of frogs barking. The cutting word is moon. This separates the spectacle of the swollen Jupiter from the cheerful background sound of the barking frogs and tree toads. Looking up at the sky, there was a spontaneous realization that “form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.

Yet once more I encourage all haiku writers to share their work, their insights into the nature of all things, with fellow poets and BTS readers. For those interested in haiku, I recommend you cast back into the BTS archives and reference the September column. It provides a pretty thorough explanation of the basic format. -- Kevin Mclaughlin



a serious note, the scrub jay is an endangered species. To the best of my knowledge, it flourishes only in Jonathan Dickinson State Park’s mix of dunes and pine flatwoods, zoos, and wildlife hospitals. The lone scrub jay sentry Gives his flock security: True Birdhisattva. -- Richard Mortenson Jim Phillips, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Louisiana sent in several remarkable verse. I, too, have had the joy of bare handing a spider in order to return it to its web. Its movement in the palm of your hand inspires awe for all of nature. The best haiku frequently result from the tension between the rigidity of the classical form and the depth of the poet’s feeling. And while Mr.Phillips does not exhibit a kigo, a reference to the change of seasons, his second haiku certainly presents a magnificent “time lapse” of the change of hours during a day. Was it the birdsongs, the crescent moon, or both that gave him an “Ah, ha!” experience about something so outwardly mundane as the effects of the earth’s rotation? Bare handing the spiders, Setting them down in the grass: Driving to the Church. Birdsongs replace stars, And then the birds are silent: Crescent moon at night. -- Jim Phillips We can all be pleased at the favorable comments BTS readers have been sending in regarding Joan McNerney’s haiku. We can only hope she is inspired to send in more examples of her work. Haiku answers profound questions with examples drawn from everyday life. We’ve been fortunate to see how Ms. McNerney sees this every day world…through her remarkable vision. What discus player Threw a tangerine moon on Top of main street? Green new leaf Fits perfectly—the future lies in your palm . Cool bright delicate Let me wear it around my neck, This soft splash of rain. -- Joan McNerney

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Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Child of 9-11

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on September 11, 2001 and died at the age of nine, shot to death ...

Child of 9-11, beloved, I bring this lily, lay it down here at your feet, and eiderdown, and all soft things, for your gentle spirit. I bring this psalm—I hope you hear it. Much love I bring—I lay it down here by your form, which is not you, but what you left this shellshocked world to help us learn what we must do to save another child like you. Child of 9-11, I know you are not here, but watch afar from distant stars, where angels rue the evil things some mortals do. I also watch; I also rue. And so I make this pledge and vow: though I may weep, I will not rest nor will my pen fail heaven’s test till guns and wars and hate are banned from every shore, from every land. Child of 9-11, I grieve your gentle life, cut short. Bereaved, what can I do, but pledge my life to saving lives like yours? Belief in your sweet worth has led me here ... I give my all: my pen, this tear, this lily and this eiderdown, and all soft things my heart can bear; I bring them to your final bier, and leave them with my promise, here. First published inThe Flea

ichael R. Burch’s poems have been translated into nine languages and set M to music by the composers Alexander Comitas and Seth Wright. Burch’s poems, essays, articles and letters have appeared more than 2,000 times around the globe in publications which include TIME, USA Today, BBC Radio 3, The Hindu, Kritya, Gostinaya, Light, The Lyric, Measure, Angle, Black Medina, The Chariton Review, Poet Lore, The Chimaera, Poem Today, Verse Weekly, ByLine, Unlikely Stories and Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing. He also edits and publishes www.thehypertexts.com.

Killing a Coho West coast of Vancouver Island

I grip its tail, hammock its back, and swing its head down with a crack on rock, then feel its spasms judder through my hands as, with a shudder, it stills, a grand finale that fulfills some ancient impulse in my mind. Poking my finger through a gill, I cause the raker fronds to spill blood that drip drips as I carry the silver deadweight of my quarry, my kill, toward a tidal pool the sunset has incarnadined. My knife begins behind its throat and blood-clouds billow out and bloat then seep into an outflow, seaward, where baitfish burrow in the seaboard in schools, their heads in sand, small fools kidding themselves they’re hard to find. I slit its stomach. From that sac their half-digested eyes peer back, sandlance dumbstruck at being hunted in shallow flats this prowler haunted, this fish whose every feeding flash signaled flesh to seals behind. Somewhere nearby a black bear roars; wolves salivate; an antler gores a starving cougar; orcas cripple humpbacks, bite their fins, then grapple great bulks till bleeding, savaged hulks sink; and then there’s humankind. No kindness here. This salmon swam full speed to seize my lure then, wham, became a madcap, hell-for-leather, death-row inmate on a tether and fed the caveman in my head. This coast is one big hunting blind. First published in Gray’s Sporting Journal

OUT OF PAKISTAN A shaft of amber sunlight suffused with dust and fly a daughter crouches by a fire tending to her chai Her eyes of pure obsidian glisten in the ray projected by the setting sun at the close of day Soon its kindly candour must give way to night and huddled on her bamboo mat her faith will turn to fright

John Beaton writes metrical poetry and his work has been widely published in media as diverse as Able Muse and Gray’s Sporting Journal. He writes a monthly poetry page for the magazine Eyes on BC and served for four years as moderator of one of the internet's most reputable poetry workshops. He is a spoken word performer and a poet member of the band Celtic Chaos. His poetry has won numerous awards, including the 2015 String Poet Prize and the 2012 Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry. He was raised in the Scottish Highlands and lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.

Night Fair

This megastar’s a dazzling super bowl, bedlam, heaven or hell, explosive fuse of spinning light; of onion-sizzling steam, The shadow of the kiker tree chip fat, spent diesel fumes and candyfloss; resumes its nightly troll of goldfish magnified in plastic bags, exposing all the secrets of flash stallholders as loud as jumping jacks; her desecrated soul of urban cowboys leaping on and off bump cars or herding bucking broncs across Rapt in dire conjecture revolving wooden floors with practised ease; eyes round as the moon of cherubs chasing dragons seraph-high she’ll listen for his sandle on like Martinware adrenalin banshees; the path outside their room This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE of stocking top, a tempting ride of flesh >>

broadcast, delight exquisitely contrived, the dark a beacon, cinders underfoot.

And make a plea for lunacy for nature’s sedative: anything to numb her to his vile prerogative.

Elizabeth Faris is educated in English Language/Literature and

Literacy Instruction. For the past twenty years, she has enjoyed teaching English and ESL to students of all ages and ethnic origin. Her passion for writing extends to poetry, formal and informal, based either on a spectrum of original themes or the plots of literary classics and traditional tales.

Behind the Bookcase – (for Dan, who is On The Spectrum) Dan likes to be alone because that way he knows which feet are his; they don't become his mother's giant feet by accident (that was embarrassing); he couldn't get her toes in even, and she made that face, which means he's done it wrong. That's one reason. But Dan is also happy when alone because he likes the conversations; Dan gets both sides right. It's worrisome to talk to other people; it's a guessing game. Dan has to contradict them when they're wrong. Besides, they like to change directions, though that doesn't interest Dan. No, it's alone Dan has his best ideas – Kathryn Jacobs is a poet, professor, and editor of The Road Not Taken. Her fifth book, Wedged Elephant, was published last year by Kelsay Press.

Peter Branson, a native of N. Staffordshire, has lived in a village in Cheshire, UK, for the last twenty-six years. A former teacher and lecturer in English Literature and creative writing and poetry tutor, he is now a full time poet, songwriter and traditional-style singer whose poetry has been published by journals in Britain, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australasia and South Africa, including Acumen, Ambit, Agenda, Envoi, The London Magazine, The North, Prole, The Warwick Review, Iota, The Butcher’s Dog, The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, SOUTH, Crannog, THE SHOp, Causeway, Main Street Rag, The Columbia Review and Other Poetry. He has won prizes and been placed in a number of poetry competitions over recent years. His latest collection, ‘Hawk Rising’, from ‘Lapwing’, Belfast, was published in April 2016.

Humbled by a Lightning Show Surges litter the sky with light unimpeachable. Abruptly, all that I have accomplished can be carried off in the mouth of one dung beetle. A conductor’s manic hands, a sparking marquee. As I marvel at each faultless errant strobe, I am reminded of God’s questions to Job. Thomas Locicero

A Poet to His Unbeloved a parody, after W.B. Yeats The words of a poet smitten Should not be considered unique To you, for when he leaves—he will— He will take what he has written And, with the lust he chose to spill, Present them at another time When he has been offered the cheek Of his latest reason to rhyme. Thomas Locicero’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in

Roanoke Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Long Island Quarterly, The Good Men Project, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Jazz Cigarette, Quail Bell Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, Antarctica Journal, Scarlet Leaf Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Hobart, Ponder Review, vox poetica, Poetry Pacific, Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, Indigo Lit, Saw Palm, Fine Lines, New Thoreau Quarterly, and Birmingham Arts Journal, among other journals. He resides in Broken Arrow, OK.

Lighthearted Verse & Limericks... submissions encouraged!

The Hyper Texts

"some of the best poetry on the web" Vera Ignatowitsch



On this page we publish monthly selections of metrical poetry from our contributors. Submit your blank verse, metrical rhyming poems, villanelles, sonnets, sestinas and other formal poetry to betterthanstarbucks2@gmail. We love both traditional and experimental forms and subjects, and do submit your limericks and lighthearted verse as well! Vera Ignatowitsch

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June's main theme turns out to be poetic justice with tangent metaphysical tragedy, a reflection of frenzy mainstream media's outbreak on too many laughing matters and un-constitutional here-say of POTUS's first 121 days in office. My intent is for this translation page to bring about fresh and critical look on how to dispense our collective emotional intelligence and suspend our own fixation or planning but leave room for holy ghost to come to our aid at variable trying times.

"利出于一孔者，其国无敌；出二孔者，其兵不诎；出三孔者，不可以举兵；出四孔者，其国必亡。" ( 管仲约公元前723或前716－公元前645） Here's my heretical-interpretation in English: Whence SHIT comes from one hole, all is saved. Whence SHIT comes from one hole and one mouth, hands are still good. Whence SHIT comes from one hole, one mouth and two hands, one can still run away with his feet. Whence SHIT comes from one hole, one mouth, two hands and three legs, all is doomed.

This was inspired by a 'new' definition I learned from a supervisor with my former employer: S.H.I.T was a shorthand for 'shipping high in transit'. In a rather strange twist, 'prayer' is like that too , yes?

盧梅坡〈雪梅〉：「梅雪爭春未肯降，騷人擱筆費評章。梅須遜雪三分白，雪卻輸梅一段香。」這首詩從雪與梅之異同處出發，指出物各有其特色。冬天的梅與雪，在春天隱而不見，因此引起了騷人墨客的歎惋。然也因此，顯出梅的精神、雪的特殊。梅與雪同是冬景之一，然不同處則是梅有暗香，雪有皚皚的白，各有各的特色，難以分出高下。這就如同每個人各有特色，他人是替代不得的。

My rendition in English: Ume blossoms on snow covered branches yearn to be favored by the coming and going season Idling scholars put away their pens meditating on the life and death of winter blossoms Ume ought not to subject itself to harsh winter snow Yet snow is totally crushed by Ume's fleeting scent.

For a somewhat orthodox interpretation of Chinese ancient texts, consult this link. One more critics written in Chinese.

梦中情人

(L to R).. a friend, John Nash (standing), Alicia Nash, Felix Browder, Eva Browder, in 1950 at Berkeley, California. Acquiescent right to the photocopy was made by surviving member of the late Felix Browder ( 1927 – 12.10. 2016) of Princeton, originally appeared in Sylvia Nasar’s book “A beautiful mind”.

我梦中的妻子有你的身子我梦中的情人有你的气质你腹中有我的孩子你的墓碑上刻着我写的字你的死亡只是一个比喻我的生存才是真的问题你用长发把自己吊死号啕大哭的是腹中的孩子 Lover in a metaphysical dream A copy of your body, my dream wife A copy of your temperament, my dream lover In your womb is my child On your tomb engraves my writing. Your death is but a metaphor My survival is the true questionable. you hanged yourself with your long hair unconsolable sobs in thy womb.

Remembering Nash and his un-calculated inculpable παράκλητος -- Who? Whom? Whose? faulty line ? Holy ghost called but Nash no longer hears voices. Hence a beautiful mind was ejected and pronounced dead on the scene. I wonder if it was Abel who lost his cool at the waiting game or is it that some other Paraclete made a miscalculation on the timing belt. Our bodily vessel is but placeholder for all the mysteries and their passing and going unto God’s work done or left undone since timely departures of all saints after Christ walking on this earth. So chime in if you still believe in παράκλητος … If not, the sun never shine in Californification…


https://webspace.princeton.edu/users/mudd/Digitization/AC105/AC105_Nash_John_Forbes_1950.pdf

What is the best math poem you know?

Answer by: Senia Sheydvasser, PhD student in Mathematics at Yale "Four circles to the kissing come. The smaller are the benter. The bend is just the inverse of The distance from the center. Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb There's now no need for rule of thumb. Since zero bend's a dead straight line And concave bends have minus sign, The sum of the squares of all four bends Is half the square of their sum." -excerpt from "The Kiss Precise" by Frederick Soddy (published in Nature, June 1936) Soddy was writing about a problem of Apollonius: if there are three mutually tangent circles, how can we draw another circle that is tangent to the three existing ones? Graphically, it is easy to see that there should be two. (It's easy to prove as well, if you are familiar with Mobius transformations)

For more best math poems, check out Quora 's nominations among many readers

I learned to go alone - by Jennifer Yih I suppose the moral of the story is, you came into this world alone and you're going to leave alone. You're not entitled to anything, you're just a visitor here. No one owes you anything money, love, fame, or happiness - you have to earn it, work for it, protect it, and give it. I wish more people would spend time becoming friends with themselves, and I understand that not everyone can but if you're reading this, I wish it for you.

- an excerpt from Jennifer's fabulous travel log https://jenyih.com/travel-tips/2017/3/3/ilearned-to-go-alone

One notable news on translation that caught this editor's attention: The debut novel of mathematician, author, and Oulipo member Michèle Audin, One Hundred Twenty-One Days retraces the lives of French mathematicians over several generations during World Wars I and II. The narrative oscillates stylistically from chapter to chapter, sometimes resembling a novel, at others a fable, historical research, or a diary, locking and unlocking codes, culminating in a captivating, original reading experience. One Hundred Twenty-One Days is her first novel and was published to universal acclaim in 2014 by the prestigious Gallimard publishing house in France. Translator: Christina Hills. source: http://deepvellum.org/authors/michele-audin/ " On January 1, 2009, she refused to receive the Legion of Honor, on the grounds that the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, had refused to This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>




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ModPo & Experimental Poetry A Brief History of Unwinnings As graphomania has nothing to do with cacography and everything to do with opened gates of a barrage, I don’t give a damn about what’s only seen on the surface. But as is often the case, I know almost nothing of the world’s ways of winning the unwinnable against adversities in all seasons. I know nothing about a glib-tongued hoaxer’s art of lacrimation but I know a lot about a copycat’s fears of non-achievement and a faint-hearted bonesetter’s unsorted anxieties and a lubber’s unmanning task of rowing for days an unmotorized raft made of plantain trunks when our rivers get swollen up with more water coming through opened gates of the noose-like Farakka Barrage. Can this sort of knowing about unwinnings be a boast? Oftentimes I think of myself as a lonely skinny calf floating with the flood tide by a hayrack in a raised lived-in cowshed; maybe I’d have my self-diffusive absorbability this way. A polar bear thrives on the polar continent and I on unsuccess. And with ice-floes thawing faster than our expectations and with experts lecturing on it with their gesticulating hands, I hope to float as a pointed gourd on such disasters or what if I sink like an unread message in a cracked bottle. All my plans were never unstilted, all my dreams always saccharous. I’m wondering who’d have felt good if my pseudo-romantic unwinnings had ever been carved on a wooden plank. Sofiul Azam has three poetry collections. His most recent is Safe under Water (2014) and edited Short Stories of Selim Morshed (2009). His poems are published in Prairie Schooner, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Journal, Orbis, The Cannon’s Mouth, Postcolonial Text, etc. and anthologized in Journeys, Caught in the Net, Poets Against War, Poetry for Charity Volume 2. He is now working on Earth and Windows: New and Selected Poems. He teaches English at Victoria University of Bangladesh.

USE—PREMISE E-RASURES

Better than Starbucks began wholly as a creation in my mind. Now the wonderful collaboration of four dedicated editors is creating a monthly magazine that I could have only dreamed about when I was starting out as a one person organization. Having said that, there are no direct connections between U Penn, Al Filreis, KWH (Kelly Writers House), ModPo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry), or any of the actual affiliated programs to ModPo and this magazine, other than I have been a part of ModPo for several years now. There is, however, a strong spiritual and intellectual connection between BTS and ModPo. If I had not gotten involved in the larger community of ModPo, I don't think I would have restarted a literary publication. I am certain I would not have added a Formal & Rhyming Page, and probably not a Translations page. I have a pretty narrow preference for poetry, but the course and the people at ModPo have expanded my view of poetry to the point that I decided if I could find good people to help me do it, we would make BTS as broad of a source of styles and genres as possible. We have been fortunate to establish a team of talented editors and are in the process of an ever expanding quest to find poetry wherever it may be. Thus, it seems fitting that we dedicate a page to my fellow students at ModPo, and/or anyone who wants to share experimental poems. The thing about experiments is, they often fail, but as the point is to learn, not to create perfection, even failed experiments in the lab or on this page, will offer something for us, if we will find it. and when the experiment doesn't fail... well, you will see! - Anthony Watkins

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‫ا‬ াক ကဗ ‫ליבע‬ ਿਪਆਰ өлүм

International is not exactly what we are going for here. We have been publishing poetry from the USA, UK and Europe, as well as Canada, Australia and various non English speaking, European and American Countries. We already have a pretty good Chinese connection with S Ye's Translations, and occasionally other places. As your publisher, I review almost all the submissions, though I don't make a decision on very many pieces, as we have a great team of editors who are better at that task than I am. You see, if you haven’t figured it out, I am the Peter Sellers character from Being There. I am a pretty good poet, of a certain style. I love people, but I am a bit of an arrogant S.O.B., one part OCD, one part Manic (rarely depressive, though). My one thing that I do is everything. If I see something I wish there was one of, and there isn’t, I look around and try to persuade the better souls and brighter minds to do it. If they don’t, I do it, often badly. But I live the life of the story of the Stone soup. I have found if I will build a fire, find a pot, and boil some water, pretty soon I have a room full of chefs who can actually cook. Better than Starbucks is a shining example of that! The thing is, I am not very smart, or very well educated, so it is hard for me to explain, but there is often a cultural distinction in the writing of the places I have listed and the places I haven’t. It not quite an east versus west, nor Christian versus Muslim or English versus “Foreign.” And I don’t think it breaks so cleanly that one editor will be able to cover 54 African countries, and all 50 Asian countries from Afghanistan to Yemen. Ideally, we will find a team of contributing editors who can cover the desk as poems come in. We will still publish only English literature, or at least English translations and the original, as I have no reason to believe non English readers make up a large portion of our audience. At first, starting this month, I, Mr. Everything, will jump in and likely do poorly. I am nervous about “segregating” cultures, but I can't seem to sort out a better way. As always, if you have a better idea, if you think you might make up part of the team of editors (volunteer, sorry, for the foreseeable future there are no paid positions at BTS), contact us, you may be in the masthead and on the page title by this time next month. We are going to start off with an African and two Asian poets. HYPOCRITES Hypocrites holding us like babies teaching us the kindergarten alphabet, four years will be over everything will be fine building on an empty land hypocrites will emerge on the high hill of calamity babbling every four years of grace watering the solid land with honey, all will be fine false hope is everything I wish,I wish that is the lay man dreaming of walking. GONE SO FAR We have gone so far we are not kids anymore sucking the milk from the breast let's face the things before us in this land no one knows how this four years will look like everyone wish is to live a better life not a life of confusion where to be or where to move we live not for the leaders that have no wings to fly slowing us down when we need to fly this is the land we fought for this is our land not for racism but to live in peace and unity. WONDER WONDER 2 My heart ceases to function so my brain stops to think so I wonder where would I be, when I'm gone? The beauty of the earth is fading so the birds sing the song of laughter so I wonder what is the meaning, of the song? The drummers drum so the dancers dance to the rhythm of the drum so I wonder what is the rhythm, of the drum? Gabriel Eziorobo is a writer and poet from Nigeria.



Tune of nature Floating galaxies in infinite space are emitting light proclaiming presence, the explosions in it fire bullets of stars which are torn into pieces of planets. Earth cools down rotating around the sun, mighty waterfalls form lake on the plain, the moonlit sky brings calmness around, the trees sway on beach with murmuring sound. He is mine Hardly any praise, always contradiction, talks on trivial matter go wrong, no compromise. I am miserably incorrect. She weeps in heart though shouts at me, lest loses her right that belongs only to her. I failed to read her. She is so vulnerable without me by her side! Let me lose to her to make her feel 'he is mine'. Dr. Sandip Saha lives in Kolkata, India, and has published two anthologies one of which, Quest for freedom, is available in amazon.com. His poetry has appeared in publications both in India and the USA. It rained like never before! It was one dark night Moonless night It rained Rained Rained like never before! As if there was no sun afore! The rain was more like pouring It poured Poured like a wild stream It rained Rained the whole night But the sun did shine The next day Brighter like never before! Rameeza Nasim was born and lives in Karachi, Pakistan. She holds a masters degree in English Literature and Linguistics. She makes her living through writing and Blogging. Poetry is her Passion and it is something in her genes.

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Once a Butcher… Frank used to be a butcher in his grandpa’s shop, all the way from high school to putting himself through college, until the worst thing that could possibly happen, happened. No, he didn’t cut off his thumb with a saw. No, his grandpa didn’t have a stroke, forcing him to sell the shop. No, nothing happened but the worst thing you could imagine: Frank fell in love with a vegetarian. At first Evelyn was fairly quiet in her beliefs. She appreciated the thoughtful gifts Frank gave her, the poetry he wrote to her. She put together all the salads and vegetable dishes for their dinners in — sitting side-by-side in their green faux-leather chairs watching Jeopardy and Survivor. She even did the same on a grander scale when their friends came over; Frank grilling out back, bringing in plates stacked with ribs, or tri-tip, even simple hot dogs and hamburgers for “game night”. Either a game was on for everyone to watch, or they all split up into bridge players and poker players. They ate, they laughed, they yelled, consoled each other, won quarters off each other. Evelyn always appreciated the gorgeous red wines Frank brought home, drinking them instead of beer. It was just the meat that was a problem—not just red meat but chicken and fish as well. Evelyn believed in all or none, and she was having none, not even at Thanksgiving. But that was before they really lived together, even though Evelyn had a drawer at Frank’s house and a set of keys from almost the beginning. Once it became official, once she had actual closet space, she became more and more outspoken, claiming she could smell the meat on his chest when they slept together, and even though he left his aprons at the shop for cleaning, she said the closet smelled like blood. She said her clothes in the closet also smelled. She began to wear just the beginnings of dissatisfaction on her face every minute of every day. Frank loved Evelyn. He didn’t want to be the cause of any strain—he’d grown up with it in his own house until the day his mother took him to school and kept going. Frank’s grandpa and grandma were completely different. They were loving and supportive. That’s how Frank thought couples were supposed to be. He even once saw his grandpa swat his grandma on the butt with the dishtowel he was using to dry the dishes. That’s what Frank wanted, so he did the only thing he could do: he quit his grandpa’s shop, went to work at a bookstore (that paid far less money but gave discounts), and became a vegetarian too. At home. That was completely fine with Evelyn. When he kissed her hello smelling of toothpaste, she knew it wasn’t the scent of another woman he was erasing, but a pastrami sandwich, and she appreciated Frank’s consideration. He still brought home wonderful bottles of red, and she appreciated that too. For Thanksgiving, they had delicious polenta fried in browned butter with sage, roasted root vegetables, and four kinds of cranberry sauce, or they went to Frank’s grandparents, where Evelyn happily made do with everything but turkey. Once you’ve tasted one of grandma’s pies you’d be an idiot to resent being invited. And so the issue of meat became a non-issue. Until it was again, as hard as they tried to live with it. And that made them both very sad. One breezy Sunday in fall, Evelyn put her keys on the counter, hugged Frank with all the love two friends store up over years of being together, and left for her new job teaching scuba on a ship that cruised between the Hawaiian Islands. It was a vocation in which she’d never shown interest, and a job they had never discussed. Frank gave her a bottle of excellent sunblock and a pareo, tie-dyed with all the colors of the sky so she could remember the seasons. Then he went outside and grilled himself a ribeye. Now, at the age of 43, the newly single Frank found himself back in the butcher shop. It was like getting back on a bicycle, only slower. The younger butchers were faster than he was, but they were not better. And the best part was that it was his grandfather’s old shop, bought by a very nice man when his grandparents retired, down-sized and moved somewhere warmer. So Frank felt like he was with his grandfather every day; it made him feel less alone. Each night, Frank finished his shift, threw his bloody apron in the industrial wash container, and grabbed a scotch on his way home, to ease his joints. He figured as long as he could lift the glass, life might be slower, but it was good. Tomorrow would be good too. Part of his salary was anything he wanted but prime rib. He usually saved this for only once a week, and usually Fridays, when the bars were too noisy and he was too tired to go out, or stop on his way home. Once in a while on a Friday though, he’d stop at Joe’s Joint, with the big communal table down the middle, and listen to the conversations around him. Sometimes he’d join in, but just listening made him feel part of the group, and made him feel younger. Then he’d go home to the shortribs that had been in his crockpot all day, or baby lamb chops with salt, pepper, garlic and rosemary from the pot on his window, sizzled for four minutes a side and served with his beloved polenta, thinking good thoughts of Evelyn, thankful she had finally found her calling, and deliriously happy it was somewhere else.

Black and White “Play me,” I said, stepping into Nate’s room. He was lying on his bed, reading a comic book, and said, “Haven’t you lost enough today?” “One more game.” “I’m reading,” Nate said, turning the page. “Beat me, and I’ll never ask again.” “Leave.” “How about a bet.” Nate set his comic book on his bed. “How much?” “Twenty.” “Betting your allowance?” “It’s all I got.” “Don’t complain when you lose,” he said, getting up. We walked downstairs to the kitchen, where my old exams were taped to the door. He didn’t look at them, but I flipped through them so he could hear my perfect scores. In the living room, we set the pieces on the table, and Nate’s forces advanced until my pawns blocked them. When I captured some of them, he stared at the board while resting his elbows on the table. Then his knights jumped into the skirmish, and the defeated pawns were lifted off their squares. The pieces were lined up on the sidelines like heads on pikes. He captured my rook, and when his knights surrounded the bishops, I gazed at his king, wondering how I could checkmate it. Then Nate stood up. “Taking a piss.” As I heard the bathroom door close, my hand hovered over his queen. A slight push away from victory. He wouldn’t notice. I slid the piece to an adjacent square, and when I touched a pawn, the toilet flushed, and I sat upright as Nate returned. My bishop conquered his queen’s square, and over time he captured more pieces. I moved the survivors backwards, but then he slid his rook across the board, and I was as defenseless as my king. “Checkmate,” Nate said. He held out his hand. “Pay up cheater.” “I didn’t cheat.” “You moved my queen.” “I never did.” “So it moved itself?” “You moved it. Pay attention to your moves.” “Give me my twenty.” “Beat me again. Then I’ll pay.” “If I’d lost, you wouldn’t play again.” “Scared?” “Hardly. Beating you is like taking a pawn.” “Play one last game.” “Hold that loss like your money.” Nate said, staring at me. Even though he dropped out of high school, he talked as if he was better than me. Chess was the only thing he was good at. My grades were better than his, I had A’s while he failed, but I couldn’t beat him. It made no sense. I was the better brother. I know I was. I needed one win, so I pulled a Jackson from my wallet and handed it to Nate. He took it, and when he saw me glare at him, he said, “You hungry? I’ll order pizza.” When he picked up the phone receiver, I gazed at the black king. I didn’t know why I couldn’t capture it. What did Nate have over me? How could he outplay me? What made him the better player? Was it because he was older? Age shouldn’t matter here. Sure he played longer than me, but that experience shouldn’t be that important. No matter what strategy I used, the result was the same— defeat. But I still tried so Nate could see he had a weakness. That I was a challenger, not a loser. The doorbell rang, and Nate carried a cardboard box inside and placed it on the table, moving the pieces aside. He lifted a slice. I stared at him. And decided to ask him the question I was wondering all this time. “Why can’t I win?” He blew on his slice. “You think too much.” “That’s stupid.” “Is it? You’re the loser,” he said, chewing his slice. “I’ll eventually win.” “Doubt it.” “Tell me. You afraid I’ll win if I know?” “Not really.” “You should be.” “It’s instinct.” “That’s even dumber.” Nate chuckled and then blew on another slice. “Then give up.” I didn’t care how long it would take. I would become the victor someday. I picked up a slice and bit into it. The cheese burned my tongue, stinging the roof of my mouth, but I still swallowed.

Ashawn A Hamilton





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This new section will change and grow as all our new sections seem to take on a life of their own. We are always open to suggestions on how to "get it right" Vincent Ferrini: My Friend by Craig Stormont I called Vincent out of the blue in the winter of 2000 in order to get some information about Charles Olson's political concerns in Gloucester, MA. Since Olson's Maximus Poems began as a series of letters to Vincent, I decided to go directly to the most informed source. When I visited him the next summer, and taped our conversation, I was amazed. Vincent educated himself at the library in Lynn, MA, and he earned his living building frames for local painters in Gloucester. It was like visiting William Blake, and I learned from him what a real poet values: not fame or wealth, but to make a difference in the community, local and universal. His parents were immigrants to this country, and I continue to admire how a man of such meager means managed to accomplish so much through, solely, his devotion to his art. After playing the tape of my conversation with Vincent for a friend, he suggested that I transcribe it and "get it out there" since he was so impressed by Vincent's words of wisdom. Realize that the conversation that follows took place prior to 9/11. I remained friends with Vincent afterward, and what I learned from him is incalculable. We communicated regularly, and I visited him as much as I could until his passing in 2007. Becoming friends with the man Walter Lowenfels termed "the last proletarian poet" was a life changing event for me. I learned more from Vincent than any other individual I've ever encountered.

The Factories by Vincent Ferrini

Sunsets splash blood in our broken eyes And the moon splinters. Dead, we are huge and ugly With derelict canyons between. Our floors empty as Sunday, Abandoned by the Bosses And a few abusing us. Our skeleton teeth locked on the sky. Workers, It is not our fault you starve Idle without purpose. Workers, resurrect us-- Put life back into our hollow bodies! Let us breathe again And the word 'fired' be a nightmare that died with the past And for the first time own your jobs! The Union to operate us for the good of the people And the profits divided among you To build a city of love! Fill us with the bubble of bustle : Your tools clicking a chorus of work Stitching leather into shoes for the feet of the people, Laughter splitting the air! Human voices warm with intimate happiness Exciting our veins and arteries and cold floors! We'll feel we are wanted! We'll drink your singing at the machines, Wait for your coming daily! And glow with the jagged electricity of seasonal picnics! We won't hurt you with accidents!

Read more on his interview with Vincent Ferrini in July 2001, just before 9/11, at Ferrini's home, which is now the Gloucester Writer's Center. Originally published as "The Initiations: an interview with poetry and art by poet Vincent Ferrini (1913-2007) in Big Bridge: A Webzine Of Poetry, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2004)." http://www.bigbridge.org/issue9/ferrini2.htm

Mr. Craig Stormont, writer/teacher/poet. Check out his recently published poem: " Projection on election day morn" with section8magazine.com and his other postings on LinkedIn.

No more speed-up torturing the nerves and the bottled anger! And no Bosses cracking the whip of low prices! Patch us up and air-condition our lungs! Shoes you make will be your own And you'll love them like works of beauty! And the reality of the 5 hour day! Invented machines ending drudgery And pouring leisure into your laps! And the wages will buy you your own homes! Your example will be a fuse leading to coffin cities and ghost towns, Igniting the people to possession—to free America! Think! Believe it! You've got nothing to lose but your poverty And the creative life that should be yours will begin! Time rots us and buries you. O workers, we are yours for the taking. For what are you waiting?

Special thanks to BigBridge editors and our contributor Mr. Stormont for granting us reprint permission ! He also had this little reminiscence to add for our rerun of this interview: "I saw about fifty communications sent to him by Jack Kirschman in the museum in Gloucester. They're poems with wild art! I met Kirschman during a break at the filming of Henry Ferrini's film "Polis is This" at the Poetry Project in NYC. I had no idea who he was, but we both raced out the door for a smoke and had a nice talk. Later in the event, he stood up and spoke for quite a while about what I later learned was a poem. I became friends with Diane di Prima at the Olson Centennial and learned all about her associations with The Dead and Pound. I guess I'm just glad someone has shown an interest in my meeting with Vincent. I've never met anyone as wise as him. His parents were Italian immigrants with nothing. He educated himself. Amazing! more resource on Vincent Ferrini: http://www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds/pdfs/firstissue.pdf p42 - 62 "Archemists of the Human Experience" interview by Michael





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The BTS Interview with Stephen Scott Whitaker The BTS Inteview Page 1 BTS: Who do you think of as a mentor or a major influence? SSW: Jamie Brown has been a big influence, just in terms of giving me opportunities, and offering advice for when I'm down on the whole writing thing. In undergraduate school both Martin Espada and Sam Cornish loomed large in my academic and creative life. Both men pressed upon me the importance of advocacy, and social justice. Now I don't consider myself to be a political poet per se, but my subject matter is certainly politicized. I am a writer of the poor rural south for example, and often write about marginalized people such as addicts, alcoholics, and even the gay, lesbian, transgender communities in the rural south. When I was at BU, Robert Pinsky, David Ferry, and Aaron Fogle all were influential in terms of sound, structure, and form; concepts that I paid little attention to in my undergraduate days. In terms of fiction, Stephen King and David Foster Wallace speak to me. My short stories almost always have a speculative element to them, and a wink of satire, sometimes more than a wink. BTS: How did you come to be a National Book Critics Circle member? SSW: Again, this was Jamie Brown's influence. It's a professional organization that is open to anyone who wishes to participate. As a regular reviewer for the Cape Gazette and the Broadkill Review, the membership was a natural extension.

BTS: Duotrope states that you have 10,000 readers scattered around the world. You and the Broadkill team have built quite a following in 6 years! I assume those include occasional browsers to your home page, and not all of them are subscribers? Either way, it makes you a truly significant international publication. What do you think is your secret to that kind of growth? SSW: Part of it is excellence, and part of it is networking. Early on we had interviews with Robert Pinksy, Maxine Kumin, and Bobbie Ann Mason, which helped attract readers. Jamie, through some connection, published some of Australia's best and upcoming poets. That was a watershed moment for the journal because suddenly we had an international audience paying attention to the writing in our pages. BTS: Also, I saw in the Duotrope listing that you do not take previously published work. Is that so? I know in the old days publications tended to insist on ‘virgin material’, but I am curious if you still find that a rational policy. SSW: Not so much. Jamie has published previously published material, but it is rare. Every journal wants that claim to have discovered a piece of great writing. Often time it simply is need. There is a glut of writing out there. Back in 2013 I wrote a poem a day for a year, and committed to publishing them on Figment, and Wattpad, two burgeoning publishing platforms. Literally thousands of writers publish daily on those websites. Some of the writing is great, most of it is average, and some of it is awful. Doing that for a year opened my eyes to sheer number of writers out in the real world. When you are curating a journal you want every piece to surprise, entertain, enlighten and move the reader. Not every work will do that. I think if all parties agree, then publishing a previously published work is okay. I do not think your personal blog counts as a publishing credit. Some magazines do, however, and that is likely part of their vetting process. A sample of Scott's poetry, previously published in Devilfish Review - Quarterly Literature, Speculative and Otherwise ABDUCTEE 103. NORTHERN VIRGINIA. PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT. The windows purred white fire. Like an animal of fire had stepped through the glass as if it wasn’t there. Engines, no engines did I hear, or a pulse. Heat. Like a woodstove, concentrated, as if a hand full of dry intense light reached out and grabbed my breast bone. Warm all over, spine pricking, needles pushed home, all the way through, as if I were the nothing that water is when it steams from fire. The house did not matter. The locks I installed when that burglar came round last winter, did not matter. Drunk, sober, summer, winter, don’t matter. Time of year don’t matter. Or who shares my sleep. They come. They come for me when they will. When they will I come. It is truth. I don’t recall seeing alien technology. Wouldn’t know it if I saw it. But dealing with them… like that play you read in high school, where the witches tell Macbeth he’s gonna kill the king. They give him no choice. It’s like that. I have no freedom. And the world is dark.

The Broadkill Review, and the Broadkill River Press, are just some of the sponsors of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, which is free to enter, and offers a full length publication of a poetry manuscript, a cash prize, and free beer. It's become one of the best contests for poets. We focus on poets who have ties to the Mid-Atlantic states. You can find submission information here on our imprint's website http://www.thebroadkillriverpress.com/dogfish-head-poetry-prize

To order or find out more about S Scott Whitaker's books of poetry, Click here.



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May 2017 Vol. II No. V


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General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird ModPo & Experimental Poetry with Anthony Watkins Check Out (and use!)the New Forum Pages! Featured Poem of the month Nintendo Villanelle With my sister it was always Tetris. I was a better Mario, stomping others. School nights air-pocketing coins, we’d get rich safe in our den’s warp-world brick, yet risk lay in bullies. Their taunts hovered. My sister, always protecting the boy bad at Tetris from the bus stop on. What was I to do, get ripped? It’s not like you’d ask for sanction via their mothers. School nights: air pockets, coin resistance met with sofa cushions. In my lap, the family pet, dish of Oven Fry crumbs as a snack to sate the druthers. With my sister it was always River Phoenix and Tetris, his Jimmy Reardon appeal. How could I closet? Bet this is some boy you know, neighbors wondering about brothers, school nights pocketing an air kiss. The next day I’d get hit by Kyle, Shane, or Dan; no haven on their movie set, pristine the bell’s dismissal. At home, conciliatory pixels gathered. With my sister it was always Tetris, school nights forgetting torn pockets, the phrases bullies coined to get rich. Jon Riccio is a PhD candidate and composition instructor at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona.


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Better than Starbucks -- the Interview

John Sevigny, "Paparazzi to the Iconic Unknown", joins us to talk about his penetrating art of photography. He is a Miami native who has lived on the US-Mexico border for four years during the worst of the drug war in Northern Mexico. More recently Central America has been both his home and his canvas. We asked him about how he gets the power into his images and even what drives him.

TS: You said, in a previous interview: "I don’t think of people as B addicts, prostitutes or members of gangs. I just think about them as human beings." I see that in your work. How do you make that happen? JS: I was talking to my brother about this just the other day. He's a wildlife photographer and all-around animal expert. He said people ask him how he managed to get a picture of, for example, a hawk flying off with a snake in its claws. He said it's simple. You get up at 5 am every day and look for hawks flying away with snakes. In my case, I walk around constantly. I talk to people, listen to them even more, and lean on empathy rather than sympathy. Which is to say in my own case and that of my brother it comes down to basic, fundamental obvious things. It shows up in the work because I'm not interested in pictures in which a first world photographer looks down at a wide-eyed, sad, Asian or African kid with an empty bowl of rice. My gaze, to use a pretentious word is horizontal, not vertical. So I spend a lot of time talking, walking, and sometimes drinking with people I meet on the street, in bars, in churches, wherever. I know the names of people I photographed a decade ago. Many photographers think in terms of the subject - some big, singular, monolithic thing they photograph. I've never seen people that way. People are all different, have different life stories, and different tales to tell.

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Who we are Better than Starbucks Founded 1995 as Scene, Arts of the Treasure Coast, Renamed 1998 Abundance, a Harvest of Literature, Life & the Arts Revived 2016 as Better than Starbucks Staff, listed in order of when they joined the staff. Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins Publisher, Founder, Editor-in-Chief Kevin McLaughlin Haiku Page Editor, Spiritual Adviser, Poetry Mentor Vera Ignatowitsch Formal &Rhyming Poetry Page Editor, Layout & Copy Editor S. Ye Laird Translations Page Editor Suzanne Robinson Poetry Main Page Editor

Why "Better than Starbucks"?

Before You Know it, the One Man Band is an Orchestra For the first four issues, this space ran on a bit about the publisher. At first, this was due to the fact that there was nobody here but the publisher. Now, as you can see, we have added several staff members so that we are a real fairly fully staffed journal. First came my trusted mentor and spiritual advisor, Kevin McLaughlin to edit our Haiku Page, then Vera Ignatowitsch to edit Formal & Rhyming Poetry. S. Ye Laird is the editor of a now regular feature, Translations, and Suzanne Robinson officially agreed to accepting the title of what she has been all along, the final judge of what goes on the General Poetry Page, look for a greater depth and breadth than anything I could offer when I was trying to wear all the hats!

Contact us at: [email protected]

Please continue to direct your submissions, questions and thoughts to the main [email protected], but you might want to put your work to the attention of whichever page editor seems most likely to want to see it. We will be looking for submissions of interesting translations, watch S. Ye Laid's Translations page for details. Staff we have yet to find, but are actively looking for! We are still missing a few pieces of the puzzle. At least two, maybe three or four or more. The certain two are as follows: A grant writer (we are not a non profit, except in fact, but not law), we need someone who knows how to help in gathering funding to first pay contributors, and then, possibly, though none have ever asked for a dime, to the various editors. Second, we need a tech person who can build us the mythical chat room discussion forum from Shelfari, or even something better. Our own S Ye has helped us get started with a pretty nice "off the shelf" forum, from which she has created a easy to use and appealing to the eye home for our discussions! We hope to start seeing these forums getting a lor of use. Please find the prominent link on this month's front page! But we are still looking for a coder who wants to help! The maybes, let's talk: Thirdly and Fourthly, and maybe even Fifthly (is fifthly a word? It looks a lot like filthy.) We are looking for: a book reviewer, a movie reviewer/critc a music critic and either an art page editor or an art critic or both.

Mentors, Ghosts, and Spirtual Editors

More than a Mind Full: over a dozen chapbooks from Anthony Watkins, starting as low as $5.95

Neither of these wonderful ladies are on our staff, as both are deceased, but they put this little muddy footed boy on the path to the love of the written word. As of December 4, 2016, we can add the ghost of my father. He never quite understood why anyone would work so hard for something that didn't make any money, but he always supported my efforts to create a place for poetry, literature and art.



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Why Better Than Starbucks? As with so many stories, this literally begins a long time ago in a place far away. In the beautiful land of Shelfari, which is, sadly, no more. In Shelfari the books lay in stacks on the ground, and poets dreamed and professors mingled with housewives, and the air hung thick with the incense of peace and love. Around Christas of 2007, I stumbled onto a group called Brilliant Babes (and Dudes) Who Read Selectively, aka BBD. Rob and Suze were the ring leaders. It was a closed group but a couple of my really smart funny friends were members and invited me. The lot of them were witty, and they tended to read books I liked. Shelfari had, and someday I hope to duplicate it, the truly friendly "cocktail party" discussion threads. I spent the first three months of 2008 thinking I had found a new home, me and my closest 168 friends. But as I, and most folks are wont to do, I let my guard down. I spoke a little more "truth" than I should have. One of the members loved Starbucks Coffee, not only the coffee, but the company. Starbucks, especially then, was doing a pretty good job of convincing the public they were the good guys, they paid above minimum wage, they extended healthcare benefits in a pre Obamacare era. And somehow, like McDonalds, like Budwieser, they took a substandard product, and with very clever marketing, made people willing to pay two and three dollars for a seventy-five cent cup of coffee. Good on them!

The problem I have with Starbucks is not really the coffee. (as many times as I have tried, and I must have bought over 100 cups of coffee from them, and I can never drink more than a couple of sips and I have to throw it away) The problem is their business model. They practice the Policy of Triangulation. When there is a successful independent coffee shop. they open three stores a block or two away in different directions, killing off the local coffee shop, and then they close one or two of the 3 and have the local market all to themselves. Yes, this is legal, but I find the taste in my mouth from it is worse than their badly roasted beans. What does this have to do with me? with BBD? and more to the point Better than Starbucks? I made the mistake of sharing that I thought their business policy was as nasty as their coffee. Little did I know, in my Barbarian in the China shop ways, I stood my ground, and she was offended, so the powers that be banned me. (This accounted for my very high bar for banning at BTS) This almost hurt my feelings, but what really hurt was they had a book club, and we were just starting The Painted Veil. I am a huge fan of Somerset's other work and had not read this one. So I contacted everyone I knew and invited them to join me in an open group to be known as "Better than Starbucks". That was the 1st day of April 2008. Within a week we had a few hundred and over the next 8 years we grew to nearly 4000 members. We did eventually have a bookclub reading of the book, and many others. Maybe if and when we get the salon up and running, we can have more. I haven't had much to do with the old BBD folks in years. I wish them well. I hope they found a home somewhere in the wasteland that followed the destruction of Shelfari. Thanks for everything BBD! - Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins

Now it's Rooster Year of 2017. BTS has grown like spring time mushroom. We are on a news item published by WeChat platform assoicated with CCTSS.org, all the way from China! Our brand recognition in Chinese is on the rise 《胜过星吧客－不一般的诗界》。Vera and S. Ye also instigated a self discovery on the Etymology of 'Starbucks'.

So here's the long story short: when our sweet American-pie publisher Anthony Watkins was banned from BBD, he started his own shop, and called it Better Than Starbucks. And the rest is history! Thanks for everything, Anthony. the rest of editorial staff with BTS2017


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General Poetry Page with Suzanne Robinson

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Haiku Poetry with Kevin McLaughlin


Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch

ModPo & Experimental Poetry

THE WAY WE SEE THINGS whose story is the true one if not both or neither the tale told over pancakes or the one drunk with decaf who knows the facts when the campfire shines and ghosts crowd yet the story is mine and you were there with me most of the way but the way we tell of our parting is two voices that echo between distant hills

Milton Babbitt in Piney Run Park kids are digging up sand, laughing in incidental stretto, running in lean circles, choosing teams for a game of tag, getting married on the ternary swings under the warm canonic clouds of April— and maybe there’s only the sweet vocalise, or the plush little Adagio for moments like these

Colin Webb is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, and writes poetry as well as fiction. His novella, Coping with Coincidence, was shortlisted for the 2015 Arch Street Prize.

A SPELL FOR CHAMELEONS it is noon of a lightless day, JOANNA M. WESTON tells us she is a spider rancher. Actually, waking to the sound of falling rain her bio includes the following: dancing against the eaves of houses Married; has one cat, multiple and the stones of the street, spiders, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen-houses. long ages since the slidewalk functioned on this street of tears Middle-reader: with the drinking and the women ‘Frame and The McGuire', Tradewind Books 2015; and the noise and the knives, voices stir up eddies of dust Poetry: in the darkened hallway, ‘A Bedroom of Searchlights’, Inanna Publications, 2016. listen to the night sounds ISBN 978-1-77133-305-4 and the soft drowsy hisses Other books listed at her blog: of those who also sleep http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/ This site was created using WIX.com.beneath these ancient ferns, Create your own for FREE >>

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Palestine children You have killed our children your bullets have pierced their heart of love now only hatred remains. You can plant you flags talk falsely of peace you never wished for. Our young will not forgive you you killed their caring hearts.

Oskar Hansen

Homecoming To return as a visitor It greets you where it once hurt you. In its parade of low tide and uncharacteristic sunshine, it reveals a kind of dysmorphia. It has been peeling itself apart in the mirror, it has stopped raining. On Banks Road, there are couples. At the Marina, the water is dressed in silk. In the cafe, the coffee is sublime. At the place where you were young, the bench has been removed.

its fronds beaded with rooks, makes you think of big things, time and living and dying the bodies of forgotten poets the siftings of alien mildew and the last lost scavengers who pick over the remnants of bones of other days, other junk dreams. Andrew Darlington, of West Yorkshire,England, has been published in all manner of strange and obscure places, magazines, websites, anthologies and books, and worked as a Stand-Up Poet on the ‘Alternative Cabaret Circuit’. His nterviews of very many people from the worlds of Literature, SF-Fantasy, Art and Rock-Music for a variety of publications has been collected into the ‘Headpress’ book ‘I Was Elvis Presley’s Bastard Love-Child’. His latest poetry collection is ‘The Poet’s Deliberation On The State Of The Nation’ (Penniless Press), and a new fiction collection ‘A Saucerful Of Secrets’ is now available from Parallel Universe Publ.

Richard M. Thompson


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Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Seventeen syllables, sorted by three lines or segments (5-7-5), have created numerous interpretations, misinterpretations, understandings, and misunderstandings. What constitutes a haiku? Many scholars, poets, and teachers cannot even agree if haiku is a valid form of poetry. Is a haiku writer truly a poet? I’d been puzzling my way through this basic question when I came across a valuable passage by R.H. Blyth, quoted by Alan Watts in “The World of Zen.” “A haiku is not a poem, it is not literature. It is a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. Our falling leaf nature, It is a way of returning to nature, our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, in short our Buddha nature. It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive language.” A beautiful, lyrical passage! Nevertheless, haiku is decidedly poetry. Some define poetry as “the best words in the best order.” Poetry is transformative writing, the poet expresses a vision of the world, a weltanschauung. Haiku ignores many of Western poetry’s conceits, the pleasant similes, extended metaphors, the rhyming, and fluid alliteration. Haiku frequently lacks the rhythmic component of the most accomplished Western poetry. Haiku is spare, slender. The finest verses rely on involving the reader. Haiku may well be poetry in its purest form. Raccoon hunts the flats: The tide drains from the mangroves,A waterfall sound. The manta ray glides Tracelessly through sea grass: Ocean’s nursery. Oysters and clams thrive: A flat, gray slough that extends To the horizon. -Kevin McLaughlin Joseph and Angie Davidson demonstrate a linked verse quality in many of their haiku. I am grateful the Davidson’s contributed a number of pieces to BTS. I will be able to publish more of their work in the June issue. Husband and wife both tap into deep wellsprings, expressing reality insofar as it can be expressed, by direct experience. Seemingly impersonal, the Self is immersed in the image. We are not separate from the outer world. Wind blows through my hair, Gently caressing my face, Storm clouds are coming. Cloudy spring morning, Misty rain on the mountains, Echoes of nature. -Angie Davidson Gentle breeze on face, Late afternoon storms warm wind: Sudden calm in the eye. Strands of DNA Cosmic loom weaves spiral threads: Emptiness is form. I found the second line in the above haiku exceptionally vivid; the spiral threads that run through nature and form the galaxy itself. Reflecting on pond

One of the themes Blyth identified in haiku is loneliness, by which he also implied a compassion for all the sentient beings on this planet of the “red tooth and the red claw.” Making this an exceptionally moving haiku is the knowledge that this is written, in part, as an elegy for one of Godfrey’s long- time friends, a friend who frequently sat in the chair in the garage. Sat in the garage, Winter, spring, summer, and fall: The chair is empty. -James Godfrey In the haiku below, Ms. Ignatowitsch catches the joyfulness of life as it flows through each passing season. Especially noteworthy is how the first line builds to the second line, and the second line to the magnificent image of her third line:” Alchemized to bud.” Yes, Vera, along with the spirit of Lao-Tzu, has captured Spring’s spirit. Raindrops coalesce Into potion branches drink Alchemized to bud. -Vera Ignatowitsch I’ve written haiku is the poetry of mindfulness. Haiku writing is an every minute art form. If you are distracted, day-dreaming, or re-writing your past, you’ll miss that perfect haiku. In his book, The Noble Eightfold Path,” Bhikku Bodhi does a fine job of describing the state of mind that generates a good poem. “The Buddha says that the Dhamma, the ultimate truth of things, is directly visible, timeless, calling out to be approached and seen. He says further it is always available to us, and that the place it is to be realized is within oneself. The ultimate truth is not something mysterious and remote, but the truth of our own experience. It can be reached only by understanding or experience, by penetrating it right through to its foundations. This truth, in order to become liberating truth, has to be known directly. It has to be known by insight, grasped and absorbed by a kind of knowing which is also a kind of seeing.” -Bhikku Bodhi Bodhi has built upon my premise that haiku is the poetry of mindfulness; it is also the poetry of insight. In his commentary he elucidates the role of the mundane. The mundane is also the sacred. Seventeen syllables can transform base metal into gold. In order to illustrate “haiku mind,” I again have the pleasure of turning to the Davidsons. Eating all bugs, The bats come out at night, The shadows reflect. Crabs out at low tide, Feeding as fast as they can, Claw waves in warning. -Angie Davidson Early morning fog, Night’s silken robe discarded: Golden rays new day. Prickly pear on trail, Needle thorns protect nectar: Yellow flower blooms. Fading day’s last light,

Honorah Murphy, the astrophysicist from Trinity College, Dublin, submitted two more of her haiku “from the Hubble telescope.” In an accompanying letter, Honorah expressed appreciation that BTS acknowledges humanity’s understanding of the natural world has increased greatly since the 17th century. I did come across a companion piece to Honorah’s work in a haiku by Issa (17621826): A lovely thing to see: / Through the paper window’s hole, / The Galaxy. Physics’ laws break down: Black holes’ Event Horizon, Halts time-gravity. Neutron stars collide: Gold and heavy metals sown, Throughout the heavens. -Honorah Murphy Joan McNerney’s work reflects another important haiku characteristic, love. Throughout our months of publishing verse from Ms. McNerney’s canon, it has been evident she has great love for all animals . . . and probably for the plant kingdom as well. For someone like Joan, there are 10,000 possibilities to write a haiku every day. She is Awake throughout the day. We are grateful she gives us glimpses into her inner nature and how she relates to the world through her five senses. Black and white kitten Lying under clothesline in Soft circles of sleep. A cup of coffee Warm fat pancakes bubbling up My haiku breakfast. Shy autumnal bird, Did you brush against the moon To get that pale down? -Joan McNerney My fellow Floridian George Mang has drawn a keen connection between the seasonal changes (not easy to do in the sub-tropics) and our vast number of dragon-fly species. Autumn Equinox, A balance between light and dark: A blue dragon-fly. The above poem has strong Taoist influences. Mr. Mang has chosen his subject well, as few animals embody “stillness in motion and motion in stillness” better than the dragonfly. Lao-Tzu would have loved this piece. In mid-November The black pennant dragon-flies, Replace green darners. -George Mang Readers who have followed this column know we publish a few poems each month from African-American Richard Wright’s collection “Haiku: The other World.” Settling on the screen Of a crowded movie house, A white butterfly. An empty sickbed: An indented white pillow In weak winter sun.


Moonlight rippled by surface Bats hunting in night. April rains falling Mother Earth’s nourishing tears, Mountains in moonlight. -Joseph Davidson In Deschutes River Haiku John Beaton expresses movement, joyfulness, and immersion into nature. Beaton puts the reader into the Class V rapids, inches above the swirling waters, wet, vigorous, and with a mind totally focused in the moment. All that exists for poet and for an astute reader is the wave of energy, the eddies, and the rocks. In addition, he manages to work in some rollicking good alliteration in the second line. Whitewater kayaks, Rapids ripping through rimrock, White knuckled paddlers. -John Beaton

Mullet school silver flashes: Indian River. -Joseph Davidson Mike Flannigan is an aerospace worker living in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Mr. Flannigan has only been writing haiku for less than a year after having been given a “Peter Pauper” haiku book by an older sister. He writes that he is a humanist who follows no specific religious or philosophical path other than the Golden Rule and making a point of trying “to stay on the moment.” His work is clear and balanced. We hope he will submit more of his pieces to BTS in the future. It is a joy to see the rasping vulture’s croak seen to be the equal of a song bird’s chirp. Just after sunset, The live oaks by the roadside, Are filled with fireflies. Unseen black vultures, Making huffing sounds in the pines: The morning star fades.

In the above poem, Mr. Wright belies the belief that great haiku have to be impersonal. This is a verse well worth a single and a solitary reading. Tossing pine trees Lulling a village to sleep In the winter dusk.

Yet once more I encourage all haiku writers to share their work, their insights into the nature of all things, with fellow poets and BTS readers. For those interested in haiku, I recommend you cast back into the BTS archives and reference the September column. It provides a pretty thorough explanation of the basic format.


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Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Love Has a Southern Flavor Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew, ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout we tilt to basking faces to breathe out the ordinary, and inhale perfume ... Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines, wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves that will not keep their order in the trees, unmentionables that peek from dancing lines ... Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights: the constellations’ dying mysteries, the fireflies that hum to light, each tree’s resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight ... Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet, as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet. first published in The Lyric Michael R. Burch’s poems have been translated into nine languages and set to music by the composers Alexander Comitas and Seth Wright. Burch’s poems, essays, articles and letters have appeared more than 2,000 times around the globe in publications which include TIME, USA Today, BBC Radio 3, The Hindu, Kritya, Gostinaya, Light, The Lyric, Measure, Angle, Black Medina, The Chariton Review, Poet Lore, The Chimaera, Poem Today, Verse Weekly, ByLine, Unlikely Stories and Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing. He also edits and publishes www.thehypertexts.com.

GOOSE HAWK Accipiter gentilis: the goshawk (goosehawk) Extinct early 19th century, through predation, esp. by ‘keepers, there are about 250 pairs in Britain: a.k.a. goosehawk or cook’s hawk, as of a size to take down pheasant and wildfowl for the table.

I watch you, youngsters weaning, August, round your tattered pile, star kissed, pale wings as sheer as butterflies. In early spring, old hands, the climbing air your mixing bowl, toss hay beyond the forest canopy, free dive, to rise like bullets, rocket high, pole dance, trace undulating pattern on the sky. The phantom of this forest’s deep, cool shade, past living pillars, emigre themselves, who watch dumbstruck, you conjure stillness in your wake, wings magic carpet, dancing shroud. Fast forwarding before I blink, I strive to process what I think I’ve seen, create my perfect movie from this fleeting dream. Your wits map four dimensions, scan for what’s concealed, sort wood from trees, compelling gaze and ravenous, space-time your thrall. You crave the stir of pounding heart, convulsion gripped through living flesh beneath your sabre feet, that razor beak engorged. Wilderness-bound, word-shy, nigh on impossible to reach, when yeoman austringers fly you at geese, you fight above your weight, wild eyes ablaze. Where this is primal, home to lynx and bear, or royal hunting ground for boar and stag, or coppice (turner, hurdle-maker, sense of charcoal on the breeze), you take the crown.

To Marguerite de Roberval When your young cavalier was a crew volunteer you were swept into shipboard romance; like a buoy with a bell that will clang in a swell, your boy gave his belle quite a dance. But your uncle, a viceroy, considered this nice boy unworthy of his wedding toast and, abandoning chivalry, dallied with devilry calved from the Newfoundland coast. He put you ashore like a stowaway whore, on an isle with a nurse for assistance; as the vessel set sail, your amour leapt the rail and swam, his arms plunging like pistons. He made it to land. As he lay on the sand a sail-less sea compassed your bounds. And you tried to stay brave when you lay in a cave as the nights made their demon-like sounds. For this Island was named for what sailors proclaimed were the terrors of visiting seamen’s worst nightmares; they vaunted that they had been haunted by ghosts on this Island of Demons. Were you scared or relieved when you found you’d conceived? Did he hug you, or grimace with worry, or imagine a boy that you both might employ to manure future crops with your slurry? Your womb waters rivered; you somehow delivered a baby by whom you were milked. But its sucking mouth yearned when you’d no milk enchurned in two bosoms that hunger had bilked. You’d been trained in the use of an old arquebuse and you hunted and butchered wild beasts and replenished your breasts with your venison-fests. How rare was the meat of those feasts? You were frightful and feral and almost chimeral in your rags and your animal skins but, barely alive, you fought to survive then the demons’ dance went widdershins. In a crude semaphore you lit fires on the shore to attract passing ships to your plight, but the days passed away till your lover wouldn't pray and relinquished the willpower to fight. With a shovel of wood, you did what you could to dig him a hole for his grave. And the baby’s was worse. When you'd dug for the nurse there was you, only you, left to save. For a year and a half you lived on the chaff of the wild, on what nature afforded till one day a barque manifested, an Ark, and it sighted your fire and you boarded.

You came home, Marguerite. Did you feel incomplete when you stepped on that jetty in France? Were your demons so black that you couldn’t look back or did they demand a last glance? This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

When outraged pheasant keepers render you extinct, it’s Peter and the wolf, cue Jack the Ripper, Hindley-primed Red Riding Hood. Magnificent, old world, your piercing, bloodcrazed stare as chilling as a winter gale, those who try hard enough, know how to look, will find you here. No shooting syndicates about, unheralded, you breed and thrive when unperturbed. Your flying crucifix, the under-part a vellum script of psalms, Apollo’s wake up call, our smoking gun, records your blanket, gibbet sacrifice for Adams dazzled by their fallen state. Peter Branson, a native of N. Staffordshire, has lived in a village in Cheshire, UK, for the last twenty-six years. A former teacher and lecturer in English Literature and creative writing and poetry tutor, he is now a full time poet, songwriter and traditional-style singer whose poetry has been published by journals in Britain, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australasia and South Africa, including Acumen, Ambit, Agenda, Envoi, The London Magazine, The North, Prole, The Warwick Review, Iota, The Butcher’s Dog, The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, SOUTH, Crannog, THE SHOp, Causeway, Main Street Rag, The Columbia Review and Other Poetry. He has won prizes and been placed in a number of poetry competitions over recent years, including a ‘highly commended’ in the ‘Petra Kenny International’, first prizes in the ‘Grace Dieu’ and the ‘Envoi International’, a special commendation in the Wigtown and the silver medal award in the last Dermot Healy Int Poetry Competition. His selected poems, ‘Red Hill, came out in 2013. His latest collection, ‘Hawk Rising’, from ‘Lapwing’, Belfast, was published in April 2016.

Letter To The Occupant Not long ago I was a house but now am property, a listing in the classifieds: three BRs, two Bs. You crossed my threshold man and wife then brought your newborns home to me. How far they’ve come since they first crossed my hardwood floors on hands and knees. You framed their pictures, K through 12, to lavish love upon. I lived to be the wall you hung their pictures on. I lay awake with you one night the moon upon my window sills your hand upon your spouse’s side your children sleeping steps away. While I was less and less their home they’d visit for the holidays. Arriving late, too late you hoped to plan an evening out, they kept you company then off to bed to settle in to my familiarity. I listened as you kept your watch your loved ones safe, secure and near then took your place so you might sleep beyond the reach of woe or fear. Think not you kept me from my rest. Your vigil honored me. My joists and rafters settled in and creaked contentedly. Then came the sign I’d seen before in front of former neighbors’ yards as if to say our neighborhood were solid as a house of cards. I never thought you would impale the lawn you tended lovingly and hang me up for rent or sale on a post for all to see.

John Beaton writes metrical poetry and his work has been widely published in media as diverse as Able Muse and Gray’s Sporting Journal. He writes a monthly poetry page for the magazine Eyes on BC and served for four years as moderator of one of the internet's most reputable poetry workshops. He is a spoken word performer and a poet member of the band Celtic Chaos. His poetry has won numerous awards, including the 2015 String Poet Prize and the 2012 Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry. He was raised in the Scottish Highlands and lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.

Poetic Styles I trend—to like Goth poems, black and white with all the piercings; but the runway Paris poems' hats and scarves can be endearing; and heroic flowing poems, the Athenian dresses I see, are better than the Chiton poems which all seem Greek to me; however, there remains a place for the raw street-poem thing with clash of sport and formal wear and all topped off with bling; the sexy poems of legs and boots I just normally wouldn't book, but they compel me still to drop my shades and take a look; high heel stiletto poems seem to always impress me, whenever I'm out trendspotting the feet of poetry; and I would be remiss to skip formal poems of renown, such classic form and intrigue as the flowing evening gown; which leads me to imagine modern minimalist wear, Victoria's Secret poetry with almost nothing there; but I digress and must admit the preferred style for me, is the casual relaxing stuff of loungewear poetry.

DE Navarro is the Founder of NavWorks Press. He is an author, poet, editor, publisher, speaker, and life coach. He is the originator and owner of the We Write PoetryTM forums and the Pride in Poetry PrizeTM and Publication. He is a husband, father, mentor and friend and Banking Sr Analyst, Tech Editor/Writer. Visit DE's beautiful Website at http://www.de-navarro.com for peace and to learn more about his work. He lives in Greater Los Angeles where he writes and publishes.

SESTINA (GOING GREEN) There's something to be said for taking stairs instead of an elevator. Sometimes life is seen from the bottom of a well; for example, my blood pressure was high, again, at the doctor's this afternoon. And I wasn't even one bit nervous; At least, consciously. What makes me nervous is the thought that if I don't take the stairs I may not live to see the afternoon of my life. One has to take stock sometimes. I need to stop seeking the sugar high, cut the caffeine, and eat vegetables. Well,

Then I watched you pack your things and check for items left behind. The etching on my sidewalk stays to mark the place your children signed their monograms on wet concrete. I'll try harder (I want to be well); I won’t forget how proud I stood This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

with their initials at my feet. I understand your kids are grown, my stairs are tough on aging knees. After all that we’ve been through you have my sympathies. Eventually I’ll dwell in peace but not today, I can’t. As you give my keys away indulge me in a farewell rant and promise me you’ll file these words with your closing documents to be retained for future use by the current occupant. Kevin Shyne is a life long writer, whose work once appeared frequently in corporate annual reports and employee newsletters. Turning to poetry in his retirement, Kevin has had poems published in The Lyric, Poetry Breakfast, Poetry Porch and The Avocet. Kevin lives in a small town in the corn-and-soybean heart of the Midwest, where, along with a group of fellow poets, he helped organize the first-ever poetry event for the Prairie Arts Council in Princeton, Illinois.

Lighthearted Verse & Limericks... ODE TO A COMMA O Worthy Little Punctuation Mark! Wee Dynamo for Recommending Pause! What scandal would my diatribe impart Without your intervention in my clause? With nothing but the flicking of my pen Do I enlist your diplomatic skill To summon from syntactic disarray Coherence of authorial intent; Yet in this age of solecistic ill Too often are you victim of foul play!! Elizabeth Faris is educated in English Language/Literature and Literacy Instruction. For the past twenty years, she has enjoyed teaching English and ESL to students of all ages and ethnic origin. Her passion for writing extends to poetry, formal and informal, based either on a spectrum of original themes or the plots of literary classics and traditional tales.

The Hyper Texts



It's time to go green, which makes me nervous. And it's not just because the stakes are high, or the taste is plain rotten; like the stairs I just gotta do it. There are some times when confidence comes, like this afternoon: It was like any other afternoon except "green lunch" didn't go down too well. I try to branch out (going green sometimes), but can feel the stomach getting nervous outside my comfort zone; feel it downstairs in the gut (pain tolerance is not high here). And nothing compares, so far, to the high sugar brings. Vegetables in the afternoon can bring you down; and I mean down the stairs to desolation's despair. To feel well I drove to McDonald's (and a nervous drive it was getting there, too). Though sometimes habits are hard to break (there are some times when I ask: What's the point? Then take the high road), the alternative makes me nervous. So it's salad, again, by this afternoon for me (I know I'll get used to it. Well, "bear's" a better word here). As for the stairs, getting high (up stairs) ain't easy sometimes, but you get there. Well, by this afternoon. Michael C. Seeger is a poet and educator residing in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs, California. Prior to his life as a middle school English instructor, he worked as a technical writer for a baseball card company and served as a Marine infantry officer during Desert Storm. He considers poetry a passion and writing generally a way of life. Michael’s poems have only recently been published, though he’s written many and stands ready to embrace the opportunity of being so honored.

On this page we publish monthly selections of metrical poetry from our contributors. Submit your blank verse, metrical rhyming poems, villanelles, sonnets, sestinas and other formal poetry to betterthanstarbucks2@gmail. We love both traditional and experimental forms and subjects, and do submit your limericks and lighthearted verse as well! Vera Ignatowitsch

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Dear readers , It has been such a fun ride editing & composing this column since Oct. 2016. To mark my 1st anniversary with this joint venture, I am starting a fund raise profile on patreon.com so that we may continue bringing you quality content & enlightenment as well as partaking more ambitious and less 'flashy' translation projects. In the month of May, may you enjoy life to its fullness.

Learn Sanskrit from Lord Rama in One Verse on Ram Navami

The Secret to Success

रामो राजमिणः सदा वजय राम र श भ रा णािभहता नशाचरचम रामाय त

नमः

रामा नाि त परायण परतर राम य दासो ऽ यह रा िचतलयः सदा भवत भो राम माम र rāmo rāja-maṇiḥ sadā vijayate / rāmaṁ rameśaṁ bhaje rāmeṇābhihatā niśācara-camū / rāmāya tasmai namaḥ rāmāt nāsti parāyaṇaṁ parataram / rāmasya dāso’smy ahaṁ rāme citta-layaḥ sadā bhavatu me / bho rāma mām uddhara Rāma, jewel among kings, is always victorious, I offer worship to Rāma, husband of Ramaa (Sita Devi, etc.) With Rāma the host of night-stalkers are destroyed. I offer my obeisances for Rāma There is no higher shelter than from Rāma. I am the servant of Rāma. Let my mind always be in Rāma passing before my eyes. Save me, O Rāma! There are 8 ways that nouns are terminated in Sanskrit. This verse has all 8, so when you memorize it, you can recognize 50%+ of Sanskrit vocabulary! 1. Rāmaḥ (Ramo) - Rama (the subject) 2. Rāmaṁ - To Rama 3. Rāmeṇa - With Rama 4. Rāmāya - For Rama 5. Rāmāt - From Rama 6. Rāmasya - Of Rama 7. Rāme - In Rama 8. Bho Rāma - Hey Rama!

उ साहान् न याद् धय त् त कम वतनात् स ग यागात् सतो व ः ष ड्भर् भि तः स य त Rupa Goswami, a Vrindavan saint, wrote a book called Upadesamrta in which he noted the way to achieve the results of your endeavor, whether for spiritual progress (here bhakti) or otherwise. If you take this to heart, according to his advice, you will be successful in what you undertake: 1. उ साहान् - utsahan - Be Enthusiastic 2. न याद् - nischyaad- Have conviction- Be fixated on your task and convinced you will attain 3. धय त् - dhairyat- Have patience 4. त कम वतनात् - tat tat karmapravratanat - Do the activities that are recommended 5. स ग यागात् - sanga tyagat- Renounce attachment - this can mean leave detractors or distracting people behind, and it can also mean to do your work without attachment to the results- in other words, don't expect immediate success. 6. सतो व ः - sato vritte - making an honest living — photo and posts credit Stuart Trusty , founder of Linuxlab Inc. , trained pianist, now living in india for humanitarian causes.

Stray Birds By Rabindranath Tagore 泰戈爾《零散的鸟语》一片冰心滿紙馮唐 = 造化？翻异 C'est vrai ？冯唐的“树/大地的渴望/踮着脚偷窥天堂”比所有其它先哲译得更有诗艺。Inspired by 馮唐's new translation attempt at Tagore's "Stray Birds", below is a few of my adaptation, mainly for self amusement and what not. O TROUPE of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints in my words. 现世里孤孤单单的小混蛋啊混到我的文字里留下你们的造孽？ The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover. It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal. 大千世界在情人面前解开紗丽绵长如舌吻纤细如诗行 http://www.eldritchpress.org/rt/stray.htm

WHAT you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow. 你无法看到真身你能看到的多是自生的印象 O Beauty, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of thy mirror. 端莊的美在敬爱中自作的秀在镜愛里。 That i exist is a perpetual surprise which is life 我的存在無外與一个永恒的问号化梵。

The “hermit-clam” image is the logo of his fictional publishing company, Clam & Doomsday™. It was created from the concept that “Characters create pearls from their irritations–beautiful, but dissoluble. The writer, on the other hand, creates diamonds from his pressures, and diamonds last forever.”

Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees. 痛在我心里渐渐平和/ 如夜被屏息的深林哄睡。


Ezra Pound and Rabindranath Tagore. By Harold M. Hurwitz. EZRA POUND MET the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and heard his poetry for the first time at a “Tagore Evening” which Wil liam Rothenstein, painter, founder of the India Society, and Tagore’s London host, gave for his distinguished guest at his home in Hamp stead Heath on the evening of July 7, 1912.1 At Rothenstein’s, W. B. Yeats read aloud several poems that Tagore had translated into English from his Bengali works shortly before he left India and while he was en route to London in the spring of 1912. Pound, like many of the other guests gathered at Rothenstein’s that evening,2 was deeply moved by the poetry. In an essay published several months later he compared his response to Tagore with Boccaccio’s excitement in discovering the Greeks and Dante: Pound’s growing antipathy towards the Indian poet was further Hearing his first Greek professor, hearing for the first time the revealed in a letter he wrote Iris Barry in January, 1917. In this he curious music of Theocritus, coming for the first time upon that claimed that Tagore received the Nobel Prize, in 1913, “because, after classic composure which Dante had a little suggested in his the cleverest boom of our day, after the fiat of the omnipotent description of limbo, Boccaccio must have felt, I think, little literati of distinction, he relapsed into religion and optimism and differently from what we have felt here, we few who have been was boomed by the pious non-conformists.’18 privileged to receive the work of Mr. Tagore before the public had heard it.3 Pound, however, certainly knew that much of the “boom” was genuine, since he him self genuinely participated in it, and he knew After the Yeats reading, Pound became one of Tagore’s most fervent many others – such as Yeats, May Sinclair, and Ernest Rhys – who admirers. Rothenstein remarked in this connection that for several were as sincere as he was in their initial praise of Tagore. As for the weeks following the program “the young poets came to sit at Tagore’s “omnipotent literati,” Pound doesn’t make clear who he means, but feet; Ezra Pound the most assiduously.”4 he certainly was part of the approving chorus; and if others were POUND’S ENTHUSIASM FOR Tagore was first revealed in a letter he deceived, he should have been honest enough to admit that he was sent Harriet Monroe, the editor of the new American too. Instead, suggestive of his later paranoia, he hints to Miss Barry magazine, Poetry. Acting as her foreign correspondent, he was that the Nobel Prize was a conspiracy: “Also…it got the Swedish anxious to get some of Tagore’s work before the other journals did. Academy out of the dif ficulty of deciding between European writers Writing Miss Monroe from London on September 24, 1912, he told her whose claims appeared to conflict. Sic. Hardy or Henry James?…And of his plans: then, the right people suggested him. And Sweeden [sic] is Sweeden.” I’ve just written to Yeats. It’s rather hard to get anything out of him POUND’S ANIMOSITY TOWARDS Tagore achieved its fullest by mail and he won’t be back in London until November. Still I’ve expression in a review published in the Little Review in August, 1917. done what I can, and as it’s the first favor or about the first that I’ve Originally written as a comment on Fenollosa’s “Certain Noble Plays asked for three years, I may get something–”to set the tone.” of Japan,” he could not resist the opportunity to use this essay as a Also, I’ll try to get some of the poems of the very great Bengali poet, bludgeon upon Tagore’s sinking reputation. “This Japanese stuff has Rabindranath Tagore. They are going to be the sensation of the not the solidity, the body, of Rihaku (Li Po),” he wrote. “It is not so winter…W. B. Y. is doing the introduction to them.5 They are important as the Chinese work left by Fenollosa, but on the other translated by the author into very beautiful English prose, with hand it is infinitely better than Tagore and the backwash from mastery of cadence….6 India….” And then he concluded this paragraph with a non-sequitur whose only purpose seemed to denigrate: “Fenollosa has given us A few weeks later, Pound again wrote to Miss Monroe, extremely more than Tagore has….Japan is not a Chinese deca dence.”19 Thus, excited because he had some Tagore poems for the next number within five brief years, Pound’s extreme enthusiasm had changed of Poetry and because he felt the Indian poet was going to create a into bitter and uncritical derogation. tremendous stir in England and America: It is also interesting to note that in his later essays on Tagore, This is The Scoop. Reserve space in the next number for Tagore…. He Pound’s early idealism disappeared and was replaced by a rather has sung Bengal into a nation, and his English version of his poems is ironic cynicism. This changed attitude was revealed in a satire he very wonderful. Yeats is doing the introduction. wrote on the hypocrisy of Eastern seers entitled “Jodindranath And we’re to hold down the American copyright. I’ve known for weeks Mawhwor’s Occupation.”20 Adopting the ironic tone and cynical that he was the event of the winter. Yeats greeted me with “someone pose that became his familiar mask, Pound seems in this sketch to greater than any of us – I read these things and wonder why one be poking fun at Indian holy men and suggesting that many of them should go on trying to write.” are fakers. For example, Mawhwor has no occupation, other than philandering and giving advice to his disciples, while at the same It’s the only real fever of excitement among the inner circle of liter time professing to use the Indian holy books as his source and guide. ature that I’ve ever seen here. And we – Poetry – have got six poems at the least; and nobody else will have any….7 It is doubtful that the hero of the story is intended to be Tagore, but there are enough similarities between the fictional and real to Pound was successful in obtaining six of the poems for Poetry, and suggest that Pound was bemused by Tagore’s saintliness. The names these were published in the issue of December 1912, along with are similar, for example. Mawhwor, like Tagore, is a Bengali. an essay by him on Tagore. The six poems were from the Gitanjali, a Moreover, the fictional character and the original are deeply volume of Tagore’s English translations published by the India “religious.” And Tagore also had a group of disciples who came to Society in November 1912. Both Pound and Miss Monroe were further him for guidance. But Pound had a great deal of respect for Tagore’s delighted by the fact that these were the first of Tagore’s poems to be in tegrity, and his parody is so heavily drawn that it seems very published in the West, since the India Society’s edition was a private, unlikely he wanted anything but a superficial resemblance between subscribed one and was not distributed until early in 1913. Mawhwor and his friend. IN THE OPENING line of his essay, Pound emphasized the impor An even profounder change in Pound’s views is reflected in his satire tance of the occasion, remarking that “The appearance of the poems on the Indian religious works in this story. In his essay for Poetry, he of Rabindranath Tagore, translated by himself from Bengali into had remarked that the poems of Tagore “will destroy the popular English, is an event in the history of English poetry and of world conception of Buddhism, for we in the occident are apt to regard it poetry.’8 In the rest of his brief appreciation, he described the as a religion negative and anti-Christian.”21 But in “Jodindranath outstanding qualities of the poetry and explained why he thought it Mawhwor’s Occupation” he underscores the pettiness and the so significant. foolishness of the Hindu religious doctrines and shows that the worldly pre-occupations of the hypocrite Mawhwor partly arise As one might expect, Pound was fascinated with the verse form of the from his study of the Indian holy works, which are likewise con original Bengali, which he found to be fashioned “in metres perhaps cerned with the most mundane and trivial matters. For example, in the most finished and most subtle of any known to us.”9 He also felt describing Mawhwor’s day, Pound remarks slyly that “Jodindranath that Tagore’s lines contained the harmonious complexity which rose in the morning and brushed his teeth, after having performed characterized all great art. He described its form through a series of other unavoidable duties as prescribed in the sutra….”22 comparisons: “If you refine the art of the troubadours, combine it with that of the Pleiade, and add to that the sound unit principle of It is difficult to account fully for the change in Pound’s attitude. the most advanced artists in vers libre, you would get something like Although Tagore’s work did deteriorate somewhat, the rancor in the system of Bengali verse.’10 Pound’s criticism and its severity are hardly warranted on a purely Pound was not only delighted with the versification but also highly literary basis. It is more likely that between 1912 and 1917 he was pleased with the contents, which he hoped might have a spiritually becoming more and more embittered by the course of external regenerating effect on English readers. In this connection, he events, and this change was reflected in his views on Tagore. remarked that “the Bengali brings to us the pledge of a calm which we We know that Pound was deeply shocked by the war and angered by need ever much in an age of steel and mechanics. It brings a quiet the slaughter. The deaths of his friends Gaudier-Brzeska and T. E. proclamation of the fellowship between man and the gods; between Hulme were particularly hard blows. Before Gaudier -Brzeska was man and nature.’11 killed in action in June, 1915, Pound wrote that “if the Germans succeed in damaging Gaudier-Brzeska they will have done more In his conclusion, Pound stressed the moral value of the poems, harm to art than they have by the destruction of Rheims Cathedral, especially his hope and belief that they would strengthen “world for a building once made and recorded can, with some care, be fellowship.” Knowing what we do about his later life, this early remade, but the uncreated forms of a man of genius cannot be set idealism seems strange, but it has the ring of sincerity to it. It is forth by another.”23 After the war, he became involved in social and interesting to note, however, that in two later essays on Tagore, economic questions partly because of his revulsion against battle published in 1913, he omitted any reference to world fellowship and and his desire to prevent further conflicts. In the autobiographical Tagore’s contribution to this noble cause.The American poet sketch he wrote for the New Directions volume of his Selected expressed his full appreciation of Tagore’s Gitanjali in a notice in Poems (1949) he stated that “In 1918 began investigations of causes of the Fortnightly Review in March, 1913, shortly after the appearance of war, to oppose same.”24 the Macmillan edition of this work.12 This essay is similar in many respects to the one he wrote for Poetry, but it is more detailed and He also became discouraged by his failure to shock the English even more extravagant, possibly because he was writing for a larger public or shake their apathy. Imagism and Vorticism created only a This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >> audience and because Tagore had achieved some prominence since

the previous essay. For example, early in his remarks, Pound rated mild stir, and Blast had few readers outside of his own group. The Tagore’s genius equal to Dante’s, an appraisal he probably later change in Pound’s personality was noticed by Richard Aldington regretted: “To find fitting comparison for the content of when he met him again shortly after he was demobilized. “For some volume [sic] before us,” he wrote, “I am com pelled to one sole book of reason Ezra had become violently hostile to England – ” Aldington my acquaintance, the Paradiso of Dante.”13 Although Pound’s praise wrote, “perhaps those ‘night dogs’ were biting him. At any rate he seems extravagant today, there are several logical reasons for his kept tapping his Adam’s apple and assuring me that the English admiration of the Indian’s work in addition to those he discussed in stopped short there. I thought at first he meant that he had been print. In the first place, Tagore wrote in the colloquial, narrative style menaced by returning troops as a slacker, but it eventually came out that Pound admired and used himself. Number ninety-three, a poem that he was implying that the English had no brains.”25 Pound’s about approaching death, is a good example of his idiom: bitter disappointment is further recorded in his Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, the opening lines of which indicate his frustra tion: I have got my leave. Bid me farewell my brothers! I bow to you all and take my departure. For three years, out of key with his time, Here I give back the keys of my door – He strove to resuscitate the dead art and I give up all claims to my house. I only ask Of poetry; to maintain ‘the sublime’ for last kind words from you. In the old sense. Wrong from the start – We were neighbors for long, but I received more Thus, Pound’s experiences in war-time England contributed greatly than I could give. Now the day has dawned and the to his growing cynicism. And this alteration in his personality and lamp that lit my dark corner is out. A summons has ideals was reflected in and partly responsible for his bitter attacks come and I am ready for my journey on Tagore. Secondly, one may assume that Pound would be sympathetic to the When the English public accepted the Indian and used Pound’s own devotional nature of Tagore’s work, for many of his early poems also words to praise him, Pound, apparently shocked to find him self part had religious overtones. In his early “Greek Epigram,” for example, of the herd, quickly denounced him. Pound pictured God as the creator of all beauty – a senti ment His attitude also changed considerably after Tagore became a common to Tagore’s verse: popular success. While the Indian poet was unknown, Pound was delighted to act as his defender and to use Tagore’s lack of recogni Day and night are never weary tion as proof of the stupidity of the English and his own superiority. Nor yet is God of creating But when the English public accepted the Indian and used Pound’s For day and night their own words to praise him, Pound, apparently shocked to find him self torch-bearers part of the herd, quickly denounced him. Some quirk in his nature The aube and the crepuscle.14 seemed to make it necessary for him to be always swimming upstream, more often from compulsion than conviction. It is also likely that he admired the Indian’s independent spirit. Throughout his life, Tagore refused to submit to British tyranny or Although Pound was impressed by Tagore’s work, it had little Indian chauvinism; and his broad and uncompromising nationalis tic influence on his stylistically. Looking through the poems he wrote ideals were reflected in many of his poems. after meeting the Indian poet, one notices, of course, his growing skill, especially as reflected in the Cantos and in Mauberley, but BECAUSE HE ADMIRED Tagore’s poetry so greatly, the American poet there is little fundamental change from the themes and style of his was very unhappy about the kind of bogus reception that he was early poems, except that his irony is a little more marked. receiving personally in England. In an essay in the New Free woman Pound took the English public to task for its failure to THERE IS ONE poem, however, that shows definite traces of Tagore’s appreciate Tagore: exoticism. This is “Dance Figure,” which first appeared in Lustra (1915). In this piece, Pound used the luxuriant descriptions, Why the good people of this island are unable to honour a fine poet as the haunting repetitions, the idyllic setting, and the exotic figures such, why they are incapable of …devising for his honour any better that characterized the Indian’s work. Like many of the poems from device than that of wrapping his life in cotton wool and parading Tagore’s Gardener, “Dance Figure” describes the poet’s search for a about with the effigy of a sanctimonious moralist, remains and will mysterious dark-eyed woman, a search that takes place in an remain for me an insoluble mystery…Rabindranath Tagore is not to Oriental atmosphere very much like Tagore’s Bengal. The second be confused…with any Theosophist propaganda; nor with any of the stanza emphasizes the Eastern setting: various mis sionaries of the seven and seventy isms of the mystical East. He is an artist pure and simple, an author whose voice has I have not found thee in the tents, almost as many shades as one might have expected from Voltaire and In the broken darkness. whose sense of humor is as delicate as that of any writer in Paris.15 I have not found thee at the well-head Among the women with pitchers. Pound’s enthusiasm for Tagore’s character possibly stems from the fact that for quite some time he had been anxious to meet a man who, “Dance Figure” also has several sensuous passages that are mindful like Tagore, would “stand for mankind.” He was tired of fearful, timid of Tagore’s poems . For example, in looking for the young lady, the men. He wanted a man who was at once heroic and sensitive, one not poet discovers that “Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy afraid of dreaming great dreams, as he wrote in “Revolt”: rest/ A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in patterns, hast thou gathered about thee….” Let us be men that dream, Not cowards, dabblers, waiters Besides the similarity in tone and atmosphere, Pound’s short piece For dead Time to reawaken and grant balm also has the archaic “thee’s” and “thou’s” that Tagore used; and, like For ills unnamed. the Indian poet, he repeats a significant line in the poem to add to Great God, if we be damn’d to be not men but only dreams, the melancholy mood. Although the “thee” and “thou” and a Then let us be such dreams the world shall tremble at generally archaic language had been a fairly common element in And know we be its rulers though but dreams!16 earlier poems of Pound’s, none of them had the luxurious atmos phere and the exoticism of “Dance Figure.” At the same time that Pound was praising Tagore publicly he was also making some private reservations about his work. In a letter to Even though Tagore’s impact is not evident in verbal felicities or Harriet Monroe, written in April, 1913, he raised some questions about stylistic parallels (except possibly for “Dance Figure”), there is little Tagore’s poetry, fearing that it would become overly mystical and doubt that he was an important source of encouragement to the exotic unless pruned very carefully. “It will be very difficult for his young American poet. Pound had long been an admirer of Asia and defenders in London if he takes to printing anything except his best Asian philosophy, and in his criticism of the West he had frequently work,” he wrote her, probably concerning Mac millan’s plans to issue used the East as his model. Tagore’s fortuitous appearance in Lon more of Tagore’s translations. And in an abrupt change from the don and the quality of his work re-enforced these hopes and ideals, opinions he expressed in his earlier articles, Pound sharply criticized as we can see from the early essays and letters. Tagore’s philosophy in this letter: Tagore was also a stimulus to Pound, who was not only an admirer As a religious teacher, he is superfluous….And his [Tagore’s] but a disciple as well. His early contacts with the Indian poet philosophy hasn’t much in it for a man who has “felt the pangs” or brought forth three essays, one review, and one short story, as well been pestered with Western civilization….So long as he sticks to as a renewed interest in Indian poetry, manifested in the poetry he can be defended on stylistic grounds against those who translations Pound made of several poems from the fifteenth disagree with his con tent….In his original Bengali he has the novelty century Indian poet Kabir, which he published in the Modern of rime and rhythm and of expression, but in a prose translation it is Review of Calcutta in June 1913. just “more theosophy.”17 Pound’s reactions to Tagore also give some insight into his POUND’S CRITICISM IS accurate but surprising because in his two temperament and character. His early praise was extremely previous articles on Tagore he had made little distinction between the uncritical; his later attacks equally emotional. In his initial response, original and the translations. It is also startling to note that he he seems to have sympathized with the unknown and alien poet and criticized the contents of the poems in this letter, for he previously defended his poetry as if it were his own. When Tagore’s work had found them significant. Although the letter was written only a deteriorated, Pound took it as an insult and a betrayal. month after his very laudatory review in the Fortnightly Review, there are, however, several valid explanations for his changed Lastly, and most importantly, Pound’s comments on Tagore reveal views. that the American poet changed a great deal, both in attitude and sentiment, during these years in England. His earliest essays on In the first place, internal evidence indicates that much of Pound’s Tagore showed a great deal of sympathy with the Indian spirit, and review was written several months before its publication. It is likely were suffused with the hopeful idealism of youth. His last essay and that after it was written, Pound re-read the Gitanjali and found it his short story disclose a cynicism and disillusionment in direct unsatisfactory. It is also likely that he saw some of the manuscripts of contrast with the optative mood of his earlier remarks. His the translations that Tagore intended to publish after relationship with Tagore illustrates, then, the nature and direction the Gitanjali and was disappointed in them. Rothenstein, Sturge of, if not the reasons for, this transformation. Moore, and Yeats had copies of the manuscripts – the latter two Harold M. Hurwitz was professor of English at Humboldt State because they were helping Tagore with his revisions – and Pound College (now University). He is the author of Rabindranath Tagore knew all three of them well. There is also a shade of personal and England (University of Illinois – Urbana, 1959). “Ezra Pound animosity towards Tagore in the letter to Miss Monroe, and perhaps and Rabindranath Tagore,” in American Literature, Volume 36, this might have been another reason for his criticism of the Indian’s no. 1, pp. 53-63. Copyright, 1964, Duke University Press. All rights work. reserved. Republish by permission of the copyright holder, Duke University Press. www.dukeupress.edu. This article first appeared This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

online: http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2013/05/ezra-poundrabindranath-tagore/

Prof. Abhay Saxena, Associate Dean (Science ) and Head, of Computer Science Department at Dev Sanskriti Vishwaviidyalya, Hardwar, Uttrakhand, India. Doctoral Degree of Computer Science Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Associated with international conferences AICS 2013 Langkawi, AICS 2014 Thailand; ICAET 2014, Dubai; TICSIC 2014, Turkey, ICGCET 2015, Dubai. Academic and industry experience of 22 years. Authored 7 Books in Computers and science. couple of Govt. funded projects completed.


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Better Than Starbucks ModPo and Experimental Poetry Magazine May 2017




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ModPo & Experimental Poetry A Brief History of Unwinnings As graphomania has nothing to do with cacography and everything to do with opened gates of a barrage, I don’t give a damn about what’s only seen on the surface. But as is often the case, I know almost nothing of the world’s ways of winning the unwinnable against adversities in all seasons. I know nothing about a glib-tongued hoaxer’s art of lacrimation but I know a lot about a copycat’s fears of non-achievement and a faint-hearted bonesetter’s unsorted anxieties and a lubber’s unmanning task of rowing for days an unmotorized raft made of plantain trunks when our rivers get swollen up with more water coming through opened gates of the noose-like Farakka Barrage. Can this sort of knowing about unwinnings be a boast? Oftentimes I think of myself as a lonely skinny calf floating with the flood tide by a hayrack in a raised lived-in cowshed; maybe I’d have my self-diffusive absorbability this way. A polar bear thrives on the polar continent and I on unsuccess. And with ice-floes thawing faster than our expectations and with experts lecturing on it with their gesticulating hands, I hope to float as a pointed gourd on such disasters or what if I sink like an unread message in a cracked bottle. All my plans were never unstilted, all my dreams always saccharous. I’m wondering who’d have felt good if my pseudo-romantic unwinnings had ever been carved on a wooden plank.

USE—PREMISE E-RASURES

Sofiul Azam most recent poetry collection is Safe under Water (2014) and edited Short Stories of Selim Morshed (2009). His poems are published in Prairie Schooner, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Journal, Orbis, The Cannon’s Mouth, Postcolonial Text, etc. and anthologized in Journeys, Caught in the Net, Poets Against War, Poetry for Charity Volume 2. He is now working on Earth and Windows: New and Selected Poems. He teaches English at Victoria University of Bangladesh. Better than Starbucks began wholly as a creation in my mind. Now the wonderful collaboration of four dedicated editors is creating a monthly magazine that I could have only dreamed about when I was starting out as a one person organization. Having said that, there are no direct connections between U Penn, Al Filreis, KWH (Kelly Writers House), ModPo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry), or any of the actual affiliated programs to ModPo and this magazine, other than I have been a part of ModPo for several years now. There is, however, a strong spiritual and intellectual connection between BTS and ModPo. If I had not gotten involved in the larger community of ModPo, I don't think I would have restarted a literary publication. I am certain I would not have added a Formal & Rhyming Page, and probably not a Translations page. I have a pretty narrow preference for poetry, but the course and the people at ModPo have expanded my view of poetry to the point that I decided if I could find good people to help me do it, we would make BTS as broad of a source of styles and genres as possible. We have been fortunate to establish a team of talented editors and are in the process of an ever expanding quest to find poetry wherever it may be. Thus, it seems fitting that we dedicate a page to my fellow students at ModPo, and/or anyone who wants to share experimental poems. The thing about experiments is, they often fail, but as the point is to learn, not to create perfection, even failed experiments in the lab or on this page, will offer something for us, if we will find it. and when the experiment doesn't fail... well, you will see! - Anthony Watkins


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Better Than Starbucks ModPo and Experimental Poetry Magazine May 2017

Featuring

Sometimes California or the March Set by Anthony Watkins

Silent Poems by Anthony Watkins


Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo works at the Department of Humanities of the University of the Philippines Los Baños


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Better Than Starbucks Short Story Fiction May 2017




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Better Than Starbucks Fiction

We did not receive any fiction appropriate for the May issue, but we are very much actively looking for submissions! 500-1200 words, any subject. We are leaving up last month's work up for your entertainment. (Also check out our new Better than Fiction Non Fiction section!)

BEDTIME STORIES When Tyler’s mom died, he was left to go through her things. The middle child, he said he was always the one left holding the bag, in trouble for shared childhood crimes he and his older brother and younger sister partook equally in like the time they tried to cook French fries and set off the smoke detector, or the time they brokeg into the liquor cabinet. Of the latter incident, Tyler told me, “Nick got in his car and drove off—drunk, I might add—a half hour before Mom and Dad got home, and Carrie fell asleep, so I was the only one to yell at when they saw the empty bottle of Jim Beam.” Carrie cried ferociously at the funeral, but skipped town without saying goodbye—better than Nick who explained things were too busy at work to come back at all. I told Tyler he was a good son to take care of details, not to mention to serve cheese and crackers and wine to the extended family at the little house his mother had died in. He shook his head and told me she would have been prouder of the other two. She’d always said no one should live their whole lives where they were born. I met him at the house to help clean. I expected he’d want to take a lot of things back to his apartment, but when I got there—early, I thought, with coffee and doughnuts for the both of us—he was already at work, filling boxes with books and DVDs to be donated, trash bags with ceramic cat figurines his mother had collected, with a family photo album. I asked him, “Don’t you want to keep some of this?” He kept working. His coffee went cold. I found the manuscript. A manila envelope filled with old printer pages—the kind with the perforated borders. The title page: Tales of Curiosity by Wendy Wright. “She wrote all of these stories for us.” Tyler didn’t even look at it, sorting through a stack of CDs for anything he would keep or else sell. “Just bedtime stories at first, and she said she couldn’t remember them so she had to write them down and her handwriting was horrible, so if she was going to read them aloud she had to type them.” “That sounds sweet.” He dropped a handful of CDs into a trash bag where they fell hard and it was impossible to tell if he’d intentionally thrown them down, or if that were just how they’d fallen. “It was nice when we were little.” He’d told me stories before, about his mother who meant well, but who could never leave well enough alone and came into his room to tuck him in sometimes, even when he was a teenager, and even when he was in college, once coming in without knocking while he was jerking off so he stopped and lied as still as possible and pretended to be asleep while she straightened his blanket over him and he thanked God it was a cold night, so he’d been hidden beneath those covers. “Mom kept trying to tell us stories even after Carrie was way too old. She tried to make it a thing that she’d lead off Sunday dinners by reading a story, but they were all bad. I was a little jerk back then and I laughed at one of them, midway through, this one about a rabbit who got lost and couldn’t find his way home, because she used the word impressive when she meant impressionable.” He sifted through the next couple CD cases. “I was a jerk.” I leafed through those first pages, to a table of contents where there was actually a story listed, “The Rabbit Who Got Lost and Couldn’t Find His Way Home.” “Where should I put it?” Tyler haphazardly dumped the CDs in his hand into the trash bag so he’d have both hands free to hold the bag open wide. “You’re not going to keep it?” He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t like it while Mom was here. I’m not going to like it now.” I put the pages back in their envelope and thought I might keep it, because maybe he’d want it later. But he was waiting and snapped the bag, opening it as wide as it would go, flipping trash that had been caught in the folds free to fall all the way to the bottom. Slowly, I reached into the bag and placed the envelope down inside. Once it was there, Tyler moved back to the CDs. It was nearly an hour later when he brought up the book again. “She sent it to publishers,” he said in a similar way to how he described the time he got busted for shoplifting, because the one time he stole, because he didn’t think to look for a security device on the Sega Genesis games. That same inflection, as if it were something stupid to have even tried, let alone to think she might have succeeded at. “They all rejected it. She spent a year sending the whole book out to all of these publishers and of course no one took it.” How many people got from thinking they could write a book to actually doing it? From writing it to actually trying to get it published.

7:38 from Bunker Hill George Tandle stood, waiting for the 7:38 from Bunker Hill to Hardchester. From the vantage point of the station, he could see nearly the entire village spread out below. He was so lost in admiring the view that he didnt realise, at first, that his train was late. 7:42. This was peculiar. He then noticed it had started to rain. What began as a light shower quickly became a downpour, and George was, for once, without his umbrella. Where the devil was this blasted locomotive? He jostled with the other commuters, all attempting to find shelter beneath the inadequate station house awning. Rain poured from the brim of his bowler hat and ran down his shoulders in great streams. His suit would soon be ruined. He glanced around at the others he stood elbow to elbow with. Two near-identical schoolboys playing tug-of-war with a sodden textbook. A vicar regarded them with suspicion. A gaggle of WI members, brown paper parcels half-concealed beneath their flowery frocks. The rest, like George, all suits and ties heading into the big smoke. The rain had stopped. Everyone drifted out from beneath the awning, stretching arms and legs as though they'd been stuck in a lift. George inhaled deeply as he strode from the shelter, an acrid tang of smoke hitting the back of his throat. Perhaps old Rathbone was having one of his impromptu bonfires. No doubt he hadn't bothered to get permission. Next thing he knew, an enormous fireball streaked across the sky, illuminating Bunker Hill in an eerie blood-red glow. Debris from the flaming projectile rained down over the village, smashing through roofs and setting flowerbeds ablaze. Everybody screamed as the meteor struck the hillside above with rending of earth and crackle of flame. A great cacophony from the tunnel then drew George’s attention, as the 7:38 tore out of the darkness, bathed in orange and yellow. Pistons pumping, the blazing engine screamed through the station, the drivers drunkenly lurching from the cab. As it flew past, a blast of heat threw George’s head to one side as though he had been punched. His bowler was blown off and landed in a windowbox behind him. He spun back around, eyes streaming, just in time to watch the demonic train careen around the bend, carriages beginning to topple as it disappeared from sight. A few seconds passed, everyone on the platform rooted to the spot, before chaos descended. An explosion shook the village, causing the windows of the station house to shatter outwards and cover the shocked passengers with chunks of broken glass. One or two people dropped to their knees, hands over their heads and remained unnervingly still. Whether they were injured or merely acting on instinct, George couldn’t say. All he knew was that he had to get out of there. He scrambled towards the arched gateway of the station entrance, crouching down to avoid any more flying glass. A brief glance to his right and there was the vicar, lying prostrate, arterial blood jetting from a deep gash on his thigh, whilst one of the WI attempted to stem the flow with a torn scrap of her frock. One of the schoolboys looked on, grey-faced, vomit dribbling onto his blazer. George reached the entrance and vaulted neatly over a dry-stone wall. It was only then that he was able to comprehend the extent of the destruction to the village. Looking down into the belly of Bunker Hill, he first saw the post office ablaze, thick black smoke billowing from the gaping windows. Mr and Mrs Henderson, faces blackened by ash, huddled together out front, weeping uncontrollably as their livelihood was consumed by flames. A fire engine flew past, sirens screaming, and collided with the butchers van, catapulting Mr. Graves through his windscreen and onto the tarmac, where he lay motionless. Heavy-set and pale-skinned, he resembled one of his own pork chops. Inside the cab of the fire engine, a voice said, "Just leave him." With a squeal of tyres, it veered off down the lane. Elsewhere, terrified villagers ran in all directions, each desperate to return home and see their loved ones. A thick coating of ash had begun to settle on the streets and houses, transforming the once pretty hamlet into a modern Pompeii. George hurried towards his house, hoping that it was still standing. He reached the bottom of the hill and turned the corner to see a bright blue Morris Minor lying on its side, flames gently licking the passenger door. As George cautiously approached, the window on the near side smashed and a fist emerged, clutching crazily at the air. George sprinted towards the capsized vehicle, shrugging off his jacket and tearing loose his tie. Scrambling onto its side, he ripped the sleeve from his shirt and wrapped it around his hand before punching the rest of the glass out from the twisted frame. Whoever was inside yelped as the shards rained down upon them, but a second later a bruised arm reemerged tentatively through the gap and George grasped it. He reached


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Better Than Starbucks Short Story Fiction May 2017 Wasn’t it worth something that she’d tried? “Mom was crazy,” Tyler said, stretching the a sound as if the longer he said the word, the more true it would be. We spent the day there, from eight in the morning to nine at night, picking off doughnuts and tap water between sorting his mother’s belongings, and sweeping and dusting. At some point in the night, I fell asleep on the couch—that thick, wide monstrosity, covered in a floral print, we could only assume was too wide to get outside without taking the front door off its hinges and that’s if the two of us could carry the thing that far. We decided early on we’d leave that for Tyler and whatever friends he could wrangle together the next day. I don’t know how long I was out for. Short enough that it was still dark through the window when I woke. Long enough that I’d been dreaming—dreaming of Tyler and I arguing about something, driving fast on a highway. And Tyler was turned from me, seated on the floor, back against the sofa. Old printer pages in a sloppy pile on the floor next to him, other sheets propped up against his thighs as he read a story about a rabbit. I pretended to go back to sleep, pretended not to have woken at all as I listened to him put one page down and grip the next in his fingers. Those pages his mother had once held herself. Those stories she’d once read to him. Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and is an alum of Oregon State's MFA Program. He won Bayou Magazine's Jim Knudsen Editor’s Prize for fiction and has work published or forthcoming in journals including The Normal School, Passages North, Iron Horse, Front Porch, and Bellevue Literary Review. He works as a contributing editor for Moss.

ModPo South For those who can't make it to the mecca that is Kelly Writers House, we gather once per month, in a traveling show sort of migration around South Florida to enjoy the companionship, the intellectual stimulation and the pure exhaustion of the mental challenge of a live close read! Join Us! If you are part of such a group in another region, please share your information and we will promote your gathering, too!

down into the darkness for the other, and then began to pull with all his strength. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the flames had now crept around to the rear of the car. Turning his head from the searing heat, he planted his feet against the charred wheel arch and used it as leverage to gradually lift the person free from the wreckage. A head emerged, hanging downwards, the hair matted and tangled. It was followed by a floral print dress, torn down one side. As the girl’s legs appeared, she used the last of her strength to push herself free and sprawled onto the side of the vehicle, gasping loudly with the exertion. The petrol cap was now on fire. In one surprisingly easy movement, George threw her unresisting body over one shoulder and clambered down the car before hobbling for cover from the blazing wreck. The ensuing explosion threw him onto his front and sent the girl tumbling out of his grip like a rag doll in a hurricane. He was unable to hear or see anything. His gasps for air only filled his lungs with dust and smoke. With his last ounce of strength, he rolled over onto his back and looked up into the sky. George could see only a face, a vast, terrible face looking back down at him with silent amusement. The mouth was twisted into a horrific facsimile of a smiles, the slimy lips exposing the yellowed teeth, each one the size of a truck. The eyes shone with primitive hatred, and the pupils burned like the fires that had claimed much of the village. George fixated on the smile as the mouth opened wider, like a portal into Hell itself, and waited patiently for Death to be upon him. * * * * * * * * * * * * Alan stumbled into the basement, the final step evading him, and groped for the light switch. Bunker Hill appeared dimly under the dusty bulb, and he stood blinking for a moment, struggling to recall its layout. He hadn't visited in a long time. At the turn of a dial, the village sprung to life. Lights flicked on in the shops and houses, the bandstand erupted into song, and the trains began their circuits around the track. Alan watched, a nearly empty bottle of whiskey tucked under his arm as he pulled a sheaf of papers from a manila envelope. Today, there will be a 100% chance of rain, he said through gritted teeth, tipping the remainder of the bottle over the diorama. He then pulled a box of matches from his pocket, spilling half of them onto the ground in the process. Finally striking one after several failed attempts, he watched the white flame for a moment, burning far brighter than the bulb hanging over his head. Then, as it began to consume the matchstick, he touched it to the corner of the papers. Instantly, they shriveled up like a dying spider. "What the fuck made you think I was ever going to sign these, Roberta?" he hissed. Just before it claimed his hand, Alan launched the flaming fireball across the room. It sunk into one of the Plaster of Paris hillsides with the sheer force of his throw, before the spilt liquor ignited and blackened shrapnel was flung all over the model village. Alan looked on as one of the projectiles struck a train and set it ablaze. It carried on around Bunker Hill, melting the tracks behind it with the heat. He grabbed the dial again and turned it as far as it would go. The speed of the trains increased, until they were little more than brightly coloured blurs torpedoing around the track. Were now making up for earlier delays, he muttered, watching impassively as the flaming locomotive ran out of track and plunged over the edge of the display. It scattered its passengers far and wide over the basement floor before smashing into pieces upon impact. "Sorry about that folks, leaves on the line", he whispered. Alan stood, towering over Bunker Hill, seeing the destruction he had wrought upon the previously tranquil village. It was nothing compared to what they had done to him. His eyes rested on a little businessman, lying near a burning Morris Minor. He began to smile, baring his teeth like a chimpanzee. I bet you anything I’m having a worse day than you, he said to the tiny figure. Suddenly he heard heavy footsteps above his head. He glanced at his watch. The son of a bitch was early. Very early. He grabbed at the dial and everything went silent. Still, having a better day than him. He stooped to snatch the empty bottle off the floor. Creeping up the basement stairs, he switched off the light and held the bottle above his head like a club. Then he waited by the door, half in the light and half in the darkness for Paul to appear around the corner. Sam Smith is a former Creative Writing and Script writing student, and dabbles in both community radio broadcasting and stand-up comedy.


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Better than Fiction (non fiction) We did not receive any non fiction appropriate for the May issue, but we are very much actively looking for submissions! 500-1500 words, any subject. We are leaving up last month's work up for your entertainment.

This new section will change and grow as all our new sections seem to take on a life of their own. We hope you enjoy this #2 installment after the last issue. We are always open to suggestions on how to "get it right"

No Coward Soul - A Critical Study

that God is the ultimate creator, sustainer and destroyer. God is the Being and the Breath of the creation. Emile Bronte belonged to the Victorian Age when the world of religion was overshadowed by No Coward Soul is Mine conflicts and creeds. The existence of God as the Supreme Being was Emile Bronte not firmly cherished. It is in this ambience that Emile Bronte pronounced her deep faith in God, the Supreme Lord of creation. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, A lyric, as we know, is a fairly short poem consisting of utterance by a The last of life, for which the first was made: single speaker, who expresses a state of mind or a process of perception, thought and feeling. Many a lyric is song sung in solitude. Our times are in his hand The Greeks defined a lyric as a song to be sung to the accompaniment Who saith ‘A whole I planned, of a lyre (lyra). A song is still called a lyric in the musical world. We also Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’ use the term loosely to distinguish it from a narrative or dramatic verse of any kind. A lyric is short, not often longer than fifty or sixty Emile Bronte’s No Coward soul of Mine reflects the Byronic faith in God as lines, and often between a dozen and thirty lines. It usually expresses expressed in the first stanza of Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra. When the feelings and thoughts of a single speaker in a personal and circumstances are depressing, deep and unflinching faith in God sustains subjective fashion. Emile Bronte’s poem is an expression of religious the poet. She is not a coward soul and she does not tremble in the world’s thought in lyrical tone. It is short in length, compact in thought, storm-tossed sphere. She sees the glory of Heaven shine everywhere, and subjective in tone and is the sincere outpouring of a soul devoted to her equally shining faith shields her from fear. God. It is, in the language of Wordsworth, the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, and the very first line bears evidence to the rock-like Emile feels the presence of God within her breast, the presence of the conviction of the poet. almighty, omnipresent deity. This resounds what is said in the Gita: “God resides in the hearts of all.” Technically too, the poem is highly lyrical in as much as it is euphonic when being read. The arrangement of lines containing almost The Supreme Lord, O Arjuna, dwells in the hearts of all beings, by His Wordsworthian language produces a musical note that pleases the Maya, to revolve (as if) mounted on a machine. 18.61 ears. Written in iambic tri-meter with alternating with amphibrachic tri-meter the poem owns a current of rhythm that is neither harsh nor She too believes in the “undying life,” in the immortality of the soul. The grating but very sweet and sedative. It seems the poem was written in poet considers the variegated creeds as vain and divertive; they are a meditative mood and the poet’s utterance points to her conviction worthless as withered weeds or the “idlest froth” of the ocean that grows born out of realization after a long and deep contemplation. The first and vanishes at the same time. She believes that doubt cannot find shelter and the third lines are shorter whereas the second and the fourth in the heart of one who, with rock-like steadfastness, holds on to God, the lines are longer. The first line rhymes with the third, and the second infinite and immortal being. Emile also holds that the spirit of God line rhymes with the fourth. This creates a musical rhythm. The diction animates the beings and pervades all. God’s love is all-embracing, and His is simple, and the expressions are straightforward. The poem has a spirit “changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears.” The poet’s staunch single orientation, and this orientation is the poet’s bold utterance faith in God is expressed when she says that even if earth and man are about her faith in God, God that is all pervasive, infinite, immortal, gone, and suns and universes cease to be, God will be there, sustaining loving and benign. God, in Emile’s opinion, is the Breath and Being, the creation. For a believer in God, there is no room for death. Death cannot creator, the sustainer and the destroyer. Emile’s poem, both for its destroy even an atom under God’s care. This is because God’s is an eternal theme and for its style, can be ranked with the lyrical poems of the existence, never subject to decay. best order. The poem is a bold assertion of the poet’s faith in God, and it is this faith that makes her pronounce that her soul is not cowardly. Emile means to say that one suffers from fear and cowardliness when one lacks in faith in God, the ultimate reality and the immortal being. She does not believe in any creed; her relationship with God is direct. That is why she boldly claims – “Vain are the thousand creeds” – which implies that creeds are just but weeds in the garden and bubbles of foam in the sea. Bronte’s concept of God is also clear and almost Vedantic. In her view, God is infinite, eternal and all pervading. It is God’s love that holds the creation together. His spirit “pervades, and broods above / changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears.” These words reflect the Vedantic view

Dr. Sibaprasad Dutta, Professor Emeritus of Jadavpur University · Departments of English & Philosophy India · Kolkata he's an accomplished scholar of Bengali; Bangla, Sanskrit (Saṁskṛta) authored two slightly acclaimed publications: (1) The Gita: Rendition in Rhymed English Verse with Sanskrit Text ( Second Edition:2015) available on Amazon and (2) The Shadow of Light: An Album of Poems ( 2015) available on Amazon and Barnes& Noble. We also feature one chapter from his autobiography book in this issue of "Better Than Fiction"


Chapter II "The New Mother" "Across the Desert: an autobiography of an obscure Indian" by Prof. Dutta copyright 2016

Better a serpent than a stepmother! - Euripides

One day, not long after my mother’s death, I found my father absent from home. He did not tell me where he was going. I can only remember that in the meantime, Gunadhar Uncle, the brother-in- law of my father’s elder brother, visited our house accompanied by a gentleman who had a bicycle. Both Gunadhar Uncle and the gentleman came on bicycles, and the bicycles caught our fancy as in our village there was none. They must be great people, I thought, and as long as they stayed at our home, I pranced round the bicycles, occasionally ringing the bells and checking the wheels. My cousins joined me in my pursuit, and the wonder of us together surpassed that of climbing the Mount Everest. Not finding my father at home, I enquired of my grandmother where my father had been. She did not say much, but only told me that he had gone to a place on an urgent piece of business and would be back home in three or four days. I cannot exactly remember who took care of our food – my two little sisters’ and mine – but it was probable that my Thakuma (grandmother) and Didi (grandmother-in- law) shared the job. About three days later, towards the evening, I heard talks that my father was coming back home in a palanquin with a new bride seated before him in the same palanquin. It became clear that my father had gone to marry the sister of the gentleman who had visited our house about a month back with Gunadhar Uncle. The news excited me. I had visited one or two marriage parties earlier and seen elderly people distributing bidis to the guests. So, I walked across the canal that ran by our house, bought a bundle of bidis and waited for the marriage party to come. I felt important and assumed distinctive dignity as a boy who was attending his father’s marriage. They came soon, but not many people were there. There were six palanquin bearers, an elderly maid who carried a tin trunk containing the bridal trousseau, the new bride and my father. As the groom and the bride alighted from the palanquin, conch shells began to be blown by the women folk to welcome the bride and my grandmother came forward to receive the bride. She was seated on the verandah of our hut, the evening sun falling on her face through a cleavage of the wall. My grandmother stepped into her room and stepped out with a small bowl containing some molasses. Taking some with her forefinger, she placed the sweet pulp in the mouth of the bride. I saw her licking it up with her long tongue. I saw some hustle in our hut and around. I had no glimpse of my father. The palanquin bearers left after a meal. The evening hush settled down. A few lamps were burnt. A lantern that my mother carefully cleaned every evening was set alight and placed inside the room. I saw from a distance the bride occupying the bedstead, with two or four women seated around her. They were getting acquainted with the new guest. Some time later, somebody called me into the room. As I stepped in, the bride took me in her arms and pushed a luchi into my mouth. A woman told me in a merry voice, “This is your mother, Shibu.” The luchi was not tasty. I was trying to rush out of the room and spit it out. The arms of the bride were coarse. I felt extremely uneasy as long as she held me. Her embrace was not like my mother’s. A strong smell of cheap cosmetics made my stomach belch. Inwardly, I discerned that this was the new mother Kamala spoke of the day my mother died. I forced myself out of her arms and came to the verandah. It was not quiet as it used to be. Women were going in and out of the room. I stepped to a corner of the courtyard and stood watching the show. I threw my sight at the tree, which stood where my mother had been cremated. They were lost in the darkness. I could not imagine what the whole affair was. How was it that I got a mother, and that even a new one! Had she changed her appearance or was it a different woman? If she was not Ranu, then why did the women tell me that she was my mother? Entirely perplexed I began to search for my father, but he was nowhere to be seen.

After about two hours, my grandmother called me to take some rice. I took a little bit of it, and got up. ‘Why have you taken so little of food today, Sibu?’ asked my grandmother. I said nothing. She understood me and cleaned the place. Then she laid a pallet in her room and asked me to sleep there by her. I had not slept in her room ever before, so I said, ‘Why here? I shall sleep in our room by my father.’ ‘That’s not possible,’ my grandmother said. ‘From today you will sleep with me.’ ‘Will then my father sleep alone?’ I asked her with shock in my eyes. ‘Not exactly. He and the new bride will sleep together,’ she said sullenly. I read sadness in her eyes, and disgust. I said nothing more but took my position on the pallet. My grandmother did not have a pillow as such. She used a bundle of old clothes for a pillow. She gave it to me. It was very hard, not like the one my mother made for us. I placed my head on it, and began thinking how the next morning would break and what I should do next morning. Sleep was not coming. In the little dark room which had no window, I was feeling suffocated. To be able to sleep I pressed my eyes. The day was gone for me. Next morning, I found my father in a cheery mood. But I began to sob as he went out to the field without speaking to me first or fondling me. As the sun rose, the new bride came out and asked us if we would take some puffed rice. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘No,’ I said a minute later, and ran away to the mustard field. I kept myself busy for an hour doing nothing. An hour later, my father came back and took me in his laps. ‘Let’s take some puffed rice,’ he said. I sat by my father. The new bride brought two bowls of puffed rice and placed them before us. My father stood up, went into the room and then came out with two onions and two green chillies. The onion I took, and the green chilli I pushed towards my father. The breakfast was finished in five minutes. After about two months, I heard whispers mixed with laughter among the womenfolk. Each time the new mother came out and talked to my aunts, she laughed bashfully, and there was a peal of laughter soaring up. One night, as I went to sleep with my grandmother, she said, ‘Sibu, your new mother will soon have a child.’ ‘Why and how?’ I said stupidly. ‘This is what happens after marriage. Haven’t you seen all women have children?’ - ‘I’ve seen, but where will it sleep? Beside my father?’ - ‘Not by your father, but by the side of your new mother and your new mother will sleep next to your father. This is the rule.’ I kept mum for a while. I could not understand what was going to be about us three. ‘Then shall I continue to sleep with you for ever and ever?’ I said. - ‘That’s right. Your father and your new mother talk and do important things throughout the night. They should not be disturbed.’ ‘But what about Sobi? Where will she sleep?’ - ‘With me. From tomorrow. And Sankari will sleep with your Didi.' I felt being atop an active Vesuvius. ‘Are we three a burden to my father?’ I began to feel. ‘Then next morning, I'll bring my books and keep them here in your room,’ I said to my grandmother. ‘That you can do,’ she said. ‘Where shall I read in the morning?’ ‘In the verandah as usual.’ ‘There’ll be no problem, I suppose?’ ‘No. No problem. But, there will be none to help you. The new bride has never been to a school.’ A heavy sigh was coming out, but I suppressed it. I now understood what the death of a mother meant.


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The BTS Interview with John Sevigny The BTS Inteview Page 1

BTS: I notice you do workshops and classes on photography, as well as show your work all over the world. I also read somewhere that your father put a camera in your hand at 4 years of age, and you wonder if you choose to be a photographic artist or if the art choose you. I have a 12 year old who has been playing violin since he was 5, I took violin for a couple of years as a teenager. He is an extremely talented, if somewhat disinterested violinist. I never got good enough to play in a public performance. This makes me wonder a couple of questions. Did you go through a phase of talented disinterest? JS: It's fascinating that children stick with certain things and not others. It's impossible to figure out why one thing holds their interest and another doesn't. I confess to being terribly liberal about this. If you have a house full of books, musical instruments, cameras, and things to make art - as we did - your kids are going to gravitate to one thing or another. My father - or someone - did put cameras in my hands before I was even five. I know this because of photographs of me, a stark naked toddler dragging some antique camera behind me by the leash. I remember carrying an SLR to elementary school. But I'm no Jacques Henri Lartigue, who was a savant. Like most people, I took photos when I was small, took a few years to grow up, took a few more photographs, spent a few more years skipping school and being a delinquent, and then went back to photography. In 1996 I went to work as a reporter in Brownsville, Texas, on the Mexican border, and I was seeing a lot of things I wanted to remember. My father sent me a camera and a complete darkroom set up from Miami and I haven't stopped since then. I might add that having played around with a violin, taking pictures is far easier and offers more immediate gratification. I've never been disinterested in anything except school. I always hated it. I am a highly disciplined person but it's my instinct to reject discipline by others. I am a classic, anti-authoritarian.

BTS: More to the point are you self taught? JS: I can't say I am. My father was a painter, sculptor and photographer who taught me many things. My whole family is motivated by art, music and probably to an even greater extent, the politics of the human condition. And I learned things from many people I met when I was young, from editors and boxers to teachers and gamblers. What I do has been shaped by all of that.

BTS: Has photography always been your “grownup job”? JS: May the gods save me from grownup jobs. But no. I've washed dishes, worked in construction, done factory work, taught, worked as a writer, and many other things. When I was 18 I was working with a brick mason in Florida. This is interesting because a lot of the things we built are still there and I feel proud when I see them. It's the same thing with photography except I feel a thousand times more pride. Also, in 2006, I was teaching English in Guadalajara, Mexico probably 50 hours a week. But at night I was out taking the pictures that became a project called Ladies' Bar. My day job made that project possible. In the past 10 years or so, however, I've been lucky to survive taking pictures and talking about pictures. BTS: What I am trying to ask, without prying too much into your private affairs is this: you have traveled a great deal to truly interesting places, and as you say, not really as a tourist documenting a “freak show carnival of the locals” in that horrid colonial tradition the “enlightened and educated white man.” You have become more of a neighbor, if still somewhat an outsider. A case in point, you were invited into a pretty rough prison in El Salvador. First, how do you get invited into a prison? I am thinking of an American prison. Under no circumstances can I image you being allowed to wander amongst the inmates. JS: The prison thing was totally unplanned. In probably 2012 I was sort of washed up on the rocks, depressed and had no clear idea what I wanted to do next. I had published a book of photographs, traveled all over the place promoting it, and was burned out. A university in San Salvador invited me to give a workshop - four Saturdays over the course of a month. It was a wonderful offer because I was teaching, getting paid and still had five or six days a week to wander around the city taking pictures. I was totally uninterested in making pictures of gang people with tattoos on their faces because it had been done before. I actually started photographing the interiors of local dive bars, the cheesy decorations and jukeboxes and crumbling walls. I ended up spending most of my time at a bar-brothel-drug house that had fantastic decorations inside. What I didn't know was that the place was owned by Barrio 18, a very powerful gang. I took pictures there on several subsequent visits and at some point a guy came up to me and told me that I needed to go to a prison to take pictures the following Monday at like 7 am. I told him no, not interested, and I'm not a morning person. He made it clear that it wasn't an invitation but rather an order passed down from the highest levels of Barrio 18. So I went. What they wanted was for me to photograph the miserable, dungeon-like conditions in which they lived. And without meaning to, I had earned their trust by taking photographs at their bar. And you're right. "Wandering" was not a part of it. But at that prison, which has since closed, the inmates were in charge. For the first part of the visit, I was trailed by this guard who couldn't have been more than five feet tall. And then he disappeared. But understand. I was in single, huge cell where 3,000 inmates lived. Moving around was not an option. There was hardly enough space to breathe. After that I was "invited" to the prison for women three times and the level of supervision varied. The first time was like a guided tour. On the second I was almost totally free to do what I wanted. On the third, I was actually prohibited from even speaking to inmates I was photographing - something that goes against my entire philosophy. It was, to say the least, interesting. The outsider thing haunts me. There's the blessing of having traveled and met wonderful, terrible, inspiring, frightening people. And then there's the flip side which is not having a place that is home. Someone


once said of me, and it wasn't a compliment or even true but is relevant - "That man has no roots. And a man with no roots is dangerous." Right now, for complicated reasons, I'm an outsider in Buffalo, New York. In August I expect to be in Guatemala for the semi-long term. I have wonderful friends there but I will always be seen as the outsider. Nothing can change that.

BTS: Did you major in the art of photography in college? JS: I did not. Formally, I've studied art history, literature, English language education, and art education.

BTS: You have been doing this for decades, and I would not be alone in saying you have become a master at what you do, in spite of your insistence that it is hard to sell what it is hard to classify, I can certainly see having one or a dozen Sevigny photos on my wall, if I had the budget. The photos I have seen are extremely powerful, the passion and empathy come right out the front of the picture. Are you able to survive through the sale of your work? JS: Money comes and goes. There are times when I sell a lot of prints and times when nothing moves at all. At the moment there's a roof over my head and food in the kitchen so I don't worry too much. I can go out for a drink if I want but rarely do. On the other hand I only have one camera at the moment - no backup - and that makes me nervous so I need money to keep going. I do make more money teaching in different places and giving talks about my own work and other subjects - from how artists have dealt with violence to experiences I've had making pictures. Regarding what art costs, I've tried to set things up in a way that anyone can afford one of my pieces. I understand what you're saying. Even at $100 a print, a dozen would turn in to quite a chunk of change for most people. But if anyone ever wrote saying they'd love to have one of my prints but didn't have the cash, I'd find a way to make it happen. My work belongs partly to me but partly to the people who value it. What I've done recently is put everything in one place online. Blog, shop, portfolio, etc. I have worked tenuously with galleries but they take 50 and 75 percent commissions which forces me to put absurd price tags on my work. So I've severed all those relationships and now everything is centralized, and hopefully, affordable to more people. This is very important to me. The question of what people will put on their walls is fascinating. There are people who buy my darkest, hardest-hitting photographs and people who say "Well that's wonderful but I'd never put it on my wall." I am extremely lucky to have found an incredibly diverse group of people such as yourself - who see the world more or less the way I do. I can't possibly express how thankful I am that anyone cares about these pictures at all. What's also interesting is that there is no one "type" of person who values my pictures. I think it's obvious that I lean pretty hard toward the left politically but there are hardcore Trump supporters who own my work. I've had New York college students buy my prints as well as struggling Mexican farmers. Again, those connections mean more to me than I could ever express. Interestingly, other photographers rarely care about what I do.

BTS: Can you give us a bit of how that 4 year old came to give us portraiture art of real people, living real, if often very hard lives? JS: This is going to sound evasive but I don't know if I have any insight into how that happened. There was no plan so there's no blueprint to look at now. I grew up around pretty rough people, most of whom had lived hard lives. For some reason, probably personal curiosity more than anything, I decided to photograph the same sort of people. Later, I accepted the role of what I jokingly call "paparazzi to the iconic unknown." And then other people started paying attention to it, placing value in it, and now it's what I do. In the past 10 years I've actually quit twice, deciding that it wasn't worth the hard work that it requires. But the fates have their own plans and the non-photographic things I've pursued have not worked out. So here I am.

BTS: I see a few photos that do not include people and faces. Again, at least to my eyes, the passion comes through, but it seems as if people are your real subjects, even when you photograph an "empty place." Do you find you are more motivated to capture the human, if not form, maybe the human soul? JS: You're right. I am a portrait photographer first and foremost. Blame Diego Velazquez for that. When I discovered his work in a book when I was a kid I knew what I wanted to do. I spent the next decade or so trying to figure out how to do it. I'm no Velazquez but I can feel his work - along with my father's and those of other artists flowing hot through my veins. A lot of what I do is Expressionistic, bombastic and hard hitting. Portraits work for that because they tend stare at you even harder than we stare at them. It's a kind of black magic or alchemy. Because it's ink on paper but it ripples with strange energy. Some of my favorite pictures, though, are very quiet and have no people in them. They are empty and haunted and that's a different kind of energy.


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How to Submit CONTACT Due to a temporary lack of funding, we will not be able to pay for poetry or fiction until further notice. We do not keep copyright on any work by anyone in this publication. The exception being work published by the publisher, including interviews. Submit your poem or story in the body of your email. If you want to add it as a word or pdf you may, but unless the submission is in the body of the email, it will not be considered for publication. Along with your work of art, short story or poem, please send your return address and the name you would like listed for the work and the name you want to check made out to, if different from your creative name. Free Verse Poetry Page Poetry Submission Guidelines The good news is this page is not run by committee. You do not need to impress a host of readers. You just need to impress me. What I love in a poem is that it surprises me, moves me, astounds me with the thoughts edged into existence by its words. Publication credits, prizes and awards tell me a great deal and they can certainly be impressive. With that said, not having publishing credits or prizes takes no one out of the running. A great poem can come from anywhere and I don’t want to miss a single one. What you won't see on our General or Free Verse Page: Rhyming Poems Long Poems Haiku (and other 2-3 line poems) Limericks We can’t accept epic poetry (roughly 30 lines tops should do it). Please send in rhyming poetry to our formalist/rhyming page editor, Vera (also accepts limericks) Please send in haiku poetry to our haiku page editor, Kevin. We are also always on the look out for great translations, those, you may send to S Ye and the translations page. And if your work fails more into the experimental category, we even have a page for that! Send in all manner of poetry. I am always starved for good poetry. -Suzanne Robinson

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April 2017 Vol. II No. IV


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New This Issue!

Better than Fiction, Non Fiction Check Out the New Forum Pages! General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird ModPo & Experimental Poetry with Anthony Watkins

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Ghastly nobody

with BTS Editorial Team

Featured Poem of the month Bone - Meal by Dennis Aguinaldo

[death] I SHALL COME BACK


...and now....

by Dorothy Parker ( PR interview) I shall come back without fanfaronade of wailing wind and graveyard panoply; but, trembling, slip from cool Eternity — a mild and most bewildered little shade. I shall not make sepulchral midnight raid, but softly come where I had longed to be in April twilight's unsung melody, and I, not you, shall be the one afraid. Strange, that from lovely dreamings of the dead I shall come back to you, who hurt me most. You may not feel my hand upon your head, I'll be so new and inexpert a ghost. Perhaps you will not know that I am near — and that will break my ghostly heart, my dear. (Sadly, due wholly, I am sure to the fact that she is fully and completely dead, Dorthy Parker's BTS Interview has been delayed until further notice -pub.) Instead, please click on the link below



If you know a literary sort, a poet, an author, a teacher of literature, or just a truly all around interesting character, and you think it might be fun to get their thoughts down on "paper". Let us know, if you have contact info, all the better, but we have our ways....

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Who we are Better than Starbucks Founded 1995 as Scene, Arts of the Treasure Coast, Renamed 1998 Abundance, a Harvest of Literature, Life & the Arts Revived 2016 as Better than Starbucks Staff, listed in order of when they joined the staff. Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins Publisher, Founder, Editor-in-Chief Kevin McLaughlin Haiku Page Editor, Spiritual Adviser, Poetry Mentor Vera Ignatowitsch Formal &Rhyming Poetry Page Editor, Layout & Copy Editor S. Ye Laird Translations Page Editor Suzanne Robinson Poetry Main Page Editor

Why "Better than Starbucks"?

Before You Know it, the One Man Band is an Orchestra For the first four issues, this space ran on a bit about the publisher. At first, this was due to the fact that there was nobody here but the publisher. Now, as you can see, we have added several staff members so that we are a real fairly fully staffed journal. First came my trusted mentor and spiritual advisor, Kevin McLaughlin to edit our Haiku Page, then Vera Ignatowitsch to edit Formal & Rhyming Poetry. S. Ye Laird is the editor of a now regular feature, Translations, and Suzanne Robinson officially agreed to accepting the title of what she has been all along, the final judge of what goes on the General Poetry Page, look for a greater depth and breadth than anything I could offer when I was trying to wear all the hats!

Contact us at: [email protected]

Please continue to direct your submissions, questions and thoughts to the main [email protected], but you might want to put your work to the attention of whichever page editor seems most likely to want to see it. We will be looking for submissions of interesting translations, watch S. Ye Laid's Translations page for details. Staff we have yet to find, but are actively looking for! We are still missing a few pieces of the puzzle. At least two, maybe three or four or more. The certain two are as follows: A grant writer (we are not a non profit, except in fact, but not law), we need someone who knows how to help in gathering funding to first pay contributors, and then, possibly, though none have ever asked for a dime, to the various editors. Second, we need a tech person who can build us the mythical chat room discussion forum from Shelfari, or even something better. Our own S Ye has helped us get started with a pretty nice "off the shelf" forum, from which she has created a easy to use and appealing to the eye home for our discussions! We hope to start seeing these forums getting a lor of use. Please find the prominent link on this month's front page! But we are still looking for a coder who wants to help! The maybes, let's talk: Thirdly and Fourthly, and maybe even Fifthly (is fifthly a word? It looks a lot like filthy.) We are looking for: a book reviewer, a movie reviewer/critc a music critic and either an art page editor or an art critic or both.

Mentors, Ghosts, and Spirtual Editors Neither of these wonderful ladies are on our staff, as both are deceased, but they put this little muddy footed boy on the path to the love of the written word.

More than a Mind Full: over a dozen chapbooks from Anthony Watkins, starting as low as $5.95

As of December 4, 2016, we can add the ghost of my father. He never quite understood why anyone would work so hard for something that didn't make any money, but he always supported my efforts to create a place for poetry, literature and art.

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Why Better Than Starbucks? As with so many stories, this literally begins a long time ago in a place far away. In the beautiful land of Shelfari, which is, sadly, no more. In Shelfari the books lay in stacks on the ground, and poets dreamed and professors mingled with housewives, and the air hung thick with the incense of peace and love. Around Christas of 2007, I stumbled onto a group called Brilliant Babes (and Dudes) Who Read Selectively, aka BBD. Rob and Suze were the ring leaders. It was a closed group but a couple of my really smart funny friends were members and invited me. The lot of them were witty, and they tended to read books I liked.

Now it's Rooster Year of 2017. BTS has grown like spring time mushroom. We are on a news item published by WeChat platform assoicated with CCTSS.org, all the way from China! Our brand recognition in Chinese is on the rise 《胜过星吧客－不一般的诗界》。Vera and S. Ye also instigated a self discovery on the Etymology of 'Starbucks'.

Shelfari had, and someday I hope to duplicate it, the truly friendly "cocktail party" discussion threads. I spent the first three months of 2008 thinking I had found a new home, me and my closest 168 friends. But as I, and most folks are wont to do, I let my guard down. I spoke a little more "truth" than I should have. One of the members loved Starbucks Coffee, not only the coffee, but the company. Starbucks, especially then, was doing a pretty good job of convincing the public they were the good guys, they paid above minimum wage, they extended healthcare benefits in a pre Obamacare era. And somehow, like McDonalds, like Budwieser, they took a substandard product, and with very clever marketing, made people willing to pay two and three dollars for a seventy-five cent cup of coffee. Good on them! The problem I have with Starbucks is not really the coffee. (as many times as I have tried, and I must have bought over 100 cups of coffee from them, and I can never drink more than a couple of sips and I have to throw it away) The problem is their business model. They practice the Policy of Triangulation. When there is a successful independent coffee shop. they open three stores a block or two away in different directions, killing off the local coffee shop, and then they close one or two of the 3 and have the local market all to themselves. Yes, this is legal, but I find the taste in my mouth from it is worse than their badly roasted beans. What does this have to do with me? with BBD? and more to the point Better than Starbucks? I made the mistake of sharing that I thought their business policy was as nasty as their coffee. Little did I know, in my Barbarian in the China shop ways, I stood my ground, and she was offended, so the powers that be banned me. (This accounted for my very high bar for banning at BTS) This almost hurt my feelings, but what really hurt was they had a book club, and we were just starting The Painted Veil. I am a huge fan of Somerset's other work and had not read this one. So I contacted everyone I knew and invited them to join me in an open group to be known as "Better than Starbucks". That was the 1st day of April 2008. Within a week we had a few hundred and over the next 8 years we grew to nearly 4000 members. We did eventually have a bookclub reading of the book, and many others. Maybe if and when we get the salon up and running, we can have more. I haven't had much to do with the old BBD folks in years. I wish them well. I hope they found a home somewhere in the wasteland that followed the destruction of Shelfari.

So here's the long story short: when our sweet American-pie publisher Anthony Watkins was banned from BBD, he started his own shop, and called it Better Than Starbucks. And the rest is history! Thanks for everything, Anthony. the rest of editorial staff with BTS2017

Thanks for everything BBD! - Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins

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I Had a Meeting with Generals of Absurd A 14 feet deep ennui. May be 15 or 16. I don't know. Despair enclosed in a gothic cathedral, steaming inside an urban ventilator . How I wish to open your skull like a fortune cookie; to steal the ores of horror, encrypted inside like the words of Roman gods. Time silently moans in quantums of minimal deaths. The conclave swells in concaves of heart-attacks in some parallel, perpendicular or slanted universe. A void pulsates in a void of a void in a void. Let it sinks like bass canon, the sounds of lack projected on lo-fi grains of a half-awake illumined absurd. Sudeep Adhikari is a structural engineer/Lecturer from Kathmandu, Nepal. His recent publications were with Red Fez , Kyoto , Your One Phone Call, Jawline Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Yellow Mama, Fauna Quarterly, Beatnik Cowboys, After The Pause, Poetry Pacific, Silver Birch Press and Vox Poetica. IT’S THE COMPANY YOU KEEP We wait together, magazine on my lap, wonder how anyone could read in this situation. You’re the only woman there who isn’t with her mother. You say, it’s what happens if you love too much, whatever that means You hate men, you tell me, and not even for the way they will not stand by you. You hate men because they write these pamphlets in the waiting room, because you have to use the bathroom down the hail as there’s one of them in white overalls, working on the sink in this one. You hate men because the female doctor is sick and it’s a male who’ll be seeing you. In deference to my company though, you mumble “Thanks for being a friend. Ah friend.. .the third sex. John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.

And I sanded our love page by page, and poem by poem, and we’ve moved on to play new parts or stages. I was scared because you didn’t I don’t think you did —I didn’t? didn’t want to admit it I admit it. Because one day we weren’t well you were and I was, or was not, but pages and pages of Ulysses on my porch all summer in hell: smoking reading languishing hating loving nothing but pages of me, pages of Ulysses, who I was and who I was not— and were you too many or not enough? I know what we were, and I know now what I am without you : what we are now : parallax, or less, never more than lost thoughts or memories on passing clouds that span our shores. Maxwell Fabiszewski





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Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin R.H. Blyth, the Western world’s foremost expert on haiku, identified thirteen characteristics he considered common to this poetry form. These qualities, the inner state of the haiku poet, drive the seventeen syllables written when both conventional and absolute reality are glimpsed. They are selflessness, loneliness, grateful acceptance, wordlessness, non-intellectuality, contradictoriness, humor, freedom, nonmorality, materiality, love, simplicity, and courage. All of these qualities are to be expressed with the poet implicit, not the explicit protagonist or subject. Some of these qualities may seem overly abstruse. Beginning next month, I will give a brief description of these traits, as defined by Alan Watts, along with an accompanying haiku illustrating that characteristic. This leads inevitably to questioning what are the “proper” subjects for a haiku. Are there proper subjects? Classical work is filled with dragonflies, bamboo, the image of the moon in the water, banana leaves dripping water, the monsoon rays, the cry of birds, butterflies, and various flowers in bloom. I am beyond any doubt a traditionalist; nevertheless, it seems restrictive, maybe even absurd, to confine our preferred verse to subjects common to sixteenth and seventeenth century Japan. The next Basho or Buson lives, of course, in a world that is understood differently than the era known as “The Golden Age of Haiku.” As we shall read later, advances in science, particularly in physics, quantum mechanics, and astrophysics have introduced new material that does not violate the one dominant haiku theme, nature. Three feet underground, Lies a dark different world: The insect realm. Across the wetlands, Two sandhill crane families, Exchange trumpeting. An osprey peeping: Invasive Australian pines, Choke the spoil islands Cold fetch of the wind, Coconuts float with the chop, Against the tidal flow. Scent of distant smoke: The crescent moon through the pines, Makes the night colder. -K. McLaughlin BTS received three haiku from Honorah Murphy, an astrophysicist at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland that precipitated this column’s theme of what qualifies as a classical piece. In her cover letter, Ms. Murphy made it clear she was familiar with the standard haiku guidelines. All of her verse follow the critical 57-5 syllable format. For Murphy, this is the natural order. Brownian movement Quantum particles collide In the mud puddle. The Magnetic field Protects Earth from solar winds: Cosmos wave functions Spooky building blocks Stabilize the nucleus: Three quarks per proton. -Honorah Murphy

Tayler Riouff has absolutely captured the doctrine of Impermanence that defines all existence. . She has a grasp of the tenuousness veil between life and death: she peers into the void. Ms. Riouff has set herself the mission of writing one haiku per day throughout 2017. BTS hopes to see much more of her work. Unintentional Life remains requested by Impermanent hearts. Beat, you fickle thing. You annoyingly fragile Powerful organ. Beat with borrowed time With moments between seconds, Lost in passing ticks. -Tayler Riouff An interesting insight into the brain when it is in a haiku mode was spoken by neurophysicist Wolf Singer at the 2005 Mind and Life Conference hosted by the Dalai Lama, “So it appears that one correlate of conscious perception is a transitory synchronization of neuronal responses that establishes a highly coherent pattern of oscillatory activity across the cerebral cortex.” This is your brain on haiku. Angie Davidson submitted a serene verse that could only have been written in the state of mind described above by Singer. When you devote yourself moment by moment to what you are doing you see Angie’s “Body of water.” Pure Zen, quiet, and without ostentation. There is Big Mind in her 17 syllables. Body of water, Reflecting mirror image Wispy clouds pass by. -Angie Davidson In the 50 years I have been involved with haiku, I have never before encountered a husband and wife who both wrote quality verse. Here are two haiku by Joseph Davidson that compliment his wife’s poem. Joseph is a dedicated Vajrayana practitonert who has taken Refuge in Tibetan Buddhism’s Nyingma tradition. These haiku illustrate how you can see the world when your consciousness begins to ripen. Lacking any wind Sails become curtains at sea: shapeshifting clouds drift. Vulture’s paradise, Water hole drying up: Storm rumbles blessing. -Joseph Davidson The haiku below was submitted by a poet who chose to remain anonymous. In some ways, this delightful haiku is consistent with that of Tara Murphy. “spotty photons”-this is an image worth contemplating. Trying to connect, But from the spotty photons No beam gets across. -Anonymous on RG Mick Shea from Portland, Oregon, sent a piece that continues this month’s trend towards expanding haiku subjects to the scientific approach to the natural world. Mr. Shea noted he is a devout Roman Catholic, and has almost no knowledge of Buddhism. Mick’s work shows there are many paths up both the haiku and the spiritual mountains. From the ocean floor, The single cell archea Pour from thermal vents. -Mick Shea

We are fortunate again this month to have some Joan McNerney’s work. When I read these pieces, I thought of a Gaelic word “Craic” that combines the concept of good hearted joy combined with an undercurrent of wisdom. I loved imagining those faces of frost that were on her window in the first haiku.. Even Goyas’s portraits Are less intriguing than faces Of frost on my window. A snowflake Falls in my surprised eyes, …all is black. Try to catch the wind. Count the ripples in the sea. Become a child again. -Joan McNerney Vera Ignatowitsch perceives pure joy and gets a glimpse of satori in her sparrow haiku. I compliment Ms. Ignatowitsch on her delight, implied seasonal reference (Kiru). That exclamation point at the end of her verse is well earned! Melted ice puddles Welcome sparrows landing splash, At long last bath! -Vera Ignatowitsch First time submitter Aline Pusecker Taylor also presents some wonderful seasonal references. The overall tone of her work reminded me of a passage written by Robert Aitken in “ A Zen Wave.” He states, “The earlier name for haiku was hokku which mean “verse that presents.” Haiku is the intimate task of presenting the vital experience of the thing in itself.” That quality is particularly strong in the silk poppies piece. I enjoyed all the motion presented in her third piece. Orange silk poppies Shade twin snowman candles: Wax drips to mantle. Fleece reindeer blanket Cozy, warm on my lap. Sink Into plum sofa. Heat escapes ductwork Sparrows shriek; scavenger squirrels Hiss at dogs barking. -Aline Pusecker Taylor Readers who have been following this column know we publish a few poems each month from African-American Richard Wright’s beautiful collection “Haiku: This Other World.” From across the lake, Past the black winter trees, Faint sounds of a flute. What will these moths do When the bright streetlamps wink out And summer rain falls. A thin waterfall Dribbles the whole autumn night,How lonely it is. -Richard Wright


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Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch The Polaroid of a Lady The lady down the street whose husband died last year was sorting through his books and found a half-a-dozen volumes to set aside for me – some Twain, some James – leather-bound editions, not so much to read as show. Okay by me. I hadn’t much enjoyed “The Portrait of a Lady” years ago. But inside I found a faded Polaroid: a lovely woman, nude, and in her eyes the love reflected at the man who took the picture. It was easy to recognize the lady who had given me the book. The title was his trick to help recall the sixty-year-old photo pressed in there. Did she remember? It isn’t, after all, a thing you want discovered by an heir, but neither is it something you would burn, nor something you forget the wonder of. What shame is there if someone else in turn should glimpse her youthful loveliness, their love?

Richard Wakefield has taught college literature for thirty-eight years and since 1985 has been Professor of Humanities at Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, Washington. For twenty-nine years he was a literary critic for the Seattle Times. His first poetry collection "East of Early Winters" (University of Evansville Press), won the Richard Wilbur Award. His second collection, "A Vertical Mile" (Able Muse Press), was short-listed for the Poets Prize.

Eris When I was young, I’d stare at that stone face Truly believing that she was an Eve. Her garden, an Eden, a sacred space, Where I found the chaos of life reprieved. But as I grew, so did my appraisal Of this woman created from a bone. My conception shattered by the navel, Through this simple scar, a new meaning shone. I realized I must reevaluate Her identity, this naked woman With apple. I tried to amalgamate My knowledge of art, myth, and religion, To no avail. Until one day I saw Her smile: full of wrath and treachery A clever goddess who uses cat’s paws To bring forth the chaos she wants to see. Following her gaze I saw a world made With centerless blocks created on sand. No peace, no war, just an endless parade Marching to a rhythmless, backward band. Staggered, I reached for her hand to steady Me but found it moved and grasped only air. She laughed and said, You should know already My apple belongs only to the fair.

Duke Trott is a writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Athenaeum and Artful Comics. He is currently a graduate student in Emerson College’s MFA program. Quiet in a Crowd There is such silence in the din of random noise, a soothing balm assuaging to a tired soul; like the backdrop of mountain trees alive with life we do not see but know is there by evidence; such relevance, though hidden, we should not forget for the power it gives earth's weary travelers, tremendous bounds of energy released at once to swirl together into a maddening calm, which finds itself at rest in a green tea latte that she sips with sweet glee and anonymity.

DE Navarro lives in Greater Los Angeles where he writes and publishes. He is the Founder of NavWorks Press. He is an author, poet, editor, publisher, speaker, and life coach. He is the originator and owner of the We Write Poetry forums and the Pride in Poetry Prize and Publication. His work has been published in various journals and magazines. His most recent book is Dropping Ants into Poems. Visit DE's beautiful Website at http://www.de-navarro.com for a peaceful experience and to learn more about his work.

Lighthearted Verse & Limericks...

To a German soldier If you should kill, think only this my friend: forget not he who lies in foreign field and recount stories of his dreadful end. Your enemy, although he did not yield and fought for country's sake like you, confused and vainly asking why, to understand, had one objective clear-- be not accused of disregarding duty's harsh command. And more, you should inquire why those in power sent you to me with war, and ask of them, what high ambitions meant that mothers' sons, of whom more than a countless few would cower in trenches filled with fear, should then condemn each other, marching out to greet the guns. Ian Colville talks to himself in the third person as if a wonderful poet, however, in his more lucid moments, he is brought to a realisation that he is merely competent. Nevertheless, he has had nigh on 60 poems published in curated magazines and anthologies. His writing tends towards irreverence, and his fondness for ballads and the 'standard habbie' enables him to versify satirically from time to time. When he's not writing, he's reading, and sometimes he goes cycling ...for hours.

Married Eaglets in unknowing stare under care of mother's glare never dream of storms so cruel drool instead to eat their gruel. Mother dreams of mountains high pristine sky where eagles fly but my dreams drift as I stare at a gorgeous woman there. Inner eagle craves to soar go explore the mountains more then descend into her care valley of her solace there. But alas, I am well fed, lift my eyes and turn my head soar in other skies instead. DE Navarro

Don’t Call the Doctor, Don’t Call the Nurse It’s troublesome to watch my mother age and there are days I have to bite my tongue preventing truths from breaking through, a sage performance having faltered once among delivering bad news; removing hope as if the moral thing to do is mute all words of reasoning to better cope with something looming overhead. Elope instead from any notion of disease. Incurable sounds better left unsaid. Discount the need any for expertise, avoid all talk of what may lie ahead! And so, we go about our day this way evading every medical dismay. Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is an award winning writer. She is

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Translations with S. Ye Laird Corinna's going a Maying

2013年5月30日星期四

五月空虚 - by 茅境

BY ROBERT HERRICK

Get up, get up for shame, the Blooming Morne Upon her wings presents the god unshorne. See how Aurora throwes her faire Fresh-quilted colours through the aire: Get up, sweet-Slug-a-bed, and see The Dew-bespangling Herbe and Tree. Each Flower has wept, and bow'd toward the East, Above an houre since; yet you not drest, Nay! not so much as out of bed? When all the Birds have Mattens seyd, And sung their thankful Hymnes: 'tis sin, Nay, profanation to keep in, When as a thousand Virgins on this day, Spring, sooner than the Lark, to fetch in May. Rise; and put on your Foliage, and be seene To come forth, like the Spring-time, fresh and greene; And sweet as Flora. Take no care For Jewels for your Gowne, or Haire: Feare not; the leaves will strew Gemms in abundance upon you: Besides, the childhood of the Day has kept, Against you come, some Orient Pearls unwept: Come, and receive them while the light Hangs on the Dew-locks of the night: And Titan on the Eastern hill Retires himselfe, or else stands still Till you come forth. Wash, dresse, be briefe in praying: Few Beads are best, when once we goe a Maying. Come, my Corinna, come; and comming, marke How each field turns a street; each street a Parke Made green, and trimm'd with trees: see how Devotion gives each House a Bough, Or Branch: Each Porch, each doore, ere this, An Arke a Tabernacle is Made up of white-thorn neatly enterwove; As if here were those cooler shades of love. Can such delights be in the street, And open fields, and we not see't? Come, we'll abroad; and let's obay The Proclamation made for May: And sin no more, as we have done, by staying; But my Corinna, come, let's goe a Maying. There's not a budding Boy, or Girle, this day, But is got up, and gone to bring in May. A deale of Youth, ere this, is come Back, and with White-thorn laden home. Some have dispatcht their Cakes and Creame, Before that we have left to dreame: And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted Troth, And chose their Priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given; Many a kisse, both odde and even: Many a glance too has been sent From out the eye, Loves Firmament: Many a jest told of the Keyes betraying This night, and Locks pickt, yet w'are not a Maying. Come, let us goe, while we are in our prime; And take the harmlesse follie of the time. We shall grow old apace, and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short; and our dayes run As fast away as do's the Sunne: And as a vapour, or a drop of raine Once lost, can ne'r be found againe: So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade; All love, all liking, all delight Lies drown'd with us in endlesse night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying; Come, my Corinna, come, let's goe a Maying.

五月空虚我知道你会来的，如同五月的樱花姗姗来迟带着腥味来带着黑黝黝的诱惑来你的头发垂到脐部，一条条如刀痕般清晰五月如同被狗咬碎的核桃，又像被冰雹击中的云五月，有很多生灵的命运悬在你的发丝悬在你青色的散乱刀痕一具浮在江面的尸体，不能说明这世道是否公正没有饿鬼的哀叫，只有空虚者在物欲中呻吟你在这时走来，似笑非笑，对我说：物是人非今夜与你同行，感受你的冷峻你伸出大大的舌头，与传说中的事情辩论又用一节一节的手臂，转动历史这枯树的年轮你把空虚证明给我看，又让我相信你的真诚这时候我的思想如同炉子，需要舔食红的火焰我知道你会来，你是我的前身我愿意看到你的眼睛炯炯有神你来的时候道路昏暗，恋人趁机接吻你看到我是那个被咬碎的核桃，那是我们, 整个家族的命运我很孤独，真的，我甚至没有梦中的情人前途是一束水面上的黑光一个声音对我说：走上去，用黑色衬托你的光辉我很冷，靠近我，但是别刺痛我风从我们的缝隙吹过，吹扭我的前程于是我只能用相机纪录我的梦境我不是撒谎者，从来不是，你说过我的话比谎言还要动听你是注定要在五月来找我的，我无处躲藏我的世界是泡沫中的空间阳光下我用黑色伪装自己，也伪装我的过去如果你给我一把绿伞，我会还你一个金色的秋天祝福如同雪花纷纷扬扬，一场冰冷的笑话冬天还没有来临，我已梦见多雨的春天你说过些什么。我便相信那些终会成真日子过得味同嚼蜡，一根火柴不能点燃缉私船从海上驶过，如同我的拖鞋漂在脸盆我害怕，沉没的不仅仅是命运你说过，即使所有的青藤树都倒了，我也应站着如今我被清醒折磨，脑痛欲裂用咳嗽掩盖干嚎，用药剂缓解绝望从泉水中或许会跳出一个弹簧，但那不是我, 更不是我的灵魂求你坐我身边，让我看清你的脸在梦中总是烟雾迷蒙

茅境199X年写，2006年10月20日分行分段 For our April issue, if one recalls T.S.Eliot famous line in his Wasteland: 'April is the cruelest month of the year...' but what following could be worse still? What if the month of May, there is yet no way out, of a wasteland so deep, inside one collective Psyche ? I have, at this moment, no clue how to render a poem written by my contemporary and unknown poet Maojing 茅境 around 1999. One thing for sure that it was the very opposite narratives with Robert Herrick's "Corinna's going A-maying' on the left. What Maojing's poem brings up to my mind is closest in, perhaps, reflecting 'Geometry of Fear' a movement by a group of sculptors from Britain in 1950s. How to overcome this fear in each of our own way is Muse's responsibilities, yes?


Winding Up

吾将上下而求索

by Derek Walcott

translated into Chinese by S. Ye

I live on the water, alone. Without wife and children, I have circled every possibility to come to this: a low house by grey water, with windows always open to the stale sea. We do not choose such things, but we are what we have made. We suffer, the years pass, we shed freight but not our need for encumbrances. Love is a stone that settled on the sea-bed under grey water. Now, I require nothing From poetry but true feeling, no pity, no fame, no healing. Silent wife, we can sit watching grey water, and in a life awash with mediocrity and trash live rock-like. I shall unlearn feeling, unlearn my gift. That is greater and harder than what passes there for life.

我住在水上，独处，无妻无子，弃掉漩生出的各种可能我成为如今的样子：一片灰水的一间低矮房子里，窗户总是敞着面向无波的海。我们并非选择了这些事，但最终我们还是从了本来的命运。遭受，流逝的年岁，我们卸下负荷而非对自我的自怜自爱。爱如石安置于灰色水域的河床。现下，我一无所求真情出嫁于诗境无怜无名无救。无言的内人我们一同坐看泉泉的暗流。和浮世一生在庸常和垃圾中受洗的顽石。我应该解下感情，解下天赋。这比当初得到它们可是麻烦多了，这也比一生随波逐流要好吧。

Childhood 童年 by Maojing 茅境 -- translated from Chinese by S. Ye My childhood was hand-carved on a small classroom desk - a demarcation of my world and your world. Your little folding fan unfolds in full swing our 'no school' summer time We bragged about stories from our fathers by the road till night falls and mosquito started buzzing, telling their hungry woo by our ears and following our footsteps back home. Rain slashing banana leaves, pulling up young bamboo shoots by the wall, painted ginseng leaves layer after layer of water green. The river that drowned my classmate is on the east side Who knows if the drowned spirit becomes hibiscus or matrimony vine? We loved chasing field rats, their fate is not unlike what we might face as grown-ups That snake we hung on the black board, that snake we once broke its back Would it still be able to chase field rats, drove them to an impasse? Pebbles by the riverbank washed here and there cracks between stones grow bead tree, beautiful bitter melon when bitter melon turns red, when bead tree flowers childhood has left you far far away peasant bend torso, facing black earth gadfly flies on his back, leech sucks on his leg.

some days are sunny, some days are rainy Her quiet smile withered away like wasted millet grass In our small country hospital often, young women crying over their husbands' corpse often, seen young woman beaten up by her man she took a mouthful and swallowed pesticide she stole food from her working unit But we get to see a movie we run around telling the news we went to see once more 'the red shining star' Childhood riverbank is full of danger Winter's mud and fire is best to scotch sweet potato mud path by the riverbank it pays no attention and swallow up your playmate nobody sees what is not seen you search for water cabbage's spring you search for algoe's spring we all know Chinese clover has no spring When spring comes They were rolled plowshares, Buried in hell.

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ModPo & Experimental Poetry IT MIGHT BE SURREAL, BUT IT'S MY LIFE:

Red Eye Open I would like to say no words were harmed in the making of the poem.

THE UNWRITTEN RULES You see, I like words as much as some people Lately the plague of monkeys I keep in the blue hut like puppies and small children. on the bridge of regrets has been making an unholy racket every night by As a grandfather, rustling their dry nest bits and something of a pushover and making their chrrrr chrrrr chrrrr noises, the ones I love babies, and puppies, they've been making since just after they were born. and old sad saggy red eyed dogs. A sweet enough sound - but loud once they all get going. I also love sad saggy old words. They must be agitated because mostly they're silent The ones that can barely move their rheumatoid consonants along. and it's just the African Grays out on the rotting deck that can't keep their blasphemous mouths shut, who Long time ago, I have to worry about in a different universe, But as long as I keep a coverlet over the cage at night, I was a truck driver for Pepsi, they're kind enough to be silent. and in East Stuart, Florida, there was a place called Now - it's both monkeys and parrots - some someone put Bessie and Ma’s. a massive tear in the bird cloth and no matter how carefully I fix it over the cage, it I don’t really know what it was, falls open every night but it didn’t open until late, and I awake to one or both of them, squawking: like at dark. "fuck fuck fuck - hear me? hear me? fuck fuck fuck". By dark I had to be back in Rivera Beach, Of course, I hear them - I'd have to be bloody deaf so I would rattle to not hear them; even with earplugs, I hear them. my long-straight-body-roll-up truck And I'm sure everybody thinks I taught them the words alongside of the store, but I don't think so, or if I did, I don't remember. bouncing over mud holes I wish I could be shut of the whole lot, but they're my and gravely bits of grass family, you can't just rid yourself of family and I would dodge the old hound. You have to keep family...that's the rules. He wouldn’t move. CAGING DREAMS There is a special sound a roll-up door makes, you probably know it. Every evening at about half past House of Cards, I tell the pugs, "Crate Time" and they don't move I hear it in my heart, They're cute little dogs but stubborn as glue on glass not my ears, after it bakes in the sun all day nor my mind, even. And it doesn't matter how cajoling I am, how sweet, I always have to forcibly move their rumps I roll up the door in the slow late afternoon, until they can't balance on the couch any longer last stop. And they tip onto the floor and then they'll 4 cases of non-returnable 10 ounce bottles. bounce down the stairs like rocking horses Tossed on my shoulder. To their kennels where I settle them for the night Even though three was the limit. Safety man says. I'd let them sleep upstairs or wherever they want but I've tried that, and they don't stay put But It was a dollar’s worth of commission. They get up and wander about and get into things, always different things - they've eaten CD's and I wasn’t going to unhitch the dolly garbage, and all manner of stuff and it's just for a quarter extra easier if I know they're in their crates and I had to take them all in. And besides, I have hideous nightmares if they're not crated - I think the house is burning down Hell, I was young. Or floating down the street and everyone I ever knew is in it, drowning - including me Thirty Years Ago. I don't know why the crating and the nightmares The old storefront windows are filled with signs. You can’t see inside. I are connected, but they do seem to be bang on the wood framed glass door. I wait. I bang, again. In a little No, there's no doubt in my mind at all - they are. while, a very old, very dark lady let me in. I shift the cases off my shoulder and onto the cooler box. I ask if she wants me to fill the box. No. she gives me the $36.00, I sign the yellow copy and give it to her. FIRING THE SIGNALS Thank you, she says. Thank you I say. She fell into the day, a pond filled with yesterday's Out of the very dark place. friends and loose teeth The hound is still laying on the edge of a mud hole. Struggled to her feet stamping through old money Now he opens one red eye. and a ripped skirt that didn't fit ever Now. Shrugged on her jeans wondering about her DNA and her other genes and that bridge I don’t touch him, And if the signals in that part of her brain's tower were but I lean down close and say, firing on all circuits or if that poor organ “hey old guy, way to watch!” Had gone on strike for good and all, or if she was then I rattle off to Palm Beach County. thinking of some other cells. No dog was harmed in this poem. I am sure of that. SLIDING INTO DUSK I read as much as I can that Al writes. She slides into dusk with trepidation I have befriended, and hypnotized, shatters like a glove or at least attached myself filled with mornings gone lost like a groupie, Then lies amongst the peach striations of sunset to some real LANGUAGE poets. This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >> Until plush black starlings on the wing scoop the shards,

bevel the edges, attempt to rectify damage I try to protect the words. Lost in chaos with more than one reptile I try to make sure my poem slithering down the corridors in her head, knows it’s a poem She knows it needs laying down and that it writes about itself, Her heavy, filled with rotted fruit head but maybe I am the dog in the mud hole, Needs syphoning off, dousing; just one red eye open. its hissing reptiles hushed I look in the mirror now. Flames begin licking round the edges Now. of hysteria building with wobbly certainty “way to watch!” in the bedlam of her mind How much time has elapsed, she wonders Anthony Watkins in the time it takes an eyelash to travel down her cheek Then float through the air like a dark angel's wing broken off at the root That is—no time at all. There is a crack in her sanity And if she squints she can just make out a drizzle of "everything's fine." But it looks like sap or resin Just as it's closing she has time and cogency enough to wonder if it's freezing over ... Or instead — S.E.Ingraham© Published on-line by Red Fez (Issue 48 - 12.08.13) IT'S BEEN MY EXPERIENCE It's been my experience When the mantle smells Like swamp-gas, it's time To brew a pot of never Wind the battery clock And set it to snakes In a basket or half past Unpleasant children Crank the pepper-mill Past the scent of jackboots Or, being locked up in a jar By now the tea should taste Like forever and the mantle Will be starting to sway It will be past time to seize A pocket level which will feel Very much like nothing Worth knowing, life In prison, or a stack Of quilted lies Or, might I suggest Instead, you take The powder brush The one giggling there By the clock - but hurry - if it coughs or worse, Sneezes, it will vanish On you For by now, the mantle Shall sound like a waterfall That really tall one In South America And the level well - it will be Old news, the tea will be dirt The clock a cow and ... It's been my experience S.E.Ingraham© -published in Pyrokinection October 2, 2012 (editor Amy Huffman) -chosen by editor Amy Huffman for "Storm Cycle: Best of 2012" Dec.26.2012 - read by Iain Kemp on his radio show in Spain, Fall 2013 (2 mins approx.) Better than Starbucks began wholly as a creation in my mind. Now the wonderful collaboration of four dedicated editors is creating a monthly magazine that I could have only dreamed about when I was starting out as a one person organization. Having said that, there are no direct connections between U Penn, Al Filreis, KWH (Kelly Writers House), ModPo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry), or any of the actual affiliated programs to ModPo and this magazine, other than I have been a part of ModPo for several years now. There is, however, a strong spiritual and intellectual connection between BTS and ModPo. If I had not gotten involved in the larger community of ModPo, I don't think I would have restarted a literary publication. I am certain I would not have added a Formal & Rhyming Page, and probably not a Translations page. I have a pretty narrow preference for poetry, but the course and the people at ModPo have expanded my view of This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

poetry to the point that I decided if I could find good people to help me do it, we would make BTS as broad of a source of styles and genres as possible. We have been fortunate to establish a team of talented editors and are in the process of an ever expanding quest to find poetry wherever it may be.

Dennis Aguinaldo shares his concrete poetry with us

Thus, it seems fitting that we dedicate a page to my fellow students at ModPo, and/or anyone who wants to share experimental poems. The thing about experiments is, they often fail, but as the point is to learn, not to create perfection, even failed experiments in the lab or on this page, will offer something for us, if we will find it. and when the experiment doesn't fail... well, you will see! - Anthony Watkins

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Silent Poems by Anthony Watkins and


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The BTS Broadcast: Anthony Watkins, aka UP The BTS Inteview Page 1 HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY TO Y'ALL ! On Sat. Apr 01, 2017 at 09:45:07AM -044 I received a Tele from a famous publisher, by the name of Anthony Watkins, codename UP. It says 'paid by receiver'. And I checked tele price from my little tele-comm calculator, it says 'priceless' for broadcasting cc: ALL. One Crazy Exciting Wonderful Year! For us, and for you! What *YOU* Can Do? I can't remember what made me do it. Maybe at the time, I was having a midlife crisis, and felt I had too much time on my hands. I honestly don't recall, but last May I published the first issue of Better than Starbucks, it was really a dummy issue. All the content was either my rants or my poetry, even my art, bless you all for having to look at that! And even my short story. I had no intention of creating an Anthony Only edition, it was just that I wanted to have something to post to invite others to submit their work. And you did, thank goodness. At first, I had a little pocket money, so I paid out a few dollars, then I lost two jobs and my father as we moved from summer to winter, so the money ran out, but then we met the most amazing people. Well, I had known Kevin, our Haiku guru, as long as I have been a public poet (since 1995), but Vera and S Ye, came on board and have added dimensions and structure and vision and art to this venture in a way we could not have dreamed of. I even managed to drag Suzanne (my better half) into the poetry editing, which is a good thing, because I am first a poet, not an editor. Thanks to the generosity of the people at U Penn and Kelley Writers House and Al Filreis and ModPo, we have expanded into a more experimental side. As our slogan says, we have become not your ordinary poetry magazine, and for this I am very proud, though some days I look around and hardly recognize the place, but that is a good thing. If all Vera contributed was a good formal page and all S Ye gave us was lovely translations, we would have been richer for it, but both have embraced the day to day aspects of copy editing, interviewing, web design, SEO, adding and maintaining new features, so that we are becoming sharper and sharper and in less than one year (May 2017 will be our 1st anniversary) , our readership has exploded from less than 1000 visitors per month to over 8000 for the March issue! In fact, March was seen by more readers than all our previous issues combined! This means we are doing something right. We hope to continue to add features and improve existing ones in ways that will allow us to serve more and more readers.

We still haven't figured the money thing out, except, for now, we seem to be able to survive and thrive without it. We still dream of paying the writers who entertain you. We need four things from you: 1) Share us with your friends, though obviously, a lot of you are doing this already. 2) Send money so we can support the poets and story tellers you read here. 3) Use our forums to discuss works, to suggest future ideas and generally create an active community here. Tell us what you like, what you hate, what you wish you were finding here, volunteer to help us create the features you like. 4) Submit your work email us at: [email protected]. --- From your humble publisher Anthony UP Watkins and the team

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Better than Starbucks Fiction (Also check out our new Better than Fiction Non Fiction section!) BEDTIME STORIES

7:38 from Bunker Hill

When Tyler’s mom died, he was left to go through her things. The George Tandle stood, waiting for the 7:38 from Bunker Hill to middle child, he said he was always the one left holding the bag, in Hardchester. From the vantage point of the station, he could see nearly trouble for shared childhood crimes he and his older brother and the entire village spread out below. He was so lost in admiring the view younger sister partook equally in like the time they tried to cook French that he didnt realise, at first, that his train was late. 7:42. This was fries and set off the smoke detector, or the time they brokeg into the peculiar. He then noticed it had started to rain. What began as a light liquor cabinet. Of the latter incident, Tyler told me, “Nick got in his car shower quickly became a downpour, and George was, for once, without and drove off—drunk, I might add—a half hour before Mom and Dad got his umbrella. Where the devil was this blasted locomotive? home, and Carrie fell asleep, so I was the only one to yell at when they He jostled with the other commuters, all attempting to find shelter saw the empty bottle of Jim Beam.” beneath the inadequate station house awning. Rain poured from the Carrie cried ferociously at the funeral, but skipped town without brim of his bowler hat and ran down his shoulders in great streams. His saying goodbye—better than Nick who explained things were too busy at suit would soon be ruined. work to come back at all. He glanced around at the others he stood elbow to elbow with. Two I told Tyler he was a good son to take care of details, not to near-identical schoolboys playing tug-of-war with a sodden textbook. A mention to serve cheese and crackers and wine to the extended family vicar regarded them with suspicion. A gaggle of WI members, brown at the little house his mother had died in. paper parcels half-concealed beneath their flowery frocks. The rest, like He shook his head and told me she would have been prouder of George, all suits and ties heading into the big smoke. the other two. She’d always said no one should live their whole lives The rain had stopped. Everyone drifted out from beneath the awning, where they were born. stretching arms and legs as though they'd been stuck in a lift. George I met him at the house to help clean. I expected he’d want to take inhaled deeply as he strode from the shelter, an acrid tang of smoke a lot of things back to his apartment, but when I got there—early, I hitting the back of his throat. Perhaps old Rathbone was having one of thought, with coffee and doughnuts for the both of us—he was already his impromptu bonfires. No doubt he hadn't bothered to get permission. at work, filling boxes with books and DVDs to be donated, trash bags Next thing he knew, an enormous fireball streaked across the sky, with ceramic cat figurines his mother had collected, with a family photo illuminating Bunker Hill in an eerie blood-red glow. Debris from the album. flaming projectile rained down over the village, smashing through roofs I asked him, “Don’t you want to keep some of this?” and setting flowerbeds ablaze. Everybody screamed as the meteor struck He kept working. His coffee went cold. the hillside above with rending of earth and crackle of flame. I found the manuscript. A manila envelope filled with old printer A great cacophony from the tunnel then drew George’s attention, as pages—the kind with the perforated borders. The title page: Tales of the 7:38 tore out of the darkness, bathed in orange and yellow. Pistons Curiosity by Wendy Wright. pumping, the blazing engine screamed through the station, the drivers “She wrote all of these stories for us.” Tyler didn’t even look at it, drunkenly lurching from the cab. As it flew past, a blast of heat threw sorting through a stack of CDs for anything he would keep or else sell. George’s head to one side as though he had been punched. His bowler “Just bedtime stories at first, and she said she couldn’t remember them was blown off and landed in a windowbox behind him. He spun back so she had to write them down and her handwriting was horrible, so if around, eyes streaming, just in time to watch the demonic train careen she was going to read them aloud she had to type them.” around the bend, carriages beginning to topple as it disappeared from “That sounds sweet.” sight. He dropped a handful of CDs into a trash bag where they fell hard and it A few seconds passed, everyone on the platform rooted to the spot, was impossible to tell if he’d intentionally thrown them down, or if that before chaos descended. An explosion shook the village, causing the were just how they’d fallen. “It was nice when we were little.” windows of the station house to shatter outwards and cover the shocked He’d told me stories before, about his mother who meant well, passengers with chunks of broken glass. One or two people dropped to but who could never leave well enough alone and came into his room to their knees, hands over their heads and remained unnervingly still. tuck him in sometimes, even when he was a teenager, and even when he Whether they were injured or merely acting on instinct, George couldn’t was in college, once coming in without knocking while he was jerking say. All he knew was that he had to get out of there. He scrambled off so he stopped and lied as still as possible and pretended to be asleep towards the arched gateway of the station entrance, crouching down to while she straightened his blanket over him and he thanked God it was avoid any more flying glass. A brief glance to his right and there was the a cold night, so he’d been hidden beneath those covers. vicar, lying prostrate, arterial blood jetting from a deep gash on his “Mom kept trying to tell us stories even after Carrie was way too thigh, whilst one of the WI attempted to stem the flow with a torn scrap old. She tried to make it a thing that she’d lead off Sunday dinners by of her frock. One of the schoolboys looked on, grey-faced, vomit reading a story, but they were all bad. I was a little jerk back then and I dribbling onto his blazer. laughed at one of them, midway through, this one about a rabbit who George reached the entrance and vaulted neatly over a dry-stone wall. It got lost and couldn’t find his way home, because she used the was only then that he was able to comprehend the extent of the word impressive when she meant impressionable.” He sifted through destruction to the village. Looking down into the belly of Bunker Hill, he the next couple CD cases. “I was a jerk.” first saw the post office ablaze, thick black smoke billowing from the I leafed through those first pages, to a table of contents where gaping windows. Mr and Mrs Henderson, faces blackened by ash, there was actually a story listed, “The Rabbit Who Got Lost and Couldn’t huddled together out front, weeping uncontrollably as their livelihood Find His Way Home.” “Where should I put it?” was consumed by flames. Tyler haphazardly dumped the CDs in his hand into the trash A fire engine flew past, sirens screaming, and collided with the butchers bag so he’d have both hands free to hold the bag open wide. van, catapulting Mr. Graves through his windscreen and onto the “You’re not going to keep it?” tarmac, where he lay motionless. Heavy-set and pale-skinned, he He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t like it while Mom was here. I’m not resembled one of his own pork chops. Inside the cab of the fire engine, a going to like it now.” voice said, "Just leave him." With a squeal of tyres, it veered off down the I put the pages back in their envelope and thought I might keep lane. it, because maybe he’d want it later. But he was waiting and snapped the Elsewhere, terrified villagers ran in all directions, each desperate to bag, opening it as wide as it would go, flipping trash that had been return home and see their loved ones. A thick coating of ash had begun caught in the folds free to fall all the way to the bottom. Slowly, I to settle on the streets and houses, transforming the once pretty hamlet reached into the bag and placed the envelope down inside. into a modern Pompeii. Once it was there, Tyler moved back to the CDs. George hurried towards his house, hoping that it was still standing. He It was nearly an hour later when he brought up the book again. reached the bottom of the hill and turned the corner to see a bright blue “She sent it to publishers,” he said in a similar way to how he described Morris Minor lying on its side, flames gently licking the passenger door. the time he got busted for shoplifting, because the one time he stole, As George cautiously approached, the window on the near side smashed because he didn’t think to look for a security device on the Sega Genesis and a fist emerged, clutching crazily at the air. games. That same inflection, as if it were something stupid to have even George sprinted towards the capsized vehicle, shrugging off his jacket tried, let alone to think she might have succeeded at. “They all rejected and tearing loose his tie. Scrambling onto its side, he ripped the sleeve it. She spent a year sending the whole book out to all of these publishers from his shirt and wrapped it around his hand before punching the rest and of course no one took it.” of the glass out from the twisted frame. Whoever was inside yelped as How many people got from thinking they could write a book to the shards rained down upon them, but a second later a bruised arm reactually doing it? From writing it to actually trying to get it published. emerged tentatively through the gap and George grasped it. He reached Wasn’t it worth something that she’d tried? down into the darkness for the other, and then began to pull with all his “Mom was crazy,” Tyler said, stretching the a sound as if the strength. longer he said the word, the more true it would be. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the flames had now crept We spent the day there, from eight in the morning to nine at around to the rear of the car. Turning his head from the searing heat, he night, picking off doughnuts and tap water between sorting his mother’s planted his feet against the charred wheel arch and used it as leverage belongings, and sweeping and dusting. At some point in the night, I fell to gradually lift the person free from the wreckage. A head emerged, asleep on the couch—that thick, wide monstrosity, covered in a floral hanging downwards, the hair matted and tangled. It was followed by a This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

print, we could only assume was too wide to get outside without taking the front door off its hinges and that’s if the two of us could carry the thing that far. We decided early on we’d leave that for Tyler and whatever friends he could wrangle together the next day. I don’t know how long I was out for. Short enough that it was still dark through the window when I woke. Long enough that I’d been dreaming—dreaming of Tyler and I arguing about something, driving fast on a highway. And Tyler was turned from me, seated on the floor, back against the sofa. Old printer pages in a sloppy pile on the floor next to him, other sheets propped up against his thighs as he read a story about a rabbit. I pretended to go back to sleep, pretended not to have woken at all as I listened to him put one page down and grip the next in his fingers. Those pages his mother had once held herself. Those stories she’d once read to him.

Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and is an alum of Oregon State's MFA Program. He won Bayou Magazine's Jim Knudsen Editor’s Prize for fiction and has work published or forthcoming in journals including The Normal School, Passages North, Iron Horse, Front Porch, and Bellevue Literary Review. He works as a contributing editor for Moss.

ModPo South For those who can't make it to the mecca that is Kelly Writers House, we gather once per month, in a traveling show sort of migration around South Florida to enjoy the companionship, the intellectual stimulation and the pure exhaustion of the mental challenge of a live close read! Join Us! If you are part of such a group in another region, please share your information and we will promote your gathering, too!

floral print dress, torn down one side. As the girl’s legs appeared, she used the last of her strength to push herself free and sprawled onto the side of the vehicle, gasping loudly with the exertion. The petrol cap was now on fire. In one surprisingly easy movement, George threw her unresisting body over one shoulder and clambered down the car before hobbling for cover from the blazing wreck. The ensuing explosion threw him onto his front and sent the girl tumbling out of his grip like a rag doll in a hurricane. He was unable to hear or see anything. His gasps for air only filled his lungs with dust and smoke. With his last ounce of strength, he rolled over onto his back and looked up into the sky. George could see only a face, a vast, terrible face looking back down at him with silent amusement. The mouth was twisted into a horrific facsimile of a smiles, the slimy lips exposing the yellowed teeth, each one the size of a truck. The eyes shone with primitive hatred, and the pupils burned like the fires that had claimed much of the village. George fixated on the smile as the mouth opened wider, like a portal into Hell itself, and waited patiently for Death to be upon him. * * * * * * * * * * * * Alan stumbled into the basement, the final step evading him, and groped for the light switch. Bunker Hill appeared dimly under the dusty bulb, and he stood blinking for a moment, struggling to recall its layout. He hadn't visited in a long time. At the turn of a dial, the village sprung to life. Lights flicked on in the shops and houses, the bandstand erupted into song, and the trains began their circuits around the track. Alan watched, a nearly empty bottle of whiskey tucked under his arm as he pulled a sheaf of papers from a manila envelope. Today, there will be a 100% chance of rain, he said through gritted teeth, tipping the remainder of the bottle over the diorama. He then pulled a box of matches from his pocket, spilling half of them onto the ground in the process. Finally striking one after several failed attempts, he watched the white flame for a moment, burning far brighter than the bulb hanging over his head. Then, as it began to consume the matchstick, he touched it to the corner of the papers. Instantly, they shriveled up like a dying spider. "What the fuck made you think I was ever going to sign these, Roberta?" he hissed. Just before it claimed his hand, Alan launched the flaming fireball across the room. It sunk into one of the Plaster of Paris hillsides with the sheer force of his throw, before the spilt liquor ignited and blackened shrapnel was flung all over the model village. Alan looked on as one of the projectiles struck a train and set it ablaze. It carried on around Bunker Hill, melting the tracks behind it with the heat. He grabbed the dial again and turned it as far as it would go. The speed of the trains increased, until they were little more than brightly coloured blurs torpedoing around the track. Were now making up for earlier delays, he muttered, watching impassively as the flaming locomotive ran out of track and plunged over the edge of the display. It scattered its passengers far and wide over the basement floor before smashing into pieces upon impact. "Sorry about that folks, leaves on the line", he whispered. Alan stood, towering over Bunker Hill, seeing the destruction he had wrought upon the previously tranquil village. It was nothing compared to what they had done to him. His eyes rested on a little businessman, lying near a burning Morris Minor. He began to smile, baring his teeth like a chimpanzee. I bet you anything I’m having a worse day than you, he said to the tiny figure. Suddenly he heard heavy footsteps above his head. He glanced at his watch. The son of a bitch was early. Very early. He grabbed at the dial and everything went silent. Still, having a better day than him. He stooped to snatch the empty bottle off the floor. Creeping up the basement stairs, he switched off the light and held the bottle above his head like a club. Then he waited by the door, half in the light and half in the darkness for Paul to appear around the corner.

Sam Smith is a former Creative Writing and Script writing student, and dabbles in both community radio broadcasting and stand-up comedy.

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Better than Fiction (non fiction)

This new section will change and grow as all our new sections seem to take on a life of their own. We hope you enjoy this first set. In all our years of publishing, we have never featured a non fiction section (other than interviews and actual news pieces when we were a local art paper back in the 1990s), so we are open to suggestions on how to "get it right."

Goodbye Santa Fe by Candy Marie Well my friends, I have done it, sold the car. The 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe has served our family well. I still remember the muggy Spring day when Mom and I co-signed the paperwork. It was a pre-owned vehicle the the previous owner was an older nurse. I can still see Dad behind the wheel, as we would start off in the dark of early morning. We would fall in love with the Eagles and the The Band as we tracked the timeless highways of our organized road trips to visit distant family. It was the backseat that I would climb into and pretend I was a young child nestled safely between my two younger siblings. I remember holding more responsibility, being the captain of this vehicle, and I would take Mother to her doctors visits. Sitting in the car, carefully reading over the D.N.R. orders as we prepared for operations. I enjoyed the strength the large S.U.V. gave me as mother and I would return home from a good doctor's visit and we would order spiced teas and sip them as we heading into the scarlet sunset along Krome Avenue. I remember sneaking off with Nick and Katrina in the early morning and having grand adventures, being young and fearlessly driving down dirt roads with abandon. The car's shocks were put to the test and loyal Santa Fe handled like a stunt car. I remember starting to enjoy solo trips, Santa Fe and I had a gypsy's heart. My first real Solo trip was to Casey's new condo, I opened the trunk to reveal all the surprises I had brought for him. we would hang out around the trunk and lean on Santa Fe's well-built frame.

I remember that day in college when Mom and Dad gave it to me. I took care of that car like it was brand new. I remember our last Christmas before nursing clinicals started, Katrina and I making Play-Doh puppets in the backseat. I remember when it needed a tune-up taking it over to my uncles shop and my cousin Scott and I changing the spark plugs. I remember crawling underneath the hood and flushing the radiator myself, felt proud taking care of this wonderful machine. I remember the last time I took mom for a drive, she was so cold and my heater was broken, but by the grace of the still functioning seat warmers, we made it. I remember when Katrina and I decided to visit our Grandma Georgia when she first got sick. It was a steamy July day and my air conditioning was broken,so we pulled over at a little hole in the wall Mexican Cantina, and cooled down with a couples of soft drinks. I remember the last time I took the Hemingway kids for a drive, we got Slurpees from the 7-11 and went to the park. Now those children are just about all grown. I remember after my mother died, Dad and I drove back home, Willie Nelson played in the CD player, and both of us just cried. I remember Dad decided to help me change my rear struts, weird that is the last project we will ever do in the Santa Fe. I will truly cherish 15 years of memories. I never thought my heart could become so attached to a machine. I maybe selling this car but the memories are mine to keep. This is no sad goodbye, but rather a fond farewell. Goodbye Santa Fe.

JŌB. - by James Hercules Sutton

You know the plot. The Devil crashes a staff meeting and, when God mockingly asks him where he’s been, Satan says “around” and asserts there’s not one steadfast believer on earth. God takes the bet. How can he lose? He’s God. Satan gets cracking. Jōb gets boils. His sheep, camels, crops, servants and children die. He spirals into debt. His friends say he must have committed abysmal sins and indict him for not repenting. There’s a long give-and-take between Jōb and his false friends, but nobody knows anything about true righteousness except Jōb. He hangs in and doesn’t lose faith. God wins His bet. But Jōb is morbidly depressed and sorry for himself, so God shows up and gives him a lecture: Self-pity is its own woe, and Jōb has no right to feel more important than clay, which, by the way, no man had a hand in creating. Then as disgorgement or because He feels like it, God restores double of what was lost and grants Jōb sons, but not the ones he lost. When Jōb ponders God’s responsibility and asks for a debate, he dummies up when he gets it. This is wise, since anyone who debates God loses before he begins, particularly when God shows up in a dust devil. If he had been an Existentialist, Jōb would have realized that he’d been given the greatest gift of all, knowledge that God exists, but his comforter didn’t think of it.

John Paul Satre could have profited from such knowledge, since he lived in doubt and was windy about it. For Jōb, his false friends, and Satre, the morals are obvious: (1) Get on with it, and don’t blame God. (2) Suffering is the human condition. For us, there are more: (3) God accepts collateral damage. He’s willing to screw up a righteous man to win a bet He couldn’t lose. (4) Sin consists of denying rightful choices to others. Satan’s assault on Job is an assault on Free Will, which is an assault on God, which is why Satan does it. Unjust Dominion is sin for mortals, too, but we overlook it, since it’s the basis of Capitalism. (5) The best suffer most. But being a little less righteous than perfect would have kept Jōb from being a target. The story’s premise is suspect: A perfect being wouldn’t stoop to being an accessory-before-the-fact. Then there’s Satan. He lost all powers, except speech, when tossed from Heaven, so his only power is power to tempt. This doesn’t present much of a problem, given the job he does on Jōb, but it raises the possibility that one could be tempted to blame Satan rather than getting on with God’s work. This has been known to fill pews.


Meet the "Liberal" Mr. & Mrs. Buttons

Noted Author Taylor Caldwell Tells of Her Childhood Encounters with the "Thriftiness" of Liberals and How These Experiences Turned Her into a "Grim 'Conservative.'". (Opinion Past) Recently a flowery young "Liberal" male with flowing hair and flowing hands -- and a flowing tongue, too -- demanded of me that I explain why and when I became a "Conservative." He wanted to know how I got this way. Frankly, I couldn't remember just how and when, and I went home musing to myself. I searched my memory and soon it all began to click in my mind, episode after episode -- all of them very painful one way or another. There are doubtless a hundred psychiatrists around who will find the following recounting of those formative experiences very interesting. Heart for the Poor It all began, doctors, when I was a child. A "Liberal" aunt of mine, who had never herself been in need of anything material, had a deep passion for the Poor, from whom she was very careful to keep far, far away. While we still lived in England, where I was born, Auntie would frequently gather together outworn garments which her family had discarded and prepare them for the Women's Guild of our local Anglican Church. She would sit before the fireplace, I recall, and singing some sad Scots or Irish ballad in a very moving soprano, she would carefully snip every single, solitary button off the clothing. I was very young indeed when this practice of Auntie's suddenly seemed outrageous to me. "Auntie," I demanded, "what will the Poor do for buttons?" Auntie had very remarkable hazel and glittering eyes, and they usually glittered on me unpleasantly. They did so now. "They can buy them," she snapped. "They're only tuppence a card." I pondered. If people were so poor that they had to wear other people's cast-offs then they certainly were too poor to buy buttons. I pointed this out to Auntie. She smacked me fiercely for my trouble and then began to shriek. "A wicked, wicked girl!" screamed Auntie. "She has no Heart for the Poor!"

My uncle, hearing Auntie's shrill cries, stormed out of his studio and demanded to know what was the matter. Auntie pointed a shaking, furious finger at me. "Your niece," she said, "doesn't want me to give these clothes -- these poor old worthless rags -- to the Poor!" I was standing up now, having recovered from Auntie's blow. "If they're rags," I said, reasonably, "why should the Poor want them, anyway? And she's taken off all the buttons." "Impudence," bellowed Uncle, who like Auntie was a flaming "Liberal" and also very fond of making a great show of loving the Poor (whom he had never met). And he grabbed me and soundly thrashed me on the spot. I am afraid I didn't ardently love those relatives after that, which was sinful, of course. But from that day on buttons had a special significance for me. I noticed that other of my "Liberal" relatives removed buttons from the garments they were preparing for the Poor, though I never discovered them patching these same old garments. One rich relative did answer my cynical question about the button snipping with the brief reply, "It's thrifty, and I suppose, Janet, that's something you'll never be." I made it a point of learning all about thrift -- and the lessons were all about me, too -- and it never appealed to me thereafter. Thrift is an estimable virtue, I have heard, but somehow when I encounter thrifty "Liberals" -- and they are inevitably tight with their own money -- I always seem to see those buttons being snipped off the clothing for the Poor. I often think of the old little poem written by some Englishman who ought to be immortalized: To spread the wealth the Communist's willing: He'll tax your pennies and keep his shilling. To this day I find myself referring to male and female "Liberals" as "Mr. Buttons" or "Mrs. Buttons," among the less invidious names I employ when I am in form. Mama was also both a "Liberal" and a button snipper. I remember that her laundress, in England, was really poor. …

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BTS Interviewees' Published Books more books published & translated by Bruce Humes

Tobi Alfier's new poetry collection, Down Anstruther Way is now available through Amazon's Create Space here. Tobi is not only an accomplished poet, but also hosts the LinkedIn Group Poetry Editors & Poets (PE&E).

Beginnings Don’t start with the dawn, start with the rise of the moon as it lights snow on mountains, and an audience of clouds, all so bright your way is lit without lantern or tired streetlight glow. Don’t start with your first sight of each other across a packed dancefloor, heartbeats matching the bass of the band, start with coming to conscious wakefulness that first morning after you marry, you twist your rings, pinch yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming. His arm wrapped around your waist, knees tucked up into the bench of your bent legs, his breath warming the back of your neck— thus begins the next thirty, forty, fifty years. Don’t start with the common car park, wander through moors and magic, past waterfalls, dreamers and dusty roads, exposed peat, nested ledges, past cottages, past memories long and lasting. Don’t start with the hunt, start with the rescue. - from Down Anstruther Way by Tobi Alfier (Red River Review, November 2015)

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How to Submit CONTACT Due to a temporary lack of funding, we will not be able to pay for poetry or fiction until further notice. We do not keep copyright on any work by anyone in this publication. The exception being work published by the publisher, including interviews. Submit your poem or story in the body of your email. If you want to add it as a word or pdf you may, but unless the submission is in the body of the email, it will not be considered for publication. Along with your work of art, short story or poem, please send your return address and the name you would like listed for the work and the name you want to check made out to, if different from your creative name. Free Verse Poetry Page Poetry Submission Guidelines The good news is this page is not run by committee. You do not need to impress a host of readers. You just need to impress me. What I love in a poem is that it surprises me, moves me, astounds me with the thoughts edged into existence by its words. Publication credits, prizes and awards tell me a great deal and they can certainly be impressive. With that said, not having publishing credits or prizes takes no one out of the running. A great poem can come from anywhere and I don’t want to miss a single one. What you won't see on our General or Free Verse Page: Rhyming Poems

Long Poems Haiku (and other 2-3 line poems) Limericks We can’t accept epic poetry (roughly 30 lines tops should do it). Please send in rhyming poetry to our formalist/rhyming page editor, Vera (also accepts limericks) Please send in haiku poetry to our haiku page editor, Kevin. We are also always on the look out for great translations, those, you may send to S Ye and the translations page. And if your work fails more into the experimental category, we even have a page for that! Send in all manner of poetry. I am always starved for good poetry. -Suzanne Robinson

email only to: [email protected] We DO accept previously published work. If previously published, make sure you have the rights to it. Most places do not keep the rights to poetry. We do not, we retain the right to use them in anthologies or promotional material as we see fit in the future, but we do not retain any copyright to your work. Do tell us where it was previously published so we can credit them. If you self publish it or post it to an open group, we do not consider that published, so no mention need be made. We do send rejections, (though I find it completely pointless, apparently some poets enjoy being told "No") If we are going to publish,we will send a notification of publication. Due to a temporary lack of funding, we will not be able to pay for poetry or fiction until further notice. If you have submitted work, and it has not been published within 60 days, feel free to send a followup note. Submit up to 3 poems, one short story or image, or up to one of each. If you are submitting free verse for our General Poetry Page, or a combination of forms, please put Poetry Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting flash fiction (under 1000 words) please put Flash Fiction Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting a short story, please put Short Story Submission in your email subject line. (Short stories of over 2000 words will be serialized.) If you are submitting an image, please put Image Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting haiku, or other extremely short poems please put Haiku Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting formal poetry, rhyme, or lighthearted verse, including limericks, please put Formal Poetry Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting translations of poetry, please put Translations Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting experimental poetry, please put Experimental Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting haiku, limericks or other extremely short poems, you may send a half dozen as our Haiku page editor sometimes publishes a block of haiku and short poems together. Our Formalist may choose to do the same occasionally with limericks. If we like it, we will publish it. If you are a Nobel laureate and we don't like it, we won't. (Note: We have yet to reject a Nobel Prize winner) Send one submission no more often than once every 3 months. The subject matter is up to you. We rarely publish long poems (over 50 lines), we do, but rarely. We publish mostly free verse in our main poetry page. We have a soft spot for limericks (and haiku, speaking of short poems). In fact, we have a soft spot for short poems. We will publish somewhat longer pieces on occasion, but nearly always under 200 words. We will publish any good short story, that we like. Full length short stories, up to 7000 words will be serialized. In both the poems and the short story, we aren't prudes, but we aren't looking for gratuitous sex, violence or crude language. We will accept any of these things if we feel they are important to the story. We will not publish anything that we think can be construed as hateful. That does not mean you can't tell the story of a terrible event, murder rape, beatings or whatever, but make sure you are not glorifying the evil. We love a good story. We love a great poem. Just make sure you don't give us a reason to not like it.

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March 2017 Vol. II No. III


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Now with Five Full Pages of Poetry! General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird ModPo & Experimental Poetry with Anthony Watkins Featured Poems of the month Feet like Shoes Once again walking barefoot among this troubled path, Mother always said, put on your socks and shoes, The words muted by the strike of thick heels, Soft on the top laced with bright veins and freckles, Tough on the bottom browned and calloused, Broken glass, stones that bruise, metal piercing through, Even so I treat my feet like Shoes. The blue of winter worn with pain and ache, The red of summer swells them with searing heat, Others shake their heads and fail to understand, These are my feet made to be stripped, free, naked, The crunch of grass, the joy of mud, warm sand between my toes, I keep them clean these feet like Shoes. Their always with me perfectly deformed, Never traded for a new pair, never set aside, Cherished as a marvel, eccentric in style, Form and function mastered in design, They all say you must wear shoes, but why. For excellent are these feet like shoes. Candy Marie is a poet and a writer who lives in rural south Alabama, she counts Wordsworth, Shakespeare and the Psalms among her influences. Epiphany I wrote this at the request of Kathryn Rose, as the lyrics for a choral anthem. I walked in darkness. Many a lonely mile, my eyes and footsteps hesitant and blind. I sought a kindly light I did not find in land or ocean, asking all the while if lightless lives are taken in exchange for light eternal. Still the shades of sight would whisper, "Even I shall see the light!" I never thought the light would look so strange. Not in a temple, echoing and awed, nor in a palace, glistening and grand, nor in my home, nor any friendly land. but distant, dirty, in a shed abroad, I met a maiden bloody from a birth and in her arms, the light of all the earth. by t j a thurman, originally published on his own site 'Gentle Readers'


...and now....

Publisher Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins shares his latest


Bruce Humes 徐穆实

with S. Ye Laird

From: Canticle to the Land 大地雅歌

The Story of Creation

Long, long ago Sky and earth not yet distinct Water and soil not yet formed Darkness shrouding all. No sun, ho! No moon, Neither flower nor beast, ho! And no love. No Tashi Gyatso, Tibetan minstrel, For his wings of passion had yet to unfurl. — Tashi Gyatso’s Creation Ballad

A God from the East did come Concocting from fire, the sun. A Goddess from the West did come Concocting from water, the moon. The sun sundered the heavens from the earth And the moon sundered the land from the sea. The firmament like a dome The land like an eight-petaled lotus bloom And the oceans as broad and deep as Buddha’s compassion. The sun chased the moon And the moon pined for the sun Their love eternal, their destiny never to meet.

To our gentle readers, I was enchanted by the above excerpt of translation, 'The Creation Story' done by Mr. Bruce Humes from Chinese novelist Fan Wen 范稳's third novel 'Canticle to the land', which is the last one of three volumes trilogy Fan Wen has written over more than 10 years. I am most delighted that Mr. Humes has kindly written back to me with candid answers to my perpetual question in mind, the wonderment of how quality translation was done by professional writers. We now present our dialogue, beginning with a reading and questions arise from another interview Bruce conducted with Mr. Fan back in April 2009 - " A Century of Cultural Collisions in Shangri-la."


thoughts and/or poems about whatever crosses his mind If you know a literary sort, a poet, an author, a teacher of literature, or just a truly all around interesting character, and you think it might be fun to get their thoughts down on "paper". Let us know, if you have contact info, all the better, but we have our ways.... This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>




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Daily Dose Inspiration comes in many forms I take mine as a regular pill It really depends on how your doctor feels about it. I told mine that I had a chronic case of mundanity and that was that 10 milligrams a day. Most other doctors would expect a bit more than that. They might make you take a test on a scale from utterly boring to mildly uncreative. They’ll ask you open ended questions and give you example answers and if you use those answers as yours well then, I’m sorry but you might have to go in for some serious surgery like Jennifer Krawetz from Accounting just last Thursday. But most people, they get a prescription. The doctors these days hand them out like lollipops. You can take it as a gel pill like I do Or a silicone implant in your knee Or a gummy shaped like Vincent Van Gogh’s ear The one he lost of course— When I forget to take yesterday’s pill and make it up for today I sometimes imagine he walked around looking for that ear And after searching for hours, He found it stuck firmly on his head Just in a different place than usual. You can take those hard pills, too. But I don’t like those ones, they’re too bitter But some people really enjoy the bitter Truth is, I can’t imagine getting inspired that way. Maybe if I just thought a bit more about it Or went to the doctor. Diane Huang is a high school senior in Minnesota. We are pleased to be her first publication, though she will surely be published many times in the future. Relearning the Elements My favorite is Beryllium or surprise. I admire the noble gases even though the formulas seem a can-can with subservient numbers peeking beneath frilly skirts. Euclid's elements march in rows. So circles are said to touch one another which meet one another but do not cut one another. My circles end in shouting matches and broken plates.

Tongue-Tied I find myself astounded by the azure in your eyes-- sapphire streaks but darker. Lapis-lazuli could be no bluer than your swollen-ocean eyes. Tears, like white-caps, threaten to roll, undercurrents of your tidal heart, your Mediterranean mind, your… Pesky things—descriptors. How best to say “cerulean,” best relate the depth of sea and silver in your soul. Rebeca Parrott, a writer and poet, works in a library in Richmond, Virginia. NO ROOM Busted blood vessels, purpling black eyes Gloria slouching indifferently resigned to fate touches swollen nose, grimaces in pain, tongue plays with loose tooth swollen lips, talking is hurtful rouge cheeks smashed by fists Counselor at reception desk leans back, judgmental snarl eyes small with cruelty ego enlarged with power You’re exiled from shelter 30 days clean and sober Impossible, says homeless guy, standing next to Gloria, coming to her defense No one gets sober, on these mean streets Should have thought before she drank blowing numbers, against rules She was raped, beaten homeless man’s voice tight despair swamping his humanity with stomach acid thinking of his red ancestors, the curse of alcohol tragedy of rape as a weapon Maybe next time she’ll think


Strunk had style too much for me. I sulk in subjective moods. Like today while reading about the elements in the Drosophila genome. A fly buzzes between the lines. I transposed its shape between pages 407 and 408. Falling for the Invisible Woman The obvious is what’s missing, cues, shaved legs, make-up, the secret smile. Her voice turns heads, like rosaries across chapped lips. No, that’s not it. But sometimes at night I think I see her while I sleep. Her friends, all men with special powers, shun the one who can’t do anything beyond a few card tricks. Even their alter-egos – rich playboys, business tycoons, brilliant scientists – shadow me. When I ask her to slow dance, Plastic Man stretches an arm between us; the Human Torch fires nasty looks. In bed between tangled sheets, she strokes my scars and wants a story. How many lies are new lovers allowed? Come morning, I whisper her name in every room. Jim Zola has worked in a warehouse, a bookstore, as a security guard, a teacher for Deaf children, a toy designer for Fisher Price, and currently a children's librarian. Published widely, his publications include a chapbook - The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press) - a poetry collection - What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press). He currently lives in Greensboro, NC.

before she drinks, uses Gloria turns, no big deal streets her life where I’ll die, says to self Sooner than she knows predators waiting, finish what they started. CITY Of THE HILL City on the hill sparkles diamond bright home to Masters of the Universe sending spaceships to the stars lording over nature all is well… Million points of light valleys below sieging Nirvana campfires of the unwanted forgotten, disposable homeless City of the hill siege by those in need those wanting hungry, destitute those without hope How long does a siege last before diamonds turn to coal, before high walls no longer hold, till hearts become barbwire entangled The hilltop people stand alone lessons learned too late a hill is not an island. Ken Williams worked as a social worker for the homeless, primary the mentally ill. The late Paul Walker highlighted his work in the documentary, SHELTER which Paul produced. His writings have appeared in Columbia University’s: Columbia Journal, Cecile’s Magazine, the Huffington Post, The Criterion, The Fear of Monkeys, and others. He is a disabled combat Marine veteran of the Vietnam War. FRACTURED ANGEL is his most recent novel.


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Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin For seven months, Bankei failed to give Master Tozan a satisfactory response to the koan, “Is there a teaching no Buddha has ever taught?” The Master was becoming short tempered with the monk’s bewildered answers. In all other zazen practices, Bankei excelled. He was a talented student and devoted to the Dharma, but he just wasn’t able to penetrate his koan. The morning after the April full moon, Bankei came for instruction, bowed respectfully to Tozan, and in response to the Master’s standard question, said: Dragonflies have hatched: Spring tides flood river sandbars Exposed all winter. “Absolute purity,” replied the Master. -Kevin McLaughlin Zen and haiku are two of the most misunderstood words in any language. Fittingly, there is a close connection, almost a symbiotic relationship between the two. Zen is the ability to tame your mind, to understand the true nature of reality, and to engage in altruistic deeds. Zen is not strictly a religion, a philosophy, or a psychology. It is a Way (Tao). Haiku is the poetry of mindfulness, seventeen syllables that provide appreciation into the natural world, both the mundane and the supramundane. Koans are questions or short tales intended to break the mind away from pure cognition. An authentic haiku can be the response to any koan (What is the sound of one hand clapping? Does a dog have Buddha nature? ). In one famous koan, “Master Basho said to the monks, “If you have a stick, I shall give one to you. If you do not have a stick, I shall take it away from you.” To many students, this cognition baffling koantool is nothing more than nonsense. But if you read haiku with mindfulness, or go through your day with mindfulness, you may divine much wisdom in these odd little tales. Lake filled with gold: A strangely lighted forest, Casts slanted shadows. Insects in the air: The palmetto’s lower fronds Are burnt by the cold. The ficus bonsai: A lizard springs off a branch, Quickly disappears. -K. McL. These two poems are suffused with Zen, yet it is extremely likely Mr. Godfrey has never read a Zen text, attended a retreat, or received any formal instruction. He apprehends the thing-initself, and captures reality in the language of poetry. The first poem is the equal of any piece produced by the classical haiku writers. The entire third line is a kireji, providing emphasis and dividing the verse into two discrete parts. While reading this piece, I was reminded of the Zen proverb, “Don’t mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.

I am pleased to be able to publish three more haiku by “house poet” Joan McNerny. There is a beautiful German word, Waldeinsamkeit, that means both solitude, being at one with nature, and love of the woods. By all measures, Ms. McNerney has Waldeinsamkeit in its most natural form. Winds sway maple trees Leaves drop like butterflies Falling to the warm earth. The morning mist roams Back and forth like a Voiceless wanderer. Deep winterset night. Sleepless stars glide through the sky In aerial ballet -Joan McNerney.

The haiku below, written by Rose Oliver, embodies that sense of Waldensamkeit. It is an example of total identification with nature’s cycles. Yet, the poet’s presence is entirely subtle. She is implicit in the three lines, but does not draw attention to herself or to the human realms. All on this planet is fleeting and evanescent. But read Oliver’s poem a second time and enjoy what many secular Zen schools would deem a moment of enlightenment. Read it and relax into the utmost composure of mind. A lone blackbird sits Dressed always in mourning For the fallen snow. -Rose Oliver The next haiku allows me to stay with the theme of being “at one” with nature. Rebecca Parrot’s preferred form of writing poetry is not haiku writing, and she has been gracious in allowing us to publish this piece. But in this verse she demonstrates the ability to identify with the image and to sense the presence of a world beyond the five senses. I admire her characterization of that herd of clouds. A herd of clouds Thin with age, snakes along Following water’s scent. -Rebecca Parrot.

era Ignatowitsch submitted a verse V accompanied by some insightful questions about the kireji in haiku. This “cutting word” has more than just one purpose, and my intent is to elaborate next month on the lesser known functions of the cutting word. Tongues tasting tender Lips delicious scents inhale Ascending desire. -Vera Ignatowitsch My reading makes the entire third line as the kireji as it makes a transition from individual senses to the five senses plus the mind. It definitely represents a transition of focus. The second line of this piece by Colin James III has the flow of a traditional haiku. The first and third lines do not. But taken together the three lines do have a koan quality, which makes it consistent with this month’s theme. Prison statistics: Black birds pecking at rabbit. God gives me food stamps. -Colin James III

We will again close out the column with two haiku by American author Richard Wright, who was beset by anger much of his life, but eventually found peace in the Other World that is haiku. These verses are from his published collection. A cock crows for dawn And then a neighing horse tells Of spring in his blood. Rain drops are tilting Pink from magnolias In the setting sun. -Richard Wright

Yet once more I encourage all haiku writers to share their work, their insights into the nature of all things, with fellow poets and BTS readers. For those interested in haiku, I recommend you cast back into the BTS archives and reference the September haiku column. It provides a pretty thorough explanation of the basic format.

In the second piece, he adeptly sketches the progress of human life (birth, sickness, death), and contrasts our life on this planet with the wonderful hummingbird image. Venus keen at dusk, Dim Mars at upper left: The Moon dominates. A bane of old age, Disappearance of comrades: Spring hummingbird eggs. -James Godfrey


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Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Excuses Man wasn’t meant to be monogamous. The terrorists we tortured lied to us. I would have dropped my gun if he’d dropped his. It all depends on what you mean by “is.” I’m on the wagon now. I stick to beer. We thought they’d have an A-bomb in a year. She could have passed for eighteen any day. The media twist everything we say. More handouts lead to more dependency. Another set of books? That’s SOP. No law offends a loyal citizen. They’re better off as slaves to Christian men. When everybody cheats, you have to cheat. The woman that you gave me bade me eat. first published in Light Richard Wakefield has taught college literature for thirtyeight years and since 1985 has been Professor of Humanities at Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, Washington. For twenty-nine years he was a literary critic for the Seattle Times. His first poetry collection "East of Early Winters" (University of Evansville Press), won the Richard Wilbur Award. His second collection, "A Vertical Mile" (Able Muse Press), was short-listed for the Poets Prize.

Caught in the spotlight Behold her furious on the stage. Assaulting mic with wings outstretched and looking round, she tries to gauge the gathering crowd promoter fetched from lassitude to hear the verse she'd scribble down, need not rehearse. And rattling out her doctrine view, this sylvan moth outcries, Phuq you!

In the swelter of the evening hangs the air in desperation, left behind while seeking meaning by the winds of aggravation. Dropped within the stubborn valley swirling among defiant oaks, it wallows waiting now to sally, simmering heat within invokes. Energy’s anger will transform the air to rise and meet the sky, in blackened anvil of the storm, the hammered air begins to cry.

She gestures, mouths provoking quips through sharpened teeth, while mocking blokes with gender conscious barbed wire lips. The gathering knows she prods and pokes, well versed, displaying vocal might that's honed to whet its appetite. And no-one's safe from words' affray, exposed to raw-edged repartee.

It’s terrible torrential rains now wash away the desperate fear, they clear the air of all its pains and free it to the atmosphere. In the cool surge of the evening gone the hanging desperation, having purpose, having meaning, blow the winds of celebration.

I saw her once, performing there. When heard, her voiced, incisive words invaded heads with rhymes that were inerrant, cast like perfect chords. A strumpet's thrum, upbraiding fools like we who sat upon our stools and sought to show we understood. We cheered, but still she thought us rude. Ian Colville talks to himself in the third person as if a wonderful poet, however, in his more lucid moments, he is brought to a realisation that he is merely competent. Nevertheless, he has had nigh on 60 poems published in curated magazines and anthologies. His writing tends towards irreverence, and his fondness for ballads and the 'standard habbie' enables him to versify satirically from time to time. When he's not writing, he's reading, and sometimes he goes cycling ...for hours.

Kansas City Limericks It’s too bad, in KC there’s no Mountain, Got no gold, yet have coins in our Fountain. Snorkeling granny dives deep, Piles all cash on a heap, In her birthday suit sits there--- a countin’.

Duke Trott is a writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Athenaeum and Artful Comics. He is currently a graduate student in Emerson College’s MFA program.

The Winds of Celebration

She revels, glories, makes her tales of mundane things that she's observed seem more profound or just what ails the social group that she's unnerved. By verse, astute, acerbic thrust of rapier tongue, she's got 'em sussed. And battling on, there's no respite as words, outpouring, fill the night.

Lighthearted Verse & Limericks...

Regret Villanelle In the heat of a summer night I let my thoughts meditate on an old saying: Time slips by like smoke form a cigarette. Something about it made me upset, maybe it was true and I was living on the wrong end of time, and the heat let these thoughts settle like a net which covered me — I found myself staying there to smoke just one more cigarette. I felt as though I’d come to regret the distance I’d unknowingly ingrained. The distance had grown, and I had let faces that I thought I’d never forget fade in and out like fireflies swaying, or like the smoke trailing off a cigarette. And now I found myself facing the threat that arrives when one has been ignoring the truth: that in those summer nights you let time escape like smoke from a cigarette.

DE Navarro lives in Greater Los Angeles where he writes and publishes. He is the Founder of NavWorks Press. He is an author, poet, editor, publisher, speaker, and life coach. He is the originator and owner of the We Write Poetry forums and the Pride in Poetry Prize and Publication. His work has been published in various journals and magazines. His most recent book is Dropping Ants into Poems. Visit DE's beautiful Website at http://www.de-navarro.com for a peaceful experience and to learn more about his work.

The Hyper Texts


There are churches and bars in K. City, For our youngsters, no place, what a pity. A new law, I heard rumors, That all statues need bloomers; Satin knickers will hide all graffiti. Annemarie Timmons


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Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot II Lady, three white leopards sat under a junipertree/ In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity / On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained / In the hollow round of my skull. / And God said / Shall these bones live? shall these Bones live? And that which had been contained / In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping: / Because of the goodness of this Lady / And because of her loveliness, and because / She honours the Virgin in meditation, / We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled / Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love / To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd. / It is this which recovers / My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions / Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn / In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown./ Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness. There is no life in them. As I am forgotten And would be forgotten, so I would forget Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said / Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only / for only The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping / With the burden of the grasshopper, saying / Lady of silences/ Calm and distressed/ Torn and most whole/ Rose of memory/ Rose of forgetfulness/ Exhausted and life-giving/Worried reposeful/ The single Rose/Is now the Garden/ Where all loves end/Terminate torment/ Of love unsatisfiedThe greater torment/Of love satisfied/ End of the endless/ Journey to no end/ Conclusion of all that/ Is inconclusible/ Speech without word and/ Word of no speech/ Grace to the Mother/ For the Garden/ Where all love ends./ Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining/ We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,/Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,/ Forgetting themselves and each other, united /In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity / Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

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We continue 'Ash Wednesday' ( II, III & IV) by Eliot in this issue as the first day of Lent in 2017 falls on March 1st. I add another translation of Eliot's 'Conversation Galante'. We also present Thomas Thurman's humorous piece on translation. And one more by Mao Jing, 茅境translated from Chinese. Wallace Stevens 'The Blue Guitar' was rendered marvelously by Li Jingbing李景冰 into Chinese & continued strumming on by the late P.K Page and read by the 3rd poet Laureate of Canada, Dionne Brand ...

III At the first turning of the second stair I turned and saw below The same shape twisted on the banister Under the vapour in the fetid air Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears The deceitul face of hope and of despair. At the second turning of the second stair I left them twisting, turning below; There were no more faces and the stair was dark, Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair, Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark. At the first turning of the third stair Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute. Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown, Lilac and brown hair; Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair, Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair Climbing the third stair. Lord, I am not worthy Lord, I am not worthy but speak the word only. IV Who walked between the violet and the violet Who walked between The various ranks of varied green Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour, Talking of trivial things In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour Who moved among the others as they walked, Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour, Sovegna vos

《聖灰星期三》-- translator S. Ye Laird 叶澍苍释译 * Unfinished... I. 因为我不再乞求变卦因为我不乞求因为我不乞求变卦渴望拥有此人的天才和彼人的天赋我不再努力不再费心于這些琐事（为何老鷹必然想要展開翅膀？）為什麼我必需哀悼人权，人命与人性的自然完了？因为我不再乞望我能洞解浩渺的历史时流因为我无心思考因为我知道我永远无法领悟唯一的千变万化的神通因为我无能化缘** 在彼岸，树木开花，春泉叮咚，在彼岸，万事不复，万物皆空。因为我知道时空永远是时空故土终归只是故土事故若为真，必仅有一回也尽在一方我开心于千事依旧万物自然我不求红脸的关公也不怕黑脸的张飞因为我不再乐意改造我的本性自然而然我欣喜若狂，尽心尽意标新立异神游于我的世外桃源，怡然自乐无穷稚趣。我只求菩萨勒令道长多存怜悯之心只求我能够忘却或超脱千情百酬中的自相矛盾因为我不肯回首且让我的言语答应好事多磨，何苦无事生非，但愿裁决之甲不得以压抑我等俗人。原来此翼已不再是比翼双飞之翼而仅仅是落魄的苟延残喘空气稀薄又干燥 , 比意念还要渺小我们由此领悟到无所不在的关怀无念的屏息静坐。请为我等罪人祈禱, 此刻及死神降临之时请为我祈祷，此刻及临终之际。

( ... for the rest of "Ash Wednesday" read by Eliot himself , follow this link ...)

Conversation Galante

诗人与繆斯的对白 -- translator S. Ye Laird 叶澍苍释译 *

by T.S. Eliot 1920 I OBSERVE: “Our sentimental friend the moon! Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) It may be Prester John’s balloon Or an old battered lantern hung aloft To light poor travellers to their distress.” She then: “How you digress!” And I then: “Some one frames upon the keys That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain The night and moonshine; music which we seize To body forth our own vacuity.” She then: “Does this refer to me?” “Oh no, it is I who am inane.” “You, madam, are the eternal humorist, The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist! With your aid indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—” And—“Are we then so serious?”

我一板正经的辩说：瞧那多愁善感的月儿她不也能（奇迹般的，我承认）装作神父的充气球？亦或是老朽的灯笼高高在上映衬出苦行人的落魄无奈。她说：你真爱胡言乱语! 我接着：有人在琴键上弹奏出绝妙的小夜曲，于是我们领悟了夜色与月光；音乐是我们得以充满自身的空洞与虚无。她责问：你在含射我吗？ “啊，不。我才是糊涂无用！” “我的缪斯，你永遠是那酣甜的猕猴桃是永恒及绝对理念的死对头你在我游疑不定的情绪中作祟以你的漫不经心与傲慢之态我等狂热激情一击即溃，终显荒谬之猴样。” 乎然 -- “我们是不是要私定终身？”

* When I first encounter this poem "Conversation Galante" by T.S. Eliot, I made a remark that Eliot's writing with the moon lady was unlike any other Classic Chinese poet that I know of. It didn't occur to me that Eliot might describe a vivid conversation, wasn't in a solitary contemplative mood. In other words, I was mistaken a dialogue so apparent to native English readers for a monologue as depicted in so many ways in classic Chinese poems. That self-correction prompted me to try a rendition on my own, to see if 1st reaction and 2nd reflection are, after all ,not so far outwardly strange in one way or another.


Translation

by t j a thurman One of the interesting things about being a writer is that you find people talking about and using your work in ways you'd never considered. A few years after I wrote the poem below, I happened upon the website for a translation competition at a Russian university; the students had been set some texts by German writers whose names I didn't recognize, and James Thurber, and my poem. I love getting surprises like that.

Ah, would I were a German! I'd trouble my translator With nouns the size of Hamburg And leave the verb till later. And if I were a Welshman My work would thwart translation With ninety novel plurals In strict alliteration. And would I were Chinese! I'd throw them off their course With twelve unusual symbols All homophones of “horse”. But as it is, I'm English: And I'm the one in hell By writing in a language Impossible to spell.

* 蓝色的故事 by 茅境 translated by S. Ye A story of blue tunes My story is colored by blue, The blue that comes from bloody seashells. My story is colored by purple It flies over meadow, like doves over violets. Personalities in my story float over misty lake. They disperse as soon as sun rises chasing away clouds and clearing up frosty window My story is hanging on Monks' prayer beads My story is hard pressed by snowy peaks of mountain tops. My story rides on the back of migrating birds echoing a strayed one's coo when autumn comes My story scatters its seed on desolate and barren prairie. Across bustling cities, I blow my story a few more times To be assured, it is as light as feather unfettered by the heavy city smokes.

This was originally published in Gentle Readers on 17 Jul 2014.

The Blue Guitar - P. K. Page

史蒂文斯《弹蓝色吉他的人》 -- translator Li Jingbing 李景冰 I 那人俯向他的吉他，裁缝的样子。白天是绿的。他们说，“你有把蓝色的吉他，却没弹奏如其所是的事物。” 那人回答，“如其所是的事物在蓝色的吉他上被改变了。” 于是他们说，“弹，就必须弹出乎我们之外又是我们自身的曲子，一支在蓝色吉他上完全如事物所是的曲子。”

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.’ The man replied, ‘Things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar.’ — “The Blue Guitar” by Wallace Stevens

II 我不能带来一个完整的世界，虽然我尽量缝补它。我歌唱一个英雄的头，巨大的眼睛和长胡子的青铜，却不是一个人，虽然我尽量缝补他并通过他几乎达到人。如果弹奏小夜曲几乎达到人由此却失掉如其所是的事物，就可谓是一个人的小夜曲在弹奏蓝色吉他。 III 啊，要弹就弹人第一号，将匕首捅入他的心脏，将他的脑子摊在板上剔出那些刻毒的颜色，将他的思想钉到门上，让它的翅膀展向雨雪，击打他活的“嘿”“嗬”，叮之，当之，将它变成真实，撞击它，从一种野蛮之蓝，弦之金属的刺耳噪杂…… the rest in Chinese, see translator's site

I do my best to tell it true a thing exceeding hard to do or tell it slant as Emily advises in her poetry, and, colour blind, how can I know if green is blue or cinnabar. Find me a colour chart that I can check against a summer sky. My eye is on a distant star. They said, ‘You have a blue guitar.’ ‘I have,’ the man replied, ‘it’s true. The instrument I strum is blue I strum my joy, I strum my pain I strum the sun, I strum the rain. But tell me, what is that to you? You see things as you think they are. Remove the mote within your ear then talk to me of what you hear.’ They said, ‘Go smoke a blue cigar! You do not play things as they are.’ ‘Things as they are? Above? Below? In hell or heaven? Fast or slow…?’ They silenced him. ‘It’s not about philosophy, so cut it out. We want the truth and not what you are playing on the blue guitar. So start again and play it straight don’t improvise, prevaricate. Just play things as they really are.’ The man replied, ‘Things as they are are not the same as things that were or will be in another year. The literal is rarely true for truth is old and truth is new and faceted — a metaphor for something higher than we are. I play the truth of Everyman I play the truth as best I can. The things I play are better far when changed upon the blue guitar.’





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ModPo & Experimental Poetry Thousand Dollar Handbags, Hundred Dollar Lives the thrusters to nowhere are always operational flights never cancelled expected ETAs expected the chubby kid on the front lawn playing cops and robbers with himself knows what I am talking about. Running from one side of the lawn to the other taking shots at himself. Ryan Quinn Flanagan lives in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his other half and mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and Horror Sleaze Trash.

Frost's Blue-white Morning Acquainted luminary Watchman Unwillingly came Before frozen other He promises Darkness, but Like ingredients Blue-white morning One because On as way Robin Cohn of Boca Raton, Florida and is a poet who enjoys experimenting with both traditional and non-traditional poetic forms, but doesn't like to leave too much to chance. This is a poetic mash-up of lines randomly generated from four Robert Frost poems. The lines were then un-randomly chosen and edited.

Condensing the Astral within the dream calling to you you hear the ultra-sentient particles vector at the speed of light its conscious infinite it is time to try and tell you what happened to me within the dream calling you imagine a tipping point her eyes? cat’s paws you are endless, the dream reborn batting the string you and I are dreamers of the cosmos that holds me together so I sing the journey to exist can be difficult no longer a package you hear the ultra-sentient particles no longer a thing refined, they vibrate at a crossroads just breath moving where you and I are beings of the grid through everything of this sensual quantum soup the thin tissue-paper where to begin? The planet calls to you covering my grief vector at the speed of light lifts like a torn scrap of nothing you hear waves expanding in its midst I am exposed... that align us with the quantum soup itself conversations with other storytellers She sharpens her claws... lead to an unveiling LoveisaCurseLoveisaDreamLoveisaPillowLoveisaScream its conscious infinite tipping point. Seamus Duggan is an Irish poet and blogger, a winner of Carol A. Stephen the Goodreads Newsletter Poet of the Month, October Poem was created for a prompt to create a 2013, an original BTSer from Shelfari days, and an all around good guy, and oh yeah, a respectable musician. new form. The lines were revised from an earlier erasure poem draft originally found in generated material from the Bullshit generator http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/

Reach by Kathleen Martin i reach and stretch and reach farther still even on tiptoe and pulled out of myself i can't get there maybe i'm not supposed to touch maybe reaching is what it's all about or maybe i just need to get a ladder Kathleen Martin #1. I lost myself somewhere along the lines on shore doing things out of the greed or the lust and the responsibilities of life seemed like a monster to me losing myself to the unknown do I run away or stand in the crowd not of the people but my own thoughts for I have no interest whatsoever in the things once seemed exciting and all I want to do is start afresh leaving behind the ashes of the past secured and peaceful just like the feel in the mothers lap for her love is unprecedented and pure and may God forgive all of my sins so that I can Begin Again

Deepak Garg

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Silent Poems by Anthony Watkins and


Better than Starbucks began wholly as a creation in my mind. Now the wonderful collaboration of four dedicated editors is creating a monthly magazine that I could have only dreamed about when I was starting out as a one person organization. Having said that, there are no direct connections between U Penn, Al Filreis, KWH (Kelly Writers House), ModPo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry), or any of the actual affiliated programs to ModPo and this magazine, other than I have been a part of ModPo for several years now. There is, however, a strong spiritual and intellectual connection between BTS and ModPo. If I had not gotten involved in the larger community of ModPo, I don't think I would have restarted a literary publication. I am certain I would not have added a Formal & Rhyming Page, and probably not a Translations page. I have a pretty narrow preference for poetry, but the course and the people at ModPo have expanded my view of poetry to the point that I decided if I could find good people to help me do it, we would make BTS as broad of a source of styles and genres as possible. We have been fortunate to establish a team of talented editors and are in the process of an ever expanding quest to find poetry wherever it may be. Thus, it seems fitting that we dedicate a page to my fellow students at ModPo, and/or anyone who wants to share experimental poems. The thing about experiments is, they often fail, but as the point is to learn, not to create perfection, even failed experiments in the lab or on this page, will


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The BTS Interview: Bruce Humes 徐穆实 The BTS Inteview Page 1 S.Ye: Bruce, in your interview with Fan Wen back in 2009, your question to him. "One key recurring motif of the novel is “disharmony” among different peoples and their faiths....", from his answer: "It’s just that China doesn’t do as is done in the West: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.... and Isn’t that what literature is for — providing people with a vision of an ideal world? " Do you agree with Fan Wen's notion of what literature is for? Bruce: That’s just a sound bite, and probably oversimplifies Fan Wen’s “notion of what literature is for.” You need to understand where he is coming from. He is a devout Catholic living at a time when the authorities require believers to register, to attend worship services only at government-approved churches, and in regions such as Zhejiang, is forcing congregations to remove the cross from the outside of their churches, and even demolishing some of the newer and better equipped churches, claiming they violate building regulations. Although things in Yunnan are less oppressive — at least as I experienced when I lived there in 2012-13 — he cannot be immune to this reality, and therefore it makes sense that he hopes to provide “people with a vision of an ideal world.” Such a vision can soothe and empower many readers in a sometimes heartless and imperfect world, regardless of our faith. But there are many other things that good fiction writing can do for us. Personally, I look to literature particularly for insight into how various peoples adapt to the challenges of modernization, as well as for the simple pleasure of experiencing how well-crafted words can capture the subtler aspects of human existence. S. Ye: Can you tell us more about your experience in translating Fan Wen's 'Canticle to the Land' ? Bruce : I enjoyed the process of becoming familiar with Fan Wen and his work, which actually took place over three or four years. While still living in Shenzhen, I interviewed him by e-mail about the first novel in the trilogy, 水乳大地 (Shuiru dadi), recently rendered in French by Stéphane Lévêque as Une terre de lait et de miel, whom I interviewed too. I later moved to Kunming in Yunnan, where Fan Wen is based, and met him several times to discuss his trilogy. A very hospitable fellow, he is fascinated by southwest China, particularly the history of the multi-ethnic settlement in Lancangjiang Canyon (gateway to Tibet), which he portrays in the novel as beset by battles between arrogant French Catholic missionaries, incompetent Han officials and their marauding troops, Naxi Dongba Shamanists, and the dominant Tibetans, not all of whom lead pacific, vegetarian lives in the local lamasery. My translated excerpt from Canticle to the Land features a 20thcentury, romance-prone itinerant Tibetan minstrel. I had fun recreating his romantic escapades, including rendering a few lines of verse from Tashi Gyatso’s Creation Story. This required a bit of research into Tibetan culture, and although I’ve recently tried to specialize in translating fiction by and about non-Han peoples, I have to admit I’m quite ignorant about things Tibetan. As we discussed his trilogy, I was struck by the impact of the censorship process on his creativity, and no doubt, on authors throughout China. I don’t recall which of the three novels he was citing, but he told me that his “editor” identified over 300 problematic passages. I assume there were so many because he is writing about sensitive topics such as the activities of foreign missionaries, and sometimes violent interethnic rivalries. He was not forced to rewrite or delete them, but where he was unwilling to accept the editor’s suggestions outright, he did have to spend valuable time negotiating an acceptable solution; otherwise, the novel could not see the light of day. One can imagine that after a certain amount of time, most any author would practice some level of self-censorship, if only to avoid wasting precious time and energy. S. Ye: Do you wish to see others pick up what you've started and finish translating the entire trilogy by Fan Wen for English readers? Bruce: As I mentioned, the first novel has been rendered in French, and more recently, Shelly Bryant translated the second, Land of Mercy (悲悯大地), into English. Sure, I’d love to see all three in English, but I don’t see myself taking part.

S. Ye: I came to US in 1992 on Thanksgiving day. I returned to my hometown Shanghai once in the winter of 2006. I won't go into length about cultural shocks I had and am still recovering from it. Now at the point of no returning to be Chinese, I came to the realization that my attempts of learning/mastering English language with lingering Chinese sentiments, effectively doubled my chance to have misspoken in English and speechless in Chinese. Is it ever a problem for you? Bruce: I have had two very intense experiences becoming immersed in a foreign language to the point where I found myself tongue-tied in English. The first time with French, the second with Chinese. The amount of mental energy I injected into both was, looking back on it, astounding. I must have been young then! Although I studied in Paris just 10 months, I spoke to myself incessantly in French throughout and refused point black to deal with English speakers. Unsurprisingly, I ended up quite fluent. But when my Anglophone father came to visit and expected me to interpret for him as we visited churches, chateaux and vineyards, it proved to be a nightmare. I remember trying to tell him what was on one menu: The flesh of birds that were raised on a farm expressly to be eaten by human beings. He disdainfully reminded me we call this ‘fowl.’ No, I thought (but didn’t dare say, my father being hopelessly monolingual), we call this ‘volaille’. I’ve lived almost 30 years now in Chinese-speaking environments, so in some way this blockage is worse. Perhaps my mind works differently than other bilingual or multilingual people, but I don’t have too much “interference” from competing languages. For me, Chinese and English exist in different universes, and they don’t really overlap. Building bridges between them is bloody hard work, and not something I can do in real time. Thus I am utterly useless as an interpreter, and find translating written Chinese into English rewarding but never easy. S. Ye: Don't we all have 'Tongue-tied' frustration? And my solution is to take up poetry translation! For me, translation is the closest thing imaginable to any religious conversion, and to recover from my own little quarrels in this world. Do you still see translation as your personal calling? Bruce: I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen Chinese-to-English literary translation, in and of itself, as my “calling.” I’ve just felt at various times that I wanted to share a world I’d discovered, one that English speakers were unlikely to be familiar with. This is why I launched a blog focusing on “writing by & about non-Han peoples” back in 2009, and since then have tried to concentrate on translating China’s “ethnic” writers. But it’s not as if I am an avid reader of fiction, dedicated to fine literature, or that I derive deep satisfaction from “converting” words between one linguistic system and another. S. Ye: Hmm.. why not derive deep satisfaction from 'converting' and be converted in one worldview embodied in mother tongue to another? Human language is a miracle, as some linguists believed adamantly. So, do you write poems/songs/lyrics? Bruce: I did write free verse in my teens, and I’m sure that helped me develop an ear for language that is very useful in translation. My favorites were Ezra Pound, Cummings, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and Baudelaire — though I doubt I had a clue what the latter’s earpleasing poems actually meant. Sometimes when very moved I do write a poem, and it comes very naturally. But I don’t feel a strong desire to pen verse regularly. S. Ye: That's a pity. You need to be daring and young at heart again. Can you give me two or three western translators or their translated work that you admire most? Bruce: The more translated fiction that I read, particularly from the Chinese, the more I feel that what I’m looking for isn’t a good “translator.” First and foremost, I want a talented writer, capable of writing compelling prose in English, who happens to know the source language (very well) too. Two that come to mind are Eric Abrahamsen and Cindy Carter, who both translate contemporary Chinese fiction.


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S. Ye: Is your approach to translation changing over the years? Bruce: Certainly. First and foremost, I’ve learned that I have a rather limited palette. This means that I should concentrate on those works that really speak to me; that requires saying “Sorry, but no” to publishers and authors — even those whom I like personally — when, for whatever reason, I feel I couldn’t do an outstanding job for a given literary translation. Secondly, I have come to understand that professional literary translation is a collaboration. It’s not a one-man gig. I prefer to hire a native Chinese speaker to proofread my draft, and if I can afford it, I also have a native English speaker polish my rendition before I pass it to my client (a literary agency) or a publisher. At the moment, I’m experimenting with cotranslating a novel by a Uyghur author. My partner translates a chapter and I proof and edit it, and vice-versa. This drastically reduces translation errors, speeds the process and gives me feedback early on in the process. But there are downsides, one being that I no longer “own” the manuscript and must negotiate changes, and of course, the already meager earnings have to be split! Thirdly, and I think this is perhaps the most significant development, I have begun — just begun — to sense the importance of creative writing in shaping a literary translator. When I first heard someone suggest that translating prose, and particularly poetry, is like a musician interpreting a sheet of music, I thought it was a ridiculous comparison. But it does make sense. If you want to hear how a piece of written music sounds on a piano, feed it to a supercomputer and “generate” the piece exactly as it was annotated; one day, if not today, this will be quite feasible. But we don’t go to a piano concert for that kind of machine-like “accuracy.” We go to hear the musician “interpret” the piece in his or own unique way. And it seems to me that if that is the case, then plenty of training and hands-on practice in various types of creative writing will go a long way to preparing the literary translator what is, after all, a very creative endeavor. S. Ye: Bruce, marvelous insight, I owe you $100 for transmitting such insight to others right there. So after you have completed your piece, do you compare your translation with the work of other translators? Bruce: Not normally. I’d be more than happy to do so — there’s so much to learn — but since I work almost exclusively on 21st century novels that haven’t been published, it’s rare that the same text would have been done by someone else. I’ve had the chance to compare my renditions with the French, however, and that’s great fun. Generally speaking, French renditions of Chinese and Japanese fiction are superb. I do normally hire a Chinese person to proof my translations, and I am currently cotranslating a novel by Uyghur writer Alat Asem with a native speaker of Chinese, and it’s fascinating to see how differently a phrase can be understood, depending on the reader. S.Ye: Our Haiku editor Kevin read 'Tao De Jing' by 5 different translators simultaneously. Studying classical text is a richer experience in that way. Bruce, I learned that your friends tried to cajole you to become a writer in your own right. Is that advice still appealing? Bruce: I do see myself as a writer in my own right. But I’ve concentrated on certain types of writing that are perhaps less prestigious than fiction. I worked as a trade journalist covering the East Asian pan-electronics industries for many years — which took me inside hundreds of factories in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China — authored a guide on how to import from Taiwan, translated two 21st-century Chinese novels, co-translated several books on traditional Chinese arts, and host a blog that has at various times focused on Chineselanguage fiction by ethnic writers in China, Altaic storytelling and most recently, literary connections between Africa and China. I’ve never been keen to write about my two decades in the PRC for the outside world. There are plenty of good “China books” out there already, and in order to make mine unique, I’d have to get personal; I just don’t want to do that. I value my privacy. There was a time when I toyed with the idea of writing a book about my China experiences. It would definitely have been in Chinese and targeted mainland readers. I did have some things I wanted to say, actually. I might have dictated it rather than written it on a PC, because I find most contemporary Chinese writing staid and unnatural, and that approach might better express my personality. But that window has closed. The days when I experienced life “in Chinese” — dreamt in the lingo, spoke to myself in Mandarin constantly and interacted almost exclusively with Chinese colleagues and friends — are past. Without that sort of consciousness, dictating such a book now would be a chore. S.Ye: I am sorry to hear that the era of you and I both dreaming "in Chinese' has passed. We missed our chance appearing in each other's dreams. Well, don't give up hope entirely. Only God knows what awaits us in our next re-incarnated life-time experience :-)

S. Ye: My impression, from sipping thru your online writings as much as I can, is that you are very keen at experiencing 'other' cultural imprints to its peoples by putting yourself 'totally' in the midst of it. Do you regret of not putting on a barrier, somewhere, for self preservation and protection ? I was quite shocked at the brutal attack and subsequent ill-treatment in the hospital on your welfare in 2000. Besides the scars left in your hand and lung, what was THE most enduring revelation you had after all these years living in Chinese/Cantonese speaking world? Bruce: That’s a tough question! I’ve spent almost all my adult life living in various Chinese societies including the PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and most recently, Malaysia’s Penang, which is two-thirds ethnic Chinese. So limiting myself to just one “enduring revelation” is a challenge. During my years on the mainland, I was deeply struck by the sense that the vast majority of PRC citizens perceive there is a huge gulf between themselves and other peoples of the world. For the most part, this doesn’t lead to a sense of innate superiority or inferiority, or hostile behavior, or irrational fear of dealing with foreigners. But it is a stubborn obstacle to natural interaction, and it is surprisingly deepseated. Many acquaintances, and even friends I have known for years simply cannot imagine me — or most any non-Chinese — shorn of our “foreignness.” I am not certain exactly where the origins of this sense of separateness lie. But it’s patently obvious that it has been purposely drilled into society’s consciousness ever since the founding of the People’s Republic. The media never stops reminding its citizenry about all the different ways — the food we eat, the language we speak, our 5,000-year recorded history, our form of socialism with “Chinese characteristics” — that make “Us” different from “Them.” This propaganda that saturates the media, plus the fact that the vast majority of Chinese are monolingual, have never traveled outside the country, and (outside the major metropolises), rarely count a foreigner among their circle, all combine to exacerbate this sense of separateness. Briefly put, I couldn’t help but regret the unnecessary walls this erected between me and many of the people I met all over the mainland. They can be circumvented, but life is short . . . S. Ye: Life is short, "Carpe Diem". So what are your plans for the next 4 years or so? Do you see yourself working as an expatriate Chinese writer, somewhere in a corner of the world? Bruce: Plans for the next four years or so? Can’t really think that far ahead. But one thing is for certain: It’s time to move on. After almost twenty wonderful years (1992-2012) residing in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Yunnan, I spent 14 months in Turkey during the Gezi Protests (2013), and that really affected me. I was moved to see people on the streets protesting against an increasingly authoritarian government. When I came back to China, it somehow no longer felt like “home.” I’m not sure exactly why. I do know that in Turkey I had caught a tantalizing glimpse of a vibrant civil society, while today’s Chinese authorities are actively trying to prevent its creation by closing down NGOs, arresting lawyers, harassing feminist activists and monitoring social media for any sign of critical commentary. I want to check out RoW— the Rest of the World! Am hoping to get to West Africa in 1Q or 2Q 2017. I’d like to explore various cultures there, particularly French-speaking Africa and Nigeria. I know next to nothing about the region, but things I’ve read about griots, marabouts, oral storytelling, the lively music scene that fuses ancient musical traditions of countries like Mali with rap, the mixture of indigenous tongues and français populaire, and Sufi-inspired Islam in Sénégal are part of what is pulling me in that direction. The idea of playing an active role — literary agent?— in introducing contemporary African fiction to Chinese readers also appeals. S. Ye: I wish you the best of luck on your pending out and about in Africa journey and continuing your ever arduous gathering and trading of other worldly fresh and strange fruit from the mind to the Chinese and the world. It's always One circle of life to those with loving and open hearts and mouths. Thank you for taking your precious time to share with us your insights and memorable life-time experience!

More magnificent translations by Writer/Translator/Editor Bruce Humes: "The Last Quarter of the moon" "Shanghai Baby"

More of Bruce's talk on translation

More on " Canticle to the Land" please see links: http://bruce-humes.com/archives/3588 http://bruce-humes.com/archives/841


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Venus in all Four Corners They poured the foundation in ’62. Well thought through, not a single tree was sacrificed— not for the house proper, the road, the well or the coops, fresh eggs bein’ a secret pleasure of my daddy’s, an extra couple bucks for mama at the Saturday market. While still damp, they stick-drew a half-shell at each corner, an inside joke. When things were still proper, mama worried that her thighs might be too big for daddy’s liking. He sent her a letter, with a photo of Venus Rising, said he thought her thighs would please him mighty fine. Momma blushed the color of Pink Lady apples, put the letter in her secret place with the rest of them. After daddy was hurt, construction was stopped for a while. Springtime’s and fall we’d go out there, throw some quilts where the kitchen was framed, have picnics, watch the trees blossom or the leaves change color. We did that for a year or two. They also decided it was best not to twostory it, but there was plenty of room to re-work that first floor; the “formal” living room became their bedroom…mama liked to say “en suite”. A smaller library became the new living room—plenty comfy and still room for the family’s beloved books. Less pressure on daddy, and less money to finish. Still bedrooms for us kids. They had the housewarming the end of ’65, a tang in the air, clouds low like they was wishing to be invited in. Aunt Delia made all the food, and she cooked up a Church social’s worth of goodness – cream cheese rollups, oysters wrapped in bacon, a punch that didn’t need any more spikin’. There was a cake with separate plates and forks just for the celebration, and celebrate we did. We talk about it every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes daddy raises his head, eyes sharp with recognition. I think it’s the oysters wrapped in bacon, who would forget those. And we laugh and eat, then go outside to the south-east corner, right by the porch, where the foundation shifted just a little in some ancient earthquake or flood. We fight to see who’s gonna pull back the vines, and there it is, that stick-drawn half-shell for all of us to see. Until next time. Tobi Alfier

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Afterwards by 冯唐 Feng Tang,

- Why I need to write 《不二》 translated by S. Ye from author's official publication site. Once a lady friend asked me: " I don't find it surprising that you can write erotic tall tales, but why you need to ? To rid yourself sexual drive, perhaps ? Why? Tell me ? Another female writer remarked, point blank ,' Your target readers are between 35 to 55 years of middle-aged women. They are raising children, taking care of their husband, struggling with their lost youth and falling into despair. They need compassionate love. They need everyday romance and sexual fantasy, not erotic novel from long dead place and time. You got it all wrong. You are digging your own grave. What actually happened, from the very beginning of my messing with words some twenty year ago, I write, not to expect writing will make me powerful and famous and rich ; I write, not to bring others peace and justice. I write, not to educate and illuminate masses. I write, for a simple enough reason, that I need to find an outlet for myself , like being pressed by a destiny: I am haunted by ghosty creatures. My pen charmed by dragon and serpent's cunning ways. It is like to patch up some tiny cracks, increasingly expanding, momentarily appearing and disappearing boundless causes. For some split of seconds, I may have envied some other writers accumulate mountainous silver coins, so famous that they must wear sunglasses whenever hitting the sidewalks. At events of signing their books, thousands and ten thousands hands dancing before their eyes and occasionally showered with stinky eggs, soda bottles and flowers. But that is only for split of seconds. Most of time, I remind myself to never forget that writing brings me pure, granulate sugary joy to knock-off the earth just half an inch. For the bottom line, my brain is a burning refinery, full of alchemist's catch, not a toast oven with one control button to press it down. To Sum up what motivates me to write my erotic saga: First, after《肉蒲团》, for two hundred years, there isn't any good erotic novel written in Chinese. Even in this famed rendition, there is too much meandering, totaling 20 chapters, the first three chapter is all about proving that the book isn't an erotic tale but a beginner's guide to Buddhism. Secondly, it is not easy to write erotic relationship with words. To narrate the base of human passion without overplay of pornography, with simple delight and ordinary pleasure of eating, drinking, bathing in the sun, taking a nap, is even more difficult. What I have in my hand, the novel 《不二》, is an experiment with such criterion. Thirdly, when I was young, I watched a lot of cultural films as a way to ease the burden and pain of growing up. I was struck by degree of deviations on people's mind. I've seen plenty of N-rated films, couldn't shake off their notion that touching oneself is deemed un-natural. I've alway wondered why the storm can't be more intense? Why culturally pure and simple can't be mixed up with pornographic eroticism ? Thus, we'd give ourselves a better wholesome view of life to live? When it comes down to execute concrete arrangements, I discovered, this is quite a challenge, the path from spiritual to sensual as diverse, perverse and reverse is no less than crossing life unto death. For the forth reason, I am almost 40 years of age, if I don't write it now, in a few more years, even if my heart dares, my body shall be frail. This world may not get to see my hundred thousands monumental work. Modern medicine examines clearly that man also has menopause. "Old stallion knows it hasn't much time left, it kicks and gallops, needing no crop'. For the fifth point, our next generation youths are beautiful. If they read only nonChinese Japanese AV and non-oriental literature work from Christianity, e.g. 'Lady Charlotte's lover' and 'Rooftop of Paris', before experiencing life on their own, being a Chinese writer, I am guilty. Last but not least, writing is a therapeutic process deployed to cure my middleaged self from damages done by the early onset of anxiety attacks and depression. As far as the structural design of my writing 《不二》，I've undergone a lot of trial and error. Foremost, after finishing 《Beijing，Beijing》， I decided I will not write any more fictions based on personal experience. The essential points have been sketched out. On the subject of the growing up near the Great Wall, this trilogy of Beijing is out there, enough for people like myself to crawl out of, for the next two hundred years. I shall write things that fascinated me most, outside of all existing biographical narratives. Incomprehensible force and demons conjuring up historical farce and reality, deflecting time and space, let me put them into this new trilogy. First Volume, 《不二》，focus on chaos and super natural, sex and religion. Background set in the middle and late Tang dynasty. Second volume, 《天下卵》, focus on 'Force', assassination and sex, background set in 辽金. Volume Three, 《安阳》, focus on "Strangeness", concocted via medical science, metaphysical alchemist and ancient relics, background set in 夏商.

ModPo South For those who can't make it to the mecca that is Kelly Writers House, we gather once per month, in a traveling show sort of migration around South Florida to enjoy the companionship, the intellectual stimulation and the pure exhaustion of the mental challenge of a live close read! Join Us!

In the beginning was this arrangement, 《不二》divided into Part A and Part B. Part A is 禅宗 during the heydays till the late Tang dynasty, in the capital city Xi'an. Part B is the other 禅宗 during the same period, residing in 敦煌. Part A, pure sensual, Part B pure spiritual. Sensuality in Part A would be as wild as late Tang era that I can't imagine it would be permitted to air out on the internet. Spirituality in Part B could be so dry and monotoned that only those crazy nuts locked inside the Sixth branch of Beijing Hospital ( aka the crazy Sixth ) might possess certain steel attention to follow its beat from the beginning to the end. During the course of writing, increasingly, this former arrangement makes me feel too imitable, too "sharp-cutting". So I decided to have droplets mixed into one steam, as it is now written, downpour of sensual and spirit fervor whenever it springs, and ends whenever it was meant to be. In the course of editing and rethinking, I find plots are much easier to come up, the hard part is the actual filling of a glass with spiritual, restorative and soothing substance, that leaves one rich, fuzzy, mystical and roomy after taste, or not. This is the Afterwards. - by Feng Tang


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Supporters By becoming a Better Than Starbucks Supporter, you can help us grow, and support this venue for poetry, fiction and art. Give as much as you like, even $5 a month helps and makes a difference. As a Supporter, your name will be listed on our Links & Supporters page, however you can also choose to give in a name other than your own. Whether it is in tribute or memory, supply us with the name of a poet, family member, friend, loved one, even a pet, and we will list your contribution in that name. You can also choose to remain anonymous. You may direct your contribution to a specific category if you wish. The categories are General Poetry, Haiku, Formal & Rhyming Poetry, Poetry Translations, Short Fiction, and Art. Click on the button below to join us in becoming a monthly supporter today.

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Become a Donor Pick a Category: Poetry or a sub page: General, Haiku, Formal & Rhyming Poetry, or Poetry Translations Short Story The Interview Katherine Michaels Fund for Literature (General funds for underwriting the site, named for our first donor)

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How to Submit CONTACT Due to a temporary lack of funding, we will not be able to pay for poetry or fiction until further notice. We do not keep copyright on any work by anyone in this publication. The exception being work published by the publisher, including interviews. Submit your poem or story in the body of your email. If you want to add it as a word or pdf you may, but unless the submission is in the body of the email, it will not be considered for publication. Along with your work of art, short story or poem, please send your return address and the name you would like listed for the work and the name you want to check made out to, if different from your creative name. Free Verse Poetry Page Poetry Submission Guidelines The good news is this page is not run by committee. You do not need to impress a host of readers. You just need to impress me. What I love in a poem is that it surprises me, moves me, astounds me with the thoughts edged into existence by its words. Publication credits, prizes and awards tell me a great deal and they can certainly be impressive. With that said, not having publishing credits or prizes takes no one out of the running. A great poem can come from anywhere and I don’t want to miss a single one. What you won't see on our General or Free Verse Page: Rhyming Poems Long Poems Haiku (and other 2-3 line poems) Limericks We can’t accept epic poetry (roughly 30 lines tops should do it). Please send in rhyming poetry to our formalist/rhyming page editor, Vera (also accepts limericks) Please send in haiku poetry to our haiku page editor, Kevin. We are also always on the look out for great translations, those, you may send to S Ye and the translations page. And if your work fails more into the experimental category, we even have a page for that! Send in all manner of poetry. I am always starved for good poetry. -Suzanne Robinson

email only to: [email protected] We DO accept previously published work. If previously published, make sure you have the rights to it. Most places do not keep the rights to poetry. We do not, we retain the right to use them in anthologies or promotional material as we see fit in the future, but we do not retain any copyright to your work. Do tell us where it was previously published so we can credit them. If you self publish it or post it to an open group, we do not consider that published, so no mention need be made. We do send rejections, (though I find it completely pointless, apparently some poets enjoy being told "No") If we are going to publish,we will send a notification of publication. Due to a temporary lack of funding, we will not be able to pay for poetry or fiction until further notice. If you have submitted work, and it has not been published within 60 days, feel free to send a followup note. Submit up to 3 poems, one short story or image, or up to one of each. If you are submitting free verse for our General Poetry Page, or a combination of forms, please put Poetry Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting flash fiction (under 1000 words) please put Flash Fiction Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting a short story, please put Short Story Submission in your email subject line. (Short stories of over 2000 words will be serialized.) If you are submitting an image, please put Image Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting haiku, or other extremely short poems please put Haiku Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting formal poetry, rhyme, or lighthearted verse, including limericks, please put Formal Poetry Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting translations of poetry, please put Translations Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting experimental poetry, please put Experimental Submission in your email subject line. If you are submitting haiku, limericks or other extremely short poems, you may send a half dozen as our Haiku page editor sometimes publishes a block of haiku and short poems together. Our Formalist may choose to do the same occasionally with limericks. If we like it, we will publish it. If you are a Nobel laureate and we don't like it, we won't. (Note: We have yet to reject a Nobel Prize winner) Send one submission no more often than once every 3 months. The subject matter is up to you. We rarely publish long poems (over 50 lines), we do, but rarely. We publish mostly free verse in our main poetry page. We have a soft spot for limericks (and haiku, speaking of short poems). In fact, we have a soft spot for short poems. We will publish somewhat longer pieces on occasion, but nearly always under 200 words. We will publish any good short story, that we like. Full length short stories, up to 7000 words will be serialized. In both the poems and the short story, we aren't prudes, but we aren't looking for gratuitous sex, violence or crude language. We will accept any of these things if we feel they are important to the story. We will not publish anything that we think can be construed as hateful. That does not mean you can't tell the story of a terrible event, murder rape, beatings or whatever, but make sure you are not glorifying the evil. We love a good story. We love a great poem. Just make sure you don't give us a reason to not like it.


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February 2017 Vol. II No. II


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Now with Five Full Pages of Poetry! General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird ModPo & Experimental Poetry with Anthony Watkins

Better than Starbucks, the Interview,

Featured Poem of the Month Stories of My Father’s Absence I learned to dust when I was eight years old, when grief and hope were equally sensual places. I followed my mother around the house, holding a clean, cloth diaper, cool with lemony sadness. At the redwood cabinet filled with curios, I dusted the stories of my father’s absence. See how the dust settles in the lines of the ancient-faced rickshaw rider, his cart laden with miniature fruits? Between the pearls baked into the pearl diver’s lap? Around the blown glass gills of the carp? In the crannies of a bamboo tea strainer? On top of a river stone darker than midnight? On Saturdays, we polished these artifacts tugging like the tides in the Bay of Bengal. We handled them as gently as we would a newborn, a wish, a sorrow. This story, this life of my father. -Cynthia Grady Cynthia was the middle school librarian at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC for 14 years. Now she writes, gardens, sews, and makes music, in New Mexico.


...and now....

Publisher Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins shares his latest thoughts and/or poems about whatever crosses his mind This Month: "Hardcopies and Hard Time"

The BTS Interview with Michael R. Burch (this is a repeat of our January Interview)

Vera: What inspired or impelled you to become a poet? Was it tied to a defining event in your life? Michael: I think the first influence came very early in my life, when my mother would recite "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes to me and my two sisters. This was when I was a very young boy, perhaps six or thereabouts. I later learned that Noyes died the year I was born, an interesting synchronicity. But I didn't think much about poetry, in terms of writing it, until my early teens. I had some friends who were in a rock group, but I had no musical ability. I had, however, become a fan of poet-songwriters like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. Then one day I started leafing through the pages of my high school Literature book, reading the poems independently, and something clicked. Some of the poems, by poets like William Blake and A. E. Housman, seemed quite magical to me. If I couldn't write songs, perhaps I could write poems. That was the beginning of my love affair with writing poetry, because it seemed to me that I did have a talent for writing poems. I remember sitting in the break room of a McDonald's where I worked to earn money for college, looking at a poem I had written, thinking, "Did I just write that?" It seemed that I had produced something a bit magical, at a fairly early age. Now that I have been published around 2,500 times, it seems that I may have had some talent for writing poetry. Vera: You are known as a Formalist, yet you also write free verse. Do you have a preference between the two? Michael: In one way no, in another way yes. I don't think that one genre is superior to the other. There are great metrical poems, and there are great free verse poems. As a reader, I simply like great writing, and it doesn't matter to me how poems are constructed. However, as a writer I find myself writing more metrical, rhyming poems. And I think most readers still enjoy meter and rhyme. For instance, most popular songs are metrical, rhyming poems set to music. Why not give readers what they like? If a poet who claims free verse is "superior" to metrical, rhymed poems is asked to name his top ten songs with words, chances are that all ten will have rhyming lyrics. And I remember reading a book called Touchstones in which a number of free verse poets discussed their favorite poems. If I remember correctly, most of the poets named rhyming poems. And the three best-known founders of English free verse -- Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot -- all wrote rhyming poems. Ironically, Walt Whitman's best-known poem may be "O Captain! My Captain!" The world is full of those sort of ironies. In short, I value both genres equally, but when I write poems they usually end up with meter and rhyme.

The BTS Interview cont'd If you know a literary sort, a poet, an author, a teacher of literature, or just a truly all around interesting character, and you think it might be fun to get their thoughts down on "paper". Let us know, if you have contact info, all the better, but we have our ways....


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The BTS Interview: Michael R. Burch The BTS Inteview Page 1 Vera: How do you view the marginalization of formal forms and rhyme in modern poetry? Michael: I think it has been very unfortunate. The marginalization of formal poetry created a lot of understandable bitterness on the part of poets who continued to work in meter and rhyme. They were denied publication in most of the socalled "major" journals for many years. They were denied awards and honors. It was, in my opinion, discrimination. I think things have improved in recent years, and the rise of the Internet has made things more democratic, as readers can find the kind of poems they prefer without going through discriminatory journals, if they still discriminate. Vera: What purpose do you believe poetry serves? What purpose could and should it serve in our modern culture? Michael: I think poetry can serve many purposes. I think it is true that art can be merely for the sake of art. Poetry is an art and it doesn't have to serve any other purpose, except to please readers. But in the right hands, poetry certainly can do other things. For instance, Robert Burns and William Blake spoke eloquently about social injustices, calling for real equality and justice for commoners at a time when the rich ruled everything. On the eve of the French Revolution, Burns was already writing about the rights of women. Blake was the first artist, to my knowledge, to graphically depict the horrible cruelties of the slave trade. Walt Whitman wrote about, and perhaps helped create, a more tolerant America where everyone could be embraced, whether black or white, male or female, gay or straight. Those poets had tremendous influence on songwriters like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen. They were, in my opinion, the first wave of tolerance. We have been catching their wave ever since, or we should be catching the wave! Poets and songwriters have also been powerful voices for peace, and against war. Wilfred Owen was one of the first major poets to argue against the idea that the battlefield was a place of "honor" and "glory." Sappho, the first great lyric poet that we know by name, wrote a poem many centuries ago in which she called for love, not war. She may have been the first "flower child" and she remains one of the most compelling voices for love, compassion and tolerance. Another ancient poet that I really admire in this regard is the Archpoet. He may have been the first "rogue scholar," and he wrote a blistering "Confession" in which he skewered the hypocritical priests of his day. Hell, the ancient Hebrew prophets who gave us large portions of the Bible were reform-minded poets! I think poetry can and has done a lot, in the arena of social change.

Vera: Are you working on any new poetry projects at present? Michael: I have been writing a lot of poetry and prose that is pro-tolerance and anti-Trump these days. I never planned on being a political poet, but some of my political poems, puns and jokes have "gone viral." I may have a few years to work on other projects, until the next scourge appears! Vera: As traditional publishing declines, do you envision new ways in which poetry, and its aficionados, could interact, connect, and grow? Michael: Yes, I think the Internet has really changed things, and in many ways for the better. Poetry is no longer controlled by a few professor-poets sitting in ivory towers, favoring their peers. It is up to poets to figure out how to write poetry that other people will enjoy reading, and they must also figure out how to make their poems accessible to readers. I think I am something of a trailblazer in this regard, as my literary website, The HyperTexts (www.thehypertexts.com), is considered very "relevant" by Google, and we are currently getting around two million page views per year, a figure that keeps going up. Google is a lot more democratic than the ivory-tower sitters, so I no longer have to worry about what they are saying and doing. Vera: How large a role does The HyperTexts play in your life? Michael: I have devoted a lot of my free time to The HyperTexts over the last twenty years. I'm a writer and I want to be read. Having millions of readers is a blessing. It makes me feel that I've accomplished a lot, as a poet, editor and publisher. Hopefully, I have entertained readers, and at times I may have opened their eyes to new and better ideas. If so, I have followed in the footsteps of poets I admire, such as Sappho, the Archpoet, Blake, Burns and Whitman. It has also been my honor and pleasure to publish poets with important things to say, who said it well, such as Jack Butler, Jared Carter, the Estonian Holocaust survivor Anita Dorn, Janet Kenny, the Jewish Holocaust survivor Yala Korwin, Tom Merrill, Richard Moore, Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), Miklós Radnóti (who unfortunately did not survive the Holocaust), Harvey Stanbrough, and Luis Omar Salinas.

Observance Here the hills are old, and rolling carefully in their old age; on the horizon youthful mountains bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . . By dying leaves and falling raindrops, I have traced time's starts and stops, and I have known the years to pass Something almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . . for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba For here the valleys fill with sunlight to the brim, then empty again, Something inescapable is lost— and it seems that only I notice lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, how the years flood out, and in . . . vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Michael Burch: I wrote this poem as a teenager. I was working at Something uncapturable is gone— McDonald’s at the time, and wrote it in the break room. It was the first gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn, poem that made me feel like a “real poet,” so I will always treasure it. scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass The poem was published as “Reckoning” by Arkansas Tech University and remembrance. in Nebo: A Literary Journal, then by Tucumcari Literary Review. After being revised and renamed “Observance,” it was selected as a top 100 Something unforgettable is past— poem in the 1999 Writer’s Digest rhyming poetry contest, out of over blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less, This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >> 13,000 overall contest entries. It also won 4th place in another large

and finality has swept into a corner where it lies in dust and cobwebs and silence. Michael Burch: This is the first poem I wrote which didn’t rhyme, and the only one for quite some time. It has been published by There is Something in the Autumn (Anthology), The Eclectic Muse, FreeXpression (an Australian writers’ magazine where I was the featured International Poet in the March 2013 issue), and Life and Legend.

poetry contest by Iliad Press. It was subsequently published in Piedmont Literary Review, Verses, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and the anthology There is Something in the Autumn. Not too shabby for a teenage poet! Infinity Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair? Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach, then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach? Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage? Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too, have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue. Michael Burch: This is the other poem that made me feel like a "real poet" in the early days of my career. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence and Poetry Life & Times.

Michael Burch with William Sykes Harris, his wife's grandfather

About the Ads you see for Kelly Writers House and Poem Talk: Two years ago I took a free class on Coursera called Modern Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania's Al Filries. Since then, I have been a Community TA. I credit Al and ModPo with recreating my need to publish again. When we first started, I thought it would look better with a few advertisements, so I asked Al if I could run a couple of free ads and he said yes. Anthony Watkins


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I am not Going to Prepare Kevun this Time (Published in the two international anthologies of poetry, “Journeys Along the Silk Road” and “Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze”) Loku Naenda sitting still on a bench watched the framed photograph of her son, my cousin, that made an exhibition of him in his army uniform and fortitude My puerile questionnaire had its flow as usual One question of mine received an answer, which obviously touched my heart “Wouldn’t you prepare some kevun for the new year? The nicest, your konde kevun.” “No putha, I am not going to prepare kevun this time, What kevun for me? I have already lost appetite.” As her speech came to an end she returned to the photograph and traced the contours of his figure with her quivering fingers. This time the koha didn't sing its ritual new year song in its seminal tone Only the strident, reedy tune of the crows hobbling in the compound Glossary Kevun, Oil-cake. It is a traditional Sri Lankan sweetmeat made of rice and sugar and is served particularly in festive occasions. The village folk are used to consider it as a taboo to cook or eat kevun in sorrowful situations especially when there is a funeral. Koha, The cuckoo bird. It announces the arrival of the New Year in the beginning of April. Konde Kevun, A type of kevun or oil-cake (See kevun) Loku Naenda, This is how somebody calls the eldest sister of their father in Sinhala. Putha, Son Indunil Madhusankha is currently an undergraduate reading for a BSc Special Degree in Mathematics at the Faculty of Science of the University of Colombo, in Sri Lanka. He is a budding young researcher, reviewer, poet and content writer. His work has been widely published.

Safe Harbor

f l o a t i n g I used to mock the ‘crazies’ who were too afraid to leave their homes and explore the world because my middle school mind couldn’t understand that the flowery walls of some people’s kitchens and living rooms and bedrooms were the world to them. their tvs were telescopes into other parallel planets and their books were backpacks that carried all the tools they needed for adventure. but I just didn’t see it that way. until I grew older and more anxious about getting good grades to get a good job to live a mediocre life full of mortgage payments and microwave meals and balancing vacation days just to go on one tiresome trip a year I just couldn’t see it that way. but time has passed and I have grown even older and now… now I am n o t h i n g. nothing but a floating parasympathetic nervous system who doesn’t even bother worrying about finding my life’s purpose anymore because I’ve already found it conveniently located within the flowery walls of my own bedroom. curled up under blankets with a novel, I am completely content with not leaving because leaving would be joining the world and the joining the world is just too scary for me right now. Patricia Grudens graduated last year from Ithaca College with a B.S. in Marketing/Communications. She also was recently diagnosed with Panic Disorder and Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder. She says, "Both of these mental illnesses have really caused an extreme disconnect between my mind and my body. In my journey to reconnect the two, the best coping mechanism for me is definitely via poetry." We find her coping mechanism has created some interesting poetry. Note: her second poem is posted below as an image to preserve formatting.


Frozen sleet slashes the ship as it lurches back and forth right and left over violently churning water. A sailor clings to the crow’s-nest scanning the horizon now camouflaged by midnight waves. A flickering light through the gloom sparks a flicker of hope in frozen hearts. Inch by endless inch moment by crawling moment a lighthouse leads sailors to a safe harbor. When tornados tear apart homes and destroy lives a musty mouse-infested cellar doubles as a storm shelter. Amid heart-wrenching sobbing loss a loving embrace becomes an anchor. When children point and laugh at the outcast on the playground a kind word leads the way home. In a world of cruelty, darkness and blinding hatred any light is a safe harbor.

Sarah M. Prindle Lords Valley, PA


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Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Master Shogen, the Abbot of Zuigan Temple, loved teaching haiku to his monks. “Haiku,” he lectured, “is the ideal poetry form. It captures the thing-in-itself, and nothing more. There is nothing extraneous. Haiku measures both the amount of Zen in the writer and in the reader.” Shogen, a lifelong haiku devotee, read one haiku per day and seldom wrote more than five in a year. “Why is it that you only read one haiku per day, Master?” asked Daitsu, one of his most promising students. “Because reading one haiku is sublime,” replied the old Zen Master, “reading two is tedious.” -Kevin McLaughlin The above micro-fiction illustrates several conditions peculiar to haiku. Each haiku is a separate “Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus” (Om Mani Padme Hum). One good haiku should occupy the reader’s mind uncluttered, by itself, not one of twenty read in less than two minutes. Reading haiku is an art form, just like writing the verse. A distracted mind will miss the essence of the poet’s insight. The haiku reader has only seventeen syllables with which to work. He must be able to make associations, have the ability to see, hear, and smell images quite vividly. In some cases, given five syllables in a line, the reader may even have to “fill in the blanks,” know how to comprehend using only a fragment of an image. One is expected to complete in many poems what the artist has just begun. Some poems must require repeated readings before the Royal Jelly is extracted from the honey comb. This leads to another attribute of transmitting haiku. It is best read from the written page (or computer screen), not read aloud. The seventeen syllables pass by before the audience has a chance to understand the poem. As a veteran of many open mic poetry readings, I can attest to how difficult it is to sit in a theatre and focus on a chain of haiku read into a microphone to an audience that quickly loses its focus. Haiku are seldom written just for the entertainment value, and if entertainment is provided, it washes out to sea faster than sand caught in a rip tide.

Tri-colored Heron Little Estero Bay Photography by Steve Dimock

Alan Watts has astutely written, “The haiku poet must, at great pains, acquire a certain primitivity and unfinishedness of expression which comes off only in a social context when the reader is also in the know. It is a poetry where the reader is almost as important as the poet, where deep calls unto deep, and the poem is successful to the degree that the reader shares the same poetic experience which, seldom however, is explicitly stated. This is not though the usage of literary allusion accessible only to an exclusive coterie of scholars. What the reader has to be in the know about is not literature, but rather life, places, the changing of the seasons and, above all, the utterly indescribable insight of Zen Buddhism.” After the blooms shed, The orchid’s true glory: Path of solitude. A common white moth Flutters by us unnoticed: The dead bamboo branch. (Note the use of unnoticed a a kireji, or cutting word) The gopher tortoise Rests by its burrow’s entrance, Remote from the trail. -Kevin McLaughlin Black birds in the sun Circle to become eagles: Vultures and fish hawks. Mr. Watkins’ Black bears haiku is a perfect example of the synergy that benefits both poet and reader. This poem is packed with visual images, and could easily have been the subject of an Impressionist painting. But the imagery doesn’t stop with the visual. Give this verse a few minutes. Watkins is suggesting the smell and the sounds of the creek bank to any reader who takes the time to give the haiku his full attention. The creek bank will fill the mind, and point to a greater reality that lies behind the conventional reality. Black bears catching bass From a shade darkened creek bank While flies hover near. Note also that creek bank serves as a fine cutting word setting up the third line. -Anthony Watkins Ms. Ignatowitsch’s Ghost among the leaves poem is the second example of why haiku is meant to be read one poem per reading. This is three lines so rich in sadness and haunting memories that it is worthy of a Hamlet soliloquy. Don’t hurry by this poem. There is much to be felt in its seventeen syllables, a purity of emotion worth considering and imagining in your own soul. Reading another haiku immediately after staying with this piece detracts from the poetic experience. Master Shogen from the opening micro-fiction would not have read a second haiku that day. Ghosts among the leaves Rustle sad old melodies Falling in one soul. The contrast of the heat and the dazzling shade qualify this haiku as a legitimate response to a koan, a subject we’ll address in an upcoming issue. Rose petals unfold Radiating velvet heat Into dazzling shade.

Thankfully, we still have more delightful haiku from Joan McNerney. This form should be enjoyable, should embrace, at least occasionally, pure delight and fun. I believe McNerney has a joyous sense of wonder about the world around her. I also admire her use of the ellipsis, a device I’ve not before seen in haiku. Yet, its usage is perfectly in line with this poetry’s strict format. Oh, and I love that fish leaping to take a bite out of heaven. Inquisitive… The gingersnap cat stares as I get undressed. Calculating… A fish leaps to capture Bite of heaven. Today’s work is done. The sun fell from the sky For a bowl of stars. -Joan McNerney Mr. Godfrey’s first poem, as well as mentioning BTS, uses a technique known as layering. The second line builds on the first, and third line shifts the reader’s focus to the comfort, mystery, and uneasiness associated with a fog. His second poem illustrates the need for the reader to be knowledgeable, as Watts put it “in the know.” The first two lines are 5-7 syllables that fully create an emotion without having to directly mention the emotion: the third line fully depends on the reader’s knowledge of Jekyll (daylight) and Hyde (night) to fulfill the haiku’s effect. Better than Starbucks A metronome of haiku Resting on a fog. The night an old cloak Charcoal scribble on the sky Jekyll is no more. -James Godfrey Ausgezeichnet! The German word for outstanding crossed my mind when I read A.M. Pattison’s haiku this morning. His work strides across every day imagery to the mystic world that lies behind what we perceive with our fives senses. Mindfulness nurtured throughout the day results in insightful haiku. Pattison’s verse result from deep awareness. We will have two more haiku from this poet next month. There is also a faint feel of the koan in this work. Voice wavers clipdress On the patio monsters Under my nightstand. Look upon the blue Striped watch slung upon her wrist Ticks incessantly. Drought upon my pond You are the mud crack That I am forced to form. We will close out this month’s column with two more haiku by American author Richard Wright, who was beset by anger much of his life, but eventually found peace in the other world that is haiku. These verse are from his published collection. A lance of spring sun Falls upon the moldy oats In a musty barn. I cannot find it, That very first violet Seen from the window.

-Vera Ignatowitsch

Try not to read too many haiku at one sitting, and try not to read them too rapidly. Yet once more I encourage all haiku writers to share their work, their insights into the nature of all things, with fellow poets and BTS readers. For those interested in haiku, I recommend you cast back into the BTS archives and reference the September haiku column. It provides a pretty thorough explanation of the basic format.





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Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch A Rooster Refugee A rooster loose among suburban houses is loudly singing matins. His crowing rouses the bleary-eyed suburbanites unused to solar time who, half-asleep, confused, must squint to read their glowing bedside clocks: a quarter of five! But what do strutting cocks concede to those whose lives run clock-unwise? Without his song the sun would fail to rise, he thinks, this self-important chanticleer whose days obey the contours of the year. Before the graders flattened out his farm the beasts awoke each day at his alarm. The fields are now a parking lot; the land is smooth and paved, as featureless and bland as days that do not wax and wane year-round. This rooster refugee is losing ground but keeps on crowing, keeping time without a thought for how his time is running out. I fumble dumbly with my coffee cup; outside the rooster calls, Wake up, wake up! originally published in East of Early Winters Richard Wakefield has taught college literature for thirtyeight years and since 1985 has been Professor of Humanities at Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, Washington. For twenty-nine years he was a literary critic for the Seattle Times. His first poetry collection "East of Early Winters" (University of Evansville Press), won the Richard Wilbur Award. His second collection, "A Vertical Mile" (Able Muse Press), was short-listed for the Poets Prize.

IDS AT SUNNY LAKES yell and fling up sand, K as boneyard motors patinate with rust. A farmer’s pickup, lost beyond its dust, speeds to where murmurating starlings land. Desire pools in the blood, and lovers laid out by orgasm drift off into sleep. Impressions wither in their minds, and steep in darkness that has flooded erstwhile shade. Noisy diesel rigs redshift through their gears. In hospice care a frail heart pumps on faintly, dreaming friends and foes—some more, some less saintly. Happiness cannot recognize its tears. Rails clack under unending rolling stock. Lone souls distill the twilight’s residue, freighthopping pasts they maybe never knew. Their tuning forks tone in the ticking clock. Stephen M. Dickey lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas, and has published free and formal verse and a couple of short stories in small print and online journals. He has published many prose and poetry translations from Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.

Akhmatova

When I wait, at night, for her to come, life, it seems, hangs by a strand. Anna Akhmatova, "The Muse"

Her marriages unhappy, government condemning her and calling her a whore, banning her books, consumed by whole days spent standing in ration lines or at the door of a party office where she would implore release for friends and family sent away to gulag prison camps (they would ignore the pleading she would come with day by day). They did not like her poems or the nude sketches Modigliani made of her. They burned her books. She scraped for love and food. Whatever wrath her poetry incurred, she stood against the boorish, asinine, dim bureaucrats who toed the party line. They died. Their empire fell, her poems remain, sketches of naked truth and art’s disdain for any system or bureaucracy that would restrict a poem or nudity originally published in Scattercolors David W. Landrum lives in Western Michigan. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Measure, First Things, Evansville Review, Three Drops in a Cauldron, and Misty Mountain Review.

Smitten You are so sweet my misfit darling dear in purple fishnet, orange tights and gear hung from a hat atop a scarf of fuchsia and heels that violate the regs of OSHA*

I love the way you snort instead of laugh you're all I need and then another half you glom on me and dote the whole day through while staring out those thick rimmed glasses too What would I do without those pouting lips the awesome sight of your sashaying hips hid beneath the clothes of dorkdom's queen that pearly flesh of yours that no one's seen I'm smitten by your love, you have my heart My Kitten—you're the sweetest little tart. *OSHA – Occupational Safety and Health Administration

DE Navarro is the Founder of NavWorks Press. He is an author,

poet, editor, publisher, speaker, and life coach. He is the originator and owner of the We Write PoetryTM forums and the Pride in Poetry PrizeTM and Publication. He is a husband, father, mentor and friend and Banking Sr Analyst, Tech Editor/Writer. Visit DE's beautiful Website at http://www.denavarro.com for peace and to learn more about his work. He lives in Greater Los Angeles where he writes and publishes.

Lighthearted Verse & Limericks... The Hulk There was a big bloke called The Hulk Who was much too proud of his bulk He trained every day Til muscles gave way Then sorry and sore he did sulk. Mario Petralia

I USED TO DREAM I used to dream of flying when I was strong and tall. Now I dream of trying to not get hurt when I fall. Charles Joseph Albert


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Kenneth Rexroth 王红公 (1905 - 1982) “The Poet As Translator“ -- that the translation of poetry into poetry is an act of sympathy--the identification of another person with oneself, the transference of his utterance to one's own utterance. The ideal translator, as we all know well, is not engaged in matching the words of a text with the words of his own language. He is hardly even a proxy, but rather an all-out advocate. His job is one of the most extreme examples of special pleading. So the prime criterion of successful poetic translation is assimilability. Does it get across to the jury?

In the summer of 1951, famed writer/playwright Laoshe 老舍 (1899 - 1966) visited the home of world famous Chinese watercolor painter Qi Baishi 齐白石 (1864 - 1957). Previously, Laoshe has written to Qi a couple lines from two poets of early Qing dynasty he admired ( 查慎行 & 赵执信), to ignite Qi's artistic interest to 'translate' words into his own art form. Here's the genesis of the later most well-known watercolor work by Qi, entitled "蛙声十里出山泉". It is said that it took the master painter three days and three nights to re-create an imagery that most faithfully reflecting the given line, by the playwright/writer Laoshe. In order to see the whole picture, I located two poems and translated four lines from one for our readership here, to fathom why a masterpiece becomes a masterpiece in that oriental world of my birth country.

Fireflies chase the first rising star, by grassy river bank。 Frogs croaking miles after miles, outrun the mountain stream New verse no longer rhymes with old habits Able man with good resolve is rare, and not so easy to come up。

查慎行《次实君溪边步月䪨》

赵执信《七夕示内一绝句》

萤火一星沿岸草蛙声十里出山泉新诗未必能谐俗解事人稀莫浪传。

香濃燈暗立秋庭

梁宗岱诗集《芦笛风》* -- 程家惠，程晟译水调歌头序曲人生岂局促? 与子且高歌。浩然一曲冲破地网与天罗。给我一枝芦笛，为汝星回斗转，冰海变柔波。哀乐等闲耳! 生死复如何? 浮与沉，明或暗，任予和。钓夫一笑相视，认我与同科。看取沙中世界，更见花中天国，同异尽消磨：君掌握无限，千古即刹那。

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近月㣲茫欲辨星窺盡風情是烏鵲人間空自媚丹青。

Water Tune Prelude Isn’t life a river slow and long? With you I sing a song, A toll to break through all woe With nets above and snares below. Give me a reed flute TO make for you all stars fly off their route, And turn the icy seas Into soft waves of breeze. Why bother with joy or sorrow, And life today or death tomorrow?

Up and down, day and night, Freely I fly as a swallow. Giving me a knowing smile, The fishing man sees me as his fellow. To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a flower of mallow. All will wither and fade Be it red or yellow. Hold infinity in hand, And eternity in the hollow. This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

*梁宗岱Liang Zongdai (1903 - 1983) was a Chinese poet and translator, developed personal friendship with Romain Rolland & Paul Valéry during his student years in France and Germany ~1924 - 1930. This collection of 50 traditional songs (ci词 ) and 6 sonnets in "Reed Flute Breeze" was first published around 1944, his coming to terms on love as sacrificial act when our poet decided to leave his second wife, a good and intellectually stimulating lady and mother of his three children, in order to offer the ultimate protection to another woman with little education and was in a deplorable domestic situation. We are fortunate to receive a manuscript with complete bilingual texts from translator Cheng Jiahui. For our coming issues, we might select a few more to reveal much dramatic truth as lived by Liang Zongdai with his passion, and also gracious understanding later on, from his second wife 沉樱, who could have taken it as a dejection but instead, transformed it into a blessing and became a prolific translator/publisher on her own in Taiwan. Our translator, Professor Cheng Jiahui 程家惠 has a dashing and daring style, most fitting to Kenneth Rexroth's remark as "an all-out advocate". I particularly love his treatment of last 3 lines in the original: "All will wither and fade, be it red or yellow. Hold infinity in hand, and eternity in the hollow"

Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot I. Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign? Because I do not hope to know again The infirm glory of the positive hour Because I do not think Because I know I shall not know The one veritable transitory power Because I cannot drink** There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice And pray to God to have mercy upon us And pray that I may forget These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us. Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

《聖灰星期三》-- translator S. Ye Laird 叶澍苍释译 * I. 因为我不再乞求变卦因为我不乞求因为我不乞求变卦渴望拥有此人的天才和彼人的天赋我不再努力不再费心于這些琐事（为何老鷹必然想要展開翅膀？）為什麼我必需哀悼人权，人命与人性的自然完了？因为我不再乞望我能洞解浩渺的历史时流因为我无心思考因为我知道我永远无法领悟唯一的千变万化的神通因为我无能化缘** 在彼岸，树木开花，春泉叮咚，在彼岸，万事不复，万物皆空。因为我知道时空永远是时空故土终归只是故土事故若为真，必仅有一回也尽在一方我开心于千事依旧万物自然我不求红脸的关公也不怕黑脸的张飞因为我不再乐意改造我的本性自然而然我欣喜若狂，尽心尽意标新立异神游于我的世外桃源，怡然自乐无穷稚趣。我只求菩萨勒令道长多存怜悯之心只求我能够忘却或超脱千情百酬中的自相矛盾因为我不肯回首且让我的言语答应好事多磨，何苦无事生非，但愿裁决之甲不得以压抑我等俗人。原来此翼已不再是比翼双飞之翼而仅仅是落魄的苟延残喘空气稀薄又干燥 , 比意念还要渺小我们由此领悟到无所不在的关怀无念的屏息静坐。请为我等罪人祈禱, 此刻及死神降临之时请为我祈祷，此刻及临终之际。

* "Ash Wednesday" was T.S. Eliot's first long poem, composed and published during the years 1927 - 1930. "Perch' Io non Spero" (part I of "Ash-Wednesday") was published in the Spring, 1928 issue of Commerce along with a French translation. I do not know if there was ever a complete Chinese translation of Part I. I started this translation in 2012, just before the Lent. This line 'Because these wings are no longer wings to fly...' gave me a long pause. I didn't pick up the translation until recently when I encountered this writing Grasping for Grace: The Strangeness and Difficulty of Faith in T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday : "Without wings, there is no transcendence, no salvation. With this in mind, I read Part I of the poem as depicting the radical loss of hope that comes when we rely only on what is earthly and human. Renouncing the “blessed face” is the equivalent of clipping our wings and accepting defeat." ** here 'Drink' as the act of partaking of the consecrated elements is translated to 化缘, in buddhism, to beg for alms; to collect alms.





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ModPo & Experimental Poetry Neurons Within this tiny darkened space Infinitesimal myriads race Inside and out To confound about They tumble here and stumble there And to my ire aloud they shout: “He said this, she whispered that, They bumped you there and tipped your hat, What of, what if, who, what, where, when...!” And when they finally come to rest Like snowflakes from a blizzard's wrest To snowflakes wafting slowly down If I don't plow away the mass Deluging clouds will soon befall; To ice will snow be soon amassed And then come myriads racing back. Hallana Youth Deprived Observe well The very many saplings that here dwell Who with dreams of becoming trees For abundant fruition one day Grow gray, gray, gray – Before fruition, they wither away. Observe all the wrinkles The discolored leaves; Though the young sapling tries to heave His listless young limbs and broken boughs 'Tis impossible, thus his head bows. And when the sap runs down his flesh He blinks to catch a glimpse below To see what lies before him, deep and low To grasp why his roots are numb and unsound. To his astonishment and torment he found That he had been planted in barren ground. Thus did all saplings raise their voice Moaning in sorrow did they curse their growth And the day when their sowers sowed seeds of lust Without considering Where they'd been thrust. Hallana

All I can hear is Ralph McTell's Streets of London Though in this moment the stars still shine and on a distant planet aliens are listening to a conversation every child has had with his mother over the sound of warplanes en route for that very particular mission light then silence the language tossed like sand into the cosmos. Deafening dark strata irradiates the universes de-vacuuming hiss I feel relieved of this, that sentient shamanic outpouring, the puzzle that vacillates. "I'll show you something to make you change your mind." The Rubix Cubes undoing, dart boards in the attic, a hoopla hoops perished orbit I'm hoarding my own Death Star from a near/far car park this out of town urban centre the future Palmyra like Dali's timepiece eroding. Am I the Aztec gunman with my Nazca lines fuzzing north? Who will sing of "from there to here" ? I will never leave this place alive only my words on 45,the aliens with turntables, cassette and MP3 players, slack jawed like Napoleon beholding the Rosetta Stone, an unreturned lend from the library of Alexandria. Fallen drones carpet the way. Terence Doyle

18:58 my life has fallen apart tumbling imperceptibly wearing away slowly, over months and years but in these few seconds the clock stopped all my private fantasies and my gyroscopic body came in touch with the reality of the moment. Lawrence Tirino

Mi vida se cae a pedazos revolcando imperceptiblemente degastando despacito, durante meses y años Pero en éstos pocos segundos el reloj se paro todas mis fantasías privadas y mi cuerpo giroscópico vino en contacto con la realidad del momento. Lawrence Tirino

COUNT ONE— FOUR

Broken English Stormy clouds pervade Molecules of differing magma Which stem from multiple Scenarios in a fluent language That is only understood by cosmonauts Adam Brown


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Dennis Aguinaldo *erasures of the criminal complaint of the United States of America v. Artem Vaulin. Better than Starbucks began wholly as a creation in my mind. Now the wonderful collaboration of four dedicated editors is creating a monthly magazine that I could have only dreamed about when I was starting out as a one person organization. Having said that, there are no direct connections between U Penn, Al Filreis, KWH (Kelly Writers House), ModPo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry), or any of the actual affiliated programs to ModPo and this magazine, other than I have been a part of ModPo for several years now. There is, however, a strong spiritual and intellectual connection between BTS and ModPo. If I had not gotten involved in the larger community of ModPo, I don't think I would have restarted a literary publication. I am certain I would not have added a Formal & Rhyming Page, and probably not a Translations page. I have a pretty narrow preference for poetry, but the course and the people at ModPo have expanded my view of poetry to the point that I decided if I could find good people to help me do it, we would make BTS as broad of a source of styles and genres as possible. We have been fortunate to establish a team of talented editors and are in the process of an ever expanding quest to find poetry wherever it may be. Thus, it seems fitting that we dedicate a page to my fellow students at ModPo, and/or anyone who wants to share experimental poems. The thing about experiments is, they often fail, but as the point is to learn, not to create perfection, even failed experiments, in the lab or on this page will offer something for us, if we will find it. and when the experiment doesn't fail... well, you will see! - Anthony Watkins


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"Get You Dirty" by Pamelyn Casto Hey, you're the one. You got yourself a fine little shape, looking so fresh and clean. Virginal. Unsoiled. You look like high class stuff that ought to get involved with someone like me. And I want to really get into you. Deep into you. That feel good to have me looking at you, to have me breathing on you like this? Feel good when I touch you with my hot hands? You know it does. You're coming with me. But I'm not promising you no forever shit. Might only be for one night. I got this big bed and a big desire to know you. You'll get real dirty with me too. I'll bring you down to my level and my level's pretty damned low sometimes. I'll bend that cute little uptight back of yours and I'll soil you, put my hands, my fingers, my presence, my marks all over you. And I'll take you at my leisure, slow or fast as I want. Make you mine for as long as I want you. You better know too that it ain't good, if it don't please me, you'll be out faster than a rabbit hopping on hot asphalt. And I'll have another in my bed in no time flat. There are so many who'll come home with me. Remember that. You'll have to work hard to satisfy me because I've been around. Plenty. And you'll never be the same again. When I'm through with you, you'll be damaged goods. Those who take their turn after me will be able pick you up for a few coins. Maybe even for free. You like that idea of being picked up cheap by just anyone that wants you? Or taken for free? Some do. Maybe you too. So let's really see that high class stuff you're advertising. Let's go find out what you're really like. What we're like together, mixing it up. You're mine because I want you. Bad. "Miss? I'll take this book. Can you ring it up for me?"



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Apology Peaches by Max Luque Through the kitchen window, I watched you pull into the driveway and get out of the car. You held a paper bag in one hand and your briefcase in the other. I opened the door for you, and you stood there smiling at me as though we hadn’t argued that morning. “Hi,” you said. “How was your day?” You leaned closer to me, and I knew that you wanted me to kiss you, but I pretended not to notice. “What’s in the bag?” I asked. “They’re apology peaches.” You pulled one out and held it to my mouth. I felt the fuzz touch my lips, and I let you stand there like that, holding the peach up to me, looking stupid with your arm outstretched. I wanted you to feel stupid for a second. I wanted you to know what it felt like. Then I bit into it and took it from your hand, our fingers touching briefly. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand and stared at you, waiting for you to say something, but you didn’t. You nudged past me and walked into the kitchen, setting your briefcase on the table. You pulled out a chair with a scraping sound, and then, sitting down, you took another peach from the bag and started eating it. “I thought you got those for me,” I said. “Oh. Right.” But you kept eating it. “So. Apology peaches.” “Yeah.” You held yours up. “Usually people just bring flowers in these situations.” “But you love peaches,” you said. You smiled, and I wanted to scream at you. I couldn’t help but say, “Apologizing means, like, saying sorry and admitting wrongdoing. Understanding what you did wrong.” You looked at me, but you didn’t say anything. “You can’t just . . . you can’t just show up at the end of the day with a bag of fruit and expect me to be, like . . . happy about it. It doesn’t work that way. It takes a bit more.” “What do you want me to do, then?” “I want you to tell me you’re sorry. I feel like . . . I feel like you don’t even understand why I’m upset. You don’t even know why I was upset in the first place.” “That’s not true.” “God damn it. You can’t just shove a fucking peach in my face and make me forgive you. Why is that so hard for you to understand?” Then you were silent. You put your half-eaten peach on the table next to your briefcase. “Leo. I’m sorry.” “It takes a bit more than that,” I said, and I felt the anger pressing on my skin. “I know that I was short with you this morning,” you said. “And I’m sorry about that. I really am. I have a lot of work things on my mind and…I know it was wrong of me to take it out on you. Do you feel better now?” I wanted to throw the peach at you, but I didn’t. I said, “I just don’t like it when you treat me in a way you shouldn’t just because you’re in a bad mood. It just hurts, that’s all. I just wish you could’ve apologized for it with your words first instead of trying to use peaches to get out of it.” You stared just past me at some spot on the wall. Then you closed your eyes and said, “When are you going to stop punishing me, Leo?” “What?” “When are you going to stop punishing me?” “What do you mean?” “I know that I hurt you before. I know that I did everything wrong before, but this is different now. This is me trying to be with you properly. This is me being with you for real, and you know that. You know that I’m not leaving.” “That’s the thing, though, Daniel. I don’t know that. I don’t know anything, okay?” “Leo, come on. It’s different now. This” – you stood up, spread your arms, and pointed at different parts of the kitchen – “This is ours. This is us being together. This is our house, and these are our things. I mean…I’m not leaving again. You need to believe me.” Continued on Fiction Page 2

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Apology Peaches continued “You don’t get it.” I felt peach juice on my fingers. “I don’t know what you want me to get.” “You have no idea,” I said. “You don’t know what it was like for me.” “It’s different now.” “I know that, but . . . but you don’t get it. You just don’t get it. That type of thing . . . It really messes with me, you know? You were always like, ‘Oh, I’m back with my wife now. Oh, my wife is ending the separation and we’re not getting divorced. Oh, I can’t do this, because I can’t handle it. Oh, I love you, but I can’t be with you.’” “Leo.” “What? What do you want me to say? I’m not going to lie to you about this. It really, really fucked me up, okay? And you’ll never understand that. You’ll never know how it feels to be on the hook like that for so long, waiting and waiting around for you to be with me. I was, like, waiting for you to love me back for so fucking long.” I thought of all the times that I lay in bed and watched you get dressed and leave without looking at me. I thought of all the mornings when I woke up without you, when I didn’t know if I would see you again. You would leave me notes that told me not to call, notes that said, I can’t do this. I’m sorry. “Leo. Look at me,” you said. And I didn’t want to, but I did, because I always did what you asked. Then you said, “I always loved you.” “YOU BROKE MY HEART.” It came out of my mouth before I was aware of saying it, and it hung there in the air between us, loud and ugly. We stared at each other, a little breathless, and I wondered if you felt as scared as I did. I hadn’t yelled at you like that before. Slowly, you moved towards me, your hands out in front of you. You asked if you could touch me, and I nodded. Then you pulled me into you, wrapping your arms around me tight, until it was hard to breathe. You whispered, “You have to forgive me. Please forgive me. We can’t do this if you don’t.” “I’m trying,” I said, and it was true. “You know that I love you,” you said. You put your hands on my shoulders and made me look at you when you said it. “Of course I know that.” I let you kiss me, then I let you take the peach from my hand and throw it away.

That night, we made dinner together, and though we spoke as though nothing had happened before, as though I hadn’t told you that you broke my heart, something was strained and different between us. We laughed a little too loud for a little too long, and we were afraid of silence. We watched Food Network together, and not because we really liked it, but because we didn’t want to risk any kind of argument over what movie to watch. Sitting together on the couch, I rested my legs on your lap the way we both like it. You placed your hands on my knees. After two hours of watching television, you turned it off. You grabbed my legs and moved them off of you, then you took my hand and walked with me to the bedroom. It was something you hadn’t done before – taking my hand and leading me like that. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but before I could decide, we were sitting on our bed, your lips on my neck. I thought of that line from that song, the line that says, I don’t want to be your friend, I want to kiss your neck. I felt something breaking in my chest when I thought of that song, because it made me think of how it used to be. It made me think of the waiting, the waiting that seemed endless, but I still would’ve waited forever for you. And just as I began to wonder how I could’ve lost so much of myself, you were unbuttoning my shirt, and I found myself taking off your belt. “I love you,” you said when you were inside me. You made it last longer than usual, and I thought of all the things we’d never done together. We never danced together. We never went camping together. We never read to each other. We never went on vacation together – not really, not in the way that normal couples do. We never went to a wedding together. “What’s wrong?” you asked, stopping for a moment. “Nothing. I just . . . I love you, Daniel.” You smiled and started again, but you knew I was lying when I said that nothing was wrong. That’s why you held me a little closer that night when we slept. We woke up to your alarm at seven, and I felt your stubble scratch my cheek when you kissed me. I couldn’t look at you when you got up and walked into the bathroom. You closed the door, and when I heard you start the shower, I got out of bed and sat at your desk. Hands shaking, I picked up a pen and wrote you a note, then I placed it on your pillow. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I love you. I put on some pants and a shirt, and then I went into the kitchen. The paper bag was still on the table, and I took one of the peaches. I went back into the bedroom and put it next to the note. And then I left.


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January 2017 Vol. II No. I


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Better than Starbucks by Subscription Coming Soon! Now with Four Full Pages of Poetry!

Better than Starbucks, the Interview, Michael R. Burch

General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird

Featured Poem of the Month

Visiting a Farmhouse as Children Our fears roam in the other part-of-house that seals breath behind a cold door. The angels of some dead wife string wisps of cotton candy to fringe the rag rug and leave sugar prints on the dresser. We feature them as who, how, and why that goes on beyond that door cut off from cob. While angels’ bony knives ply sprinkles to phantom air, quilts of butterflies cheer us, their eyes winking at fright. Jan Wiezorek Wiezorek teaches writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and has poetry forthcoming at The London Magazine, Panoplyzine, and Schuylkill Valley Journal online. He is author of Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011) and holds a master's in English Composition/Writing from Northeastern Illinois University.


...and now....

Publisher Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins shares his latest thoughts and/or poems about whatever crosses his mind This Month: "Hardcopies and Hard Time"

The BTS Interview with Michael R. Burch with Vera Ignatowitsch Vera: What inspired or impelled you to become a poet? Was it tied to a defining event in your life? Michael: I think the first influence came very early in my life, when my mother would recite "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes to me and my two sisters. This was when I was a very young boy, perhaps six or thereabouts. I later learned that Noyes died the year I was born, an interesting synchronicity. But I didn't think much about poetry, in terms of writing it, until my early teens. I had some friends who were in a rock group, but I had no musical ability. I had, however, become a fan of poet-songwriters like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. Then one day I started leafing through the pages of my high school Literature book, reading the poems independently, and something clicked. Some of the poems, by poets like William Blake and A. E. Housman, seemed quite magical to me. If I couldn't write songs, perhaps I could write poems. That was the beginning of my love affair with writing poetry, because it seemed to me that I did have a talent for writing poems. I remember sitting in the break room of a McDonald's where I worked to earn money for college, looking at a poem I had written, thinking, "Did I just write that?" It seemed that I had produced something a bit magical, at a fairly early age. Now that I have been published around 2,500 times, it seems that I may have had some talent for writing poetry. Vera: You are known as a Formalist, yet you also write free verse. Do you have a preference between the two? Michael: In one way no, in another way yes. I don't think that one genre is superior to the other. There are great metrical poems, and there are great free verse poems. As a reader, I simply like great writing, and it doesn't matter to me how poems are constructed. However, as a writer I find myself writing more metrical, rhyming poems. And I think most readers still enjoy meter and rhyme. For instance, most popular songs are metrical, rhyming poems set to music. Why not give readers what they like? If a poet who claims free verse is "superior" to metrical, rhymed poems is asked to name his top ten songs with words, chances are that all ten will have rhyming lyrics. And I remember reading a book called Touchstones in which a number of free verse poets discussed their favorite poems. If I remember correctly, most of the poets named rhyming poems. And the three best-known founders of English free verse -- Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot -- all wrote rhyming poems. Ironically, Walt Whitman's best-known poem may be "O Captain! My Captain!" The world is full of those sort of ironies. In short, I value both genres equally, but when I write poems they usually end up with meter and rhyme.

The BTS Interview, continued

If you know a literary sort, a poet, an author, a teacher of literature, or just a truly all around interesting character, and you think it might be fun to get their thoughts down on "paper". Let us know, if you have contact info, all the better, but we have our ways....


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The BTS Interview: Michael R. Burch The BTS Inteview Page 1 Vera: How do you view the marginalization of formal forms and rhyme in modern poetry? Michael: I think it has been very unfortunate. The marginalization of formal poetry created a lot of understandable bitterness on the part of poets who continued to work in meter and rhyme. They were denied publication in most of the socalled "major" journals for many years. They were denied awards and honors. It was, in my opinion, discrimination. I think things have improved in recent years, and the rise of the Internet has made things more democratic, as readers can find the kind of poems they prefer without going through discriminatory journals, if they still discriminate. Vera: What purpose do you believe poetry serves? What purpose could and should it serve in our modern culture? Michael: I think poetry can serve many purposes. I think it is true that art can be merely for the sake of art. Poetry is an art and it doesn't have to serve any other purpose, except to please readers. But in the right hands, poetry certainly can do other things. For instance, Robert Burns and William Blake spoke eloquently about social injustices, calling for real equality and justice for commoners at a time when the rich ruled everything. On the eve of the French Revolution, Burns was already writing about the rights of women. Blake was the first artist, to my knowledge, to graphically depict the horrible cruelties of the slave trade. Walt Whitman wrote about, and perhaps helped create, a more tolerant America where everyone could be embraced, whether black or white, male or female, gay or straight. Those poets had tremendous influence on songwriters like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen. They were, in my opinion, the first wave of tolerance. We have been catching their wave ever since, or we should be catching the wave! Poets and songwriters have also been powerful voices for peace, and against war. Wilfred Owen was one of the first major poets to argue against the idea that the battlefield was a place of "honor" and "glory." Sappho, the first great lyric poet that we know by name, wrote a poem many centuries ago in which she called for love, not war. She may have been the first "flower child" and she remains one of the most compelling voices for love, compassion and tolerance. Another ancient poet that I really admire in this regard is the Archpoet. He may have been the first "rogue scholar," and he wrote a blistering "Confession" in which he skewered the hypocritical priests of his day. Hell, the ancient Hebrew prophets who gave us large portions of the Bible were reform-minded poets! I think poetry can and has done a lot, in the arena of social change.

Vera: Are you working on any new poetry projects at present? Michael: I have been writing a lot of poetry and prose that is pro-tolerance and anti-Trump these days. I never planned on being a political poet, but some of my political poems, puns and jokes have "gone viral." If Trump is defeated, as I hope and believe he will be, I may have a few years to work on other projects, until the next scourge appears! Vera: As traditional publishing declines, do you envision new ways in which poetry, and its aficionados, could interact, connect, and grow? Michael: Yes, I think the Internet has really changed things, and in many ways for the better. Poetry is no longer controlled by a few professor-poets sitting in ivory towers, favoring their peers. It is up to poets to figure out how to write poetry that other people will enjoy reading, and they must also figure out how to make their poems accessible to readers. I think I am something of a trailblazer in this regard, as my literary website, The HyperTexts (www.thehypertexts.com), is considered very "relevant" by Google, and we are currently getting around two million page views per year, a figure that keeps going up. Google is a lot more democratic than the ivory-tower sitters, so I no longer have to worry about what they are saying and doing. Vera: How large a role does The HyperTexts play in your life? Michael: I have devoted a lot of my free time to The HyperTexts over the last twenty years. I'm a writer and I want to be read. Having millions of readers is a blessing. It makes me feel that I've accomplished a lot, as a poet, editor and publisher. Hopefully, I have entertained readers, and at times I may have opened their eyes to new and better ideas. If so, I have followed in the footsteps of poets I admire, such as Sappho, the Archpoet, Blake, Burns and Whitman. It has also been my honor and pleasure to publish poets with important things to say, who said it well, such as Jack Butler, Jared Carter, the Estonian Holocaust survivor Anita Dorn, Janet Kenny, the Jewish Holocaust survivor Yala Korwin, Tom Merrill, Richard Moore, Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), Miklós Radnóti (who unfortunately did not survive the Holocaust), Harvey Stanbrough, and Luis Omar Salinas.

Observance Here the hills are old, and rolling carefully in their old age; on the horizon youthful mountains bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . . By dying leaves and falling raindrops, I have traced time's starts and stops, Something and I have known the years to pass almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . . for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba For here the valleys fill with sunlight Something inescapable is lost— to the brim, then empty again, lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, and it seems that only I notice vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars how the years flood out, and in . . . immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is gone— Michael Burch: I wrote this poem as a teenager. I was working at gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn, McDonald’s at the time, and wrote it in the break room. It was the first scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass poem that made me feel like a “real poet,” so I will always treasure it. and remembrance. The poem was published as “Reckoning” by Arkansas Tech University in Nebo: A Literary Journal, then by Tucumcari Literary Review. After Something unforgettable is past— being revised and renamed “Observance,” it was selected as a top 100 blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less, This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

and finality has swept into a corner where it lies in dust and cobwebs and silence. Michael Burch: This is the first poem I wrote which didn’t rhyme, and the only one for quite some time. It has been published by There is Something in the Autumn (Anthology), The Eclectic Muse, FreeXpression (an Australian writers’ magazine where I was the featured International Poet in the March 2013 issue), and Life and Legend.

Michael Burch with William Sykes Harris, his wife's grandfather

poem in the 1999 Writer’s Digest rhyming poetry contest, out of over 13,000 overall contest entries. It also won 4th place in another large poetry contest by Iliad Press. It was subsequently published in Piedmont Literary Review, Verses, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and the anthology There is Something in the Autumn. Not too shabby for a teenage poet! Infinity Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair? Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach, then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach? Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage? Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too, have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue. Michael Burch: This is the other poem that made me feel like a "real poet" in the early days of my career. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence and Poetry Life & Times.

About the Ads you see for Kelly Writers House and Poem Talk: Two years ago I took a free class on Coursera called Modern Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania's Al Filries. Since then, I have been a Community TA. I credit Al and ModPo with recreating my need to publish again. When we first started, I thought it would look better with a few advertisements, so I asked Al if I could run a couple of free ads and he said yes. Anthony Watkins


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Use links below to connect to other poetry sections Haiku Poetry with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird

Give Me Booze or Give me Jesus Give me booze or give me Jesus If we listened to the bottom of the vodka bottle, or finished the last chapter book of Revelation, the spirits toss in the cards, the chipspray for a gambler. Listen to summer sun, birds that chirp, these are the beginnings and where it ends. Maya calendar. -Michael Lee Johnson Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He now lives in Itasca, Illinois, and has been widely published. He edits 10 poetry sites. Michael is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom, several chapbooks of poetry, and many poetry videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrym anusa/videos . Johnson has 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015 & Best of the Net 2016.

I Buried Mississippi In two small black boxes With my brother I went back down to Union line cemetery one last time and laid my mama and my daddy In their final resting place there is still a Mississippi But it ain't mine and I am not its nor Alabama either buried them all In that shallow grave I buried Mississippi until it buries me. Anthony Watkins Besides publishing this poetry magazine, Anthony has published 14 chapbooks as well as a couple of hardcover collections of poetry. He constantly blogs, writes short stories and generally can't be separated from his laptop keyboard for any great length of time.

About the Ads you see for Kelly Writers House and Poem Talk: Two years ago I took a free class on Coursera called Modern Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania's Al Filries. Since then, I have been a Community TA. I credit Al and ModPo with recreating my need to publish again. When we first started, I thought it would look better with a few advertisements, so I asked Al if I could run a couple of free ads. He said yes.

Prison Writing

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University where he is advisor for The Chimes, the University’s poetry and arts publication. Poussin’s writing and photography have been published widely in the United States and abroad, including The Front Porch Review and the San Pedro River Review.


White World Imagine a day without light, a sun that dies without warning, the universe when all stars have perished, and the waters on Earth reflect no rainbow. Picture the deep blue of your eyes, as it becomes lifeless, white, and dissipates within the milky way; observe a night thickening, where the moon is languid in desperation. Learn to feed a fertile imagination, walking in a darkness without known end, around you form the shapes and hues you once knew, your heart will be nurtured or it will die. No need to try and record the world; memories are all you need; revive your senses from inside your very being, infinite as your may be, the cells remember what once awakened them. See in the unfathomable obscurity, dreams never perish, heaven awaits; your heart larger than the depth yet not traveled, pleasure immeasurable found within you. Stars come to be again on the walls inside, as you invent a universe made for you and I; you close the eyes of a soul where no one may go, to a creation not unlike that which your beauty desired. So you will not see again, fortunate you are, the creation is yours, you are the mistress who decides on red, black, on green on this house; please enter, my secrets to your revealed. Night day, day night, white black, light dark, now all one, now all none, you know it matters not, a hand on your breast, your heart beats, your chest heaves, conqueror, in day and night your live forevermore. Fabrice Poussin

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Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Richard Wright (1908-1960) was among the first great African- American novelists. Best known for his master work” Native Son” (partially funded by a Guggenheim grant), he also published the semi- autobiographical “Black Boy” and” White Man, Listen!” Born in rural Mississippi, Wright expatriated to France, in which country he died. Wright was known not only for the beauty of his writing, but also for his emphasis on racial themes. In his private life, he held ever fluctuating controversial political opinions. Critics and supporters alike recognize him as a major literary voice. He might well have been America’s first haiku master. In haiku he found an almost Taoist balance between the spirit and the natural world. There was to be found an inner peace not experienced in the narrative that was his life. In the final eighteen months of his life, he wrote an astonishing 4000 haiku, all of the highest quality. Significantly the title to his published work is” Haiku: This Other World.” Wright found the enlightenment he craved in the seventeen syllable form. The introduction to” Haiku: This Other World” was written by his daughter Julia, and describes one of the finest dedications to an art form I have ever read. “One of my last memories of my father during the summer and autumn months before he died is his crafting of thousands of haiku. He was never without his haiku binder under his arm. He wrote them everywhere, at all hours: in bed as he slowly recovered from a year-long battle against amoebic dysentery; in cafes and restaurants where he counted syllables on napkins; in the country, in a writing community owned by French friends. Although he had at last overcome the amoebas, he was often inexplicably exhausted and feverish. “My father’s law in those days revolved around the rules of haiku writing, and I remember how he would hang pages and pages of them up, as if to dry in his sunless studio in Paris, like the abstract still life photographs he used to compose and develop himself at the beginning of his Paris exile." “Some of us will even find these deceptively simple patterns of syllables tap-dancing in our minds long after they are read. They are Richard Wright’s poetry of loss and retrieval, of temperate joy and wistful humor. They lie somewhere between the loss for words and the few charmed syllables that can heal the loss.”

I’ve selected five of Wright’s verse as examples of his mastery. There will be more published in coming months. I am nobody: A red sinking Autumn sun Took my name away. In a misty rain A butterfly is riding The tail of a cow. On winter mornings The candle shows faint markings Of the teeth of rats. One magnolia Landed upon another In the dew-wet grass. A thin waterfall Dribbles the whole Autumn night,How lonely it is. -Richard Wright Late in the season Black pennant dragonflies Rest on pine needles. In this heavy fog, Stars are made invisible: Sounds in the wet-lands. -Kevin McLaughin This next haiku has been published due to a special request I made to the poet, James Godfrey, a musician/ Industrial Engineer from Shrub Oak, New York. Classical haiku has a historical link to the four seasons and the changing of those seasons. In Japanese, this is known as kigo, and was considered an inviolate part of any true poem. I have never read a verse that captured the essence of kigo in a purer form. Take your time reading this verse. Immerse yourself in the Winter Solstice. The First Zen Patriarch, Bodhidharma, wrote (Red Pine translation), “The cave of the five senses is the hall of zen. The opening of the inner eye is the door of the great vehicle. What could be clearer?” To write a significant haiku is to experience Big Mind, however briefly. The solstice is near. The Sun begins its return, In long cold shadows. The snake slithers by The cat becomes confounded With the coral, death, -James Godfrey

Yet once more I encourage all haiku writers to share their work, their insights into the nature of all things, with fellow poets and BTS readers. For those interested in beginning to write haiku, I recommend you cast back into the BTS archives and reference the September haiku column. It provides a pretty thorough explanation of the basic format.

While paging through “Abundance Press: Best of Haiku,” published in 2000, I came across contributions by a poet best known for his work in non-haiku, who blinked open his Zen eye, turned invisible, and wrote of the natural world. I am referring to our publisher Anthony Watkins. We will have two more of Anthony’s haiku in the February column. Sunlight on moss ferns Filters as a settling fire Among pine and sand. Fields of legume grass Wait for nothing but the wind To caress hardwoods. Deciduous leaves Turn brown and silver against Green cypress and pine. -Anthony Watkins Joan McNerney could almost be considered this page’s house poet. I love the profound intimacy of her work, an intimacy into which the poet and the noise of an “I” obtrude just ever so subtly. Joan captures the stillness that is ever present in motion. It is the white hour Between deep night and soft dawn. Even the wren stares. Summer evening Sun and moon share the sky in Perfect symmetry. Splash. One word in Oceans of sound. -Joan McNerney “Thing of beauty,” I thought when I read Amanpreem Multani’s poetry. “ Zen and beauty have been found in a landfill.” I realize this piece can be read on several different levels, and thank Mr. Multani for allowing me to incorporate the work into the BTS haiku page. Love is to open sky As loathing is to a landfill filled With memories. -Amanpreem Multani Sneha has written “Literature is the very essence of that fabric which binds life with living… literature embodies those subterranean hinges that cannot be reached mechanically to its core but in the sheer pleasure of revisiting, rereading and reengaging with its seminal discourses.” I believe this vision is clearly conveyed in a verse titled ‘dwindle.' The day of scant Leaves wear a brown gown With a milk bodice of dust. -Sneha

-Kevin McLaughlin, Haiku Editor.


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Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Our Interview this month is with Michael R. Burch, Formalist poet and editor of The HyperTexts, and we are proud to offer another of his beautiful poems..

Isolde’s Song

After the deaths of Tristram and Isolde, a hazel and a honeysuckle grew out of their graves until the branches intertwined and could not be parted.

Through our long years of dreaming to be one we grew toward an enigmatic light that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun? We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite the lack of all sensation—all but one: we felt the night’s deep chill, the air so bright at dawn we quivered limply, overcome. To touch was all we knew, and how to bask. We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt spring’s urgency, midsummer’s heat, fall’s lash, wild winter’s ice and thaw and fervent melt. We felt returning light and could not ask its meaning, or if something was withheld more glorious. To touch seemed life’s great task. At last the petal of me learned: unfold. And you were there, surrounding me. We touched. The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched, and learned to cling and, finally, to hold. Originally published by The Raintown Review and nominated for the Pushcart Prize Michael R. Burch’s poems have been translated into nine languages and set to music by the composers Alexander Comitas and Seth Wright. Burch’s poems, essays, articles and letters have appeared more than 2,000 times around the globe in publications which includeTIME, USA Today, BBC Radio 3, The Hindu, Kritya, Gostinaya, Light, The Lyric, Measure, Angle, Black Medina, The Chariton Review, Poet Lore, The Chimaera, Poem Today, Verse Weekly, ByLine, Unlikely Stories and Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing. He also edits and publishes www.thehypertexts.com.

One More Breathe out, breathe in your fill of willful air. Now that the meds are gone, you're free to go but hold your ground for one more breath, one more act of defiance. Make death wait its turn on pins and needles for a change as you breathe out, breathe in your fill of willful air - deep, sudden, hungry gulps, each one a dare, your wasted body boasting it's not through, will hold its ground for one more breath, one more. Your eyes open. You smile. I smile. Hello there, I'm dying, you say. I hold your hand. I know, breathe in, breathe out my fill of clear-eyed air. This must be the time to finally share my secret -- I get all my strength from you, to stand my ground for one more breath, one more day and face down half of what you do, bare -knuckled, bleeding, defiant, razor-tongued. You breathe out, breathe in your fill of willful air and hold your ground for one more, one more, one more - originally published by The Road Not Taken Michael Getty is a writer and educator who lives with his husband in St. Louis, Missouri. His work has appeared in The Healing Muse, Pidgeonholes, and is forthcoming in Poetica

“Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.” ~~Don Marquis

I'll Wait Alas there is an echo, though but small come from a drifting petal after all, so monumental such a thing appears if nothing would be less then I'm all ears. We must not limit self but go beyond, Oklahoma House it only takes one pebble in a pond to send the ripples to the farthest shore A broken home sits on a hillside, and to the deepest depths, the basin's floor. A gust of wind sings through its ribs; Grass pokes through its rotted floorboards, Just like the dropping of the pebble be Its curtains billowed by the winds. a mighty force dispensing poetry, together we can fill that massive hole The dishrag hangs, still folded neatly a petal thrown from every poet's soul; As it was hung up there with care to make that old Grand Canyon overflow Years ago by ghosts of people with poetry that all the world will know, Who once lived, then turned to air. we care not whether echoes will be heard for something greater then will have occurred. Look and you can see them leaving, A half-packed suitcase on the floor. And so we say to you old Don Marquis Clothes still hang on rusted hangers; it was not an impossibility; The pantry still has jars in store. improbable as so much often seems, the echoes are for poets in their dreams. There are footprints in the carpet Trapped below by years of dust DE Navarro is the Founder of NavWorks Press. He is an author, poet, Someone’s dreams are still there sleeping editor, publisher, speaker, and life coach. He is the originator and On bed frames stripped and thick with rust. owner of the We Write PoetryTM forums and the Pride in Poetry PrizeTM and Publication. He is a husband, father, mentor and friend All the footsteps that were made here and Banking Sr Analyst, Tech Editor/Writer. Visit DE's beautiful Are covered up by drifts of snow. Website at http://www.de-navarro.com for peace and to learn more When weary, wrung out people leave about his work. He lives in Greater Los Angeles where he writes and How do their stranded houses know? publishes. His most recent book, Dare to Soar, is a poetic journey via 151 poems and 12 essays, diverse in style, tone, voice, approach and This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

Ruslan Garrey is a Russian born poet now living in Gunsan, South Korea. He previously founded the North Fork Oklahoma Writers and his work has been featured in Short Orders Poems and Anthroposcene.

Lighthearted Verse & Limericks... There now is a man in the Azores who has a young lady he adores. As she does eight chores he mans the great oars and both of them enjoy midday snores.

J ohn J Mathews member of DE Navarro’s We Write Poetry Wordshop LOVE POEM À LA PARKER My love, she is a pretty thing, a dream of girlish charm, a regular siren when she'd sing (at least, a car alarm). She laughs with such a dainty trill, you'd never think of thunder, and curses with such modest skill the devils blush, down under. She's witty, tasteful, wrinkle-free-it's like she can't grow older! (You won't hear otherwise from me: she's reading over my shoulder). Charles Joseph Albert


form, to explore self, humanity, the city, country, nature, people, society, life, and spirituality. Two to Six Players Let me thank you kindly, Milton Bradley, For this lovely marriage of Dilly/Dally Which you call Life: This boxed experience, This packaged heteronormativity— Self-expression reduced to Blue and Pink And fossil-fueled, put-putting sedans: Monochromatic, even their windshields. And God forbid one wins without breeding. One gets the feeling that one has domain Over Time itself, spinning the clock-like Wheel (though it’s base-ten) front and center, Watching each peg be flicked/molested by A plastic prick, the players made agents Of their fortune: one hustleless-bustleless. Devin Taylor studies English and Creative Writing at Washington College. His work can be found in Five 2 One, Maudlin House, BLYNKT among others. He has forthcoming publications in Gargoyle, Infinity Ink, Clockwise Cat, and elsewhere. He plays bass and electric kazoo and aspires to be a golden retriever.

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an excerpt from “The Poeny Pavillion” translated by Susan Ye Laird , first published in Oct. 2010 《牧丹亭》汤显祖 (1550-1616) 情不知所起,一往而深. 生者可以死,死可以生, 生而不可与死,死而不可复生者, 皆非情之至也. 梦中之情,何必非真,天下岂少梦中人耶? Adoration knows not how and when it is seeded Once it sprouts, it has a life of its own and knows no bounds Living touches death, death becomes so alive. If what lives can not accompany what is dead, and what is dead can not reseed and do loving thee both have not reached the fullness of one cosmic breath Lovers of the dream, why it has to be not real? it is not like this world is devoid of dreamers.

Two variations on translating 'Dreams are well, but waking's better' , from Emily Dickinson's English to modern Chinese by this editor, another much closer translation in style and in the form of classic Chinese was done by Philomèle from paper-republic.org. 梦想 — 多好 — 苏醒更好，一如清晨的醒悟 — 要是半夜醒来 — 何不再添梦想 — 黎明的到来？

更甜的 — 是不知情的知更鸟 — 从不为栖息的树吟歌取乐 — 更不会因破晓 — 反唇相讥 — 至始至终 —

Dreams — are well — but Waking's better, If One wake at morn — If One wake at Midnight — better — Dreaming — of the Dawn — Sweeter — the Surmising Robins — Never gladdened Tree — Than a Solid Dawn — confronting — Leading to no Day — 晨悟醒好梦更好，夜悟不如梦晨阳。多问雀之无欢树，甜于屹立无昼光。

"The world is too much with us" by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

translated by Li Qingzhou＊, originally shared on sciencenet.cn 世与我纷纷；时光中浮沉，得与失同在，荒芜了此生；看不见，天性所爱之丘山；心为形役，迷途已远！海向月露襟怀，风自呼啸不休，众类会归, 与花同寂，万物谐律，却与我相离；至高的主，恕我无动于衷！我情愿作个异端，沉沦于信仰之墟; 如此，或立于明媚的草地上，环顾四方，稍慰绝望；看，波图斯自海上升腾；听，特里同将他的螺号吹响。

* Mr. 李轻舟 originally shared his translation of William Wordsworth within the context of transposing "The world is too much with us" with another famous Chinese Classic work《归去来兮辞》 by one of the foremost "recluse" poets -- Tao Yuanming (365–427) . There are a couple English translations masterfully done of 《归去来兮辞》. We like to save it for later.

* First published in The New Yorker. Vol. 21 (1945), N 3. And the first public reading by Nabokov was at Filene's Department Store in Boston to an audience assembled to hear New England's leading poet, Robert Frost. This poem also appeared on p.134 - p.138 in 'Selected Poems'(2012) by Vladmir Nabokov, edited by Thomas Karshan, new translations by Dimitri Nabokov . Nabokov's other essays on the sins of translating poetry isn't as illustrious as 'an evening of Russian Poetry'(1945) and his 'Pale Fire' (1962) by this editor's point of view.


Vladimir Nabokov, "An Evening of Russian Poetry" * The subject chosen for tonight's discussion Is everywhere, though often incomplete: when their basaltic bank become too steep, most rivers use a kind of rapid Russian, and so do children talking in their sleep. My little helper at the magic lantern, insert that slide and let the colored beam project my name or any such-like phantom in Slavic characters upon the screen. The other way, the other way. I thank you. On mellow hills the Greek, as you remember, fashioned his alphabet from cranes in flight; his arrows crossed the sunset, then the night. Our simple skyline and a taste for timber, The influence of hives and conifers, reshaped the arrows and the borrowed birds. Yes, Sylvia? 'Why do you speak of words When all we want is knowledge nicely browned?' Because all hangs together – shape and sound heather and honey, vessel and content. Not only rainbows – every line is bent, and skulls and seeds and all good words are round, like Russian verse, like our colossal vowels: those painted eggs, those glossy pitcher flowers that swallow whole a golden bumblebee those shells that hold a thimble and the sea. Next question. 'Is your prosody like ours?' Well, Emmy, our pentameter may seem To foreign ears as if it could not rouse The limp iambus from its pyrrhic dream. But close your eyes and listen to the line. The melody unwinds; the middle word is marvelously long and serpentine: you hear one beat, but you have also heard the shadow of another, then the third touches the gong, and then the fourth one sighs. It makes a very fascinating noise: it open slowly, like a greyish rose In pedagogic films of long ago. The rhyme is the line's birthday, as you know, and there certain customary twins in Russian as in other tongues. For instance, love automatically rhymes with blood, nature with liberty, sadness with distance, humane with everlasting, prince with mud, moon with a multitude of words, but sun and song and wind and life and death with none. Beyond the seas where I have lost a scepter, I hear the neighing of my dappled nouns, soft participles coming down the steps, treading on leaves, trailing their rustling gowns, and liquid verbs in ahla and in ili, Aonian grottoes, nights in the Altai, black pools of sound with "I"s for water lilies. The empty glass I touched is tinkling still, but now 'tis covered by a hand and dies.

My back is Argus-eyed. I live in danger. False shadows turn to track me as I pass and, wearing beards, disguised as secret agents, creep in to blot the freshly written page and read the blotter in the looking glass. And in the dark, under my bedroom window, until, with a chill whirr and shiver, day presses its starter, warily they linger or silently approach the door and ring the bell of memory and run away. Let me allude, before the spell is broken, to Pushkin, rocking in his coach on long and lonely roads: he dozed, then he awoke, undid the collar of his traveling cloak, and yawned, and listened to the driver's song. Amorphous sallow bushes called rakeety, enormous clouds above an endless plain, songline and skyline endlessly repeated, the smell of grass and leather in the rain. And then the sob, the syncope (Nekrasov!) the panting syllables that climb and climb, obsessively repetitive and rasping, dearer to some than any other rhyme. And lovers meeting in a tangled garden, dreaming of mankind, of untrammeled life, mingling their longings in the moonlight garden, where trees and hearts are larger than in life. This passion for expansion you may follow throughout our poetry. We want the mole to be a lynx or turn into a swallow by some sublime mutation of the soul. But no unneeded symbols consecrated, escorted by a vaguely infantile path for bare feet, our roads were always fated to lead into the silence of exile. Had I more time tonight I would unfold the whole amazing story – neighukluzhe, nevynossimo – but I have to go. What did I say under my breath? I spoke to a blind songbird hidden in a hat, safe from my thumbs and from the eggs I broke into the gibus brimming with their yolk. And now I must remind you in conclusion, that I am followed everywhere and that space is collapsible, although the bounty of memory is often incomplete: once in a dusty place of Mora county (half town, half desert, dump mound and mesquite) and once in West Virginia (a muddy red road between an orchard and a veil of rapid rain) it came, that sudden shudder, a Russian something that I could inhale but could not see. Some rapid words were uttered – and then the child slept on, the door was shut. The conjurer collects his poor belongings – the colored handkerchief, the magic rope, the double-bottomed rhymes, the cage, the song. You tell him of the passes you detected. The mystery remains intact. The check comes forward in the smiling envelope.

'Trees? Animals? Your favorite precious stone?' The birch tree, Cynthia, the fir tree, Joan. Like a small caterpillar on its thread, "How would you say "delightful talk' in Russian? my heart keeps dangling from a leaf long dead How would you say 'good night?' " but hanging still, and still I see the slender white birch that stands on tiptoe in the wind, Oh, that would be: and firs beginning where the garden ends, the evening ember glowing through their cinders. Bessonitza, tvoy vzor oonyl I strashen; lubov' moya, outsoopnika prostee. Among the animals that haunt our verse, that bird of bards, regale of night, comes first: (Insomnia, your stare is dull and ashen, scores of locutions mimicking its throat my love, forgive me this apostasy.) render its very whistling, bubbling, bursting, flutelike or cuckoolike or ghostlike note. But lapidary epithets are few; we do not deal in universal rubies. The angle and the glitter are subdued; our reaches lie concealed. We never liked the jeweler's window in the rainy night. This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>


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Ink

With a twisting of the rusty doorknob, a creaking of an unoiled hinge, and a tepid breeze rushing through the opening door, Martin entered the house. It was the last day before his school’s summer vacation, a time of year when he would retreat to his room to pour over the archive of novels on his bookshelf, attempting to unearth the many secrets authors before him had encoded in their pages. Although these efforts detracted from his ability to forge friendships, fifteen-year-old Martin was indifferent to any such loss, all too focused on the information ripe for the harvesting within the walls of his own home. He scanned the house. Placed with a calculated precision atop the circular burner on the stove was the family’s bright red kettle, its globular base covering the metal spires underneath, and its curved nozzle, like that of a grazing animal, reaching towards the adjacent window. The spout’s careful positioning towards the glass meant one thing: his father was home. The ensuing chain of events, with the kettle fogging up the kitchen window and his father inscribing proverbs on its moist canvas, was impossible to mistake. “What are you reading?” Martin asked as he entered the family den, his springy blonde curls of hair scraping the wood paneling of the lowhanging foyer ceiling. “I’m not,” his father peeled apart the pages of the newspaper he was holding, turning the parchment for Martin to see. Bright pixelated colors sprung off the page, and the wide-eyed cartoon characters reminded Martin of his father’s childlike attraction to comic strips. “But some of these are pretty funny today,” his father chuckled. The room fell quiet. “What’s wrong?” His father never failed to recognize when cynicism had leeched onto his son’s mind, no matter how stubbornly Martin attempted to hide it. “It’s just my physics class…” Martin met his father’s unblinking stare— two deep blue eyes hidden behind the lenses on his father’s thinrimmed glasses—but was unable to see beyond the glaring patches of light reflecting from the overhead lamplight. “Some of what we learned was upsetting.” “How so?”“Well we covered the elements, mostly the ways in which they connect and make up everything in the world, and if all I am is an assortment of atoms, in particular protons, neutrons and electrons, and if my brain is just electrical currents buzzing around, and if my emotions are simply chemicals and hormones, then how am I anything more than that?” Martin raised his hands as he uttered the final word, an exasperated expression latching onto his face at its crescendo.His father sighed. He folded the newspaper and set it on the table. Taking one long breath, Martin’s father closed his eyes as the still air in the room was pulled in through his nose, shipped down the back of his throat, and deposited into the chambers of his lungs; its soothing, sinuous path readying the man for a moment of magnitude he was visibly hesitant to face, but whether it was his father’s unpreparedness for the question, or just a simple reluctance to interrupt his reading, Martin couldn’t tell.

“Go pull out what you’re currently reading,” Martin’s father flicked a wrist towards the nearby bookcase. Startled, Martin walked over to the shelf and snatched a thin book with a leather cover and dark scarlet writing imprinted on its spine. He tossed it to his father. It was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “Not a bad choice. Not bad at all.” “I don’t see what this has to do with the question. That book has—” Martin was cut off by his father’s extension of a slender monolithic index finger, the universal symbol to snip any excess thoughts from an imminent rambling statement. “What’s in this book?” his father asked, tapping the leather cover. “What do you mean? It has a story.” “And what does a story include?” “A plot,” Martin paused. “It also has characters whose experiences tell a larger narrative,” he nodded with brimming confidence. “What if I told you that it has none of that?” Martin’s father cocked his head as he flipped through the book’s pages; Martin cocked his eyebrows. “Here take a look. What’s on this page?” Thumbing at a stack of paragraphs and dangling strands of dialogue, Martin’s father looked up from the text, returning the same resolve his son had shown upon first entering the room. “Words?” Martin flung his breathy, wavering answer into the stagnant air. “And what makes up a word?” “Letters.” “And letters?” “Ink.” “So isn’t a book just an organized arrangement of ink in a singular direction? To your point, it’s no different than our physical world with all its matter, forces, and rules that shape its existence. A book is simply ink organized in a given space and structured by the rules of language.” As if the moment had swallowed him whole, magnetizing every muscle in his body to align, reaching into the ethers of his mind to stall all swirling cognition, Martin was still, totally and utterly still. “But as you can see, it’s much more than that,” his father continued. “It has themes and concepts that challenge the very essence of human existence, characters that spring off the page with the same liveliness and candor of people you know, and perhaps most importantly, stories that transcend its very own covers.” “But…” “But how can that be? You see, it’s a miraculous thing. These ideas don’t contradict each other; they’re complementary. So as to your question: are you just a jumbled assortment of matter? Why, sure. But are you also something more than that? Your guess is as good as mine.” A shrill whistling punctured the air. The kettle was boiling. “Well that’s my cue,” his father said with a shrug. “The vapor on the window will soon be gone and I’ll lose my opportunity,” he rose, set the book down, patted his son on the shoulder, and like the fleeting nature of condensation on a cool surface, evaporated from the freezing tension that hung in the foyer. Unable to leave confines of the room that now encased him, Martin relegated himself to the sofa, plucking the indented spine of the novel with an air to distance himself from its mystical contents and opened it to a bookmarked page. What lay in front of him was now as plain as day; Dr. Jekyll’s internal struggle wasn’t complicated; Mr. Hyde wasn’t a separate entity, or even a contradiction to Dr. Jekyll’s character for that matter. Starting at the top of the page, with a slight dilating of his ink black pupils to magnify the inbound information, Martin began to read. Damian McGlothlin Damian is a medical student living in Chicago.



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