agt63

Night are hanging a kerchief with stars
Above the sleeping earth
( or: Above falling asleep earth)
Above its sadnesses, passions,
Above her restless head.
And only a lunar path
Is telling the dreams to dark Volga,
And a Romany fire is burning
On the bank of this great Russian river.
The lass - Gipsy dances,
The bracelets are ringing,
Tapes and the snakes her of hairs
are flying up in dance.
She the most beautiful lass in the world-
That is why the wind is dared,
And night plays with tambourine
of moon and stars.

Why ?
Why do I worry so much?
Maybe because of rainy days?
Why do I cry so much?
Maybe because summer is over?
Why do I yearn for so much?
Maybe because my past years have gone?
No! I worry, cry and yearn so much
Because my son
Is not with me now.

Jeffrey Mackie returns to this issue. I had an interesting email with him, seems he was involved in the recent federal election we had in Canada, sad to report, his candidate did not fare well.

The Promise

by Len Bourret

Song: "The Promise", Written and

Performed by Len Bourret.

A love for people all around us...

...You and I shall be forever.

Say goodbye,
when I can barely say goodnight.
If I can hardly take my eyes from yours,
how far can I go?

Walk away,
the thought would never cross my mind.
I couldn't turn my back on Spring or Fall,
your smile least of all.

When I say always,
I mean forever.
I trust tomorrow as much as today,
I am not afraid to say I love you.
But I promise you,
I'll never say goodbye.

We're dancers,
On a crowded floor.
While other dancers leave from song to song,
our music goes on and on.

On and on.
And if I ever leave your arms,
I really would have traveled everywhere.
For my world is here with you.

When I say always,
I mean forever.
I trust tomorrow as much as I do today.
I am not afraid to say I love you.
And I promise you,
I'll never say goodbye.

How could I ever say goodbye?

Click here to listen

The next series of works is from the Chilean poet Mario Melendez. I invite you to google and learn more about this fascinating and talented individual.

EL MAGO DE LA SOLEDAD

Las palabras
se recuestan en mi cama
a escuchar
la extraña historia de esa niña
que sacaba agua de sus pechos
para bañar a sus muñecas
Una vez terminado mi relato
y visiblemente afectadas
me confiesan en voz baja
que es el cuento más hermoso
jamás descrito
pero no una razón suficiente
para haberlas reunido
“La razón es lo de menos”
les respondo
“Sólo soñaba con verlas
recostadas en mi cama”


CICATRICES DE GUERRA

A veces
cuando me emborracho
las palabras me traen a casa
en un viejo triciclo de madera
Y lejos de quitarme los zapatos
y acostarme
como ocurre en estos casos
me dejan tirado en el jardín
lleno de hormigas
y con la cara pegada
al foco del alumbrado
“Eso te pasa por escribir malos poemas”
me dicen
y se marchan cantando y riendo
abrazadas
a mi última cerveza


EL CLAN SINATRA

Todos los gatos de mi barrio
son fanáticos de Sinatra
comienzan a tararear sus temas
apenas pongo el CD
y la voz se escurre
entre los techos y las panderetas
A veces me piden
que repita algún single
entonces el sonido de My way
New York o Let my train again
les para los bigotes
y los lanza de cabeza contra los vidrios
Esto no pasa cuando leo mis versos
se estiran, bostezan
miran para otro lado
o conversan entre ellos
en un acto lamentable
de ignorancia y sabotaje
“Ustedes no me comprenden”
les digo
Y vuelvo a encender el CD
para que cante Sinatra
y esos gatos se llenen de poesía

PORQUE EN MI CASA OCURRE DE TODO

Aquí se baila al ritmo de las estufas
se canta como los grillos más desesperados
se aprende a desnudar al viento
que nunca nos muestra su trasero
y en noches de luna llena jugamos a ser felices
midiéndonos los colmillos
Porque en mi casa ocurre de todo
y los pocos ratones que existen
están condenados a seguirnos la corriente
unos vestidos de superhéroes
otros haciendo gárgaras
con los bigotes de un gato muerto
Y así como las ampolletas aportan lo suyo
las sábanas también observan
más allá de sus narices
y ven miles de piojos sentados en el patio
y pulgas tomando sol
entre las patas de una gallina
y caracoles reunidos en una gota de champagne
cuando la tarde estira sus piernas
por encima de los vivos
Pero nos faltan aún las bisagras
y algunas flores que no han sido entrevistadas
y están las escaleras y el ropero de tres cuerpos
y aquella hormiga pacifista
con sus dotes de gran oradora
Y no se asusten si a ratos quedamos a oscuras
son los zancudos que apagan la luz
y vuelan con su coreografía hacia otra parte
Porque en mi casa ocurre de todo
y todos tienen derecho a voz y voto
desde el baño a la cocina
desde mi cama al hueco dejado por las arañas
antes de hacer sus maletas
Todos sonríen de alguna manera
y se conforman con lo poco y nada que poseen
Porque en definitiva aquí pueden estar tranquilos
y saben que es peligroso cambiar de domicilio
cuando han logrado el respeto de este pobre poeta
que bien los tiene en su Santo Reino


Mario Meléndez (Linares, 1971). Estudió Periodismo en la Universidad La 
República de Santiago. Entre sus libros figuran: “Autocultura y juicio” 
(con prólogo del Premio Nacional de Literatura, Roque Esteban Scarpa), 
“Apuntes para una leyenda” y “Vuelo subterráneo”. En 1993 obtiene el Premio 
Municipal de Literatura en el Bicentenario de Linares. Sus poemas aparecen en 
diversas revistas de literatura hispanoamericana y en antologías nacionales y 
extranjeras. Ha sido invitado a numerosos encuentros literarios entre 
los que destacan el Primer y Segundo Encuentro de Escritores 
Latinoamericanos, organizado por la Sociedad de Escritores de Chile (Sech), Santiago, 
2001 y 2002, y el Primer Encuentro Internacional de Amnistía y Solidaridad con 
el Pueblo, Roma, Italia, 2003, donde es nombrado Miembro de Honor de la 
Academia de Artes y Letras de Roma. Además dirige, durante dos años, un 
taller literario en la Cárcel de Talca que dio origen al libro “Los 
Rostros del olvido” (dos volúmenes) donde se reúne el trabajo poético de los 
internos. Actualmente trabaja en el proyecto “Fiestas del Libro 
Itinerante”, y preside la Sociedad de Escritores de Chile, región del Maule.

Pat Paulk was born and raised in Brunswick, GA, sixty miles south of Savannah, on the coast. Whether it was the ocean breezes or the really good looking girls in the creative writing club in high school remains to be proven, but began his writing in 1968. Two marriages, work, and child rearing provided reason for a 30-year hiatus. However, with grown children, and two successfully failed marriages behind him, it was time to write. Pat has been published in Poetic Voices; The Sidewalk's End; BBC Southwest Wales; Makata; Kookamonga Square; The Artistic Forum, Skyline Magazine, Poetism, and Above Ground Testing. He currently resides in Lawrenceville, GA. with his fiancé and their family of barking fur and hissing claws.

Valerie Noir

Taylor Graham's work is a collection that examines life, love and culture. some of it tongue in cheek:

BROKEN

The last bloody tyrant
is gone, his image
brought down stone by stone

piled up again in the communal
garden; teaching
how to get rid of gophers.

Rabbits, moles, foxes,
anything that goes
to ground.

We flood their burrows
with a hose;
watch for bubbles

and bash them with a shovel
when the tender noses
start to show.

It doesn’t kill them.
Vermin are tough.
Just maimed and bloody.

My dog whimpers beside me.
His paws are bloody too,
though he’s done nothing.

IN THE FAMILY

Among the female in-laws it’s a constant
bickering, oregano vs marjoram, and how
much garlic, and virgin extra-virgin or
just originale for the oil. And now Vito’s
got a bride (who knows where he found her)
with such a different tinge to her skin,
turmeric like a feral exotic ochre dye
on the tips of her fingers. No eraser
could make that girl white. And now Lola,
Maria’s daughter, stands silent looking
at her hands. And Mama thinks she’s got
a chap she hasn’t spoken of. Who
could help but wonder out loud.

REBUTTAL

    Insert an accent
between the word “culture” as it’s spoken
casually (eg, last night by everyone
over glasses of wine),

and our urgent discussion, later,
about how “Kultur” might save
this bourgeois collision-
course-with-disaster
civilization.

Does deep thought go better
in a foreign language?

This morning the sky accepts
dimness, a gray
not captured in silk; black
silhouette of three ponderosa pines
outside your argument.

Trees have their own language, ring-
written, akin to the speech of sky which,
just now, flicks an impulse

to silence this computer
with its potential to connect my thought
with a cultivated whole,
the mind’s bright push toward
civilization.

In short, cut short before
language powers out.

WITCHES ANONYMOUS

Sometimes it’s better to keep one’s magic
to oneself. Even when the unkempt bully
in the Big Gorilla T-shirt
slips a plastic grenade in his backpack,
and trounces the younger kids
on their way to school,
and teases the half-blind dog
with cayenne in the meatloaf.

Sometimes it’s better not to interfere,
and just stand by with frustrated fingers
while that same bully-boy
carries off the neighbor’s kitten
to drown in the slough,

and wait for the bottom-mud to reach out
with its cauldron-cold hands to grab
his sneakers and pull him under
as he screams for mercy and
the kitten scampers free.

Sometimes it’s best to keep
one’s magic to oneself.

WHY HE’S NOT COMING BACK

Her cat in profile
has a lion aspect – Assyrian,
Egyptian, stone-cut ageless
passport to a Pantheon of predatory
claws. Any cat is sacred,
she explains. Hers
reigns over birds and mice
and lizards, even bats
that over-sweep their bounds,
echo-location gone awry –
anything within reach
that goes astray.
When she begins speaking
this way about her cat,
he believes it’s time
to leave, not stay.

Before the review by Aurora, she submitted these two poems, one by Pat Paulk and the other by herself. She suggests they be read together, as two voices in conversation:

SoHo In You

by Pat Paulk

You write poems with chop sticks

and place them on street signs south of Houston.

Similes dangle from your hair

like jasmine petals taped on black strands of Serbian lore.

Size one fits a minority of you

with the Borealis reflecting in your eyes.

Snowflakes fall in a flagon of dreams

that you pour out like green tea after a cold morning’s walk.

Crystal chimes resonate in your voice,

and make me want to embrace the SoHo in you.

Cold Beer and Water Stars

by Aurora Antonovic

Your poetry makes me think of

Charles Bukowski

And Will Rogers

Rolled into one

With a spattering of water stars

Thrown in for good measure

I crave

Bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches

With a slather of

Relish

On white bread

Cut any old way

And washed down with a cold beer

Even though I never touch the stuff

One conversation with you

Brings images of sandy beaches

And tropical vacations to mind,

Makes me go off to dream land

Where I’m entertained by

Ernest Hemingway tales

Read in a soft Southern drawl

That rocks me to sleep

In a ship of verse.

Review

This issues review is from Aurora Antonovic and it is for a new book of poetry by Michael Ladanyi. His new book of poetry is "Chicken Bones":

It is always intriguing, with each new collection a poet brings forth, to note whether or not he has held to his own standards, or surpassed them. In this regard, Chicken Bones, Michael Paul Ladanyi’s fourth collection of poetry, does not disappoint.

As always, Ladanyi’s rhythm and meter are impeccable, his words, image-rich and powerfully driven. He follows his trade-marked handling of difficult subjects with aplomb, using his skills to bring powerful messages home without over-kill. These are the things that remain the same.

In the past, Michael Paul Ladanyi’s poetry has read almost as a written slide-show presentation, with unusual line breaks to switch us from one visual to another with a click of an enjambment. In this collection, he instead presents his images in solid, flowing pieces, coming together to form one final message.

The first verse from “Raindogs” illustrates this well:

There was never so much mud---
morning an alarm of ebbing silence,
droning gestures wrapped
in soupy leaves, thick warbled
gray weighing down
limb-blooded trees.

“Winter Stones” is another example of such a method: the poem is laden with evocations of ghosts, and small dead seeds, closed fists, and broken bones, all adding up to a complete image of “Winter Stones.”

This collection consists of verbal paintings, with marigold and charcoal, red mouths, paste for skin, and green and blue words. The pictures travel from a range of leaves to sparrows, mud-lapping dogs to awkward skeletons, lilies to peasants.

As all good collections, these poems read best when read together, each one enhancing the next. Colour-rich, nature-laced, and image-evocative, Chicken Bones is a collection worth reading again and again.

Michael's book can be ordered here:
http://www.celaine.com/LittlePoemPress/ladanyi.htm

We also have some work from Michael

Bird Feather Voodoo

Day is marigold painted enamel,
art wrapped in bird feather voodoo,
rain and sun the same white rib.
Canon spiders knocking childtrick
cadavers over stone, your
crylove mouth in my hands as a hostage.

Where are your frog and fern secrets?
Where is your moon-voiced woman?
I am eternally dumb to your hazel aching,
peacock blue business of love.

The isle-man womb is a bag of
rainy bones and dark organs,
maggot and ghost rich brother creatures.

Water diamond words, your face
a maroon strumming, mermaid of
virgin seas, our salt-finger mornings
are poured and spent silence.

Sophia Had a Name

Sophia had a name in death,
an elemental drunkenness
surrounding her red mouth,
obscure eyes that wandered
inaccessible reaches of lust
and insanity. Paste for skin,
old words sold in new ways,
laboring among lilies;
where are you now, Sophia?
There was never a sleep
that was not your demon,
kudzu sculpted and shallow rooted,
in wood-thumped nights
summer-watered, precarious
Japanese gardens lost of myth
and breath. In small hours
before winter light,
your mantle clock chimes
as marigolds trapped beneath
stone-bottomed water,
never absolute or dismayed.

Omens (Of 1966)

Brown weeds are leaning passively
in November’s distinctive wind,
I am bleeding against their hollow spines,
curious at the sight of myself attempting
to die as my own witness.

I was born on elephant grass and mud,
charcoal flesh---
pain laid out on tin plates left unwashed
for days, with sucking lungs that
sear themselves, fumble for breath.

There is a fetus that lives within me;
it will never die, waves its tiny hand
through dead smoke of my cigarette,
like fucked-up omens my mother used
to whisper to the pillow-cased face of God

Michael Paul Ladanyi resides in the foothills of the North Georgia Mountains, with his wife and two daughters. His poetry, reviews, interviews and reviews written of his work, have appeared in hundreds of print and online magazines, in the US and abroad.

He is the author of the chapbooks Palm Shadows, (Purple Rose Publications, June 2002) Spelling Crows of Winter, ISBN 1-58998-229-0 (Pudding House Publications, Sept. 2003) Chicken Bones, (Little Poem Press, June 2004) and All Your Picasso Trees, (Sun Rising Poetry Press, July 2004.) His 72 poem collection, Humming Riddles in Naked Seasons, ISBN 0-9755955-0-4, will be released August

2004, by Sun Rising Poetry Press, and is currently being distributed by pre-order through Amazon.com and Sun Rising Poetry Press, http://www.sun-rising-books.com/humming_riddles_in_naked_seasons_1.html and will also soon be distributed by Barnes & Noble.com, Alibris.com and others.

Michael has just finished his chapbook Art of the Dog, which will be published by Sun Rising Poetry Press, late 2004, and he is currently working on his second full poetry collection containing 67 poems, Raindogs in the Sun. It will be released through Sun Rising Poetry Press, in early/mid 2005.

He is the founder, publisher and editor of Adagio Verse Quarterly:
http://www.geocities.com/adagioversequarterly/Adagio_Verse_Quarterly.html
a poetry editor with Write-away-poetry: http://www.author.co.uk/writeaway/ and maintains a personal site at:
http://www.geocities.com/michael_paul_ladanyi/index.html

Photography

This collection of photography is from Bruce Reeves.