nine mile magazine fall 2013

FALL 2013 // ISSUE 1

2 Nine Mile • Fall 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Nine Mile Magazine. Poetry and artwork copyright of their respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. No poem or artwork may be reproduced in full or in part without prior written permission from its owner.

Send submission inquires to: [email protected]

ninemile.org

EDITOR:

ART EDITOR:

DESIGN:

COVER ART:

Bob Herz

Whitney Daniels

WRKDesigns, wrkdesigns.com

Jamie Ashlaw, “Super Service”

Nine Mile is an online magazine of literature and art. Our mission is to publish the best writing and artwork from across the country, with a special focus on Central New York. The magazine will be digitally published twice a year in the Spring and Fall.

We take the name of the magazine from a local waterway, Nine Mile Creek, formed by glaciers about 14,000 years ago. The creek runs 25 miles from Otisco Lake, in the town of Marcellus, through Camillus and into Onondaga Lake in the Town of Geddes. Its watershed covers 10 towns in Onondaga County and two in Cortland County. The creek has different elevations, different turns, different speeds. It has had a long and varied history.

The magazine is also varied, with different writings and arts coming together to form a cohesive whole. Our views are broad and we’re excited to be able to provide publication and appreciation to our fellow creative types.

Nine Mile is a labor of love. We are currently not sup-ported by outside financial sources. At this time we are not able to offer compensation to published submissions other than the ability to ‘get your name out there.’

3Nine Mile • Fall 2013

CO

NTEN

TSPOETRY

FEATURES

ART

6

14

16

22

24

30

36

42

50

52

9

18

26

32

38

46

4

56

PaMela StewartWhen Elbow PatchesThe ShallowsThe DonkeyIt’s Men

Michael BurkardGaslightexchange

howard BragMaNRepercussionsDay Camp Iroquois

FraNk ceteraIn A Grey Dearth

walt ShePPerdI Dreamt I Took a Two Week

Vacation in an Audrey Hepburn Movie

A Rainy Day is Like Looking for Work

ciNdy daySunny Was Here

eliNor craMerLee Goes to WorkSpooky at My Doorstep

gail PeckBirthplaceTheyPast TenseWriting My Mother’s ObitOffering

StePheN kuuSiStoIn the Cards

iaN raNdall wilSoNBitter CarrotsLosing FriendsThe Rules of Accurate Choice

and Prudent RestraintThe Physics of StuffIron Mike in Three

JaMie aShlawPainting / Mixed Media

reBecca kNollPainting / Mixed Media

kari o’MaraPhotography

laurel ButkiNSPhotography

c J hodgePainting / Mixed Media

MaureeN FoSterPainting / Mixed Media

the PreMier oF NiNe Mile

oNe FroM theN: JaMeS tate


Welcome to the premier issue of Nine Mile Magazine. As editors we intend to publish the best of those things that we like, without necessarily adhering to any particular ideology of writing, composing, or creating. The magazine will be open to all, but will have a special focus on Central New York, where we live, and where Nine Mile Creek has its home. The creek is long and wind-ing, sampling, if you will, many different earths and locations. We intend for the magazine to be like that also.

We hope you enjoy this issue. We have worked hard on it, and on our online presence, and will soon have a reading featuring many of the poets in this issue.

–BobHerz,Editor –WhitneyDaniels,ArtEditor

THE PREMIER OF NINE MILE

ninemile.org

facebook.com/NineMileMagazine

@9MileMag


By way of background, we both have had some history in editing and pub-lishing various types of publications. Here’s a bit more about us:

Bob Herz was editor of SenecaReview as well as the Hobart&WilliamSmithbook series, which pub-lished essays by Donald Hall, reprinted Robert Bly’s TheFifties, TheSixties, and TheSeventies, and Dif-ferentFleshes by Albert Goldbarth. Mr. Herz also ran his own small press, W.D.Hoffstadt&Sons, which published such poets as David St. John, Jim Cer-vantes, Michael Burkard, and others. The Hoffstadt press has just been revived, with the publication of Poems for Lorca by Walt Shepperd (first run sold out), and will shortly issue SomeTimeintheWinter, by Michael Burkard.

Whitney Daniels is the owner of a graphic design studio, WRKDesigns and has designed such publi-cations as PoemsforLorca by Walt Shepperd and Welding and Gases Today quarterly trade maga-zine. She fills a variety of different roles by being a graphic designer, surface pattern designer, crafter, and all around creative chick. As the current NOTES Editor and member of the Junior League of Syra-cuse, she designs and publishes the monthly news-letter in both print and online formats. She is also a member of the Near Westside Initiative Business Association, Syracuse First, Phi Sigma Sigma and is working on becoming certified as a “Women’s Business Enterprise.”

ABOUT BOB HERz

ABOUT WHITNEY DANIELS


PAMELA STEWART

She often thought if she ran into him she’d pretend not to be her.

This morning when she shook the carton of orange juice before pouring it out,she could feel her belly shake too – left to right.

His emails are curmudgeonly.

Once he had captivated her – fair-haired, brown-eyed boy in his green corduroy jacket back when elbow patches were dashing.

His energy had been all nerves. She adored him.

They shared almost nothing -- a couple of dates in the City during school breaksand one evening in bed hushedin the apartment where, in the next room, his famous father snored.

Her husband snores.

In the mirror her face is thick, splotched. She still has a nice grin.She knows he’s bald now. He was always designed to be bald, that slightgrouchiness and shoulder stoop. She’s certain he’s invested well.

How he spends his time doesn’t much interest her. Oncehe complained about some too-smart Asian boy beating him at chess.

When she sees his name in the inbox, it’s a though someone’shanding her a cookie, or a ripe scented pear.

She never wants to see him. She never wants him to set eyes on her again.

When Elbow Patches


dog eared dusty doorwindow curve Mousein the skirting boardcold trees coffee mugthose hours to find your faceskitter & pause Marilyn,don’t send your bare skininto that noisy roomso crazy & softlet the Mouse sit alone with the mouse

cha cha into the cornerpeople are talkingloud people are talking seriouslyright here butacross the hall a coughand some laughtercha cha away, Sweetheart,because the bossy tune & beatare taking over andslashing the room to ribbonsof cash

Mouse, sleep while you can --love stays silky dreaming

doesn’t know sand from gold.If rough sand or golden dustfills up his earshe’ll twist his neck,shake his head. A donkey’s ears are longand deep. They catchthe footfall of that beastbeyond the hill.No handsome donkey’s ears decideif the sound of friend, or breath of foe,is sand or gold.It’s a long time tossing of the headbefore the donkeyisn’t deaf and his ears lift free.But when he brays he cannot lie:from ear to tail he knowshow nothing living thriveson sand or gold.

The Shallows

The Donkey


who speak of summer dresses: a lacy strap. crinkle, slink,& drape. The skirtwhich wraps against smooth legsin wind, the dip of skin, shineon the burnished shoulder.

It’s men who grow the roses,stripes or dotted-Swissto a population of memoriesbleeding into bar talk,lyric and dream.She’ll never know

that what crumpled to the floorone humid night, her brush smoothinglong hair and those whitesandals kicked off so carelessly

would be the thought retrievedwhile sitting on summer’s evening porch.

It’s Men

ABOUT PAMELA STEWART

Pamela Stewart (Jody) lives on a farm in western Massachusetts with 7 dogs and some others. Her most recent book of po-ems is GhostFarm, Pleasure Boat Studio, 2010. Once she tidies up, she expects to arrange a small and delightful gathering of letters between the late poet Lee Mc-Carthy and Guy Davenport.


JAMIE ASHLAW

Wines and LiquorsAcrylic and oil on panel

48” x 12”


Palace Theater IIIAcrylic and oil on panel11.5” x 11.5”


Fanelli CafeAcrylic and oil on panel

22” x 44”

Palace Theater IIIAcrylic and oil on panel11.5” x 11.5”


ABOUT JAMIE ASHLAW

Jamie Ashlaw was born in Carthage, a small town in upstate New York. Born of Lebanese heritage, Jamie began making art at an early age, winning his first con-test in 4th grade. His first visit to a mu-seum happened at the age of 16. While living in Bogota, Colombia for the sum-mer, Jamie was brought to the Fernando Botero Museum. After that summer, he would never see the world the same way again. After high school, he majored in painting and drawing at the University of Oswego before moving to New York City.

Shifting between art and theater, Jamie began working as a gallery assistant at the CFM Gallery where he learned a thing or two about the NYC art scene. Soon came another move, this time to Chicago in or-der to study illustration at the Columbia College of the Fine Arts. During this time,

Royal MotelAcrylic and oil on panel26” x 45”

Jamie worked as a custom sign maker, an experience that would greatly influence his current series. After his return to up-state New York for graduate work, Jamie spent a semester in New Zealand teach-ing and traveling, forever changed by the landscape and the Maori culture. Jamie presently lives in Syracuse, NY, where he makes and teaches art. Presently, his work can be seen at the Delavan Art Gallery.

Jamie Ashlaw explores the design of clas-sic American signage. His images are in-spired by neon tubes, bright colors and quirky shapes.


Super ServiceAcrylic and oil on panel36” x 24”


MICHAEL BURkARD

I had to do all that becauseshe always felt cold, because my books were extinguished by a flood of milk.

I endured the loud whip and told the mortar, go in peace.Everyone wants a feeding; —imagine,an axe proposes to the window, the vowels of the moon in this same place!

September, 1920:“the fog bled. The barn temporarily drooped.”

Our attendants: a fat professorwho refuses to remove his coat, a girl student making drawings of the stomach.

Marius, water blackens the metaphor.You would better confuse the heart with blood. Such passages are rare . . . the blood large, decent; flowing behind the window. The occasion for this is your first pair of glasses.

Gaslight –forIsaacBabel


how many times had he hunted for the right singer of “Careless Love” - there were over two hundred and some versions of the song all of course by different singers - he thought of sending the tape he had of the version he had toa very famous writer or at least one who was doing very well and getting relatively more famous as each passing month went by - the two of them used to exchange tapes once in a great while or was it that he had simply made tapes of different bluesand sent them to the famouswriter - no telling now whom he could send what to - snow is falling againout of season and there really are thieves who can keep you up all night like a willingness to give up or just start singing yourself

exchange

ABOUT MICHAEL BURkARD

Michael Burkard teaches in the MFA Writ-ing Program at Syracuse University and at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provinc-etown. He has received prizes from The American Poetry Review and the Pushcart Press. He has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center at Provinc-etown, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His books of poems include TheFiresTheyKept (Metro Book Co., 1986), MySecretBoat (WW. Norton, 1990), and Entire Dilemma (Sarabande, 1998). He lives in Syracuse, New York.

The poem “Gaslight” is from the book SomeTime in theWinter, which will be published by W.D. Hoffstadt & Sons Press in January.


HOWARD BRAgMAN

At Nottingham High SchoolMy history teach, Frances DurkinSent me down to Joseph Dixon,vice principal, with a note saying:Howard is Jack the Ripper in DisguiseI stopped off at the a-v roomFor the rest of the periodGiving the note to Steve MullerThe next day Dixon came upBehind meAnd perpetrated a judo chop on theBack of my neckThe next day Durkin brought herhenchman to class saying:“You better watch yourselfHe’s my bodyguard”The next day Davis gave me a rideTurning to Judy Sachs saying:“You better watch out for HowardHe’s liable to drill you full of holes”Miss McBurnie used to give medirty looksMiss Gates downgraded me twenty pointssaying “Your other grades weren’tthat high

Repercussions


When I was a little shaverSimon Samuel sent me toDCILarry Share was a switchhitterSo I thoughtI would give it a handOur counselor yelled and screamedat meUntil wracked in tearsI batted right handedI had loaned my McGregor gloveTo Emanuel JohnsonYou probably know where thisis goingI wacked the ball right to himAbuse continues at an early age

Day Camp Iroquois

ABOUT HOWARD BRAgMAN

I am a 70 year old male who has spent most of my life in ‘Cuse. I went through the upper east side school system includ-ing Charles Andrews Elementary, T. Aaron Levy Jr. High, and William Nottingham High Schools. I was Bar Mitzvahed and Confirmed at Temple Society of Concord. Although I only have a year of college credits at SU, UC I think I would have done better if teachers had taught me how to study each course. I also have an Exec Sec degree from CCBI business school al-though my shorthand was sparse. I was also in the military although I am not real-ly a spit polish kind of guy. To relive my life I believe I would have focused on Team USA The Olympics, performance arts, and veterinary medicine.

My poems reflect a more realistic look

back at my life, i.e. how I wish I had looked at many events that have affected me per-sonally. Although I have been accused of stringing words together by Pat and Mike at Happy Endings Cake and Coffee House, I prefer to think I string poetically. Although I sometimes try to make my audiences gig-gle, according to Georgia I always want to make them think. Sometimes, I even write innocuously but that merely reflects my mood at the time. Although I am a pretty good speller and even made it through the first round of the local tryouts for the na-tional spelling bee, I missed ‘inaugurate’ by inserting two n’s. It’s interesting how something like that stays with me. I could swear that I read two n’s in a comic book. There was a psych at SU who taught with comic books, but I digress (heh). That al-ways makes Georgia giggle.


REBECCA kNOLL

A Garland for GirlsWatercolor and pencil on book page


He Artfully Led The ConversationWatercolor and pencil on book page


SecretsWatercolor and pencil on book page

ABOUT REBECCA kNOLL

Rebecca Knoll received her Associate of Science Degree in Civil Engineering Tech-nology with Architectural Specialization from Alfred State University and a Bach-elor of Fine Arts Degree in Interior Archi-tecture from the University of Houston. She has been a practicing Interior Archi-tect since 1980 in Houston, TX and Bal-

timore, MD. Earlier works translate craft, historically associated with the “feminine arts” — weaving, quilting, sewing — into multi-media pieces mostly of recycled pa-per, fiber, metal and found objects. Her current work is a watercolor exploration of jewels and verbiage utilizing recycled book pages.


Money Cannot Buy Refinement of NatureWatercolor and pencil on book page


FRANk CETERA

Famished I have been roaming; among this desertof grey dearth.

The objects rising before me hold no sufficiencywithout being propped up by the labor of millions,and give so little in return.

My brother called today, he needs surgery againfor his chronic condition,but there is no insurance; and there was no wisdom.And thus we are here.

I always hoped that we would each learn from our mothers,each of us on this planet;but our mothers’ milk has been poisoned and dried up by the econocrats.

Sand not under foot, yet barren; mother gathering for her child finds naughtbut plastic wraps and soft drink caps.The groundcover not of sweet herbs but of asphalt dark and sour(yet a sweet smell that harkens to childhood when it pours steaming hotfrom its beast of burden).

Heat waves rising in this desert, from the heated blackness; mother searches for berries but finds naught but waves of nauseous rot and human lack of thought. The understory not of pregnant bushes of juice but of poles of metal and barriers of concrete and signs for sale.

Yet I see in a distance, family, they are working the field, they are working the lot, they are surrounded by looks of disdain, and sneers of pain. How dare they; who do they; never will they overcome our lords of pleasure for lords of simple life.

Mother clambers upon a bench and reaches for a fruit; yet the elm is in death woes and produces nothing to eat. The awnings and the telephone wires, provide our shade and our sweet

In A Grey Dearth


onslaught of entertainment; as we blind ourselves to our true human needs.

A canopy which mother strains her neck towards; longing for the sunlight to nourish her crops; for clean water to fall on her dwelling and slack the thirst of her children; for the simple aspects of life to show themselves through her; not the steel and glass of man-made gods to look down upon us all, oh almighty! You can always look down upon us, we will always be here; working for our release and our sufficiency and when you are locked in your boxes and the energy, only, of our sister sun warms down over us all; we will welcome the overlords to join in with us and forgive thee for they ransacking of our wisdom; which you will learn can never be taken from our thousands of years of being on this Earth. And as the ground is released from its over-lords of weight and pressure, new life can begin; as we reach into our/ances-tor’s bag of tricks; as we must rely on some begrudged use of our masters’ tools to overcome our masters’ rules.

Family is harvesting peas and carrots from this opening in the canopy. Sing-ing can be heard in the distance and in the eves. Sister is healthy from sweat and vegetables; the surgeons (as the soldiers) now turn to the plows.

ABOUT FRANk CETERA

Ecosocialist, Permaculture Activist, Prac-tice Artist, and Green Party Organizer Frank Raymond Cetera conjures up pre-figurative visions of a possible regenera-tive future that may result if the destruc-tion from unfettered Capitalism continues on its way. There is no blatant utopia in this current society or waiting for us in tomorrow’s, there is only the future we make, by organizing, educating, and re-structuring, before it’s too late. We don’t have to wait for a barren planet to rec-ognize our limitations, our potentialities, and our connections to each other and the natural world, we only have to have the courage to look at and into ourselves, and change today.


WALT SHEPPERD

I never wanted birthdaysand Christmasand mother’s dayto be what nowit seemsthey must become,excuses for rememberingthat time is now a luxury.We build new worlds and gather things that patch the strands that chafe our shells that brace our memories into barricades that must stand by themselves, for time is now a luxury.

The things we gathergather dustthe barricadeswon’t stand a chargethe boxes burnthe seeds grow moldthe papers crumble in the light,and love becomes the luxury.

I Dreamt I Took a Two Week Vacation in an Audrey Hepburn Movie


A rainy day is likelooking for workpassing grey merged faceslike waste passed unconsciouslyconcentrating on the captions in PEOPLE Magazinefaces passing grey promisinguncertain futures telling people I can get my own coffeedo my own typinganswer my own phoneto whatever harassmentand I’m sorry this shreds your job descriptionbut here’s a chance to be creativewhat was it you wanted to do with your lifereflected in a resumeread by some remarkingit looks like you have a hard timeholding a fob.

Yesterday the sun rememberedthe birds sang earlythe dark came latefor one psychic momenta universe in cosmic balanceand me looking for work.

A Rainy Day is Like Looking for Work

ABOUT WALT SHEPPERD

Walt Shepperd has read poetry at colleges and cultural cen-ters throughout Central New York and in New York City. With Stewart Brisby, on a grant from the National Endow-ment for the Arts, he edited and published BornintoaFel-ony, the first national anthology of contemporary American prison writing. Mr Shepperd is Executive Producer for the MediaUnitand Senior Editor at UrbanCNY. He is a three-time winner of the New York Press Association Writer of the Year Award and a recipient of the Syracuse Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award. His most recent publication is PoemsforLorca, from the W.D.Hoffstad&SonsPress.


kARI O’MARA

MoistSilver Gelatin Print

CongealSilver Gelatin Print

ScabbingSilver Gelatin Print


ABOUT kARI O’MARA

Kari O’Mara is Central New York-base fine art photographer who focuses on large scale high-contrast prints. O’Mara gradu-ated from Cazenovia College in 2010 with a BFA in Studio Arts with a concentration in Photography. In 2011, she earned her MA in Museum Studies from Syracuse Uni-versity. O’Mara became the youngest art-ist to show her work at the Earlville Opera House in 2012 with her series “Repulsing Attraction.” Her work was recently shown in Syracuse’s 40 Below Public Task Force’s “Snow Show.”

Repulsing Attraction:We often go through life only viewing ob-jects and people on the bare surface, but when we begin to look closer, the surface starts to crack, gape, and crust over. From the time I was little, I have seen common place items in a more eerie and detailed

way than most others. Focusing on every line, shadow, and dot.

Using the body as my canvas, I add texture to the bodyscapes to push the audience out of their normal view point and into my hypersensitive world. Instead of focusing on the figure in its entirety, I allow a visual journey to be taken; new details and infor-mation will come to attention. The goal is to stop simply seeing the world as a whole and start truly examining our surrounding in fragmented detail. When we are awaken to the physical truths of the world and other aspects of life, whether for good or bad, we begin to creep towards enlightenment.

EmbryonicSilver Gelatin Print


SplittingSilver Gelatin Print


CINDY DAY

Sunny, thanks for the necklace.I called your name out loud last night and again this morningbecause a film I saw about the Westreminded me of your suffering.It was my prayer, your name, if you heard me.The narrator of the film was sayingwe can’t imagine the life of the Siouxbefore the Whites, that much freedomis beyond our language. It seems insultingto even mention this.Yet you and I found ourselves in the same car.I made you laugh because you looked at the skyand asked if rain was coming. I said noand it rained. You were enlightened. You werepast insulting. And I said to myself and to you,“Sunny, meeting you is an experience.”And further along in the car you spoke aboutthe end of the trees without emotion—or if I heard any sadness in your voiceor bitterness, it was ancient, felt so many timesthat it had settled down finally like a rockinto a state of being. You had long agoaccepted it, perhaps you had even died.

Sunny Was Here


ABOUT CINDY DAY

Cindy Day has published in the Denver Quarterly, The Literary Review, Green Mountains Review, and the Southern Po-etry Review, among other magazines. Four of her poems appear in Last Call: Poems of Alcoholism, Addiction and Deliverance, edited by Sarah Gorham & Jeffrey Skinner, Sarabande Books, 1997. Her first novel, Last House, was serialized online in 2005 where it won an award, and she is work-ing on a second, The Janeville Murders. She won the 2008 Emerging Poet Award from Stone Canoe Magazine at Syracuse University. Currently she is participating in the Downtown Writer’s Center PRO pro-gram in Syracuse, NY. A native of Hartford, Connecticut, she has lived and worked in Central New York for 30 years.


LAUREL BUTkINS

The PorchGiclee

The ViewGiclee

Snow GeeseGiclee


Blooming Pink DahliaGiclee


Blooming Pink DaisyGiclee

ABOUT LAUREL BUTkINS

I’ve been told before that I can find beauty in absolutely anything and I completely agree with that… From the intricate de-tail of a snowflake or the delicateness of a flower about to bloom, to the intensity of a skyscraper or the power of a battleship, there truly is beauty in everything, every-where, all around us… And I try to capture that in each of my photographs… I am in-spired by nature and intrigued by technol-ogy and with my camera I try to find the perfect balance of both…

A large majority of my artwork is associ-ated with nature inspired images such as flowers, birds, landscapes, sunsets and

moons, though I also do event and portrait work not only of people, but also of pets, classic cars, motorcycles and boats… I also provide services for other Artists in pho-tographing their artwork for hi-resolution images.

I am very fortunate to travel to Alaska and work with Ice Alaska in creating artwork, dvds and photobooks of the bp World Ice Art Championships located in Fairbanks Alaska and featuring Ice Sculptors from all over the world.

Any day I have my camera in my hand is always a good day!


ELINOR CRAMER

Because it’s Sunday, I wake slowly, after Lee’s door slamsacross the hall. Then I open the shades and watch him cross to the convenience mart. Pitched forward, he seems to catch himself with each step, his boots unlaced and blue coat flapping. He does the daily things

more or less at the same time. It’s one-thing-then-the-next time, eat and sweep, sweep and eat—what he learned at the State School.And in between, the waiting.Not one for routine, myself, I seeits goodness in him.

He pulls a piece of cardboard for a dustpan, and a sparse broomfrom behind the icemaker—$2/ bag.Lee plants his feet wide, and bends to pick up a plastic lid,but falls to one knee. It’s hard to watchas he rights himself with his hands,but he goes on—

so I do too. I start my choresbrewing coffee, and when I return,there’s a customer outside the locked store hollering at him. His dismissive gestureseems to say, the owners will come when they come.

It irks me how little they carefor his time. Lee sits on a bucket waiting for the next thing to happen. His wispy hair blowing, he never wears gloves or a cap.

Lee Goes to Work


My neighbor’s old cat crouches on my porch.When my car pulls into the drive,she stretches the crooks from her legs.She cries Waa, like a baby cries, ow like ouch.

Waa-ow... from her tail like a pump’s handle, out her sharp pink mouth.I touch her rough fur—mostly for me, I think. And she quiets.

All night it rains, and she prowls on her stiff hips—Waa-ow...Waa-ow...Waa-ow...her yowls filling my heart as a bucket.

It’s been weeks since you’ve phonedor come around.

The wailing keeps ontill I can’t stand it.I run barefoot from the house in the dark, and rock her,letting her claw and muddy my gown.

Spooky at My Doorstep

ABOUT ELINOR CRAMER

Elinor Cramer’s first poetry collection, “She Is a Pupa, Soft and White” was published in December 2011 by Word Press. She is the author of a chapbook, “Canal Walls Engineered So Carefully They Still Hold Water,” for which she received a Heritage Grant from New York State. Her poems have appeared in “Stone Canoe,” “The Comstock Review,” “The Healing Muse,” and other journals. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Warren Wilson

College, and holds a Master’s degree in Psychology from Roosevelt University in Chicago. She lives in Syracuse where she practices psychotherapy.

Most often I’m aware of an emotional thread as I write. I let the thread stitch to-gether the things that come into my aware-ness. I’m happiest with a poem when it seems to speak through the sounds and words I call my voice.


C J HODgE

Bones and Gears 2Acrylic and mixed media on paper

20” x 30”

Bones and GearsAcrylic and mixed media on paper20” x 30”


After The PartyAcrylic and mixed media on paper47” x 67”

ABOUT C J HODgE

I think I was brought up as an artist, my mother is a working artist and my father is a medical doctor but I don’t remember anyone suggesting to me that I could be a doctor. I loved to paint and draw and my parents had these great, interesting friends who were artists. I had a fantastic group of high school teachers who nurtured my tal-ent and inspired me to push my art. College was a fantastic experience, my professors were a huge influence on me even though I was not a “model student” M. Sickler, G. Trento, J. Witkin and others were a huge part of my growth as an artist.

Currently I have been developing a new style that I call Expressionist Pop though my work evolves and changes monthly so

I can’t really be pigeonholed into any par-ticular style. Subject Matter: C. J. loves to paint people but is not concerned if the people are rec-ognizable when the painting is complete, the paintings are changed and the people are made into shapes and forms. The origi-nal person is lost in color and form and usually not recognizable. The paintings are not meant to be portraits.

C. J. Hodge III currently lives in James-ville, NY with his wife and son. He is an Art Teacher at Cortland Junior Senior High School. His artworks are mixed media piec-es using mediums such as acrylic, water-color, and tempera.


Sinclair EthylAcrylic and mixed media on paper47” x 67”


gAIL PECk

after a first line in a poem by Czeslaw Milosz

You were my beginning and again I am with you,mother, in the song of the bird perchedin the dogwood of Virginia where both of us

were born. We’d walk down the hillside to town,a few dollars in your pocket for lipstick,a coloring book for me, a large box of crayons

with a name on each. Then up the hill againto sit in the swing. I’d pick dandelions you’d placein a glass on the windowsill. I did not conceive

of them as weeds. Later, the pungency of roses, lilacs.We didn’t buy flowers at the store, countingon the wild iris to continue blooming by the fence

we dreamed never to leave, yet did. Now dandelionsare taking their place on your grave whererain falls on the etched stones someone mows around.

Listen, you’d say. A mockingbird I couldn’t always see in the distance. You’d repeat the soundsso that I hear them in this silence.

Birthplace


My sister who gathereda drop of water in a strawand placed it in the cornerof our mother’s mouth

The sitter who rushedto the back room and stoodwith us waiting for silence

The young Hospice nursewith the experience to pronouncesomeone deadlifting our mother’s arms for a bath

Funeral director who triedand failed to get the stretcher out the back door

My husband on his hands and kneesattempting to unlock one of the frontFrench doors leading to the hallwayof the old apartmentA last desperate prayerand the stretcher slides through

Friend who boughtdye matched to our mother’ssnip of haircarrying it to the funeral hometo make her beautifulone last time

How quickly it passesfrom is to was

from has to had—as quick as a bird

flies from a windowsill—you hear its song

but no longer see it.They’d slit her gown

up the backto spread it across her.

Small embroidered rosesat the top with beads

in each center.The eyes don’t totally close

near the endand once the hands cooled

we knewand I know almost no Bible verses

but it came to mewhen they removed the body

The peace of God which surpassesall understanding

for she was a Godly woman,my mother.

Dress her in pinkwith the white lace blouse

for she loved white—white of the lily, white of the clouds.

They

Past Tense


Although she wasn’t yet gone,I looked online to see how it was done, then wroteshe’d been an army wifewith tours in Japan and Germany,that she was loved by her church family.

They did visit one-by-one,two-by-two, leaning over the railingof her bed to sing and pray.I was often in the next roomlying down, staring at the wallpaperborder that went around the ceiling,the cracked plaster barely concealed.

Whatever I’d never askedwould remain unasked, and could shehear what I said?

The funereal director asked if I wantedmy mother buried next to my stepfather.I said they didn’t get along in life,and there was no reason for themto be together in death. She hated Green Creek.

An undertaker once wrote that the deaddon’t care. A month before she diedI’d stood by her bed, asking to be forgivenfor any slight or shortcoming.Then I went to sleep, half-listeningfor her breathing, and would get up and lean over herthe way she’d attended me as a childwhen she heard my cough or cries,knowing I was afraid to be alone.

Writing My Mother’s Obit


First day at the beach,that old cliché of sun, neon,flashing its beautyover the ocean.

Starfish are everywhere.A man walking by, seeingI was afraid to touch them,said they were dead.My general fear of the dark sea,waves having tumbled meand caught my breath.

I walk up and down Inlet Point,holding starfish in my palm,thinking of my mother who may not live long,and then who will I callto hold my worries.

Offering

The egret is the most patientcreature I know—white— my mother’sfavorite color. When he liftshis wings, I see a sculpture of feathers, and the God my motherwants me to believe in—slow risefrom the marsh.

The starfish are drying in the sun,and may crumble I was told. Either way,I’m leaving them, small offering for all the years I waited,not knowing for what—this symmetry living in every ocean,star of the sea, that can regrowas many arms as needed.

ABOUT gAIL PECk

Ms. Peck is the author of six books of po-etry. Poems and essays have appeared in Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity, Connotation Press, Com-stock, Stone Voices, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for a Push-cart, and one essay was selected as a “no-table” for “Best American Essays, 2013.”

“For over thirty-five years I’ve attempted to write poems that speak to the lives of oth-ers, to show we’re not alone in our hopes, grief and various losses. Whether I’m writ-ing autobiography or not, my goal is to create from the fragments of thoughts and memories something that becomes whole, to be engaged in that process of discovery, for I truly believe what Robert Frost said: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”


MAUREEN FOSTER

Cat & MouseInk on Muslin


Parlor TricksInk on Dyed Muslin


ABOUT MAUREEN FOSTER

Maureen Foster is a young and emerging artist residing in Central New York. Her ed-ucational background is in the fine arts and she is deeply involved in the arts commu-nity throughout the New York State area.

Photographyby:JakeBeardsley


STEPHEN kUUSISTO

Believing in luck I see luck everywhereFor much of it is not human--Dogs know itEven swallows nesting High in the barn Feel the electrolysis of air.Don’t talk of Saint Paul Or the raft of destiny For though I’ll hear you I know luck has no figure for God.Early morning I walked in the fieldWhere a bird cherry stood covered With blossoms and the alderLeaned in poor soil,Green catkins Lifting gently in wind.

In the Cards –forLarsGustafsson

ABOUT STEPHEN kUUSISTO

Stephen Kuusisto is the author of two collections of poems, “Only Bread, Only Light” and “Letters to Borges.” He teach-es at Syracuse University.


IAN RANDALL WILSON

Out back they’re reporting a riotamong the spirit guides.I have tried to convince everyonethat a sponge understands excess.No luck.One man’s flooris another man’s yellow,anger is nudity,the wrestler behind the leaded glass doorstops all of us from singing.Certainly the Chinese food was flawedbut that’s not a reasonfor them to whip the flowers to death.

All my problems can be traced to a defective muse.I purchase a cultural magnethoping to father a discussion among black holesabout the best way to raise beef.We disband when we discoverwe all have sons resembling the horns of a seer.

You might call me a collectorbecause I harvest the roads.In the last two years I have gatheredtwo jars of careless expectation—the white kind.

I look forward to winterand its ironically purified air.The trouble with things todayis you try to be seriousand end up in Cleveland.Let me return to the life of cows,cold water, the spaces they make in the world.I’m going to take the afternoon off from wrestling with the visible spectrum.I’ll be back later,or, if I believe them,in my next life.

Bitter Carrots


When I feel the urge to call you an idiotI’ll say, Shrimp Boat, instead.But in truth, Shrimp Boat, I wonder how you stay alive,your mind empty as a door.I did promise to keep my insultsdown to a light levelonly young cats can seebecause I think of you as another stepin my program to free myself of weak verbs.I don’t care that you’re rich--what does money know?

Losing Friends

In my parody of theory I construct a new civilization from this bucket of dirt

and I have discovered light shining from a vapor, magnets in conversation.

I call on all molecules to bend their arms in unison.

More heat, more room.I won’t hide my fully extended theory.

Write a speeding ticket if you want to.What is a poet? What is a man?

What is an ellipsis?I’m the kind who gets stones talking.

In Section 24 the candidate is asked to imagine a life with no bedroom slippers

nor rocks.No longer can I obey the fluid laws.

The Physics Of Stuff


Wheels are growing on the jacaranda.Birds decline. Snails respond with personal greeting cards.Tonight I swing the fifth limband the air cracksas if whipped.The house singsin a minor key.Good masonry helps.

Once our bodies fit togetherlike a mended doorthen the wall fell downbringing a grief that went runningeach morning around five a.m.with a pack of feelingson loan from themselves.

Chen Zao says, What is a circlebut a dream through history?I’ve decided to put the cat down,and throw out all my clothes.Say it was me that left her.About these scars on my throatand wrists--I’m holding all questionsuntil the end.

The Rules Of Accurate Choice And Prudent Restraint


After the Beloved leavesI move with the cut-maninto the back bedroomand keep himvery busy.I find myself sleepingwith a heavy bagin case the urge for combinationsstrikes me in my sleep.This is not the timefor ring metaphors about how no one winsmoving backward,how a flurry near the bellmay steal the endof every round.We all know the judgesdo their work in secretand often the resultsare a surprise.

Iron Mike In Three

and the Dadaists and the Surrealists, toss-ing everything in the air in a grand show of color and light. I didn’t worry that much about sense-making. If I wanted sense, I would have been an estate planner. But then sometimes I think I got the word wrong and what I really meant was brick layer; that changes everything. These days, I’m happy to get off a good line. A single decent image. That would be enough.

ABOUT IAN RANDALL WILSON

Ian Randall Wilson’s poetry and fiction have appeared in many journals including The Alaska Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, The Gettysburg Revew and the North American Review. A chapbook, The Wilson Poems, was published by Hollyridge Press (www.hollyridgepress.com). He has an MFA in po-etry from Warren Wilson College, and is on the fiction faculty at the UCLA Extension. He lives in Los Angeles where he works for Sony Pictures.

At the time these poems were written, I thought I was a bricoleur. I thought I was taking little clippings from the New York School and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets

I, personally, thoughtI was aheadonly to discoverI was losingon all the cards.But that’s another sport’s metaphorthat it takes courageto climb under the ropesand standing on the canvasis sometimes a victoryin itself.Tell that to the Belovedafter she digs to the bodyand leaves without throwing in the towel or waitingfor the refereeto raise one or anybody’s hand.


One From Then: James Tate

I began writing a modern or modern-ish poetry in the late 60’s, while an undergraduate at Hobart & William Smith College. Several of us in those Woodstock / Altamont years of 1969 and 1970 discovered “new” poets, by which we meant poets new to us, who wrote in ways different from anything we’d seen before. We thought that we were on the verge of something, that the subjects and ideas we were working with were part of a broad project of changing society. We believed that this could happen by virtue of the way we lived and thought and wrote. The discovery of these new voices was im-portant, because we needed signposts and helpers as we traversed this new territory. We were fortunate to have a very good and enthusiastic teacher named Jim Crenner, a poet himself who knew many of these younger poets, and an English Department whose members did not begrudge us turning from what they considered the real tradition—not just Victorians but also huge and by then grandfatherly presences like Eliot and early Lowell—to champion this new body of work. They sensed that something different was taking place in American poetry and were generous about letting us explore without interfering judgments.

It was an exciting time to be writing. There were so many poets to dis-cover, all of whom seemed to be doing something so different from what we had seen before, bringing new things to the art and to the conversation about poetry. It’s impossible, forty years on, to reread these poets with the same eyes I had then, to generate the same sense of fevered discovery, that sense that in our writing and the writing of these poets we were helping create the new world. Does that seem too much to say, too much burden to put on the discoveries of those years? It’s accurate: We were innocent, and caught up in the zeitgeist, the spirit of those times. Everything we looked at was potential, could be made new.

I’d like to share some of the qualities of those poets who excited us then, and the discoveries we made in their poems. We read their work differently now, of course. Time does that. It gives us perspective, and we read back from work produced since. The trajectory and development of the lives and careers and work of those poets alters everything we thought we saw then, changes the potential into actuality or in some cases, into discards. Nothing can give the sense of the really new that we saw then.

But all that said, I’d like to use the back pages of this journal to share some occasional thoughts about poets who upended our views of what we meant by poetry in those heady days, and to try to describe what was so exciting about them and the books that made their mark.

One of those poets was James Tate. Three books, or parts of them, had a huge effect on what we meant by poetry and by a poem. They books were TheLostPilot (Yale University Press, 1967), RowWithYourHair (kayak press, 1969), and TheOblivionHaHa (Little Brown & Co., 1970).


What was so great about Tate’s work? We—or maybe better said, I—had not known that you could split lines the way he did, or joke or surprise the way he did. The music of his lines was so different from anything before, sometimes raucous, sometimes subtle, but always somehow casual, more like someone talking than someone composing. Here from The Lost Pilot is a poem that moved me when I first read it, and whose music and surprise still haunts me this many years later:

Why I Will Not Get Out Of Bed

My muscles unravel like spools of ribbon: there is not a shadow of pain. I will pose like this for the rest of the afternoon, for the remainder of all noons. The rain is making a valley of my dim features. I am in Albania, I am on the Rhine. It is autumn, I smell the rain, I see children running through columbine. I am honey, I am several winds. My nerves dissolve, my limbs wither— I don’t love you. I don’t love you.

I love almost everything about this poem, and I still remember my first reaction to it, the pleasure that came from the incredible music of those first


two lines to the final surprise at the end, “I don’t love you.” Where did that come from? I was stupefied. It felt right, and yet, it surprised. And where did those children in the columbine come from, or that bilocation or travel to far-flung places on earth, Albania and the Rhine? I went back through the poem, noticing the rest of the music, the almost casual rhymes of Rhine and columbine, the slant-rhyme of wind, and the off-handedness of rain and Rhine and Albania—the internal sonorousness of the poem is intense and moves so quickly that you could almost brush past it in a first reading even as you are affected by it.

The two-stress lines were new to me—everything we had read to that point was iambic pentameter. Who knew that you could write in lines so short and yet convey meaning and such music? And then, at the end of the poem, the way those last lines seem to shock, driving me back into the poem to see how it got there. It felt right, and yet strange.

To summarize the movement and scenery of the poem: The poet is emo-tionally collapsing, muscles unraveling in an intense lethargy that comes without pain. It is afternoon, raining, and Autumn. In his mind he is or at least wants to be anywhere but here, and so grasps words that signify other places, but he does not envision or share with us actual locations. These are ciphers, incantatory words, not actual geography. He sees children in col-umbine, a vision which I take to be significant, for these are children of his fantasy, not actual children, and they are running somewhere, but probably not toward him, for they are no more real in this context than those cipher words Albania or Rhine. And although the poem is not explicit about this, it seems to me that they are children who will now never exist because, as we discover at the end of the poem, the poet does not love the woman, and is telling her so. They will not come together, they will not have a family, they will not have children, they will have no future together. There is, as he says, no pain or even a shadow of physical pain, but there is a painful struggle that produces this mental map of the world and of fantasy as he tries until the end to avoid what he has to say.

What this poem showed to so many of us was music in short lines, in a structure unlike anything we had seen before that contained a wrenching meaning. That meaning did not come in the way of the older iambic poets – not in the heavy way of “Skunk Hour,” or the cynical way of “Portrait of a Lady.” It was something new. And there was something generous there that made us feel like we could be part of it. Maybe as important it seemed like these were lessons we could use in the development of our own poems. We could bond as writers with this poet, who had taught us something new.

The LostPilot was an amazing book, and the OblivionHaHa collected many of the poems that had been in chapbooks, including several from RowWithYourHair. Oblivion is a wonderful book. But to my taste, Row was the


best of the three. Produced by the iconoclast George Hitchcock the book was a work of brilliance from beginning to end, down to every detail, even to its designs and look and feel. Row continues and develops the break-throughs from “Why I Will Not Get Out of Bed.” Magnificent pieces such as “When Kabir Died,” “Shadowboxing,” “The Wheelchair Butterfly,” “The Blue Booby,” and one I have not seen reprinted, “The Crushing Rose.” Wonder-ful! Why do I mention these particular poems? Read them and find out. If you can find the book they came from anywhere, look at it, hold it in your hands, and you will see what I mean. I have one cherished copy, and it is falling apart. Tate has never been so fresh. He was in effect making tracks on first snow.

I want to write in future essays about others who influenced us in those early days: Robert Bly, James Wright, Galway Kinnell, Charles Simic, and W.S. Merwin. I will post the essays as I finish them.

–BobHerz


FALL 2013 // ISSUE 1

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