Migration by Phuoc-Tan Diep

Migration

Swifts and swallows leave – while I grasp for memories like

fruit – remnants of home

riddled with holes – my baby cools in my arms

dripping fermented juice – the milk from her mouth

sweet – sticks under my fingernails

under blushing trees – the guards, with eloquent guns, demand my  coat

those that can’t leave expect a cold winter – they smirk at my battered sweetbox

with its few hopes – inside are smuggled postcards of thatched houses

and promises – of English orchards.

This cleave poem was written specifically for the “Don’t be a stranger” initiative launched at this year’s Evangelical Alliance flagship event The Temple Address 2008, given at The Royal Society on the 27th November by The Archbishop of York; The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr John Sentamu. The cleave is included in the booklet accompanying this initiative and on the EA website and in upcoming press releases.

Afterwards, Janet: A Murder Mystery in Speech Acts by Diana Manister

Split in Two (or three) by P.A.Levy

Split in Two (or three)

I’ve held –……. night time skies laden with dreams,
stars –………….. and the moon, whose orbit follows lines
in my hand –.. laid down into darkness moulded by caresses,
until light –….. touch of pleasures; sweet songs
escaped –……… crashing into prism colours,
out through –. sonnets I wrote on your flesh
my fingers –…. tracing every wish into a couplet
and then –……. sealing every letter of love with a kiss
I just held –….. and held you until morning became clothed in mists;
cloud –………….. castles crumbled on the drift and I was lost in echoes
whispers –……. that blue is here to stay forever.

P.A.Levy, having fled his native East End, now hides in the heart of Suffolk countryside learning the lost art of hedge mumbling.  He has been published in several magazines, although these days he spends far too much time controlling his characters on the Clueless Collective website at: www.cluelesscollective.co.uk.

After Reading Shelley and Hearing Krenwinkel is up For Parole Again by Laurie Byro

After Reading Shelley and Hearing Krenwinkel is up For Parole Again

by Laurie Byro

A greater impact is
absence as you                Troublesome Love
wield your chisel creating
somebody else’s wound         you are thwarted by
                              inconvenience.
Are you the one?
                              It is the silver hour
                              Crickets will chorus
One of the unfortunate
who settles your stiff legs
into a hunter’s stance
after you claim the body?     in the four corners
                              of my room. 

They will say, as any smart
family will say,
I have gone to Ireland
to be with my aunt.           Soon I will rise, Ophelia’s
                              wet hair clinging to my legs
                              like strands of lake-grass.
You have left me, but I will
walk away from you,
this time.                    Call me the only Romantic
                              in your mad maid’s circle.
You, who have been
with a man.                              

But bury me under a Pointing Tree its fingers brown
from its work under the sun, not woman’s work on paper
falling and covering me as you should have done had you
not preferred my sister.
 ========================================

Laurie Byro is a thrice nominated Pushcart Prize poet who has been published widely in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Laurie lives in Northern New Jersey where she works as Head of Circulation in a library and facilitates “Circle of Voices.”

Descending a Double Helix Staircase by Margot Brown

….Descending a Double Helix Staircase

On Ativan …………………..for my trouble with heights
..I can open my eyes………………I wobble with fright
…in this merciless mouth of air…………trembling
……each edge a precipice………no stable sight
…….disoriented…………like a drunk baby ape
………..flailing for a vine…..aloft, out of synch
……….…oh! for a drink…….thirsty from fear
…………….descend……….steps tentative
..……………….swaying…………twisting
…..………………imagining……..falling
………………….……falling….calling
…………………………….calling
………………………………fall
………………………………ing

Margot Brown was born and raised in Massachusetts and now lives in Northern Illinois with a Hurricane Katrina evacuee (Miss Kitty), and her husband, Michael Morrison. Margot’s poetry has appeared in joyful!, The Shine Journal and The Boston Literary Magazine and in an upcoming anthology, Poetry for Suzanne, published by Avalanche.

tHe mAgic typEwritEr (cleave poetics 15-19/19) by Dennis Kelly

CLEAVE POETICS 15-19

Four Quatorzain cleaves

“I prefer poems in anthologies
to poems in individual books.
A poem in an anthology has
forgotten its author.”
—Tan Lin, “ambient stylistics,”
Telling It Slant

BERNSTEIN

Brute design—beltway bozos
dEmocracy—lewd propositions
guRly boyz—knowing the truth
thiNk about—halliburton haves and those
scabS of the—ratty mourning have-nots
gangsTer lobbyists—hoodlum politicians
silhouEtting—formaldehyde artifices
uncertaInties—nightly snarky fox-tv
discrepaNcies—elephantine lies

Seed text = BERNSTEIN
Source text = Charles Bernstein’s
“Ballad of the Girly Man,” Girly Man (2000)

(Using the diastic method, the writer reads through the source text and successively finds words or other linguistic units that have the letters of the seed text in positions that correspond to those they occupy in the seed text.)

http://quarterlyconversation.com/thing-of-beauty-by-jackson-mac-low

(Using the cleave method, the writer reads through the diastic text—hyphenating the horizontal text into2 vertical texts. The resulting text is a diastic / cleave intertext—with 3 poems in positions that correspond to each in a unique polymorphosely vocal / textual way.

https://cleavepoetry.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/dennis-kellys-further-thoughts-on-cleave-poetics/

GREENE

Gravedigger—slowly finishing up
GReene saying—“One never knows,
WhEn the blow—may fall”
DetEctive—sesame phrase:
“FrieNd—of Harry Lime”—
WinklEr—the Viennese Jansenist

Seed text = GREENE
Source text =The Third Man (1950)

“Jansenist,” Dr. Winkler commented and closed his mouth sharply as though he had been guilty of giving away too much information. “Never heard the word. Why are the arms above the head?” Dr. Winkler said reluctantly, “Because He died, in their view, only for the elect.”
—Graham Greene, The Third Man

BAUDELAIRE

Balking at sleep—i was a well
pAscal had his abysses—i was a mine
haUnted by vertigo—nightmares
hanDs reaching down into—darknesss
pacEs full of—languorous indifferences
disobLiging work—being a lyric poet in hell
consolAtions being few—in between while
contritIions ending up—lame and clandestine
surrendeRing sullen—boredom
silhouettEs—baudelaire on the wall…

Seed text = BAUDELAIRE
Source text = Les Fleurs de malNotes:

“Les Fleurs de mal was the last lyric work that had a broad European reception; no other writings penetrated beyond a more or less linguistic area. Added to this is the fact that Baudelaire expended his productive capacity almost entirely on this one volume.” —Walter Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire (2006)

PIERS GAVESTON

Ganymede—prince, my future king
pAge, sovereign’s son—fairest lover boy
joVe’s cutest chicken—lascivious commaund
sweEt beauty’s rarest purple—flower in bloom
wordS can’t describe how wanton—the ivy-twisting
idolaTrous my love-sick lips—kissing qualm
gavestOn your servant—ogling eyes astonished
ascendaNt—by rare phoenix youth…

Seed text = Gaveston
Source text =”Piers Gaveston,”
Michael Drayton (1593)

“This Edward in the April of his age,
Whil’st yet the Crown sat on his father’s head
My Jove with me, his Ganymede, his page,
Frolic as May, a lusty life we led…..
He might commaund, he was my
Sovereign’s son,
And what I said, by him was ever done.
My words as laws authentic he allowed,
Mine yea, by him was never crossed with no,
All my conceit as current he avowed,
And as my shadow still he served so”

The Cleave on Ink Sweat & Tears

Thanks to Charles Christian for highlighting us on his webzine Ink Sweat and Tears,

where the first ever cleave poem was published over a year ago.

It is a great place to submit your poetry to, and Charles is a great Editor.

Please Burn This Poem, Plant this Poem by J.S. MacLean

………………………..…Please Burn This Poem, Plant this Poem

To write a cleave…………………………………………..if it is three poems
won’t be easy………………………………………….or one long one folded
the usual symmetrical……………………..bilateral or triclinic trimeter
approach is to take………………………………………..two to make three
ideas and explore……………………………….more than one the sonnet
all ins and outs……………………………………..or if I actually amputate
with technique………………………………..a formula with three results
until it sounds……………………………………..just like temporal fission
like a Bach’s……………………………………………….C Major Solo Violin
Sonata…………………………………………………………or a Coltrane tune
single melody…………………………………………………………..streaming
into three………………………………………………………………at least two
coexisting………………………………………………..simultaneous in time
if it works………………………………………….in some mysterious world
if a secret door unlocks……………………where you need three sexes
will three know……………………………………………………….to connect
and still respect………………………………………………………each other
in triplicate………………………………………..expecting baseball teams
_____________________________________________
Maybe if I use a mirror…………………………………………………so I did
.write on the glass…………………………………………peer over the top
…holding up to another…………………………………..and there I was
….trying to make sense……………………………..in a two way world
…..of a cleavage………………………………………..layered and lucid
…….like sheets of isinglass…………………..for a furnace window
……….but the poems are looking out…..three no four no more
…………a trillion I suppose……..spawning darkness an abyss
………….behind the isinglass………of monoclinic evil hordes
………………but they are the isinglass……..but all is glass
………………….or just like glass…………….like isinglass
……………………….isn’t it glass………………or isn’t it
…………………………….isinglass……..I guess it is
…………………………………………..isn’t it
……………………………………………..or
……………………………………………..is
……………………………………………..it

J.S. MacLean lives in Calgary Alberta, Canada. His poetry has been published in
online and print publications including This Magazine, The Maynard, Beano Anthology
and Vidya and will appear in upcoming issues of  Every Day Poets and Perspectives.

A Compass Rose, Explained to a Raindrop by Andrea Defoe

A warm welcome to Andrea Defoe.

*

A Compass Rose, Explained to a Raindrop

North, then Northwest – from the black river, – so this is Northeast:

from where the road forks – you empty out into – a pristine lake

you choose like Frost – a manmade reservoir – poisoned with mercury

but both ways are so paved – with a foot-shaped floor – like the god took a swim

as to show no wear – like a shoe slipped off – and abandoned

but if you continue West – to the center, a giant – Eastern style artesian well

you’ll flow into a kettle – cartographer’s teacup – brimming

a glacial relic – all chipped clay and oldness – with a good spring

like the cool grottos – awful musty – and out of use

to the Southwest there are – tents in a campground, – doors facing Southeast

thunder clouds – angled roofs for rain – shut windows

that call you up – so you can drip down – and you’re kept outside

so you can boom – and make mud, – because weather is dirty

feed that hurricane brewing down South.

*

Andrea Defoe lives with her family on the Red Cliff Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin.

She prefers to think of herself as being at least of few cats shy of crazy cat lady, but she’s

honestly not sure. Her poems have appeared in various literary journals, most recently:

Rattle, 32 Poems, New American Writing and Margie.

Pastor in White by Thane Zander

                    Pastor in White

    I begged the minister - to bow down to an unknown God
     support my matrimony - as we preached to John
 creating a new inference - to demonise George - King
   and passing the Grace, - unto facts of insobriety
I stood firm, knees tight - and passing judgement on the Christ
       nailed to the wall - where the blood dried and
      we spoke in tongues - a Pastor in White washed.