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SCOTT THOMAS OUTLAR

2/15/2016

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Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com where links to his published poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews can be found. He is a Best of the Net nominee whose words have appeared recently in venues such as Eunoia Review, Your One Phone Call, Visual Verse, The Literary Nest, and Green Panda Press. Scott's chapbook "Songs of a Dissident" was released in 2015 through Transcendent Zero Press and is available on Amazon.


​                   Conversation Killer
 

 
It’s a bit strange
how the mind works sometimes
 
Sitting here on the front porch
when for a split second
it feels as if Dad is there
in the chair beside me
and we’re about to discuss
any old thing in the world
 
But the sensation is gone
as soon as it arrived
and all that remains
is the sad thought
that it has been
nearly two damned years at this point
since the last time we talked


                      Wind, Rain, Shiver
 
 
I don’t always preach about love
because I am not a charlatan
 
I save such words
for when I truly mean them
 

 
                       Silverfish
 
 
Away from the light,
dancing antennae
scutter past spiders
to hide in the shadows
where silvery scales
can wait in the bathtub
for the house to fall silent.
 
Creeping and crawling
while the world is asleep
the pests of the night
head to the bookshelf
for a feast.
 
With the dawn
in the morning
we are early to rise,
and head to the office
to wake up our minds…
only to find
that the words
which our eyes
seek to read
have been devoured in full
by our foul enemy…
 
that has slipped away
without a trace,
leaving only
torn and shredded pages
in its wake –
 

 
                 Beyond Comprehension
 
 
Love is a spasmodic explosion
Love is a tidal wave of passion
Love is a womb bursting open
Love is a scream across the void
Love is an aching in the bones
Love is a fire deep in the marrow
Love is an agony without satiation
Love is the electric pulse of skin friction
Love is the tip of the tongue tasting center
Love is hot flesh pressed tightly against hot flesh
Love is a stain found between bedsheets
Love is a wild dance in the midnight hour
Love is the first sip of wine in a new day
Love is the seed shooting out its first sprout
Love is the dirt into which roots burrow
Love is the evolutionary fervor of mutating genes
Love is the unstoppable swarm of progressive adaptation
Love is a widow weeping in despair
Love is the sorrow of existential desolation
Love is the pain of seeking perfection
Love is trying again when rejection strikes
Love is the thunderclap of gods in the sky
Love is the rumbling storm of righteousness
Love is a fat wad of cash filling up pockets
Love is a space of shelter in the midst of chaos
Love is the entropy that wails and gnashes
Love is a tooth being cut on hardships
Love is getting back up after failure
Love is the new dawn rising above far horizon
Love is a truth that cannot be rationalized
Love is a force beyond all comprehension
Love is justified violence against atrocity
Love is blood, sweat, sex, cum, and tears
Love is war, baby…
Come and get some – 

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PEAULADD HUY

2/15/2016

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Peauladd Huy was born in Phnom Penh. Her latest work, published by Connotation Press: An Online Artifact was nominated for the Sundress "Best of the Net," the Dzanc "Best of the Net," and the Pushcart Prize. And with deep gratitude to Connotation Press she’ll have a book, forthcoming soon.



              Water 




Think of a river 
The water is not named

From every depth it runs
Water is water

The river is not without
Its flow. Its life--

The life of a creature is in the blood
When he enters the water reddens--

You are not wrong: blood is thicker than water,
If permissible, blood can float a river

And what remains 
A river are found. 



               To Purpose


Where I can be of most use?
I can be the pit the rain 

Pools after they emptied and filled, 
The flood now sits over the rice plains, 

The great lake stars 
Space like eyes on the moon 

Tonight. The moon. The moon 
(What can I say?). Sometimes light I can see 

Flickering over the water they are watching. 
It returns like a missing father. Staggering

Bruised night to night, in various shades of light 
Eaten by a monster 

Darkness in my nightmares.     
Nightmare. Nightmare 

And nightmaring (what to say about it): 
It is an eye. Opening 

The theatrical darkness I’ve entered, not once 
Was I permitted to be bored

With his torture, his resourcefulness to disguise
And ambush—the gnat is not always a gnat, the spider,

The web, the young girl looking on the garden
Of white lotuses suddenly turns bone-white 

Genocide, those rice fields: when will they stop 
This constant façade over these years 

Old bones, scaffolding with every intricate 
Part I am to them? In this blank space, this vacant dark wall 

Spanning a grotesque mirror and its flat face, the moon I see
The children following, me not far, breathless with questions, my mother and her death 

Camp of mothers calling here and there: Are they there? 
Are they here? in the corner 

Back I first did not see. Are they too, they still have hidden in rice 
Acreages, I am to appeal for (to poetry of all)? 

Now dirty bits broken up and stuck together (they too don’t want 
A whole mirror regarding such images distorting their perfect poetry).

So I’m torn once and twice (are we right 
Calling on the service of others

To view our deaths?) Once committed; twice visited 
(Day and night); and three times I am real

Real is real to disguise 
You all amongst night 

Trees, blooms as common as rain, flood and fog 
Fields, my mind

(You all’s actually) in voices of petals and leaves 
Falling, faces cut features—a human collage

Of planetary deaths: can you see 
One’s falling dark a million stars are shown?  


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NAUSHENA

2/15/2016

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Naushena is a poet, an early years teacher, a healer and a mother of three. She has been writing poems since her teens about the complexities of life and developed her passion over the years. Besides poetry, she writes essays and fiction too. Her work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Mothers Always Write and is forthcoming in Mamalode.

 
                               The  Street  Lamp  Light


At night had you passed by the spot
Hope you could miss it not.
The pole; tall, slender and old
With a belly wrapped in gold.
 
In winter serving as a lantern
For travelers who to their home return.
Shrouded by a sheet of mist
But she would secretly peep through it.
 
Few sat studying under the little lamp light
To make their future prosperous and bright.
Few burnt to death at her feet
At last, they had accepted their defeat.
 
Years passed, seasons went
To give light, she was meant.
Children’s play she had witnessed
Not a sight had she missed.
 
Now her body has bent low.
No more does she glow
But she’s happy with this even
For she has become, a bird’s haven.                                   
                                              

                                            My  Shape  Poem
                                                                    I
                                                                     Am old.
                                                           They say, may be fifty.
                                                Nay, more. I say. My life’s a book
                                        Zealously preserved with all the events I have seen.
                                 A silent spectator, I have been of travelers, who stood under
                                                               My shade in the
                      Scorching heat when I played with the Sun, hide and seek. Who would
                 Attempt to cast his rays upon them and I swayed to and fro, to protect them. I was
         A home of many birds, a quiet partner of children in their games, their favorite escondite.
  My long roots like the golden tresses of a woman were their swings. My coarse trunk, engraved
   With the names of lovers, is a testimony of their fleeting love. Here I am alone at the causeway
                                                             Standing majestically,   
                                                             With open arms. Cut
                                                             My boughs to light your
                                                             Fire, if you want. After  
                                                             All, who can burn and 
                                                             Still give comfort? Here
                                                             I stand unreservedly,
                                                             To serve and I will, as 
                                                             Long as I am let by you. 
                                                                                                       
                                                 

 
                        Last  Time

​

Last time, just last time,
Embrace me,
Just tell me that you are sorry.
Sorry for disrespecting me,
 For abusing me,
Tarnishing my image.
With both hands, apologize
Say that you should not have insulted me
In front of others.
Last time, confess that you did not regard me
 As a selfless soul
Who walked along through thick and thin
When others left.
Who sold her possessions for you
When you possessed nothing.
Last time, just last time
Admit that your words
Pierced through my body
And wounded my soul
Leaving invisible marks
That this self will always behold.
Last time, kneel down and repent
That you killed
My love, my respect
And my compassion for you,
Only then, perhaps,
I may forgive you.
                                                    
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CHRISTINA MURPHY

2/15/2016

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Christina Murphy’s poetry is an exploration of consciousness as subjective experience, and her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including, PANK, Dali’s Lovechild, and Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, and the anthologies From the Roaring Deep: A Devotional in Honor of Poseidon and the Spirits of the Sea, The Great Gatsby Anthology, Let the Sea Find Its Edges, and Remaking Moby-Dick. Her work has been nominated multiples times for the Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Net anthology.



                    Before There Were Rebels



Before there were rebels, there were prodigals;
before there were prodigals, there were fathers;
before there were fathers, there was God.

Perhaps. Or maybe God was a conventionalist,
not a prodigal, or a rebel, and only peripherally a father.
Deciphering is the key because there is no way to know.

So the mind plays with logic and the heart plays with need,
and any of the three will work depending upon how it is
one needs to see or understand stability or chaos.

God the conventionalist would have created out of duty
God the rebel would have created out of spite
God the prodigal would have created to re-create a lost unity

Seeing God as the conventionalist, it is easy to praise 
God’s work ethic. A lot was accomplished—beyond
perhaps even God’s expectations

Seeing God as the rebel gives one sympathy for those
who feel angry at being in someone else’s world
on someone else’s terms

Seeing God as the prodigal makes one aware of
transgressions and the desire to make amends by
replacing a broken trust with a new world of second chances

Seeing God as God lacks the human touch, which might
be fine with God, but is too limiting for humans,
who might wish to think of God as one of their own

So perhaps God was none of these but just a child
seeking to play in a world of no playmates,
in a vast darkness before the Let there be light

And God the child was a visionary, and the ideas became
visions, which became the three-dimensional forms 
that humans came to know as reality

Ah, the prodigal plays, the rebel fantasizes, 
and God the child mourns for companionship
equal to God the child’s abilities and interests 

And everywhere, the Universe mourns for lack 
a North-Star God who is centered within
the darkness and defined by light

The world is a dream of perfection that falls
from grace in every pensive moment
of a human or God-like heart

Rebel on, oh God, while prodigals you have created
look for the way home in the bittersweet melancholy
of stepping stones into stillness


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YUXING XIA

2/15/2016

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Yuxing Xia is an author and poet who has been published in 10 different countries in journals and magazines such as Society of Classical Poets, Strong Verse, and many others. He hopes to retire to an ostrich farm.

          Rain


Within the crest of a lasting rain, 
I held an umbrella hostage for a friend.
I stood wide-eyed for several hours,
waiting for a shadowy figure to emerge
and greet me with a sigh of relief.

I wondered if I (or my friend?) 
was at the wrong spot and we wasted
time waiting for each other to reach
the other, only to find ourselves
lost inside the labyrinthine self.


        Backseat

Take a spin around the block
and let me know if you like the new car
because it’s your birthday and I wanted
to give you that pickup truck. 
Run through some mud and a few mail boxes, 
go opposite the one-way lanes and I will follow 
the trail of twigs and leftover paint to your home.
As I savor this moment in the back seat,
we will make new memories along the highways
and floating dust, speeding under the cover
of moonlight and bumper stickers. 
The moments we sacrifice 
along the journey of increasing velocity
will not be lost once the brakes break.

          Colony

Legions of time couldn’t fall 
when we crossed the colored seas, 
sailing with a creaky boat. Our heads 
were raised above the mast 
with salty air swelling our faces. 
We could twist that old raft 
in whichever direction we wanted 
jumping up and down. 
And the wear in the rudder 
was telling of our clumsiness. 
We knew the first sliver of land 
was going to be cooked and eaten, 
then stepped on and colonized. 
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DEBORAH ROCHELEAU

2/15/2016

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Deborah Rocheleau is an English major, Chinese minor, and all-around language fanatic. Her writing has been published by Tin House, 100 Word Story, Flights, and Thema, among others. She is currently writing her third contemporary young adult novel. 


​                  Lightning Strikes


Waiting for the elevator to the Washington Monument
our tour guide informed us the structure is free-standing
No mortar holds all those marble blocks in place
but their weight alone anchors them to the Earth.

No nails were used
an architectural trait it shares with the Japanese pagoda
made not with stones like their Chinese equivalents,
but wood, paper, earthen tiles
and a heavy central mast, the shinbashira
that keeps the building upright through an earthquake
weathering a natural disaster
better than the Washington Monument.

The day after our trip up the Monument,
an earthquake rattled the Capitol 
sending a crack down through the free-standing stones of the obelisk
like the mark from a bolt of lightning when it kisses the top
of a stripped, branchless, cypress tree.

Although pagodas withstand the earthquakes
inevitable in Japan
random lightning strikes
are claiming them
one shinbashira
at a time.
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FIONA PITT-KETHLEY

2/15/2016

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Fiona Pitt-Kethley is the author of more than twenty books of prose and poetry. She is British but has lived in Spain for the last thirteen years together with her family and an adopted family of feral cats. She is currently writing a prose book and poems on the Sierra Minera.


​        Mina Segundo Ferrocarril


Its mouth is hidden in the woods. A slope
leads up to it behind a cemetery.
The Romans mined here first, then Modern Man
reopened it, extending passages.
So many Roman mines ended up thus.
Nineteenth and Twentieth century bosses lacked
divining skills to search out other spots,
preferred to scrape the last scraps of the ore
from almost worked-out mines that once were good. 

The tunnel´s filled with mud up to our knees.
Its roof is low, easy to strike your head.
Our ancestors were shorter in those days.

Along the route some rusting rails emerge
The passageway divides, forking in two,
its Roman straighteneess bending to a curve.
Galena glints where lights illumine it.
No hammer needed on these brittle walls.
They yield their samples to our fingers´ touch,
gypsum, rainbowed with goethite, yellowed with iron.

The left branch leads to ancient areas.
Some masonry that´s growing stalactites.
Clear water pooling on the floor beside.
A white precipitate turns it to milk
as we plod through it to the tunnel´s end.

The right branch has a ramp that leads upstairs.
This mine goes up where other mines go down.
The upper level´s dry. The clearest quartz, 
galena, siderite adorn its walls. 
gypsum so delicate it turns to dust.
More passages, another drystone wall
leads up for those who have the skill to climb.
A telltale string other collectors left
marks out the path to precious minerals.
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GTIMOTHY GORDON

2/15/2016

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OPEN HOUSE (fictions) and an expanded edition of  the prize-winning SunStone Poetry Press chapbook, EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE:  ENHANCED,  REVISED EDITION, were published in 2015, while GROUND OF THIS BLUE EARTH and UNDER ARIES were published in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Gordon's awards include National Endowment for the Arts & Humanities Fellowships and writing residencies, while several poems have been nominated for Pushcarts. NIGHT COMPANY was nominated for an NEA Western States' Book Awards. 

He divides personal and professional lives among Asia, Europe, and the Mountain/Desert Southwest.  

          What is Light After All but Desire?

Better to illuminate than merely to shine . . .
-Aquinas-



Beyond the complex, a parti-colored suite of prayer-flag kerchiefs hitched on hemp
And cord stretched across the patch of thin-skinned, filéd, silver poplars adorning Night, 
People, Pueblo, Llano decked out in desert ecru, ochre, divining light.  And then they ignite 
So soon as spiritlamps, spots of unknowable light rarely seen, or first-felt in the blood, 
Until late, blue, then red and violet sparking inside and out chambered houses of the poor 
Like winter-white luminaria, now midsummer-mad, adobe, stucco, terrones marsh-brick 
Glowing, while the flat pale sky requites its dark desire over clumps of mountains splayed in 
Silhouette, white night caught in the desertspell of wild iris, jasmine and lilac, Chaste berry shrub, 
Sexpot Tease Cereus, her solitary solstice taking nightwhite root, blooming oh so virginal! 
For once, and once only, out of cactus in fragrant darkness, then poof— gone with the dawn, 
Light after all but desire inspiriting dreamy clay.


                      Spring-Moon

Lotuses on a Summer’s Evening
(after Yung Shou-p’ing)

What if they’re not as sublime as baroque Blue Nile lotus,
Crème-white Madonna lily, ascending aflash from sacred waters, 
Stems stiff as righteous Jamaican spliffs, têtes regally coiffured, 
But just gangly and beige and somewhat scumbled, brushed on 
Mulberry bark or rice paper, their taupe, misty palette Home, 
Opening nightly up from rushes and shallows for no one but 
Themselves, Art, Nature, Poetry, and the unseen Spring-Moon 
Illuminating mist just enough for feel, just as it illumines every
Mortal thing in this world, however briefly, fabled glam aesthetes 
Sporting toque-blanche-et-azure crowns, milkweed and toadstool—, 
Sunflowers caught furiously yellow on canvas in the act of being  
Nothing more beautiful than they already were, are, always have been, 
In bleak, wintry Arles.
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CHRISTINA MURPHY

1/15/2016

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Christina Murphy’s poetry is an exploration of consciousness as subjective experience, and her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including, PANK, Dali’s Lovechild, and Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, and the anthologies From the Roaring Deep: A Devotional in Honor of Poseidon and the Spirits of the Sea, The Great Gatsby Anthology, Let the Sea Find Its Edges, and Remaking Moby-Dick. Her work has been nominated multiples times for the Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Net anthology.

A TOWN WHERE THE MERMAID by Christina Murphy
​

a town where the mermaid
is a run-down bar and fishing nets hang 
on wooden walls,

the sea nearby rocks
in fragmented lights;

the waves are reminders
of change and temporality— 
nothing lasts beyond small motions

not hearts or grains of sand, not even
stars someday when infinity is exhausted
and nothing remains to understand the silence
INTERSECTIONS by Christina Murphy

The order of things is the outer shell
of stems & roots, waterfalls & bedrock
opening into the softest sighs of patterns
shaped by the intersections of evening light 

The grains of ocean sand
are blossoming stairways,
narrowly extending into a way of being,
silently beautiful in all forms of light

Concealed in clouds are the tears of the lost,
the wrong turns, the sad choices—all hidden
within the white shadows floating, like delicate smoke,
across a deeply blue & motionless sky
ALL THINGS CONTAINED BY ZERO by Christina Murphy
​

1.
Hillsides in the blue haze of evening
where intricate honeysuckle vines frame
the melancholy of the sun’s diminishing heat

Rippled water shines in silken layers,
and all the world’s failings are revealed 
by the loneliness of each mooring of dreams in an endless sea

All things contained by zero will be reshaped  
by the meanings held in one fragile moment--
night’s darkness approaching like the shadows

Of moonlight on ancient waters, restless with currents
as the graceful arc of gravity connects land and sky
through a latticework of clouds and waves stirring

2.
In light, in darkness, the world does not seem a globe 
but a surface layered with growth and diminishment
and a circumference that defines what might have been

Like the stones on eroded shores that, in twilight,
look like angels seeking a way to speak to the heavens,
the indifference is cold and deep, more silent than foreboding

And only the tides—like blood—move through channels
and bow down to the fate that holds infinity in its scope
and reshapes the absence entwined within every moment 
2 Comments

COLIN JAMES

1/15/2016

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Colin James has a chapbook of poetry Writing Knights Press: Dreams of the Really Annoying by Colin James called Dreams Of The Really Annoying from Writing Knights Press.

 PANDERING TO THE ECOLOGICAL by Colin James


                                                  At the staff promotion 
                                                  it was someone's idea
                                                  to herd wild antelopes
                                                  through a narrow pass 
                                                  into a hastily built stockade. 
                                                  But those animals can jump, and did
                                                  killing several office workers instantly.
                                                  Mrs. Newman who collected the office fund
                                                  was the slowest running almost posthumously, 
                                                  and an intern we weren't sure really existed anyway.
                                                  The big boss down from corporate,
                                                  stood on a boulder screaming into a megaphone.
                                                  He had the look of conviction in those blue eyes.
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DEBORAH ROCHELEAU

1/15/2016

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Deborah Rocheleau is an English major, Chinese minor, and all-around language fanatic. Her writing has been published by Tin House, 100 Word Story, Flights, and Thema, among others. She is currently writing her third contemporary young adult novel.

Immigration by Deborah Rocheleau

Every word wants to make it to English
It’s very accommodating, they’ve heard
once you’re settled
Piñata made it
Feng shui
even Burka

For Tundra, though, things were harder
coming from an obscure background
raised on the snow of Norway
among reindeer herders
He longed to immigrate, even as the dream
seemed a melted ocean away.

Then came a political shift, someone pointing out the benefits of a diverse language
how thought was limited by a starved vocabulary
one word stifling the imagination
While speakers of languages with six words for snow
skated icy circles around their one-word counterparts
The idea, though faulty, inspired measures 
to stockpile words 
snatched here and there from foreign languages.

Thus Tundra arrived
and established himself in the scientific jargon
and thesauruses
of one of the world’s most widely spoken language
He has arrived, only to find himself alone, the sole immigrant 
from Sami, his mother tongue.
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MAREA NEEDLE

1/15/2016

2 Comments

 
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Marea Needle has been writing poetry, short stories, fiction, non-fiction for many years. She published in various media: websites, magazines, journals, etc. Latest work is a collection of short stories titled: From My Ashes, Volume 1, available on Amazon.com. She’s currently working on first novel


THE 1-2-3 OF A LOVE AFFAIR (Pantoums) by Marea Needle




Depending on the Whether - 1

Whether or not he likes me 
Or whether or not I like him
To charm or be charmed
Diving into his soul or looking aside

Or whether or not I like him
Plays the restless dream
Diving into his soul or looking aside        Later… -3
Swearing it off before it starts
                                                                       So what does it matter now
Plays the restless dream                           You’re leaving I’m not
To charm or be charmed                            Will there be tears or not
Swearing it off before it starts                   More ripping apart or not
Whether or not he likes me     
                                                                         You’re leaving I’m not
Obsession - 2                                                Walking in oblivion or not
                                                                         More ripping apart or not
Always the questions                                   Selling off stars or not
Why the other women? 
What is he thinking?                         Walking in oblivion or not 
Where do I fit in?                             Will there be tears or not
                                                              Selling off stars or not
Why the other women?             So what does it matter now
Why isn’t it me?
Where do I fit in? 
Why can’t he get it?

 Why isn’t it me?
 What is he thinking? 
 Where do I fit in?
 Always the questions 
2 Comments

CRAIG KURTZ - THE SCIENCE OF INSULT

1/15/2016

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Craig Kurtz has vexed aesthetic circles since the 1981 release of The Philosophic Collage. Recent work appears in Dalhousie Review, The Madras Mag Anthology of Contemporary Writing, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sheepshead Review, and Tower Poetry;  many others would just as soon string him up. He resides at Twin Oaks Intentional Community.

The Science of Insult by Craig Kurtz

RECRUITMENT FOR THE SCHOOL OF SCOWERING

HEADMASTER:

​Forsooth, the science of insult is mathematical,
There’s protocols and formulas: it’s intellectual;
sure, in the country, some bumpkin can merely slap a face,
but in refinéd London, quarrels’ rules fill a bookcase;
there’s etiquette and precedent and how to do it well,
there’s statutes and concordats in the art of raising hell;
good man, your coming in’s indeed an act fortuitous,
the Captain here is certified a quarreling genius.

CAPTAIN:
I’ll tutor you on the insult disguised as compliment,
I’ll teach you querulous accosts both deft and elegant;
I’ll demonstrate the churlish dehort and the reproof curt
and if these will not prevail ye, there’s kicking shins overt;
the counter-check’s effective, the suave slander’s de rigueur,
the quip intense is trendy, the snide jeer is debonair;
all these prim conventions can be taught to you until
you are advanced to flatter glitterati with ill will.

​PUPIL:

I would speak according to the phrase triumphant, if you please,1
enucleating the kernel of my scabbard with ease;2
I’d like to roar out challenges to all my well-bred foes
but do so with assurance that no one will slit my nose.

HEADMASTER:

Forsooth, the science of insult requires scholarship --
how to salute haunches, when to box ears without slip;
there’s tropes and figures to map out how you should taunt and goad,
and, according to Fastidious Brisk, dueling in the mode;3
now, in the countryside, breaking windows after dark
may be the latest rage but we’ll expect more of you, spark;
we’ve got a certain tenor here, we’ve got a subtle touch,
and being Furious Inland is going to be too much.4

CAPTAIN:

I’ll tutor you on feizing servants and nose-tweaking gents
and why it’s a faux pas to ever mix these variants;
your thump, your wherret, and your doust, essential to ache joints,
tugs on the hair, bobs o’ the lips, I know the finer points; 5
I’ll demonstrate the niceties of truncheons and knife stabs,
but, more importantly, I’ll show you how to dodge bar tabs;
when I am done, the people you’ll love best are enemies,
since friends or family won’t fight you, who needs these base sissies?

PUPIL:

​I would insult courtiers and justle cavaliers --
anyone can brawl with peasants, I’ll hassle compeers;
but, maybe prior to my transformation to gallant,
you might also provide me with some weapon unguent.6
​1. Fletcher and Massinger, The Little French Lawyer, Act II, sc. I.
2. Middleton and Rowley, A Fair Quarrel, Act IV, sc. I.
3. Ridiculous anecdote about a challenge in which two antagonists succeeded in only injuring their foppish attire, from Jonson’s Every Man Out of his Humor.
4. Buffoonish country ruffian in William Davenant’s News From Plymouth.
5. Middleton’s A Nice Valor, Act III, sc. III.
6. Magical salve which, placed upon a weapon, prevents injury to its victim; mentioned in Henry Glapthorne’s The Hollander.



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GTIMOTHY GORDON

1/15/2016

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OPEN HOUSE (fictions) and an expanded edition of  the prize-winning SunStone Poetry Press chapbook, EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE:  ENHANCED,  REVISED EDITION, were published in 2015, while GROUND OF THIS BLUE EARTH and UNDER ARIES were published in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Gordon's awards include National Endowment for the Arts & Humanities Fellowships and writing residencies, while several poems have been nominated for Pushcarts. NIGHT COMPANY was nominated for an NEA Western States' Book Awards. He divides personal and professional lives among Asia, Europe, and the Mountain/Desert Southwest.  

BEFORE THE FALL by GTimothy Gordon

Picasso lived this painting of tears, blue
as the humid depths of the abyss, and full of pity.
                                                                                                                    
-Apollinaire-


His child’s hands
Keep curling, merging
Moment and myth, husband, 
Esposa, bowed, barefoot, 
Shy-eyes beggaring nothing
(Nothing like the maimed
At Guernica, blind men,
Sad acrobats, tumblers, 
Breasts nailed to nudes, 
Guitars the shapes of women, 
Tontos y locos), crude blues,
Blueboy savior blessing all
Before the tide of washed blue sea,
Before duende struck,
Before the scripture, “Pablo Picasso,”
Título, LA TRAGEDIA, 
Lugar, Barcelona, España,
​That summer surréaliste, 1903.

​BAS-RELIEF BLUE by GTimothy Gordon



Behold the sun as still
As the flat, blue, pastel sky,
And the day daily burns a slow,
Fervent burn in its bas-relief beneath--
Brute lives of strays and waifs,
Unnamed, unnamable, 
Found on the floor of earth,
True as the trueblue sky,
Still as the stillborn sun.

​DISORDER AND EARLY SPRING
by GTimothy Gordon

 

They have finally   
Decided to come

Alive on the lower
Slope, shape and color

Intruding into view
Mountain and brush,

First faint stippled hues 
Effacing the comely blue   

And prescient sun
Even unto the nightswell

Where in-deep,
Under starlit canopy

They cease waiting,
Sensing their certain sway   

Into the wild,                         
Crazy with color.
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