7/18/2021 POETRY: ROBERT FREDE KENTERTHE BENDS Polished cameo a distilled mirror steam skimmed skin of water in the oval cue The ocean has no perceptible bottom The detritus of cargo ships strewn, submerged No one dives no strolls to retrieve Don’t rise too quickly back up to the sky Animal exhalations hold the wreckage of your heart poured into a white porcelain sink, angled down A paint spattered canvas Still, breathing – oxygenated There is not enough fresh air. near, a view, a window further, distant, the port. (a churning inland sea, painted surface of nothingness) what emerges four-legged from the shore a figure-ground illusion of an ancient-creature still living, distilled breath, “Dressed Landscape for Dry Ice Studies.” The perspective of a band practice The tarry instruments, tinny, far away of amplifiers affixed to stilts Someday the body will remember Its genealogy A generation of flailing limbs A Flirtation with Rapture The Skin of Victorian buildings floating in the after-birth of rain lakes Porous Fissures lattice network The painting hand thinking in a network of gestures of the linked orbital of satellite communications layers of the ascension the numbing epidermal of embodiment cold metal needle in the simulacra the metronome of a shaking hand the surgeon, hirsute At the bottom of the painting, hand-written, The cut ice letters Here where Holy ghost prophecy carries more weight than science FREEDOM Freedom senses all the tears of a thousand windowsills The rainbow of men and women shoulder to shoulder entering hotels and shelters Rowboat sailors with buttoned oars rough coughing from lungs of a sulfur sheen Of black coal in lieu of flowers holding the skirt of the lake. A thousand monarchs rose up, lifted both sides of the sky exposed exploited roe Inlaid into monoculture rows A cascade of waterfalls and memories accompanied the rain all night Rattling on about the cusp as it danced though never unattended The flood waters rang out May the lake take you under to dream May the sky rise to meet you when you awaken. Robert Frede Kenter is a writer and visual artist, who lives with ME/FM, is widely published and exhibited and is a 2020 Pushcart nominee. Work recently in Black Bough, Burning House Press, Cypress, Talking about Strawberries, Floodlight Ed., Anthropocene, Cough. Robert is publisher of Toronto-based Ice Floe Press www.icefloepress.net & author of a recent hybrid collection, Audacity of Form (Ice Floe Press). A chapbook of VISPO, "EDEN", is forthcoming later in 2021. Robert was a feature reader in 2020 at Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Twitter: @frede_kenter
2/20/2021 POETRY: SAMUEL TONGUECARHENGE Pollok Free State, 1995 (i.m. Colin Macleod) New car smell rammed into the roadbed until it stinks of the earth’s gut: muddy leaves, wet dog, plum-cake. Lichen-rust tectonic under bonnets, engines furred. Headlight bulbs are goldfish bowls, tenantless. Doors pucker with each slam and the boot flaps like a gull-wing. Twin-exhausts are organ pipes, emptying. Everything natural, every thing resourced: we make the things that make us, moulded or vulcanised. Blacked tyres made up with stibnite. When we fire them, rubber drips from the wheel-arches like hot sugar, sweet petroarticles of faith on the tongue. We circle each instant monument, generous heretics, knowing these are ugly gods – bitter in the stomach, black in the lung.
ANIMAL TRIALS: STATEMENT FROM THE TRIAL OF THE WEEVILS OF SAINT JULIEN In the spring of 1587…some weevils were arraigned before the ecclesiastical court in St Jean-de-Maurienne for despoiling the vineyards of St Julien. John Harwood, ‘Deliver Us from Weevils’, Literary Review, August 2013 If I may speak on behalf of my sisters who, of late, have sprung bright from the soil and turned these vineyards into frail stock and failed wines; at no time did we act contrary to our creation; and, indeed, as you will know Reverend Father, your wormy books spell out in calfskin and ink, that we precede your own ape-like standing in the Great Chain of Being. God created animals first, – each creeping thing – and gave us every green herb for food. If I may be so bold: the holy vine-leaf sweetens in our grubbing mouths; the grape swells for us, juicy globes without sin. You might damn us to desist but you would do well to remember this: this trial will not bring the control you crave. Insects are on the side of the angels and we shall turn you out, even unto the grave. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "Carhenge" first published in The Scores, then Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) "Containerization" first published in Gutter, then Stitch (Tapsalteerie, 2018) "Animal Trials: Statement from the Trial of the Weevils of Saint Julien" published in Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) Samuel Tongue's first collection is Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) and he has published two pamphlets: Stitch (Tapsalteerie, 2018) and Hauling-Out (Eyewear, 2016). Poems have appeared in Magma, The Compass, Finished Creatures, Gutter, The Interpreter's House, Envoi and elsewhere. Samuel is Project Coordinator at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh and he lives in Glasgow. www.samueltongue.com; Twitter: @SamuelTongue
11/21/2020 POETRY: KATHLEEN MCCRACKENYOU HAVE TO LOVE THEM ENOUGH TO LET THEM BE WILD That’s what Steve said about the mustangs up on Pryor Mountain – no sugar cubes, no carrots no coaxing, stroking, gentling no whispering no ropes, no tires, no pick up trucks no dust storm swing low choppers no Judas horse no gathering, no holding pens no PZP, no freeze brand no breaking in, no putting down no auction block, no slaughterhouse no flank strap, no fast track no stockyard, no consignment no snaffles, bridles, saddles, spurs no blankets, shoes or blinders no rodeo, no latigo, no cincha no clipping, combing, currying no conchos, braids or bells no ranches, no reata no binder twine for breech births no ligatures, no doctoring of tears & rends & bites no vaccination, no inoculation no sterilization no intervention just bales & bales of air seep water, galleta grass the animal vegetable mineral earth exacting, punishing, available Kathleen McCracken is the author of eight collections of poetry including Blue Light, Bay and College (Penumbra Press, 1991), which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. A bilingual English/Portuguese edition of her poetry entitled Double Self Portrait with Mirror: New and Selected Poems, and featuring a preface by Medbh McGuckian, was published by the Brazilian press Editora Ex Machina in 2016. She is the recipient of several distinguished poetry prizes in Canada and Ireland, and has held Ontario Arts Council, Poetry Ireland and Northern Ireland Arts Council awards. Kathleen is currently Lecturer in Creative Writing and Contemporary Literature at Ulster University, Northern Ireland.
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