heat of july

your lips on mine

oh   yes

       (for El Mutanabi Street and Iraq)

and now

what can we say

of Iraq,

of the El  Mutanabbi street bookstore,

what can we say

of all the delicate pottery in the Iraqi National Museum,

what can we say of the highest educational level in the Middle East,

what can we say about the best medical care

in the middle east,

what can we say about these years that have

been preserved since the time

of Hammurabi, since men climbed

out of the Tigris and Euphrates

created statues, books, knowledge

beyond what the world had known,

the world famous Baghdad Library,

but we can say

we know who threw the bombs,

the missiles,

who destroyed the dams,

the rivers,

the hospitals

the schools

the museums

the universities

we know the ignorant who came to destroy

the mosques

the churches

the synagogues

the science labs

the CAT scan machines

the Xray machines

the research centers in medicine

the homes

the fathers

the mothers

the sisters

the brothers

the sons

the daughters

the unborn children

should we count them all,

should we just stand here

as if is done, and we should remain

silent

and walk away

they would have us remain silent

they would have us walk away

but for us, there shall be no silence

there shall be no walking away

we shall keep this history alive

we shall talk, we shall write

of the barbarians who came,

first the mongol hordes from  Asia,

after Ibn Khaldun tried to convince Ibn Timur

to save the library and the city, he burned it anyway,

then the mongol hordes for America, from

England, from France,

bombing, burning, stealing,

we shall remember them aloud

we shall remember them on paper

we shall condemn them

as we have condemned them from

time before they came to destroy Baghdad

before they came to destroy

Islam, before they came

to steal the oil,

to destroy mankind’s history,

we shall condemn them in every breath

in every word,

for these massacres of humans

of history

of what was

and could be, that has

been shattered, but we

know, it shall come again,

and the hordes that raped this land

just like Ibn Timur who burned the library,

the Western powers that came, will fade away

with their history in shame,

and these rivers, these laws of Allah and Hammurabi

will rise again, as will the saying of Jesus and Moses,

they shall rise again

as will this famous bookstore, this museum,

these universities, these mosques, these churches,

these synagogues, these children,

will reclaim their own land, will yank it away

from the Americans, the English, the French

and we shall join them

as they spit on those who have harmed

the beautiful land and its  people

no, we shall not be silent

we shall never walk away

our words

our hearts

their words

the hearts

their sorrows

their rebirth will remain

so long as men have memories

so long as men have books to read

and so long as men know that in the end

only good will prevail,

inshallah, inshallah

inshallah

c: sam hamod  7.2.11

We shall never remain silent

       (for El Mutanabi Street and Iraq)

and now

what can we say

of Iraq,

of the El  Mutanabbi street bookstore,

what can we say

of all the delicate pottery in the Iraqi National Museum,

what can we say of the highest educational level in the Middle East,

what can we say about the best medical care

in the middle east,

what can we say about these years that have

been preserved since the time

of Hammurabi, since men climbed

out of the Tigris and Euphrates

created statues, books, knowledge

beyond what the world had known,

the world famous Baghdad Library,

but we can say

we know who threw the bombs,

the missiles,

who destroyed the dams,

the rivers,

the hospitals

the schools

the museums

the universities

we know the ignorant who came to destroy

the mosques

the churches

the synagogues

the science labs

the CAT scan machines

the Xray machines

the research centers in medicine

the homes

the fathers

the mothers

the sisters

the brothers

the sons

the daughters

the unborn children

should we count them all,

should we just stand here

as if is done, and we should remain

silent

and walk away

they would have us remain silent

they would have us walk away

but for us, there shall be no silence

there shall be no walking away

we shall keep this history alive

we shall talk, we shall write

of the barbarians who came,

first the mongol hordes from  Asia,

after Ibn Khaldun tried to convince Ibn Timur

to save the library and the city, he burned it anyway,

then the mongol hordes for America, from

England, from France,

bombing, burning, stealing,

we shall remember them aloud

we shall remember them on paper

we shall condemn them

as we have condemned them from

time before they came to destroy Baghdad

before they came to destroy

Islam, before they came

to steal the oil,

to destroy mankind’s history,

we shall condemn them in every breath

in every word,

for these massacres of humans

of history

of what was

and could be, that has

been shattered, but we

know, it shall come again,

and the hordes that raped this land

just like Ibn Timur who burned the library,

the Western powers that came, will fade away

with their history in shame,

and these rivers, these laws of Allah and Hammurabi

will rise again, as will the saying of Jesus and Moses,

they shall rise again

as will this famous bookstore, this museum,

these universities, these mosques, these churches,

these synagogues, these children,

will reclaim their own land, will yank it away

from the Americans, the English, the French

and we shall join them

as they spit on those who have harmed

the beautiful land and its  people

no, we shall not be silent

we shall never walk away

our words

our hearts

their words

the hearts

their sorrows

their rebirth will remain

so long as men have memories

so long as men have books to read

and so long as men know that in the end

only good will prevail,

inshallah, inshallah

inshallah

c: sam hamod  7.2.11

We shall never remain silent

       (for El Mutanabi Street and Iraq)

and now

what can we say

of Iraq,

of the El  Mutanabbi street bookstore,

what can we say

of all the delicate pottery in the Iraqi National Museum,

what can we say of the highest educational level in the Middle East,

what can we say about the best medical care

in the middle east,

what can we say about these years that have

been preserved since the time

of Hammurabi, since men climbed

out of the Tigris and Euphrates

created statues, books, knowledge

beyond what the world had known,

the world famous Baghdad Library,

but we can say

we know who threw the bombs,

the missiles,

who destroyed the dams,

the rivers,

the hospitals

the schools

the museums

the universities

we know the ignorant who came to destroy

the mosques

the churches

the synagogues

the science labs

the CAT scan machines

the Xray machines

the research centers in medicine

the homes

the fathers

the mothers

the sisters

the brothers

the sons

the daughters

the unborn children

should we count them all,

should we just stand here

as if is done, and we should remain

silent

and walk away

they would have us remain silent

they would have us walk away

but for us, there shall be no silence

there shall be no walking away

we shall keep this history alive

we shall talk, we shall write

of the barbarians who came,

first the mongol hordes from  Asia,

after Ibn Khaldun tried to convince Ibn Timur

to save the library and the city, he burned it anyway,

then the mongol hordes for America, from

England, from France,

bombing, burning, stealing,

we shall remember them aloud

we shall remember them on paper

we shall condemn them

as we have condemned them from

time before they came to destroy Baghdad

before they came to destroy

Islam, before they came

to steal the oil,

to destroy mankind’s history,

we shall condemn them in every breath

in every word,

for these massacres of humans

of history

of what was

and could be, that has

been shattered, but we

know, it shall come again,

and the hordes that raped this land

just like Ibn Timur who burned the library,

the Western powers that came, will fade away

with their history in shame,

and these rivers, these laws of Allah and Hammurabi

will rise again, as will the saying of Jesus and Moses,

they shall rise again

as will this famous bookstore, this museum,

these universities, these mosques, these churches,

these synagogues, these children,

will reclaim their own land, will yank it away

from the Americans, the English, the French

and we shall join them

as they spit on those who have harmed

the beautiful land and its  people

no, we shall not be silent

we shall never walk away

our words

our hearts

their words

the hearts

their sorrows

their rebirth will remain

so long as men have memories

so long as men have books to read

and so long as men know that in the end

only good will prevail,

inshallah, inshallah

inshallah

c: sam hamod  7.2.11

We shall never remain silent

       (for El Mutanabi Street and Iraq)

and now

what can we say

of Iraq,

of the El  Mutanabbi street bookstore,

what can we say

of all the delicate pottery in the Iraqi National Museum,

what can we say of the highest educational level in the Middle East,

what can we say about the best medical care

in the middle east,

what can we say about these years that have

been preserved since the time

of Hammurabi, since men climbed

out of the Tigris and Euphrates

created statues, books, knowledge

beyond what the world had known,

the world famous Baghdad Library,

but we can say

we know who threw the bombs,

the missiles,

who destroyed the dams,

the rivers,

the hospitals

the schools

the museums

the universities

we know the ignorant who came to destroy

the mosques

the churches

the synagogues

the science labs

the CAT scan machines

the Xray machines

the research centers in medicine

the homes

the fathers

the mothers

the sisters

the brothers

the sons

the daughters

the unborn children

should we count them all,

should we just stand here

as if is done, and we should remain

silent

and walk away

they would have us remain silent

they would have us walk away

but for us, there shall be no silence

there shall be no walking away

we shall keep this history alive

we shall talk, we shall write

of the barbarians who came,

first the mongol hordes from  Asia,

after Ibn Khaldun tried to convince Ibn Timur

to save the library and the city, he burned it anyway,

then the mongol hordes for America, from

England, from France,

bombing, burning, stealing,

we shall remember them aloud

we shall remember them on paper

we shall condemn them

as we have condemned them from

time before they came to destroy Baghdad

before they came to destroy

Islam, before they came

to steal the oil,

to destroy mankind’s history,

we shall condemn them in every breath

in every word,

for these massacres of humans

of history

of what was

and could be, that has

been shattered, but we

know, it shall come again,

and the hordes that raped this land

just like Ibn Timur who burned the library,

the Western powers that came, will fade away

with their history in shame,

and these rivers, these laws of Allah and Hammurabi

will rise again, as will the saying of Jesus and Moses,

they shall rise again

as will this famous bookstore, this museum,

these universities, these mosques, these churches,

these synagogues, these children,

will reclaim their own land, will yank it away

from the Americans, the English, the French

and we shall join them

as they spit on those who have harmed

the beautiful land and its  people

no, we shall not be silent

we shall never walk away

our words

our hearts

their words

the hearts

their sorrows

their rebirth will remain

so long as men have memories

so long as men have books to read

and so long as men know that in the end

only good will prevail,

inshallah, inshallah

inshallah

c: sam hamod  7.2.11

We shall never remain silent

       (for El Mutanabi Street and Iraq)

and now

what can we say

of Iraq,

of the El  Mutanabbi street bookstore,

what can we say

of all the delicate pottery in the Iraqi National Museum,

what can we say of the highest educational level in the Middle East,

what can we say about the best medical care

in the middle east,

what can we say about these years that have

been preserved since the time

of Hammurabi, since men climbed

out of the Tigris and Euphrates

created statues, books, knowledge

beyond what the world had known,

the world famous Baghdad Library,

but we can say

we know who threw the bombs,

the missiles,

who destroyed the dams,

the rivers,

the hospitals

the schools

the museums

the universities

we know the ignorant who came to destroy

the mosques

the churches

the synagogues

the science labs

the CAT scan machines

the Xray machines

the research centers in medicine

the homes

the fathers

the mothers

the sisters

the brothers

the sons

the daughters

the unborn children

should we count them all,

should we just stand here

as if is done, and we should remain

silent

and walk away

they would have us remain silent

they would have us walk away

but for us, there shall be no silence

there shall be no walking away

we shall keep this history alive

we shall talk, we shall write

of the barbarians who came,

first the mongol hordes from  Asia,

after Ibn Khaldun tried to convince Ibn Timur

to save the library and the city, he burned it anyway,

then the mongol hordes for America, from

England, from France,

bombing, burning, stealing,

we shall remember them aloud

we shall remember them on paper

we shall condemn them

as we have condemned them from

time before they came to destroy Baghdad

before they came to destroy

Islam, before they came

to steal the oil,

to destroy mankind’s history,

we shall condemn them in every breath

in every word,

for these massacres of humans

of history

of what was

and could be, that has

been shattered, but we

know, it shall come again,

and the hordes that raped this land

just like Ibn Timur who burned the library,

the Western powers that came, will fade away

with their history in shame,

and these rivers, these laws of Allah and Hammurabi

will rise again, as will the saying of Jesus and Moses,

they shall rise again

as will this famous bookstore, this museum,

these universities, these mosques, these churches,

these synagogues, these children,

will reclaim their own land, will yank it away

from the Americans, the English, the French

and we shall join them

as they spit on those who have harmed

the beautiful land and its  people

no, we shall not be silent

we shall never walk away

our words

our hearts

their words

the hearts

their sorrows

their rebirth will remain

so long as men have memories

so long as men have books to read

and so long as men know that in the end

only good will prevail,

inshallah, inshallah

inshallah

c: sam hamod  7.2.11

FOR MY MOTHER, DAVID AND LAURA

Cast:
Hajj Abbass Habhab: my grandfather
Sine Hussin: an old friend of my father
Hussein Hamod Subh: my father
me

6pm

middle of South Dakota
after a funeral in Sioux Falls
my father and grandfather
ministered the Muslim burial
of their old friend, Assam Hamady

me—driving the 1950 Lincoln
ninety miles an hour

“STOP! STOP!
stop this car!”

Why?
“STOP THIS CAR RIGHT NOW!”—Hajj Abbass
                                                     grabbing my arm from back seat
“Hysht Iyat? (What’re you yelling about?)”—my Father
“Shu bikkeee? (What’s happening?)”—Sine Hussin

I stop

“It’s time to pray”—the Hajj
                                yanks his Navajo blanket
                                opening the door

“It’s time to pray, sullee
the sun sets
time for sullee”

my Father and Sine Hussin follow
obedient
I’m sitting behind the wheel
watching, my motor still running

car lights scream by
more than I’ve ever seen in South Dakota

the Hajj spreads the blanket
blessing it as a prayer rug
they discuss which direction is East

after a few minutes it’s decided
it must be that way
they face what must surely be South

they face their East, then notice
I’m not with them

“Hamode! get over here, to pray!”

No, I’ll watch
and stand guard

“Guard from what—get over here!”

I get out of the car
but don’t go to the blanket

My father says to the others:
“He’s foolish, he doesn’t know how
to pray.”

they rub their hands
then their faces
rub their hands then
down their bodies
as if in ablution
their feet bare
together now
they begin singing

Three old men
chanting the Qur’an in the middle
of a South Dakota night

    “Allahu Ahkbar
    Allahu Ahkbar

    Ash haduu n lah illah illiliawhh
    Ash haduu n lah illah illilawhh

    Muhammed rasoul illawh”

in high strained voices they chant

    “Bismee lahee
    a rah’manee raheem”

more cars flash by

    “malik a youm a deen
    ehde nuseerota el mustakeem
    seyrota la theena”

I’m embarrassed to be with them

    “en umta ailiy him
    ghyrug mugthubee aliy him”

people stream by, an old woman strains a gawk at them

    “willathouu leen—
    Bismee lahee”

I’m standing guard now

    “a rah’maneel raheem
    khul hu wahu lahu uhud”

They’re chanting with more vigor now
against the cars—washing away
in a dry state
Hamady’s death
he floats from their mouths
wrapped in white

    “Allahu sumud
    lum yuulud wa’alum uulud”

striped across his chest, with green

    “Walum yankun a kuf one uhud
    will thouu leen”

his head in white, his gray mustache still

    “Ameen . . . “

I hear them still singing
as I travel half-way across
America
to another job
burying my dead
I always like trips, traveling at high speed
but they have surely passed me
as I am standing here now
trying so hard to join them
on that old prayer blanket—

as if the pain behind my eyes could be absolution

[Author's note:] The Muslim prayer in this poem is analogous to The Lord’s Prayer

NPR READING, AFTER THE FUNERAL OF ASSAM HAMADY, SAM HAMOD

Sam Hamod- please see author’s complete biography on the home page, in additional works in this issue, and on the author’s page.

You run your
hand     just so
very slowly
over the dark sewn fabric of this
Bedouin dress – you feel
three thousand years rough up
against the color of your
skin      against the colors of your
memory          you tell me
“When I wear this dress
I always come out
red”      and I,
looking at the
rustle in you, say
“You must look good
all red”         and the
brightness of your
hair       is lit up by the shine of
your eyes        so predictable
a beauty    but your laughter
always surprising
and new
like this
dress     so many
years
in the making
with so many hidden     desert places
so many deep crevices
in the heart

SAM HAMOD/VISTA, CA. POETRY READING

She said,

if I could

I would embroider you

into my heart

He replied, yes,

and the thread

the thread would come from mine

She said,

if I could

I would weave you

into my breath

He said, yes

you are already

within my breath,

without you, I could not breathe

She said,

if I could

I would take you

into my blood

He replied, yes,

I am already

in your blood

and, as well, yours is mine

She said,

if that is the case

then your are mine

I am yours

Yes, he said,

it is true,

we are one

the same blood, breath and heart

ځ

See Author’s complete bio on the Home Page and in the Author’s page.

Tonight, Sally and I are making stuffed
grape leaves, we get out a package, it’s
drying out, I’ve been saving it in the freezer, it’s
one of the last things my father ever picked in this
life – they’re over five years old
and up to now
we just kept finding packages of them in the
freezer, as if he were still picking them
somewhere       packing them
carefully to send to us
making sure they didn’t break into pieces.

                   *          *         *

“To my Dar Garnchildn
Davd and Lura
from Thr Jido”
twisted on tablet paper
between the lines
in this English lettering
hard for him even to print,
I keep this small torn record,
this piece of paper stays in the upstairs storage,
one of the few pieces of American
my father ever wrote.  We find his Arabic letters
all over the place, even in these files we find
letters to him in English, one I found from Charles Atlas
telling him, in 1932,
“Of course, Mr. Hamod, you too can build
your muscles like mine. . .”
 

                   *        *        *

Last week my mother told me, when I was
asking why I became a poet, “But don’t you remember,
your father made up poems, don’t you remember him
singing in the car as we drove – those were poems.”
Even now, at night, I sometimes
get out the Arabic grammar book
though it seems so late

Sam Hamod-Please see author’s full bio on the home page, in additional works, and on the author’s page.

 â€œEveryday, everyday, everydaayyy 
 I got the blues, 
talking of bad luck and sorrow 
Well you know I had my share
” 

 â€“ Joe Williams with the Count Basie Band

Tonight, they tell me you died
on a Vegas street,
Walked several miles from a hospital
Just checked yourself out and escaped toward home–
No, no–
I don’t want to believe it, rather, we’re
back at the Blue Note, Chicago, 1955
You’re standing on the bandstand, light green rolled collar, your
Big white teeth smile as the Count says,
” Now here’s a young man whose recently joined our band–
we think you’re going to like his singing”
then you smacked it out, like a 1×12 smacking water, “Everyday”
“Everyday, everyday, everyday I got the bluesÖ”
and now, hearing that you’ve passed into that other side of the song,
everyday we’ll have the blues, talking of bad luck and sorrow, well you
know this will add to our share–but let me hear you, let me look at that big
smile again– swinging uptempo with the band ” The Comeback“–telling your girl, hold tight,
hold tight baby, and we could hear the pleading in your voice as you asked her
to hang on, to just wait a while longer because you’d be back–and then you were
sliding into “Rollem Pete” you made us all jump for joy, and you were up there
just like a rollin’ baby boy–and we were up on our feet dancing and clapping
Basie just kept smiling and the band kept blaring, trumpets
High- cresting, the saxes laying down that harmonic line and the trombones
filling the background, their slides darting in and out of the the light
then you’re joined by Lambert, Hendrix and Ross and you make the Blue Note shake
with “Going To Chicago” — and you tell it like it is, cause ain’t nothin’ in Chicago
that a monkey woman can do– and we were like that, hometown people, full
of good folks from home, and you knew it, and we knew it when you sang it,
and the Count said it, “Chicago is always like home to me” and somehow,
you up there with that big rolled collar have always stayed in my mind, in
my heart, now tonight, I refuse to believe
that you stole out of that hospital late at night
I donĂ­t’ want to remember you struggling down that road
Struggling for breath, each slight step a pain, a
Gasp, a pulling for air, just wanting to get back home
To those lights, to get back to that stage, to get back
Among your friends–why was it no one understood
A singer like you can’t be kept away from your people, you
Were given that voice to sing, to get out among people, to make
Them laugh, to feel wistful, to remember when they were in love, and what
Love is, that special feeling that embraces us with its happiness and sorrow,
That love in all its configurations is still that warmth, that warmth in your voice
In your broad smile, and in that way you held the mike and moved from jet black to silver hair
All in an instant–almost too fast for any of us to remember how it all changed–none of us
Noticed the time passing because there was always you, Ella, Sarah, Dinah, Count, Duke,
Hamp, Diz–now we have only Nancy Wilson, and I know she’ll cry tonight and a lot of days
And nights as she remembers your big wide voice pleading, “Please Send Me Someone To
Love,” and she’ll ask the lord to send you to the right place, where you’ll join the others
Singing with the angels–and we’ll be earthbound, having you in vinyl, on cassette, on CD and in
our memories– so tonight, I know they speak their truth
That you have died, but my truth is that you are there at the Blue Note in Chicago
You are there at Blues Alley in Washington, DC, a little hoarse, and you are there with your arm
 

Sam Hamod has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry by Ray Carver and Ishmael Reed. He has published several books of poetry and his current book An Old Arab in My Mind: New and Selected Poems will be published this year. Hamod has been widely anthologized in print and online. He is the Editor in Chief of CWLJA

James Brown

 ”Look at me,
I’m a bad mutha’,
yeah, I’m a bad mutha’, uhh! uhh! hey baby,
turnaround
”
James Brown

you be struttin’
james, up on broadway, ho’s
just shuck’n and jive’n, laugh’n out loud,
knew you were a big fisted daddy,
a tough mutha, that no muthafucka
would fuck with you—at Buddy’s Buzz Box
Buddy said, “Shit man, u tellin’ me
james brown is’n town—got to gitup to Broadway, got ta
see that man, an’his 20 footlongCadillac” he jes’ be
hangin’ back from that be-boppin, chest thumpin’, laughin’
mutha, just laughin’, just struttin’ blues, brownie, yah!
musta been, big time on Broadway, hell I don’no everboda’comin’out
cars stop’in people jes’ watchin’ even
little Willie, drunk asa skunk woke up sober, jes’
stragglin’ out to catch’m, willett smearin’ on
bright red lipstick, rosie ran upstairs, puttin’on
her tight- white sweater, and slick, he just sayin’
“tha’s my man, yah’ tha’s ma’man”

that was Gary, Indiana, September 14, 1960

ï»żSam Hamod – see author’s full bio on home page, additional works, and author’s page.

     From Fringe Magazine

		. . . we get out a package, it’s
		drying out, I’ve been saving it in the freezer, it’s
		one of the last things my father ever picked in this life . . .
		we just kept finding packages of them in the
		freezer, as if he were still picking them (lines 2-8)

		Cast:

Hajj Abbass Habhad: My grandfather Sine Hussin: an old friend of my father Hussein Hamod Subh: my father me 6 p.m. middle of South Dakota (lines 1-7)

		“STOP THIS CAR RIGHT NOW!”—Hajj Abbass
		                                             Grabbing my arm from the back seat
		“Hysht Iyat?  (What’re you yelling about?)”—my Father
		“Shu Bikkee?  (What’s happening?)—Sine Hussin

		I stop

		“It’s time to pray”—the Hajj (17-21)

Three old men chanting the Qur’an in the middle of a South Dakota night Allahu Ahkbar Allahu Ahkbar . . . in high strained voices they chant more cars flash by . . . I’m embarrassed to be with them (58-73)

I hear them still singing as I travel half-way across America to another job burying my dead I always liked trips, traveling at high speed but they have surely passed me as I am standing here now trying so hard to join them on that old prayer blanket— as if the pain behind my eyes could be absolution (95-106)

These men died with the wrong names, Na’aim Jazeeny, from the beautiful valley of Jezzine, died as Nephew Sam, Sine Hussin died without relatives and because they cut away his last name at Ellis Island, there was no way to trace him back even to Lebanon . . . (Lines 1-7)

. . . the Arabic of Hussein Hamod Subh, Na’aim Jazeeny, Sine Hussin lost each one sealed away with the wrong name (48-52)

Sine Hussin is still sitting in that old chair, upholstered in brushed maroon wool . . . you know the smell of this room, meat and fried onions, fresh garlic on the salad, tartness of lemon twists into the air, and an ease toward evening as you walk in all the silence splits into hellos and hugs while the world comes together in the small room (56-72)

		so we move now
		my new wife and I, my children
		move further away          like lost
		shipmates crying to me for help (Lines 1-4)

		before them
		everyone          everything stuck together          things stayed
		and when they moved
		grandfathers          grandmothers          fathers (26-29)

		. . . what am I
		to say, a stranger now
		to my parent’s land, in the
		Bright Washington afternoon . . .
		. . . feeling grief in
		Arabic saying it in English . . . (Lines 53-60)

(for my old friend and teacher, Professor Muh’sin Mahdi of the Univ. of Chicago and Harvard, all the way from Iraq and the Alf Laila, Wa Laila)

    (for Mahmoud Darwish, in memory of the greatest of Arab poets)

At the checkpoint, the

Israeli private asked me my name, I told

her, my name is

Zaitoun, she asked, what does that mean,

I told her 4,000 year old trees, she laughed,

asked for my real name, I told her, “Dumm,” what?

i said, it means blood, she said, that’s no name, I told her

blood of my grandfather, my father, my uncle

and even mine if necessary, she bridled, called the corporal,

he came running up, said, what kind of threat is that,

I said, it’s no threat, it’s just a fact,

he called the sergeant, he came up and hit me before he spoke,

my mouth bled, I told him, this is the blood I mean, that same

blood, you are afraid of, it’s over 4000 years old, see how dark it is

he called the lieutenant, who asked why my mouth was bleeding,

the sergeant said I had threatened him, the lieutenant asked me

if that was the truth, I told him, I had only stated facts, that

they would be true, after they conferred, he called the

colonel, the colonel came over and asked why I’d been provocative,

I said, all I was doing was stating facts; he asked what I did,

I told him, I was a farmer, he asked what kind, I told him

a farmer with words, what some call a poet—

“yes, now I know your name, Mahmoud Darwish,

you’re well known in Israel,”

he asked me if I knew the work of Amichai, I told him yes,

that I’d met him, that he knew what I meant, that Amichai was

sorry for what he’d felt he “had to do”—the colonel shrugged

dismissed the others and told me, “pass on,

I understand, but they don’t, they are not Jews, I am a Jew,

not a Zionist”

I pulled the qhubz arabi from my pocket, pulled some zaitoun

from another, some jibbin from my bag and gave it to him–

we laughed, he split the bread in half—

we ate together, we laughed at how sad and foolish all this was

* qhubz arabi: bread of the arabs

jibin: arab cheese

zaitoun: olives

please see author’s complete biography on the “Home Page,” and in “Author’s Page.”

To most, Allen Ginsberg was known as this wild Jewish, Buddhist, homosexual poet, who wrote HOWL and KADDISH, so most assumed he wouldn’t eat pork and most likely was, as were many Buddhists in the 60s, and today, a vegetarian.

But when he came to Iowa City, to read and to talk with old friends at The Writers Workshop like Ted Berrigan, an old friend from NYC, and Anselm Hollo, and a few others from around America and the world, he decided, since he was in Iowa, that they should have a pig roast.  Everyone talked about it for about a week, then they all laid out the plans.

They would have the roast at Ken McCullough’s house out in the country, where they would have enough room for everyone in the workshop to come.  Allen also told them how he wanted to roast the pig.  He wanted them to dig a big hole in the ground, so they could put wood down, then bake the pig all day, so that it would get smoked and be done by nightfall.

None of us knew much about how to cook a pig, and in my case, as  a Muslim, I didn’t eat pork, so it was no big deal to me, but I was curious how you cooked meat in the ground in a hole.  I’d heard of it, but knew nothing about it.  But Ginsberg and ken seemed to know what they were doing, and they had others help them prepare the ground, the wood and the fire in the ground.

After they got the fire going, they put the small pig in the ground, covered it with some kinds of leaves, Ginsberg said it was an old Hawaiian way of doing it, and then covered the hole and everyone went back to Iowa City for his reading, with plans to return that night for the big party and feasting on the pig.

The reading was very good, but some of the homosexual matters in the poems made some of the more genteel professors a bit uncomfortable. But in the end,  but all agreed, even those who were uncomfortable, that his poetry, and his reading of it were something wonderful, and that no doubt, he was one of the important poets of our time. It was a reading that was far different from many who had come, some of whom were a bit stuffy; Ginsberg’s voice rose and fell, he gestured wildly as he read, he stared down at the large audience in the auditorium like a magician, almost as if he was saying, “See,that’s how you do a poem.”

When the reading was over, though many wanted him to sign  their books and get his autograph, he was in a hurry to get back to Ken McCullough’s farm house to check on his pig.  So we were off.  He grabbed me and Hollo and said, “Let’s go!  Do you know the way to McCullough’s?” After I confirmed it, we took off down the country road to McCullough’s and the fabled pig.

When we got there, a lot of people had stayed around all day, smoking pot, shooting up, and others drinking cheap wine and singing, or maybe they were trying to sing, it was hard to tell because there was so  much noise and so much was   going on. 

Everyone crowded around Ginsberg, and started asking him how the reading went, and when would the pig be done.  Allen told them the reading was great, that he was very happy to be in Iowa City with all the poets, and to be in the country and to finally have a chance to cook a pig in the ground. 

After he talked and talked with everyone and had a few drinks of the jug wine that was being passed around, he raised his arms, and almost as if was in a trance, he began a Buddhist chant.  I wasn’t sure what it was, but it had words, not just the famed, “OMMmm
”

After a few minutes of the chant, he jumped up and shouted, “Now it’s time, now it’s time to take our friend the pig from the  hole.” He called Ken, who knew how to take the pig out of the ground, but Ken said, “No, the pig is not done yet.”  Ginsberg insisted that he knew it was  done.  Ken kept saying, “NO, it hasn’t had enough time to cook all the way through yet.”  But Allen would have none of it, he was sure it was done and he wanted it out of the ground 

Ken said, “NO, once more and walked away,” refusing to take it from the ground. 

By this time, the hundreds of drinkers were getting hungrier and hungrier because they’d been drinking and  most had been smoking pot all day, and hadn’t eaten since late morning when Ken had put the pig in the ground.  They all began to say how hungry they were, and they wanted to eat, and that no pig should take that long to cook.

They kept this up until Ginsberg asked if anyone else knew how to get the pig out of the ground.  At that point,  some of the drunker ones said they knew how to do it, that they’d done it before. Having worked with drunks in my bar business days, I  was sure they didn’t know shit from shinola about getting the pig out of the deep hole it was cooking in. But Ginsberg was also hungry and impatient to get the show on the road. So, he enlisted these drunks to help him pull the pig out of the ground.

It was clear from the first few minutes, when one almost fell into the hole, that none of them knew what the hell they were doing, and furthermore, they were so drunk, even if they knew, they wouldn’t have been able to lift the pig out of the ground.

After the drunken crew flailed around for I have no idea how long, Allen himself gave up and asked if anyone else knew how to  get the pig out of the fire hole.  Some said they’d like to help, but had no idea how to do it without getting burned.

Finally, Ginsberg prevailed on McCullough to pull the pig out of the ground, even though Ken kept saying it wasn’t done.  Ginsberg said, “I don’t give a damn, let’s just get it out so we can eat,” and some other choice words I can’t remember at this time.

Ken called some of his buddies who were relatively sober, and so was I, so we all followed Ken’s directions of how to pull on the blanket or whatever the pig was wrapped in, to pull the pig from the ground.  I felt sorry for the poor little pig; as we pulled it up, I realized how young it must have been.  But with all the wood on top, the blanket, and whatever else, we tugged and pulled until finally the pig reached the surface and everyone began shouting. but for the hell of it, I can’t remember any words, just jumbled shouts all around by a bunch of hungry drunks, led by their pied piper, Allen Ginsberg, who was as anxious as they were to get to the pig.

After Ken unwrapped the pig, with Allen’s help, the butcher knife was brought out and Allen began cutting up the pig, as if he knew just what he was doing. But, having seen butchers and my father butcher cows, lambs and chickens, I knew he didn’t know what he was doing.  He cut the meat awkwardly, in chunks, and as he cut into the pig, it was clear it was not done, because some of the meat was pink and other slices were red, but it made no difference to the crowd, they were hungry and they wanted to eat no matter what condition the meat was in. So, the meat was cut, handed out as fast as it was cut, and people were wolfing it down as fast as they could chew.  It was a madhouse, a medieval feast, people all spread out on the lawn, their plates full, their wine glasses and jugs full, wine all over their clothes, people singing, people shouting for more, people smoking joints, and Ginsberg praising the pig and how wonderful it tasted, while Ken and I just shook our heads, he still sober along with me, and neither of us with a taste for the pig, he because it wasn’t done, and me because I didn’t eat pork, as a Muslim.

The eating and drinking went on, and on, and one, especially the drinking and the smoking.  Finally, I told Hollo and Allen I had to go, and felt they could get another ride back to town if they wanted to stay. Of course, they stayed, in fact, they slept at Ken’s farmhouse that night, along with a lot of others who had brought their blankets.

Ginsberg stayed another day or two, I can’t remember for sure, but when I saw him years later in Del Mar at a reading he did at a bookstore, that sadly is now closed, we laughed about the famous pig roast and how crazy we’d been in those days because after he left Iowa City, Ginsberg went on to try to  levitate the Pentagon, as his protest against the disastrous Viet Nam War. 

Though he didn’t know how to properly roast a pig, Ginsberg was right about the Viet Nam War, and also about dope being sent home to the states in body bags with the dead, and about how our soldiers were getting hooked on dope because our military made sure they had it in Viet Nam so they could stand the heat and dangers of battle in those God forsaken jungles and rivers, where snipers picked off our people at will.

Sam Hamod has his PhD. from The Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa and has taught in the Workshop; he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, has published 10 books of poems, and has appeared in dozens of anthologies in the U.S. and abroad.  He has also taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, Princeton, Michigan, Wisconsin, Howard and overseas as well. He has had praise from Neruda, Borges and such American poets as Ishmael Reed, James Wright, Dick Hugo, Jack Marshall, Amiri Baraka and E. Ethelbert Miller among others. He is the Editor In Chief of Contemporary World Literature: Journal for the Arts (www.contemporaryworldliterature) and Contemporary World Poetry: Journal for International Voices.

It is a
Shoe     a
Single baby’s
Shoe
I pull it from the
Wreckage in Fakhani, a refugee
Shoe
Separated from its
Foot,   it is April
And it is darkening in the covering
Black Lebanese earth, the soft earth
Has cracked its white surface, marked with
Streaks of blood

And who wore this shoe, what
Little girl, or was it a
Boy, what did the
Father say when he
Smiled, did he laugh
Back, or was she a shy girl who had
Already learned to be a
Coquette – or was she
Chubby and withdrawn among
People, if he was a boy
Was he already strong, his
Dark hair flying as he
Wrestled his father’s
Arm – and what
Did her mother say to her
Father when they heard the jets
Screech across the sky, did they
Hear the whistle, or was it an
Offshore song, Israeli sirens at
Sea who sent in wave after wave of
Glistening silver sheets of
Sorrow.
And why was
This little shoe
Left by itself to wonder
In the dark, to find its way
To the surface by itself, and how
Did it feel

Leaving its foot behind­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­―
And what did the foot say
As the shoe slipped away
In the darkness
Toward the surface, did the
Child turn over as if in
A dream
did he dream
his
Mother and father were blowing
Away

And what am I
To say, a stranger now
To my parent’s land, in the
Bright Washington afternoon,
Here in Fakhani, holding onto this
Little shoe, feeling grief in
Arabic saying it in English, so
That it is flat against
The round care of this shoe, something
Is missing, how did this shoe come
To surface today to meet me, the
Child who can explain it
Is sleeping
Under the new coming
Grass, under the splintered boards and
Shining glass, and how
Long can we stand in the
Shadows hiding what our hearts know – like
A telegraph beacon repeating
Someone is missing
Someone is missing
Someone is missing.
 

Now
Sucking in the air
We drink Palestine, we taste
Lebanon, we hear Syria, we remember
Jordan, all the same
Land, the home of the same shoes,
Split now,   like this foot
From its shoe,     the blood smell
Coming from the piles of
Debris
In the hot Lebanese sun, and
So we are at home, tearing away
The language and names
Of countries, of village,
Tearing away the memory of these
Past two weeks, believing this shoe
Never had a foot, something lost
From a shoe store by mistake, something made
Alone and single in the tannery of
Rafik Dibbs in Machgara in southern
Lebanon, some sort of dream of what it was like
In Alay and ZahŚł le, when people
Would stay up until early morning
Doing the dabŚłkee, eating olives and
KibŚłbee by the flowing creek

A place where there were
No airplanes, a place where
There were no rockets, no
Ships lobbing in shells from
The blue and glistening Mediterranean, but
This shoe, we know
Is missing its foot –
Shall we search in Tel Aviv, in Washington, in
Moscow – shall we search, or
Shall we make another
Speech, shall we make another
Poem, shall we empty the canister
Of language and simply
Cry.
 

The shoe
Yes,
I give you this
Shoe,
It is
Not mine,
It is
ours   

Dr. Sam Hamod

           (for my late mother, Zinab)

It’s as if
I can hold time back
 as if
I can keep that letter in my briefcase as if I can
keep my mother
still alive
upstairs in the white room, as if
I can still hear
her blood soaked
cough           want to tell her
it is something that will pass, lie to
her, tell her the letter is good,
the treatments will
work, tell her that we’ll make
that trip to Romania
get some of those “miracle drugs” we keep
reading about,
that we’ll sit on the front porch again
in the spring marvel        at the clarity of air,
talk about when she was a little girl in Iowa
when the circus would come to field across
the road, when she raised her brothers
and sisters after her mother died
when she was nine – baking bread each morning
and each year the exciting circus would return –
that we’ll get her passport ready
it will be a long flight we can – then
there’s that deep wrenching cough
again
And I’ll lie
again, tell her that she’s worried for nothing
that the pain in her stomach is only
gas, I’ll choke up again
unable to talk
turn away     my swelling throat
tight, unable to – then we’ll
strain out talk of dandelions and grapeleaves
we’d pick when I was a boy, by the river in Iowa,
by the roadsides in Indiana, then she
falls asleep, moves fitfully
Go back to my briefcase      not open it
wish the letter away –
now that she’s passed, that
briefcase sits, full of papers, unopened, but my eyes blur in this
poem
because in this life
there are some things we never fully close

photo by Kristen Scott

please see author’s complete bio on the home page, additional works, and on the author’s page.

I  really didn’t want

to talk about Ali losing his leg

to an Israeli shell last week, or

samira,scarred still in the hospital

her body napalmed

from a fast moving jet, but

as I said,

i’d rather not talk about it,

but it seems

there is nothing else

we can talk about except, maybe

the zaitoun* trees, the tanks

and bulldozers made short work of them,

but their stumps remain, gravemarkers

some say, but they say,

they’d rather not talk about it

between muffled sobs their women

knot their hands, shake their heads, their

scarves wet from tears, but even they say,

they’d rather not talk about it,

and as for me, I’d feel the same, but

as a poet, I have to give them voice, even though

they say,

they’d rather not talk about it,

I want to, and I want u to know

more about Mahmoud who lost an eye to shrapnel,

to Miriam who lost her 7 year old son

because an Israeli sniper decided he was a threat

as he picked olives in his own orchard, and

I want to talk about Father George, who was on his way

to church on Sunday, but walked too close

to the Israeli wall, and lost his brains

as they scattered along the wall, red and white

as another sniper made sure no one came near

this land they stole from Palestine, and,

Hussein who lost his foot from a cluster bomblet

that had been left behind in Gaza, he was simply

on his way to the mosque to pray on Friday, the

Imam said it was “Allah’s will,,” but I doubt it,

when asked why it was Allah’s will, he said,

I’d rather not talk about it, but we go on,

and, there is another story, behind another bed

in the emergency room, and another stretcher

bleached white with red stains all over,

and,  and,

and, and, and, but I could go on,

but as I said, I’d rather not talk about it,

as they all said, there is nothing to talk about,

nothing,  nothing,  no, 

nothing at all

*zaitoun:  olives in Arabic

PHOTO BY KRISTEN SCOTT

It was never the spinning

Never the turning

Nor was it losing one’s self,

It was from inside

From that part of the heart

Attached to Allah’s heaven

From within

It was always from within

Tied to Allah from without,

That rope

We never let loose of,

That deeply felt, invisible

Binding that helps us ascend,

Frees us, spiraling upward     

            (por Pablo Neruda)

always there are the waves
at Isla Negra,
unless you understand the
motion of rocks
as they stir
against the pounding surf,
you will never understand
the motion of
loving a place
or a woman,
each moves
in her own way, undulating
like willows
high up
on cliffs as they extend
their branches downward,
enticing you
as do the waves
at Isla Negra,
so many colours,
so many rhythms,
so many songs
heard
and unheard
known only in the heart

Sam Hamod has his PhD. from The Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa and has taught in the Workshop; he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, has published 10 books of poems, and has appeared in dozens of anthologies in the U.S. and abroad.  He has also taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, Princeton, Michigan, Wisconsin, Howard and overseas as well. His most recent books were, JUST LOVE POEMS FOR YOU (2006), Ishmael Reed Pub. Co/Contemporary Poetry Press and THE ARAB POEMS, THE MUSLIM POEMS (2000), Contemporary Poetry Press/Cedar Creek; he has two more books of poems under contract and his memoirs as well. He has won many awards over the years, and in addition has read with such poets as Kinnell, Ginsberg, Merwin, Wright, Knight, Baraka and others, and has had praise from Neruda, Borges and such American poets as Ishmael Reed, James Wright, Dick Hugo, Jack Marshall, Amiri Baraka and E. Ethelbert Miller among others.

 
            You who believe in the false
               assurances of schedules, the presumptions
               of plans, or the pr0mised future
               of appointments. this poem is
               for you.
                       Today I have nowhere
               to go and nothing to do
               but watch the Mediterranean Sea
               from a seaside table in Menton.
            Nobody knows me here.
            The couples dancing tangos
               in the public square regard me
               as the foreigner I am.
                                 I order
               lunch in unimpressive French
               and sign language.
                          The world
               that pressured me at home
               with phone calls, obligations, bills
               and headlines carries on,
               but I’m not playing.
                            Instead
               I focus on the green and red
               confusion of a Nicoise salad
               while I hurt for an America
               I barely recognize.   
                            In the name
               of Christ we’re Arabizing Arabs
               as we once Vietnamized the South
               Vietnamese before our vanity
               consumed us.
                          We’ve sponsored free
               elections but reversed results.
            To launch the neo-century
               we crushed a country and destroyed
               a culture.
                           Though someone warned
               that occupiers lose at last,
               the warning was ignored.
                                 When scholars
               wrote that Athens at its peak
               sailed fleets to ultimate catastrophe
               in Sicily and bled for decades
               afterward into inconsequence,
               they reaped the glory of derision.
             Why bother talking history
                            with those whose only purpose
                       is deceit?
                          Why reason with unreason?
            When shouters violate what’s sacred
               with impunity, the only answer
               is dissent.
                    Hiding behind
               lapel-pin flags, they’ve fouled
               what I thought would be a holiday
               abroad, not merely a reprieve
               before the next resistance.
            I’ve met them all a thousand
               times whenever fear and cowardice
               demanded loyalty to causes
               that were never mine.
                                 Since power
               is their word for peace, they swagger
               like competitors who can’t not win.
            And when they lose, as they
               will always lose, they’ll claim
               they could have won with more
               support, and then they’ll whine.

Samuel Hazo is the author of poetry, fiction, essays, various works of translation and four plays. Governor Robert Casey named him Pennsylvania’s first State Poet 1993. He served until 2003.

From his first book, through the National Book Award finalist Once for the Last Bandit, to his newest poems, he explores themes of mortality and love, passion and art, courage and grace in a style that is unmistakably his own. He writes with equal feeling and clarity about political and artistic figures and the complex synchronicity between life and art. He is extremely interested in the wonderment and discovery that emerge in the act of writing, in the movement toward wisdom that results from the expression of feeling.

As the founder and Director/President of the International Poetry Forum, Dr. Hazo has brought more than 800 poets and performers to Pittsburgh in the past forty years. These have included Nobel Awardees (Heaney, Walcott, Paz, Milosz), Pulitzer Prize winners (Merwin, Kumin, Wilbur, Kinnell, Kooser and others), Academy Award recipients (Gregory Peck, Princess Grace of Monaco, Eva Marie Saint, Anthony Hopkins, John Houseman, Jose Ferrer) as well as public figures who understand the relationship of poetry to public speech (Senator Eugene McCarthy and Queen Noor of Jordan), playwrights and composers (Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Gian Carlo Menotti) and new poets of significance and promise.

Dr. Hazo is McAnulty Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Duquesne University. He has received eleven honorary degrees, is an honorary Phi Beta Kappa member, and has been awarded the Hazlett Award for Excellence in Literature from the Governor of Pennsylvania, the Forbes Medal, the Elizabeth Kray Award for Outstanding Service to Poetry from New York University, and the Griffin Award from the University of Notre Dame. His recent book, Just Once, received the Maurice English Poetry Prize.

We are honored to have Dr. Samuel Hazo’s work in Contemporary World Poetry: Journal for International Voices.

In a darkness with nothing to see,
in a darkness with little to hear
but the dove softly cooing on the wires above
and running water somewhere near
lapping the soft summer air,
train-whistles trail their signature-sounds
in the distance, diffusing to the timbre of smoke
and the doves’ soft cooing on the wires above…

And I have lately been thinking of the aged
eagle, the darkling thrush, the fire-fangled bird, and hurt hawk, all
grown weary of the trash that passes, the trash
that exasperates and likely provoking the poems they wished
they’d never have to write. How, at the end, stripped
of promise, as the fruit falls asunder,
annihilation becomes plain-
spokenly bare
cadence, canceling all show and ornament, bare-
boned end-speech, devoid of any intentions on us,
only voiced conviction, baring what it knows.
Nothing complicated: just life and death.

Jack Marshall is one of America’s finest poets; we are honored to have him on our site. He has published 12 books of poetry (the most recent, The Steel Veil, 2008), and a memoir, From Baghdad to Brooklyn 2005; a book-length poem, TRACE (for which he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship), will appear in 2012. 

First thing after I shower,
I brew a fresh pot of coffee, pour a cup
and take it out to the garden to sit
under the yellow-laden lemon tree
where yesterday at twilight I saw a hummingbird,
wings a blur, flit from globe to globe.
Since having moved into this house
far inland from the ocean we lived by
for over a decade, ocean whose smell brought us
home, whose salt smell was home,
I’ve seen bluejays, white doves, and hummers,
warblers and whistlers you won’t hear by the sea
which can be calamitous, as that drowned crew
of young Russian submariners only yesterday doomed
by their leaders callous indifference…
Old men sacrificing other peoples’ sons,
as if the sea didn’t have enough old bones
to gnaw on; it needed new young.
For us, though, lucky enough to be on land,
there’s nothing like a garden in bloom
and the sight of new birds to loosen
the ocean’s hold on us and start the new life.

Jack Marshall is one of America’s finest poets; we are honored to have him on our site. He has published 12 books of poetry (the most recent, The Steel Veil, 2008), and a memoir, From Baghdad to Brooklyn 2005; a book-length poem, TRACE (for which he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship), will appear in 2012. 

please see authors bio in his additional works for CWPJ and on the Author’s page.

The men emerge from the mine
in a cartridge with wheels
and everyone cheers.

In the hills
of Afghanistan,
deserts of Gaza,
mountains of Pakistan,
villages of Libya,
men crouching behind boulders
and broken houses
wish they knew their secret.

Naomi Shihab Nye  lives in San Antonio, has written or edited 30 books, and is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

A scientist says that
Crows can recognize
Human faces
After
He released those
He’d tested in labs
They’d harass him
Whenever he took
A walk
I guess that’s why crows
Don’t talk to
Me any more
Strolling along the path
Of the Emeryville Marina
We used
To be good buddies
They’d do three caws
And I would
answer with three
And then they
Would do four caws and
I’d respond with four

But now they’re silent
I must have said the
Wrong thing
I guess they’re on to me
I guess they’re saying among
Themselves
There goes that fellow
Who thinks he’s one of
Us

I never got as close to
A crow as Marlyse
Her mother bought
Gustav for five Swiss francs
He used to follow her
To school,
And would perch on a
Tree outside her
Classroom
He’d stand on her
Shoulder when she
Went horseback riding

Her step father
And brothers hated Gustav
When he flew into their
Bedroom window, the
Brothers smothered him with
Linen and laughed as he
Struggled
After that, the brothers
Were objects of his furious
Pecking
He’d tear out their hair
He crow-sacked the kitchen
Broke dishes
Covered himself with
Flour
When Marlyse returned from
Catholic school
She found that the step father
Had shot the crow

She never forgave him

ISHMAEL REED

Ishmael Reed- Author of twenty-seven published books to date, Ishmael Reed is a novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist.  He is also a publisher, editor of thirteen anthologies and numerous magazines, blogger for the San Francisco Chronicle, television producer, media commentator, teacher and lecturer. A 1972 manifesto inspired a major visual art exhibit and book, “NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith,” curated by Franklin Sirmans for The Menil Collection in Houston, where it opened June 27, 2008, and , through 2009, subsequently  traveled to P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City, and the Miami Art Museum . Reed’s forthcoming book is titled, JUICE!

Every morning I visit every tree in this garden
even before I wash my face or comb my hair.
All the trees know a few facts.
They know the same woman will water them day after day,
the woman who picks one apple from the red apple tree
She is the woman, who asks if the rain lets them sleep at night,
the woman who goes to every tree
even before the sun can shine on them.
Not all the trees are happy in this garden
Some are moody on certain days, some get
annoyed with the cold or the heat
Some are so difficult they hate being touched
Some so brave they can grow tall even in the absence of rain
By now I know all their names
I know what makes each one smile

The man who sleeps in my bed is morose every day
but I lack the art of knowing what makes him sad.
He is like those trees, never talks
Once I asked him if it was the rain, or the cold
or the yellow color of the sheets?
Is it the color of my eyes, the size of my thighs?
Or even the way I lay down?
It is Sunday morning and I go to the garden to watch the trees

Mahnaz Badihian is a poet and translator whose work has been published into several languages worldwide, including Persian, Turkish, and Malayalam. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines including Exiled ink! and in Marin Poetry Center Anthology amongst others. She attended the Iowa Writer’s workshop with a focus on international poetry while practicing as a dentist in Iowa City.  Her publications include two volumes of poetry in Persian and a best-selling translation of Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions into Persian.  Her most recent publication is a critically acclaimed book of original English language poetry, From Zayandeh Rud to the Mississippi. She has an awarding winning selection of poetry (XIV Premio Letterario Internazionale Trofeo Penna d’Autore, Tornio) translated into Italian by Cristina Contili and Pirooz Ebrahimi. 

I labor a new woman in me every day
I am not in my twenties
not even in my forties
But the art of multiplication is still in me
I am a growing new garden
new buds.
I feel life crawling on my shoulders
with the gods of fertility,
that will never let me stop being a woman

Mahnaz Badihian is a poet and translator whose work has been published into several languages worldwide, including Persian, Turkish, and Malayalam. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines including Exiled ink! and in Marin Poetry Center Anthology amongst others. She attended the Iowa Writer’s workshop with a focus on international poetry while practicing as a dentist in Iowa City.  Her publications include two volumes of poetry in Persian and a best-selling translation of Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions into Persian.  Her most recent publication is a critically acclaimed book of original English language poetry, From Zayandeh Rud to the Mississippi. She has an awarding winning selection of poetry (XIV Premio Letterario Internazionale Trofeo Penna d’Autore, Tornio) translated into Italian by Cristina Contili and Pirooz Ebrahimi. 

There goes a woman carrying a teardrop.
Erasing, erasing the world
there goes one woman carrying a teardrop.
Erasing her own face
there goes one woman carrying a teardrop.

There goes a crippled woman.
She takes out a broken leg
from her broken leg.
There goes a woman, walking.

Tears, there’s a woman that you drag along.
The hot rhythm pulls up a woman.
There’s the faint world erased
by the passing rhythm.

Translated by Don Mee Choi

Kim Hye-sun’s (1955- ) poetry first appeared in the early 1980′s, during
a period of intensified political struggle. South Korea fell under a
dictatorship of General Chon after the assassination of President Pak in
1979, who also came into power by leading a military coup in 1961. As
many as 2000 civilians and students are known to have been killed during
the civilian uprising in 1980. During the 80′s, many prominent writers
were arrested, including Ko Un and Kim Chi-ha, but at the same time,
women’s poetry began to resurface. Distinctive voices of women poets
such as Kim Hye-sun emerged despite the fact that Korean poetry has
traditionally been a closed space accessible to men only. Korean women
began writing publically since the early 1920′s, but only the works by
women that are contemplative and beautiful gained approval and
recognition by the mainstream Korean literary establishment. Kim’s
poetry challenges the criteria of gentleness still expected of women
poets. Her work explores the identity of women in the context of
oppressive patriarchal culture, nation. Kim’s poetry occupies a
marginal, yet critical space in Korean poetry.

She writes criticism and teaches creative writing at Seoul Arts
University, S. Korea. March of2000, she received the Korean
Contemporary Poetry Award. She received the prestigious Sowol Poetry Award, year 2001.

Don Mee Choi was born in S. Korea and came to the U.S. as a student in
1981. She studied art at the California Institute of the Arts. Her
poems have appeared in The Asian Pacific American Journal, Hawaii
Pacific Review, disorient journalzine, and Gargoyle. She lives in
Seattle and translates poetry of several contemporary Korean women
poets. Her translations will appear this year in the fall issues of
Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture and Luna.

Ko Un
Translation by Don Mee Choi

My bother
a wounded soldier brother
of Vietnam War

I’m drunk
Today I detest lies
hate lies

I never worked
at an office or candy factory

That was all a lie

Seven years ago, as soon as
I arrived at Seoul Train Station
I went on my road
I went on a road of a Jap’s whore

My bother
my brother
crippled brother

I got drunk
Only when I’m drunk
I have a home

Even a whore, a whore has a home

Translated by Don Mee Choi

Ko Un was born Ko Untae in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province in 1933. He was at Gunsan Middle School when war broke out. The Korean War emotionally and physically traumatized Ko and caused the death of many of his relatives and friends.  In 1952, before the war had ended, Ko became a Buddhist monk. After a decade of monastic life, he chose to return to the active, secular world in 1962 to become a devoted poet. 

Around the time the South Korean government attempted to curb democracy by putting forward the Yusin Constitution in late 1972, Ko became very active in the democracy movement and led efforts to improve the political situation in South Korea, while still writing prolifically and being sent to prison four times (1974, 1979, 1980 and 1989). In May 1980, during the coup d’etat led by Chun Doo-hwan, Ko was accused of treason and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. He was released in August 1982 as part of a general pardon.

After his release, Ko married and moved to Anseong, Gyeonggi-do, where he still lives. He resumed writing and began to travel, his many visits providing fabric for the tapestry of his poems. Since 2007, he is a visiting scholar in Seoul National University, and teaches poetics and literature.
Don Mee Choi see bio in previous poetic translations on in the Author’s page.

from the Island of Lost Luggage

unlike Luria’s poor patient “S,” the man
who remembered everything, and in no particular order.
He swam each day through a thick fog of trivia
and history: the yellow toothbrush his aunt
kept at the summerhouse, formulae for colloidal
suspensions, the weight in grams of the Faberge egg
lost when they took the Imperial Family to Tsarkoe Seloe.

What I remember is this: Simon brought almonds
and a tin of cocoa from his pack that cool evening.
We had the hard flat bread of travelers and plums
found in the tainted countryside. We ate them anyway.
They say that in March on that mountain, the butterflies
were so thick you could not walk without crushing them.
I keep this image as if it were memory.

In the Grand Hotel, we wandered through hallways,
past photographs askew on their wire hangers,
intricate rosettes carved on the overdoors, floors
of polished, hard green stone. We tried to imagine
the people who built this, then poisoned their fishes.
In that poisoned land, we slept and I tell you
I did no dreaming. Anna, will we remember our past
always? Will we ever walk the dream road
of our childhood, lined with wild rose, the scent
of cape jasmine, to waves iridescent with fishes,
fearful only of the wild cries of ravens?

Janet McAdams’s  Janet McAdams’ collection The Island of Lost Luggage won the  American Book Award in 2001. Her poems have appeard in TriQuarterly, Columbia, the Women’s Review of Books, the Crab Orchard Review, the North American Review, and other journals. She teaches at Kenyon College.

Crying all night long
crying kaegol kaegol
That potent cry
makes a rice paddy

Make a rice paddy to give to the poor
Sang-soe, good to see you again
Here, a patch of paddy for Kum-sun too

Look at the morning fields
such a colorful bride
All the frogs are asleep
from crying all night

kaegol kaegol

Translated by Don Mee Choi

Don Mee Choi was born in S. Korea and came to the U.S. as a student in
1981. She studied art at the California Institute of the Arts. Her
poems have appeared in The Asian Pacific American Journal, Hawaii
Pacific Review, disorient journalzine, and Gargoyle. She lives in
Seattle and translates poetry of several contemporary Korean women
poets.

see Ko Un’s bio in additional works and in Author’s page.

Retail price of 30 cucumbers is only one thousand won, it’s dumbfounding
Our cucumbers taken to Karak Street, Orak Street in Seoul go for
400 won for a bundle of 50. It doen’t even make the transport cost
Even big round melons are 500 won for 10
a flat of garlic, 100 bulbs, is less than 2000 won
This is our crop, this is our crop

Smash this dog-craziness
let’s go to Seoul
let’s go to Seoul to live or die
My daughter can become a whore or factory girl
my wife can go as a maid
I’ll rise to the drum’s fury, climb to Mount South
scream once and kill myself!

Let’s go to Seoul
Let’s go to Seoul

Let’s go to Seoul to wreck life

Translated by Don Mee Choi

Ko Un was born in Gunsa, North Jeolla Province, Korea. Un became active in the democracy movement and led efforts for democracy in South Korea, which resulted in four imprisonments. After his prison release, he continued his writing, and since 2007, he remains a visiting scholar at Seoul National University where he teaches poetics and literature. His works include The Sound of My Waves, Beyond Self, Little Pilgrim, Ten Thousand Lives, The Three Way Tavern, Flowers of a Moment, and Songs for Tomorrow: A Collection of Poems 1961-2001, among others. Ko Un has won several literary awards including; Korean Literature Prize (1974, 1987), Manhae Literary Prize (1989), Joongang Literary Prize (1991), Daesan Literary Prize (1994),  Cikada Prize, and Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award (2008), among others.

 Don Mee Choi for complete bio please see other translated works in CWPJ and on Author’s Page.

Undiminished, grimacing from the window
of his old cave, Milner Place will smoke another cigarette,
pluck at his grey beard. pull the hairs from his nostrils
            whilst the street corner orators
denounce the pulchritude of whores in back alleys
 and another failed revolution,
where the morally defunct prey on the weak
            and the ancient wrangle unfolds
between musicians and poets. There are no hours to steal
of particular significance from the intelligentsia
who claim to have seen tomorrows abundance, no gods
            or the creatures of God
 waxing lyrical about the paradise of angels.
Our poet scratches his beard, diviner of the elements, 
curer of old age, carrying the weight of time,
            ripping at the roots of life,
unveiling the world as it shrivels to an old man’s breast -
whilst the shackling of a young boy and girl stops
under the dripping branches of an olive tree on the slopes
            of Mount Etna as two hearts become one.

Mark A. Murphy’s poems have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Scotland, Quarterly Literary Review (Singapore), The Warwick Review (UK), Struggle (UK), Istanbul Literature Review (Turkey), Paris Atlantic Journal (France), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Litspeak (Germany), Contemporary Literary Horizons (Romania), Munyori (India), Taj Mahal Review (India), The Tampa Review (US), Del Sol Review (US), Left Curve (US), The American Dissident (US), The Stinging Fly (Eire), Crannog Magazine (Eire) and on the deaddrunkdublin website.

Mark  A. Murphy

Every breath is precious. He labours,
he struggles, like a man in an iron lung,
except he welds a spade to his fist
and says nothing.
 

No protest, no murmur of disbelief,
no sound issues forth from his mouth.
One might think his lips
had been sown together

with surgical thread, so silent is he.
How many thousands of years
have brought us to this,
how many systems of thought?
 

He digs for dear life,
broken-backed, making no complaint
behind the steel barbs,
beseeching no heaven with his eyes.
 

Above the broken stone and fire
only one voice protests
with any certainty. The voice snaps
like a steel trap above the wind: Dig, you bastard, dig!

Mark A. Murphy’s poems have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Scotland, Quarterly Literary Review (Singapore), The Warwick Review (UK), Struggle (UK), Istanbul Literature Review (Turkey), Paris Atlantic Journal (France), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Litspeak (Germany), Contemporary Literary Horizons (Romania), Munyori (India), Taj Mahal Review (India), The Tampa Review (US), Del Sol Review (US), Left Curve (US), The American Dissident (US), The Stinging Fly (Eire), Crannog Magazine (Eire) and on the deaddrunkdublin website.

Mark A. Murphy was born in the UK in 1969. He studied philosophy as an under-graduate and poetry as a post-graduate. His first full length collection, Night Watch Man & Muse is pending from Salmon Poetry (Eire) early in 2012.

Bees crazy off nectar, darkest plums were turning black,
old ladies sat in their cars with the air on.

The woman dropped you off at the bottom of your hill
and you were plumper. They must have fed you well
in the child protection service. We were 12, I guess.

Your mother had just been shipped off
to an institution again. We walked to your house
so you could pick up some clothes
and found a pile of The National Geographic
in the driveway.  She had cut out pictures of women
and set the magazines on fire.
The women were in a pile, under a rock in the sun.

I think we laughed – but not at your dolls,
strewn across the house with their eyes cut out,
bleeding cotton up and down the hallway.

I watched your face as you looked around.
Too young to know any words to save anybody,
I wished it wasn’t your house.

Dolls who couldn’t see. Paper women under a rock.
Something about women – something about body –
what was she trying to silence?
We found a litter of puppies outside,
one of them was dead.

The others were healthy, so healthy.
How were they able to do it?
They survived somehow.
“Where should we take them?” you asked.
We understood we were on our own.

I buried the dead puppy with the paper women.
I don’t know why.
Something about women,
something about body,
trying to silence something
in the desert heat.

Rae Rose’s poetry and fiction have published in literary journals, including The Pedestal Magazine, Cicada, Earth’s Daughters, Today’s Alternative News, Contemporary World Literature: Journal for the Arts, The San Diego Poetry Annual and THEMA.

I look outside the window
and see the shopping trolley
that is sat in the park.
It has been there now
for about two or three weeks
I have lost count
Of how long.
 
I have seen young children being pushed about in it.
But there is no one there today.
The park is empty
and so
is the trolley.
 
The clouds get blacker and the rain gets heavier.
A bird flies over the trolley
And out of view.
 
I change my view
But still
I
Feel the same way.

Marc Carver has published four books of poetry, worked on a poetry site in New York City and has had two hundred poems published individually. He has performed in America and all around the venues in London and southern England. He resides in the United Kingdom.
  

Every night you open in me a fountain

of forbidden words,

words like love and sadness and freedom

and though none or few

(too few to make a difference)

shall listen to those troubled words,

the words must be written

lest the present should ever be forgotten.

While the generals celebrate

and the rulings of state empower the rich,

we are never far from the troubled lives of the poor,

or the boys in uniform, the uneasy killers –

who write their final letters home.

It is not possible to say when the war will end,

or count the dead in such a way

as to bring any comfort to the living.

You say, ‘get up, do not be afraid,

write your poems, my love.’

And there it is again, the struggle

to be one’s self, the customary carnage,

the struggle to speak the truth.

What man will raise his arms in defiance –

raise his head above the hole

he has spent years digging for himself?

Every night you free me

from the disapproval of my fellow poets

whose ancient belief in the natural order of things

condones the ‘war of all against all.’

And so we return once more to forbidden words,

words like peace and justice and brotherhood –

even these words must be written

albeit against the stream.

please see Author, Mark A. Murphy’s bio in his additional works for CWPJ and on the Author’s page.

              for the people of the village of PonikƂa 

Tassels flow through my hand,
beads of grain roll against
the husk of my palm.
I lean to the lost

fire of the weeds:
the blue flame
of cornflowers,
papery mouths of poppies.

A rooster’s few
drawn-out notes
journey in the echo.
I stand shoulder-deep

in blond light.
Wind holds me,
then lets me go.

A farmer halts his horse,
points at me with his whip:
Black hair, strong head.
You will never go crazy.

*

I am the harvest now.
Sheaf by sheaf,
sky holds me,
then lets me go.

Oriana Ivy was born in Poland and came to the United States when she was 17. Her poems, essays, book reviews, and translations from modern Polish poetry have been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry 1992, Nimrod, New Letters, The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Black Warrior, Wisconsin Review, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Southern Poetry Review, and many other journals and anthologies. A former journalist and community college instructor, she teaches poetry workshops. She lives in San Diego.

Martha Stewart would run for her life.
I twist dough into snakes, slam them on countertop.
Teacups rattle. I scream. All over the world,
Jewish women are braiding bread –
how do they do it so damn holy?
It wasn’t God I thought of when I punched this dough,
 but a man who tricked me, a man before that,
and the first man –  maybe I did think of God.
I punched someone’s dough face.

Out my window – a woman without a home
sleeps under a bridge. I punched whoever built this city,
invented these laws. How do holy women do it?
Pretty heads bowed over ovens, aprons dusted with sugar,
a sweet smile on every rosy face.
My kitchen? Hiroshima made of flour.
Egg shells litter counters as if I am a red-tailed hawk
stealing from nests, cracking eggs with beak –
can you create something holy if you are angry?
When God (supposedly) made the world, was He furious?
Is that why He made everything in the dark,
was He too scared to look?

I separate Challah, ripping out a piece of dough
like I am ripping out an eye –
that eye that saw his last trick,
that eye that saw me pull at my veins like cats cradle
and scrub my flesh with Brillo pads,
I am pulling out that eye – that stain –  that hurt –  from this braided body that is now so – so –

curvy. So female. 

I use my fingertips,
glaze Challah with egg whites.
It shimmers like moonlight hugging curves.
The heat will harden her, thicken her skin.
She will be able to take it. Take anything.
Pull down the moon– my moon –
– my light – my curves – my invention –
I am reinventing woman. My own recipe – no rib required.
I have created something holy in a world 
in which everything was already invented for me. Poorly.
This time I will change.
I look at the woman under the bridge.
Maybe this time, we’ll change everything.

Rae Rose’s poetry and fiction have published in literary journals, including The Pedestal Magazine, Cicada, Earth’s Daughters, Today’s Alternative News, CWLJA, The San Diego Poetry Annual and THEMA.

                         When our life is ashes, it will not
                         Be ashes through and through –
                         For under the ash will remain
                         A starry diamond.
                                   ~ Cyprian Norwid

You were born under an unlucky star,
the fake Gypsy said
at the half-price
reading of my palms.
The windowsill was lit
by Jesus with a light bulb heart.
Do you believe in God?
the Gypsy pressed.
Earlier that year, I turned down
three gorgeous young men.
How could I reach the heights
unless I sublimated my libido?

But where was it, this new Life in Art?
I was drowning in a maelstrom
of erotic fantasies. In the end
I threw myself at an alcoholic
Vietnam veteran, the comet of his
ponytail the flag of Mr. Wrong.

In the quiet of my appeased body,
I could see the oleanders again,
starry scatter of poisonous blossoms.
I could smell the iodine ocean.
You don’t even know what love is,
the Gypsy wailed. But perhaps I did.

First thing in job-shattered morning,
I’d reach for a book that slept
with me under the pillow.
That was my real love life;
my youth, between weeping.
My star the color of ash.
Yet underneath that death,
immortal diamond.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               Oriana Ivy – please see author’s full biography in her additional works or on the Author’s Page.

Te idiotki, my hostess calls
the American women.
“These idiots go in public like that,”
she exclaims at the sight
of housewives helmeted in rollers.
Hawaiian muumuus splash
hibiscus in the produce aisles:
 â€œThat’s how these idiots dress” –
When we see a young family:
“These idiots marry at eighteen
and have five children.”

With a wave of her bony but still
elegant hand, she points to
an overflowing shopping cart –
skyscrapers of canned soup,
soda pop, Puffa-Puffa Rice â€“
“Isn’t it vulgar?”

Then she turns toward me
as I stand there with my meek
girl-from-a-good-home smile.
Eyes me sharply
up and down.
For the first and only time,

she addresses me in English:
You will never make it.
You don’t know
how to sell yourself.
Her hard “r” in never
laughs like a knife.

Oriana Ivy - please see Oriana’s full biography in her additional works in this issue and on the Author’s Page.

From abysses of her skirt she pulls
a pack of cards, draws five,
spreads them in a fan.
My boyfriend and I see only

destiny’s backside,
oily gray as the tail
of an old Warsaw pigeon.
In a pause between the worlds,

she ponders the first card –
slowly looks up
with stone-black eyes:
You are going on a great journey.

I nearly faint. The city swirls
with solstice light; and in my
purse, barely obtained,
my American visa.

You will be rich, the Gypsy drones;
You will have three children . . .
She turns to my boyfriend, draws
another fan of cards:

Fear sits in your stomach.
His face turns completely white –
he’s terrified of the draft.
Behind us, huge heroic

statues of workers and peasants
lift hammers, sickles, march
into the future –
the Gypsy prehistoric,

scarf flowering red poppies.
You are thinking of a female head . . .
You will have two children . . .
He glowers – not with me. 

And you will be rich, she hastily
adds, her bronze narrow hand
plunging my bronze ten zlotys
down the forever of her skirt.

I’m seventeen. So this is fate.
Holding hands, he and I
walk the blossoming boulevards.
“A waste of money,” he says.

Pale golden bells of linden trees
hum with bees, a million voices
droning the same story –
one that begins, A Gypsy said . . .

Oriana Ivy was born in Poland and came to the United States when she was 17. Her poems, essays, book reviews, and translations from modern Polish poetry have been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry 1992, Nimrod, New Letters, The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Black Warrior, Wisconsin Review, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Southern Poetry Review, and many other journals and anthologies. A former journalist and community college instructor, she teaches poetry workshops. She lives in San Diego.

Mr. President, given you medical history
the “Reagan Memorial” anything seemed in poor taste to me.
But after seeing your spirit float proudly along your freeways,
through so many schools and over your own aircraft carrier,
the jets taking off and disappearing like many facts,
I now bow to peer pressure and offer this memorial poem.
 
I saw your funeral inside the National Cathedral,
          the camera at a bird’s-eye angle
          the same as God must’ve had:
          ring of mourners around your casket,
          mise-en-scĂšne as if by Busby Berkeley,
          the way you would’ve wanted it.
Your coffin sat to the bottom of the encircling crowd, so
your funeral looked like The Smiley Face gone serious and blind.
 
How appropriate, I thought, not the blindness,
but the respectful space around your coffin,
for it was there the ghosts began to drift:
the Iranians whom Iraq gassed with military aid
you initiated over Amnesty International’s cries. Listen,
we can still hear them weeping for Kurds, Kuwaitis and,
of course, our own.
How good of you to sit up in the casket and salute.
 
Then came the Nicaraguenses, some carrying
their diaphanous limbs lopped off by your contras.
In grace, they piled eyes, ears, breasts,
genitalia and tongues into your coffin.
 
The Salvadoreños wearing neutralized expressions
followed the Afghanis whom your freedom fighters liberated
from life and any happy pursuit not
allowed by a literal reading of the Koran.
 
Finally, the Guatamaltecos crowded
comfortably around your coffin;
they’d been practicing in mass graves at least
since you restored military aid in ‘81.
                                                         
Did you recognize the ghost of Bishop Juan Gerardi?
You were deep in the delusions of Alzheimer’s in ‘98 when
a graduate of Fort Benning’s School of the Americas
bludgeoned Bishop Gerardi for counting Guatemala’s dead.
Genocide plus one.
 
How big of you not to make a fuss when
Gerardi helped you from your coffin and absolved you,
you not repenting and all that.
 
Your coffin loaded with broken bodies, the ghosts
glided beside you riding behind the caisson,
the nation honoring you in death as in life:
remembering nothing but good things:
how you held the picket line at the Warsaw shipyards,
how you stared down the Kremlin guards who took you hostage,
how you freed Tibet and
personally piloted the Dali Lama home on Air Force One.
 
It must have been at that moment of the procession,
you riding backwards yet comfortable in your old boots,
all of us suffering Sympathy Alzheimer’s,
that your mind was healed and
you understood you were on your way to heaven,
to spend eternity with the ghosts flowing beside you,
and that was when you began to cue the horse back
along the trail, so the bullets would revert to dollars,
the ink on the executive order flowing into the pen in your hand.
God bless that horse,
even with you sitting backwards in the saddle like that,
it wanted to obey your cues and turn from the grave,
but, alas, the soldier leading it had other orders.

Brandon Cesmat has conducted readings throughout The Americas. His books include Driven into the Shade, Light in All Directions and When Pigs Fall in Love. His blog is http://brandoncesmat.blogspot.com/ 

Cesmat currently teaches creative writing at CSU San Marcos and for California Poets in the Schools. He blogs about writer residencies for CPITS at http://cpits.wordpress.com/ 
           

Cesmat’s interdisciplinary work includes performances with the arts ensemble Drought Buoy, collaborating with visual artists at the Escondido Municipal Gallery and California Center for the Arts Museum, a documentary on poetry from the San Diego-Tijuana region titled Cruzando Líneas. He is currently an artist in residence for the San Diego Arts Institute Page-to-Stage program.

Come down from your pine-covered hill

through clumps of wild daisies

step along the rocky path,

chill of morning deep inside you,

your own walking keeping you warm

and let the sun as it climbs its own hill

reflect a brightness on the lagoon below,

giving depth to the sea-birds—cormorants

egrets, ducks and herons—look around,

reeds bending in the breeze, soil

giving beneath your feet and remember,

as though you had picked some daisies

and are holding a bouquet of them

over the water’s edge and you see their

reflection along with your own smiling face

and the willingness of your ruffled hair

to obey the commands of the wind

R. T. Sedgwick is a poet living in Del Mar, CA.  He has attended Harry Griswold’s Pleasures of Poetry workshop for the last nine years, Idyllwild Summer Arts Poetry in 2005 through 2010 and has participated in a Master Poetry Workshop lead by Dr. Sam Hamod in 2007 and 2009. He spent one week in 2006 at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA studying under poets Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux and Joe Millar. He is currently enrolled in a monthly critique group that meets in Rancho Bernardo, CA. He has four books of poetry, “Forgotten Woods”, “Harmony of a Storm”, “Sand Castles”, and “Circles and Lines” published by sedgwickARTcards, Del Mar, CA, as well as numerous poems published in various anthologies and periodicals.

to be smoothed out
on a wide stretch of beach
 

to become the mold
of a million footprints

to be whisked into whirlwinds
by Simoom or Sirocco

to sift into rippled dunes
like a blizzard’s morning after

to merge with a shape-shifting landscape
content beneath out-of-reach sky

or be scuffed by camel hoofs
traipsing after elusive oases

grab onto pointed Bedouin tent-poles
bask in the blaze of their tall torches

but never to be
the lone-wolf grain

who burrows into someone’s shoe
and bites their heel

R. T. Sedgwick is a poet living in Del Mar, CA.  He has attended Harry Griswold’s Pleasures of Poetry workshop for the last nine years, Idyllwild Summer Arts Poetry in 2005 through 2010 and has participated in a Master Poetry Workshop lead by Dr. Sam Hamod in 2007 and 2009. He spent one week in 2006 at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA studying under poets Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux and Joe Millar. He is currently enrolled in a monthly critique group that meets in Rancho Bernardo, CA. He has four books of poetry, “Forgotten Woods”, “Harmony of a Storm”, “Sand Castles”, and “Circles and Lines” published by sedgwickARTcards, Del Mar, CA, as well as numerous poems published in various anthologies and periodicals.

Where the road from Playas twists
to aim all four lanes at la linea,
a line that fades if not high-lighted,
a red sedan stalls in heavy traffic
smothering the downhill momentum
toward the digital surveillance slots.
 
A hungover passenger climbs out,
his beard measuring four careless days.
He falls against the trunk and,
his life’s weight rolls his junk home,
past the rainbow vendors of mementos
caricatured by migration north and south.
 
Gravity fights back and fatigue brakes him,
makes the lanes like metal bars of a cage.
La vieja raising a box of Chicklets,
amazingly animates me to get out
of my car and help push for home.

Brandon Cesmat – please see author’s full bio in his additional works and on the author’s page.

Mexican vendors prepare me for home
with Tony Montana merchandise.
The way little girls wrap themselves in The Little Mermaid towels
or little boys dream in Transformer pajamas,
adolescent males cover dorm walls with Scarface bedspreads and posters.
Tony, the anti-communist drug lord,
overlooks more pyramids of empty beer cans in U.S. dorms
than all portraits of Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Abe Lincoln combined.
 
“Mi padrino,” says the jallero in front of his curios.
Yes, I pray. Our godfather who art lining the way home to El Norte,
hallowed be thy merchandise.
Thy drugs that run, thy empire come,
in Omaha as in Bogata.
 
I look both ways on this street.
Federales stop traffic for pandillas on the way to playas.
Oh Tijuana, with gangland executions in vacant lots,
Oh Chula Vista, oblivious neighbor where Pontiac sells bullet proof Escalades
Oh the Americas, one continent, so many people.
from TJ to LA hear Don Corleone sing,
 
(To the tune of “God Bless America”)
 
Gangster America, land that I whack
from the Indians with casinos
who think they can buy their country back.
From the mountains, to the prairies, to the ocean front I own,
gangster America the land that takes,
gangster America, makes no mistakes.

Brandon Cesmat has conducted readings throughout The Americas. His books include Driven into the Shade, Light in All Directions and When Pigs Fall in Love. His blog is http://brandoncesmat.blogspot.com/

Cesmat currently teaches creative writing at CSU San Marcos and for California Poets in the Schools. He blogs about writer residencies for CPITS at http://cpits.wordpress.com/ 
           

Cesmat’s interdisciplinary work includes performances with the arts ensemble Drought Buoy, collaborating with visual artists at the Escondido Municipal Gallery and California Center for the Arts Museum, a documentary on poetry from the San Diego-Tijuana region titled Cruzando Líneas. He is currently an artist in residence for the San Diego Arts Institute Page-to-Stage program.

When he shines shoes,
speaks and gestures watermarks in the air,
it is habitual that his hands
resemble dreams of dreams unfulfilled–
But, what customer knows or guesses
behind that smile what polishes and burnishes
the tough desires of his memory?

Now, unshaved for days
on the sunny sidewalk of Florida Street
he sleeps. Yes, he sleeps in his summer smile
wrapped by the golden light of the winter sun.

Who is going to ask him to shine shoes?
The million people that daily flows past.
How? He has an infinite dream

In it he runs now!
Runs and jumps on a prairie,
following swallows and countryside doves,
blue doves
while drunken orange blossoms perfumes,
caress his hair.

Even if the wax melts, the flannels fly
and the brushes walk,     who?
But who can awaken him
from such exclusive chimeral treasure?

Sadly, I never knew his name

Pietro Grieco

 Pietro Grieco is Doctor of Divinity, has an OBD in Administration Sciences, and a Master of Arts in Literature and Writing.  He taught at the Buenos Aires University and Belgrano University in Argentina, and  at the California State University San Marcos, CA.  Mr. Grieco wrote academic essays, poetry and seven books. Some of his articles on spirituality have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. He resides with his wife Blanchette in Spain.

¿Qué sucede en este mundo?

Las abejas estĂĄn desapareciendo
Del aire de la primavera.

Los pĂĄjaros con el corazĂłn
Quebrado caen del cielo.

Los peces de a miles salen del mar
Para depositar sus cuerpos clamando una
misericordia de ojos abiertos sobre las riberas.

¿Y los humanos? ¿Qué sucede con
Los humanos?
ÂżTe refieres a esos ciegos
cadĂĄveres que caminan?

What happens in this world?

Bees are vanishing
From the air of spring.

Birds with broken hearts
are falling from the sky.

Fish are coming out of water
And deposit their bodies on the shore
Claiming mercy with big open eyes.

And what is going on with humans?
You mean those walking
Corpses who lost their eyes


Pietro Grieco is Doctor of Divinity, has an OBD in Administration Sciences, and a Master of Arts in Literature and Writing.  He taught at the Buenos Aires University and Belgrano University in Argentina, and  at the California State University San Marcos, CA.  Mr. Grieco wrote academic essays, poetry and seven books. Some of his articles on spirituality have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

Golden letters engraved in wood
tell travelers they have reached
the end of the Pan-American Highway.
A tranquil landmark lucid as the sun
leaving me speechless and alone.
the end
  the abyss
  the end

the waves
  hypnotizing the silent
loneliness of moss, soul and stones
receiving the beat of the surge
a mantra for iris and retina
perplexed unknown at the end
of the labyrinth of this world.
Facing a gray and frosted horizon
imagining an ephemeral continent
behind the feared Cape Horn
and the mariners graveyard
whitens my mind.
Steps in long decades
drove me
to the world’s end:
Tierra del Fuego.
Stunned in this Land of Fire akin
to an original Patagonian Ona Indian
wide eyed to flames dancing
under the Southern Cross at
aliens coming from Finisterre.

Moved
I closed my eyes.
Facing an invisible threshold
        the temptation was nearby to
                embrace the cross or steal the fire or
                jump and be swallowed by the whale
                sacrificing for something bigger than
myself bypassing the line of madness
                to live not by bread alone, be
or descend into the darkness of time
                losing my being in the transformation
                while this epiphany plays an arrested
                rhythm between this instant and eternity.

Stepping over the end
of a global universe,
end and beginning have
the same meaning as
the end of winter or the start of summer,
in a meaningful and futile
temptation we define
the end as a lucid revelation
                where not a bird sings
and we draw the line
where we break our dreams
and we step over our hearts
where we decide to pass on
                        and awaken the next day
                where an end seems to be
                        is never an end but
                        a new stone to step on
                        a new path to transcendence
                where  the best Victory of Samothrace
                        flies away from the furnace
                        of our burning chest.
The end of the universe is not a destiny.
The end of the universe is not a place.
It is only a location in our minds where
We step upon immanence for a new experience

My sight stirs
the same pebbles resembling
faithful dogs at my feet. Similar
to those mysteries of life
the same small miracles that
keep us going. Thus
the end of the universe is not a destiny.
The end of the universe is never a place
It is an act of imagination!

Breathe in
breathe out
Breathe in
breathe out.
The horn honks
Disrupting my reverie
The head turned toward the empty
bus for our return to Ushuaia
walking this clear tear of joy
like a simple speck of dust
I realized we are all part
of a poem
the universe is writing with us

Pietro Grieco - please see author’s bio on author’s page, and in additional works.

Evocating a photo of Tiananmen Square,
An young teen-aged American girl faces a bulldozer
Sent to destroy homes and hopes
Of  Palestinian families

The animated film
Shows the Israeli bulldozer
Run down her body,
Slowly crushing her,
Bones mixing her
Blood with that ancient
Palestinian land,
Back and forth,
Back and forth he goes, mashing her
Into the earth and into history,
Because the driver
A patriot man,
A good zionist man
Wanted to be efficient,
Wanted to be sure of 
A work well done

Something happens
In my stomach,
Suddenly
All the history of the world
Runs through my veins and my guts
And I fear my temples are going to blow up–
It cannot be true   it is only a film, I say to myself
The Israelis know the Commandments and the Law
They went through infinite sufferings and the holocaust

It cannot be true they fear the ire of the Empire
And very easily they can be crushed too,
No, it cannot be true.

It is not true
No human being can crush
The body of an innocent girl
Claiming for justice
For human rights and for
Optimism in the world.

I know it is not true
No human being
Nor a good Jew
Can such action do.

I know it is not true
Because no apology
Will return her life
No prayer will restore
Our feeble hope
No reason will
Suffice our minds.

I know it is not true
The friends
The politicians
The judges
The senators
The representatives
The governments
The presidents
The ministers
Even the enemies
The press and all
The powerful of the world
Will act and slam their fist
Will cry with indignation
Will act at the unison
And stop the bulldozers of hate
Jump and save the innocent
With a biblical name

The scene wasn’t revised
And none came to save
Idealistic Rachel Corrie,

None is hoping to restore
Hope to my shattered hope.
I wish someone would come
And hope to hope with me,
Help to restore meaning
Mending small words:
Life, peace, Love

My neighbor, I remember his
Tears in disbelief, he who went
To work ideals in a kibbutz
But left when he could not
Do his biology work with
A machine gun. As these
Things can happen I hope
Never to run a bulldozer
Or watching TV news
Having peacefully
A miserable cup of tea

Pietro Grieco

please see Dr. Grieco’s complete bio on the Author’s page and additional works, SPRING ISSUE, 2011

 

 

This year
Now
I want peace to be the violent birth
Let tears fall
After death has had its way
Let spring roar like a thunder river
 

Photo by Melanie Rush Davis

Lahab Assef Al Jundi (Ù„Ù‡Űš ŰčŰ§Ű”Ù Ű§Ù„ŰŹÙ†ŰŻÙŠ)

was born, and grew up, in Damascus, Syria.  He published his first collection A Long Way in 1985. Assef’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary publications, and many Anthologies including: In These Latitudes, Ten Contemporary Poets, edited by Robert Bonazzi, Inclined to Speak, An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry, edited by Hayan Charara, and Between Heaven and Texas, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye. He currently resides in San Antonio, Texas, with wife Sara and two cockatiels Yoda and Princes.