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The almost transparent white grub moves
slowly along the edge of the frying pan.
the grease makes the only sound, loud
in the empty room. Even the rim is cooking him.
The worm stops. raises his head slightly.
Lowers it, moving tentatively down the side.
He seems to be moving on his own time,
but he is falling by definition. He moves forward
touching the frying grease with his whole face.
Linda Gregg
Louis Seigal and Erika Lutzner collaborated on Convertible Deliberations, the first of several photo essays on topics such as movement, stasis, color, texture, and how they interact within constraints of the natural world, or by the lens of a camera, or perhaps by the mind itself.
Convertible Deliberations originated with the idea of water; how it transforms itself and takes on new shapes like a snake shedding her skin. Water is vapor rising, ice melting, turning grey in the twilight of slush—
a lone snowflake leucous in the light,
later, puddles of dingy impurities, this transformation of liquid to solid, gaseous, vapor—steam, what does it mean?
This essay attempt to reflect on that…
Leave you with questions, the next time you look at a lake, a puddle, an ice cube, notice
how they are similar and no two are alike
Louis Seigal has been living photography as long as he can remember. Always more comfortable with a lens to hide behind, he found that he has a gift for viewing the world through a frame at a different angle than most see. He has the unique ability to see things that many miss. His photographs encapsulate worlds within worlds. He notices the most minute details and allows us to see their beauty. Whether an icicle, a child’s smile, a raindrop among thousands, or a daisy standing at attention, Louis captures the essence of meaning through color, texture and most important, his patience and views of the subjects he photographs, bring us into his world.
Space
Mars, Jupiter, Pluto
looking
below from above—
Big Bang
boom
boom
lichen flash
nictitating nebula
boom
boom
Blistering
behind
crystalline
disguises
obscure
harmonies
in
the
voice
of
a
siren’s
call
Artifice
Illusive illusions—
droplet of water
appear as animals
refraction of light
on lens of camera
from screen bouncing
off window = art
Slick
Orgiastic droplets
dripping
making liquid
love
on hood of
car
Lake
Swirling eddies
drooling in circular
motion, each one robotically
indifferent
to the next
Mosaic
blue cracked
glass covered
by blankets of
alabaster powder—
viridians and crimsons
encased in icy prisons
Beaded
Effervescent
bubbles
planning their
escape—
imprisoned
by
a
wall
impenetrable
impossibilities
Aurelian 
chaos
crystal
blizzards
patinas
of
a
moon
mysterious
sepias
coined
from
Celan’s
image
sculpted out of ashes
found
in a field of
poppies and remembrance
longing in the color of
snuff colored dust
liquid madness
all illusionary
hope is not attainable
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN
the collar
of your navy
pea coat
and your clumsy
hair
the crescent
of your neck
moons me
between white lace sheets
a blizzard
two storms move across
sky
to meet over new york city one night
in 1888 with bare hands
i saw you somewhere the way you see someone you know on television
eating whipped butter spread
somewhere your messy
untied shoelaces
somewhere puddles
between moon and mantle
they buried you
somewhere in my baseball cap
somewhere your sideburns climb the brain between your thoughts
with bare hands
between fingers between buttons between snowflakes big as bulbs
we share a monster somewhere a wall
somewhere the poem becomes a train becomes a moon
the close watch of the clock somewhere—
women in sequins and buckles, men in
pleated yokes and coattails twirling and
kissing between the hands of the clock
we were drinking and twirling and blowing
kisses towards something we didn’t fully
understand
somewhere two storms make monster over new york city
between fingers between buckles
I wet your paper plate
with the lawn hose out back
somewhere your bony
back—the muscles of the city motionless
yes, I saw them fall
yes, I was somewhere on canal street— I was late for a meeting
no, I forgot the time, I didn’t realize anyone was inside
no, I couldn’t run my pants were too long—no, my heels were too high
on a subway between church and chambers
i think to bowtie your shoelaces
between
left and right
between your left
handedness
and your proclivity
towards paper cuts
your pen exploded
ink
puddles
your shirt pocket
splatters somewhere
between east and neck
again in the space
between the backs of your ears
CONFLICTS WITH MASTER #1
First, it was cherry pits and pork chop bones
in the bed sheets.
Then, an opened can of soup with the mushrooms picked
out and laid across the bed—
Sometimes we are asleep, but technically we are awake. Dolphins
for example, sleep one hemisphere at a time.
She caught him in the act, (not the violent masturbating, that started much later)
when she awoke in the shriek of night to find him crying –here,
kitty, kitty at the edge
of the bed chewing
raw bacon and cigarettes
or rummaging the neighbors’
homes for stale licorice and coffee filters chanting
“God Bless America”.
From that point on she took
matters into her own hands:
(ladies, here’s how to keep a man—)
Push the love seat.
Push the sofa.
Push the cherry book case.
Push the walnut coffee table (which belonged to your mother)
Push the kitchen table.
Disconnect the TV and PUSH.
PUSH. volumes
of history books & board games.
In the early morning, when she slipped back into bed beside him, she would
sometimes find teeth marks in the mattress and pillowcases –
He had been dreaming what he always dreams: He is a large cat circling a
zookeeper with a bucket of raw meat.
ADDIE POLK, 90
When he heard a loud noise come from Addie’s house, A neighbor
used a ladder to enter the second story bathroom. At first, he assumed
the long-barreled handgun on the bed was for protection. Then he saw
the red— “Oh, no. Miss Polk musta done shot herself.” Downstairs,
in the home Addie and her late husband lived in for 37 years: Addie’s
car keys, Addie’s wristwatch, Addie’s pocketbook, Addie’s policy
laid out across the antique table with blue trim. The notes the deputies
had been leaving always disappeared, though Addie had never come
to the door when they rang.
MARVIN SCHUR
World War II veteran,
survivor of the Great
Depression
found stiff.
Man, 93—
The coroner said:
I’ve done hundreds of these,
never seen someone freeze
inside their home.
Bay City Electric
Light and Power
sent notice via mail.
On the kitchen table:
a utility bill clipped
to a large amount of money.
J. Hope Stein is studying at New England College.
The Nightmare
She drifts on sea sofa
rides unconscious desire-
Fuseli’s luminous mare
hypnotizes with psychic lines.
Her heart hums in silk petal gown
splashes through paint pulses-
wind gallops in electric ice vapors,
tangling synaptic hair and mane.
Reflections on flaming lake
smolders in broken mirrors.
She wants to stay; the mare rears-
turns the heavy breathed air.
The double evaporates into
ether huffed handkerchief.
She wakes with electrifying jolt-
Freud will not look at her,
infused with indigo smoke
takes notes- spills white powder
on her liquid gown & writes her script
they will meet tomorrow for hours.
Electra’s Stockings
Every time she went to Queens, she took the subway to see this middle-aged guy
in Astor Place at his brownstone stocking shop. She stilettoed past the vintage
clothing shops, tattoo and piercing places. She visited him in lieu of coconut soup
and vegetables in the Indian food district. She didn't even need stockings; her
mirrored heirloom armoire at home overflowed with the extravagances she had
bought: lace, seamed, sheers, regular, and thigh highs.
From the busy street, she spiraled down the stairs. Hearing his voice, she was
swept up in oceanic memory, an archeology of embedded layers, feeling as
though she was drifting in the Atlantic off Coney Island.
Downstairs, his thick Bronx accent resonated deep within her. He liked to talk as
much as he liked selling stockings. He said he had to get out of his rent-stabilized
apartment because the walls were closing in on him, and she selected some lace
garters. He missed the smut in New York since Mayor Giuliani had cleaned
everything up. She laid some white stockings printed with black crosses on the
counter. He flashed some fresh black fishnets and she heard a siren coming from
somewhere inside herself.
Carmel by the Sea
In another life, I was a mermaid. At first, I thought it was a dream, but not a
chance with my glistening sheen. I didn’t even have to shake my verdigris tail or
my wet, polished tresses to be every sailor’s fantasy. For them, it must have been
the complexity of Oedipus, since I nursed the orphaned starfish at my breasts.
In this life, I live in the mist and rush of undulating waves in my barnacled
bungalow. The migrating Monarchs visit my succulent gardens and windswept
cypress, and the barking harbor seals and lions bask on the sloshed rocks.
I cast sea spells for the women here, sculpting mouth blown fantasies and sea
fineries. I stitch together dresses corseted with bleached seagull bone, knotted
and woven with blue jay wings and dyed with a splash of oceanic ink; and
stranded pearls from the ruffled clams. I read the past and future in spirit bottles
stained with iridescent messages imprinted deep within the belly of the earth’s
consciousness. And at night by moon gleam, I slip out of myself into the
glittering gown of the sea, rising in the ocean’s shell to become Venus incarnate
for Botticelli.
Alexandra's prose and poetry currently appears in Wilderness House Literary Review, FRiGG, Pank, Dogzplot, keepgoing.org., poeticdiversity, Eclectica, Fickle Muses, Slow Trains; and forthcoming in Dogzplot Flash Fiction Anthology 2009. You can visit her here: alexandraisacson.com
Where The Board Walk Ends
The strong shells of full-grown crabs
Are no match for
A five ton pickup truck.
Waves swell, crash, and flail,
Then return quietly,
Never having left at all.
Caravans of clouds
Pass by quickly,
In no particular hurry.
Moses parts seas.
Jesus walks on water.
I spread your lips, dive right in.
Your legs spread open,
Your wrists and ankles bound,
I fuck you as I please.
Tiberius F grew up in the wilds of the Northeast. He studied philosophy, spirituality and people; finding that he had a gift for helping people in various ways. He is intense, funny, a merrymaker, a charmer, and never boring, his laugh alone will give you pleasure beyond your dreams...
Gacela of the Inner Givens
for Molly Gaudry
no one ever says the right thing in your sleep
of midnight blue and black stars.
No one can say the single word
that makes your colors want to sing.
A hundred brushstrokes of Persian blue
and green shifts in the window of your brow.
You want someone to push your cloudy hair,
watch the colors of your face—the slipping
of orange to magenta to yellow to crimson.
Your eyelids have a blue song tattooed on them.
You say the word satellite in sleep. Behind
your forehead someone prepares the seed
of the moon. She has grown it into a body—
yours. She conjures sap and blood.
She holds it in the cup of her hand,
and offers it to you without words.
Gacela of a Redwing Blackbird
for Peter Conners
It is only a blackbird singing
at the orange remnants of the moon.
You say not to believe the song—
there is no dead of night, only the long
body of stars, mirroring our own.
Do not believe what the poets say—
the night is not cruel. Love is a blackbird
wing, small heart upon its sleeve.
What the blackbird sees of the night—
those impossible crumbs shining brightly;
that orange worm taunting the horizon.
You know what's true: the night is a blackbird
song sung with that hunger known to be
empty as the black space between stars.
You stretch out your wings, o red sleeve
heart, O blackbird fly at the starry spiral wing.
The Moment Before Waking
for Brianna Noll
your hand is hovering above the small creature that has come to see what you are: it has a life of its own: even though it is clearly the hand you were born with: everything else is your hair: taking on different forms: grass: leaves: the bark and the blossoms: another creature begins to lead you away by a lock: something else has wrapped a nest out of your eddies and tides: you want to pet the little visitor: but like children: you are not sure how the gesture will be received: beyond all this: light is becoming music: wispy reeds and high strings: it’s haunting and unfamiliarly familiar: like seeing your own hair or hand in places you’ve never been
J. P. Dancing Bear is the author nine collections of poetry, most recently, Conflicted Light (SalmonPoetry, 2008). His poems have been published in DIAGRAM, No Tell Motel, Verse Daily and others. He is editor for the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press. His next book, Inner Cities of Gulls is due out by SalmonPoetry in 2010.
Lizard
The gray-brown lizard so handsomely marked appears on a speckled rock, a movement out from shadow. Flash—freeze. Hot—cold. What the fuck are you doing here he asks the lady in the bathing suit. She sits on another rock nearby but can’t hear him. He one-eyes her. And what you looking at? The absurd woman studies him, his poise and pose, then gazes again at the river cut deep in its gorge among boulders. Sparse brush and oak. Blue span above. The rush and tumble of it. Her wet bathing suit. The lizard squats, thin fingers splayed on a rock. He too stares. Into distances. For a long time. The water’s roar. A suspended light. He cocks his head and licks something from the rock. I love my life he says.
I wait for a rogue wave
I wait for a rogue wave to hit or a seagull to shit in my hair, what it means to sit on a rock near unprecedented sea, the sea that sounds like itself and nothing else in the world at the edge of the world where the waves change themselves against cliff. Here comes another woman down the same path, silent because of the self-sounding sea. Who isn’t obvious, only where and when. She hops the stream that barely troubles the surf. Next I look, she sits naked on the sand with a flame between her legs. This sounds like sex but it’s pages she burns, not self or passion though that’s implied. I can’t bear to watch nor should I. Watch. One who waits for birdshit must not interfere with one who self-emoliates. Instead I pocket two stones, one smooth, one jagged like an arrowhead and climb back up the cliff careful at each pitched step.
And look back where one at a time each page torn out goes up in flame, each page a prayer. I don’t pray, such unbinding the loosening of thought, an unbodiment of desire. How is a mystery and why can’t be spoken. Even what fools the eye. Only fuel, smoke rising in a pillar, my lips flecked with salt.
How To
Don’t waste a feeling. Or a story. Or a way or worry. A minute. A birdsong. Not even one shade of green. Promise the crows anything. Remember the turkey vultures, how all spring they return one by one at dusk to roost in the eucalyptus trees. Also consider the privet that readies new berries so the seasons will continue outside the window. Write a Carte Geographique de la Lune—nothing more sublime can be written in English nor more shadowed with desire, nor more unsayable. That it has not been said enough, even water mouths its lonely syllable. It stutters across the sea and lays cool hands over a lake. Don’t mention it anymore someone will tell you. But how can you compress the horizon or keep it from its risings? It will leer or loom or drift, a silver eyelash, a miniscule crack, an irresistible opening you long to enter. What else is there to know? So much spills out and over. And the ceiling fan spins slow. The spider in its corner spins a secret and the atoms in every part of everything spin, spin the little wheels of our hearts, spin beauty and its waning, the spider’s finely wrought bundle silent, wound with silken thread.
in memory of Pat O’Laughlin
Sally Ashton is editor of the DMQ Review, an online journal. She is author of These Metallic Days, Mainstreet Rag, and Her Name Is Juanita, Kore Press 2009. Poetry and reviews have recently appeared in Sentence, Linebreak, Parthenon West Review, Poet Lore and in the anthology, An Introduction to the Prose Poem. She blogs at www.poetryonastick.blogspot.com
Nice Pig
In first grade Mrs. Wilson taught us
to write our names in cursive.
We took turns going to the blackboard,
gripping the yellow chalk,
writing in large loopy letters.
Anna P. liked to write her name
in one long stream.
AnnaAnnaAnna.
Rhoda wrote her name once
and sat down.
Tommy was afraid to go to the board.
He cried and picked his nose.
Ginny drew a dog after her name.
That’s my dog, she said.
D-o-g.
What a nice dog, Mrs. Wilson said.
Did everyone see Ginny’s nice dog?
She gave Ginny a gold star.
After I wrote my name,
I drew a pig.
What’s that thing? Mrs. Wilson asked.
That’s my pig, I said.
P-i-g.
Oh, she said.
Is he a nice pig? I asked.
In the Operating Room
The nurse stands over a girl. She places a mask over her nose and mouth, and
says breathe. The girl breathes. She breathes in and in. She inhales an
underground lake, the liquid dank and acrid. The taste of darkness fills her
mouth and lungs. She tries to stay afloat but is sucked down, the world above
her fading fast. For days, weeks, years, she is far below. Sometimes she is too
cold to move. Some days she is swimming faster and faster through your veins,
her tail flipping inside your skin. Her eyes blur with the speed. A hook tears at
the back of her throat. When she looks up, she sees a bird looking back at her.
He stands on one leg and cocks his head, first to one side, then the other. He
watches, waiting for her to surface. Breathe, the nurse says. Please breathe.
The Afterlife
Maybe you think it’s simple. Like the difference between left and right.
Between dreams and the other life. The one you like. But yesterday I saw a car
run over a cyclist. When I looked up, the sky went black. A huge bird spread
across my sky. No one knew my name, not even me.
What do you want? God asked. Nothing, I said. But it was such a lie. I was The year I was diagnosed as a manic depressive, I was only a girl.
trying to be polite. Maybe that’s why He sent me back here to try again, here in
this gap between one life and the next, between what you said and what I
meant.
Sometimes I say we have to meet. Then we wrap around each other again and
again. It never works out. There’s always a fight. There’s this woman who
asks, Who do you think you are? There’s this man who says, You are the only
woman who exists. (Men are like that, yes?) He tells such lies.
Me? I slink away with my hands in my head. Or is it the other way? I get lost
doing the simplest tasks. Drinking tea, climbing the steps, having sex. (Am I
the only one who forgets which is which or what’s next?) I remember now.
There’s a bicycle leaning against the house. Whoever knocks, I say, Come on in.
In the Dark Room
sliding down so suddenly, I scared people,
Fuck you, I said to anyone who asked
how I was. Fuck you too.
It sounded cool.
After a while no one bothered me.
My mother said it was genetic.
Uncle Bill stepped in front of a train.
Cousin Joe got hooked on sedatives.
Grandma Grace stayed inside
with the shades drawn
until she was cured with shock treatments.
Doctors electrically deleted her memories
and dreams. She came home smiling
every time. If a therapist asked
what her problem was,
she had no clue.
The last time she went in,
she said she found God in the asylum,
but He wasn’t very nice.
Sometimes I think I shouldn’t think what I think.
Or dream. Like last night I saw our girl
coming out of a tub. You wrapped her
in a huge bath towel and combed her black hair back,
took her outside past the pawpaw patch
to the pond where blood suckers swim.
The two of you walked so slowly beneath the full moon.
You said you were in no mood to talk about what has passed.
There is too much catching up for any two people to do.
And besides it’s over now like old news.
I’d be sorry if I ever really knew what I knew.
Nin Andrews next book, Southern Comfort, will be published in October, 2009, by CavanKerry Press. Her new chapbook, the Accidental Seduction, will be published in a very limited edition in November, 2009 by Obscure Publications. The poems in this issue of Scapegoat are from The Accidental Seduction.
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Nin Andrews |
Tiberius F |
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Flash Fiction |
Photo Essay |
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| Alexandra Isacson Electra’s Stockings Carmel by the Sea |
Louis Seigal & Erika Lutzner Convertible Deliberations |
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