Stephen C. Middleton

3 poems


**


Teachings


…and are taught what, precisely?
(In the cradle of the free world)

Curdled narratives & alibis
Causus belli, lies & spin

Autodidact’s vague soundings
Often rebound

Spasm

A low-grade blight
(And then they whip out the plague
To frighten us).


**


Ice Axe (in a writer’s hands)



“Not a musician’s hands, a writer’s hands”, said the old man, father of the climber, medic in The Last Blue Mountain – whose ice axe he gave to me. Scared to go under / chlorine & cold / head in the water – he ducked me: the old man, as he seemed, looked closely, piano practise not going well, I told him – “not a musician’s hands / a writer’s hands”. The Dell / the ‘big hill’ we called it, dwarfed though it was by the quarry’s depth – like breathless Castelluccio, a mound in the vast Piano Grande. His grand-daughter, Mary, joined us in play. John Emery – medical student, survives Haramosh (1957), though lost his toes, fingers, & climbing companion, himself lost in the Alps a few years later. The banality of death / a slip – a clip undone (survived). Otherwise faulty issue. Cut steps. A sadness / on reflection / but not a shrine / a scent of age (in the best sense) & refinement. Kept thus for bereaved mother & father, & daughter, but no mausoleum. The ice axe the prop of/for a lecture – 15 or 16, back from the Bernina. (A boy in a thick sweater, I remember, thanked me. Pixie hoods) The ice axe too little used – Piz Palu, the Fairfield Horseshoe (Don’t need an ice axe in the Lake District / Sometimes you do). Living up to expectations. Late, but no deadlines / nothing to protect / echoes… whose breath smelt of almonds ( as the beautiful villages do), but can make nothing of that. In orange survival bags – for practise – the Berwyns, Ro-wen. Units of survival. The smell of freshly baked bread, in Cornwall, Italy. Show your route (Workings). Curveballs to cover. Objections, hecklers to disarm / overcome. Some responsibility, then & now. Any questions? What is the recovery position? “A writer’s hands / not a musician’s”.


**


Deserted (Patient’s Notes)


Appointments lost
Glossed over, elided
Confidence eroded

Blindsided then by episodes

Livid awhile
But damage forgiven

Back to distance
And the crunch…that never comes

Is it the kindled madness?
Or spindle thin-ness, once…?

And why take exception
To exceptions made?

Violence averted
Overlaid by heavy pity
Condescension

Lived out
From the couch, outward

Swords crossed with everyone
But also…deserted.


**

return to sawbuck 5.1

**
Stephen C. Middleton is a writer working in London, England. He has had five books published, including A Brave Light (Stride) and Worlds of Pain / Shades of Grace (Poetry Salzburg). He has been in a number of anthologies, including Paging Doctor Jazz (Shoestring), Troubles Swapped For Something Fresh (Salt, 2009) & From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010). For several years he was editor of Ostinato, a magazine of jazz and jazz related poetry, and The Tenormen Press, producing limited edition art books of illustrated poetry about music. He has been in many magazines, mostly in the U.K, but also in the U.S.A, Australia, and Europe. His live work includes poetry readings, performance pieces with musicians, stand up comedy, and storytelling. He is currently working on a number of projects (prose and poetry) relating to jazz, blues, politics, outsider (folk) art, mountain environments, and long-term illness.

Magazine & anthology publications include: Outposts, Stride, Acumen, Poetry Salzburg Review, Great Works, Orbis, erbacce, Links, Poetry in Performance (U.S.A), Jack (U.S.A), Otoliths (Aus), Envoi, Other Poetry, The Coffee House, Anemone Sidecar (U.S.A)…

Forthcoming publications include: Agenda, The Seventh Quarry, Pinstripe Fedora (U.S.A) …

Nicholas Michael Ravnikar

4 poems


**


Utility Bill


For I have estimated the jalapeno and it saves us nothing

The two trees in the courtyard cast shadows that always intersect but do not cast
........them alone

And the aloe beside the citronella candle flourishes in places and zinnias lose their
........petals rather quickly

And a hanging basket above the chair contains a plant whose name I cannot recall,
........but I'm not complaining

The winged insects would annoy anyone who sat here long enough until they sat
........here a single instant longer

That is, a whole afternoon resists the memory of it
That is, a nervous confusion arises from floaters
That is, a pastoral solitude always tends to shatter
For various creatures appear variously considered

For light flatters only from a point of view, which I understand as being distinct from bias

I should glimpse a fallen branch more often than it lingers, but this remains only
........possible through covers and covers of covers and so on ad infinitum

Which constitute a reality as possible as any single point and then what startles you
........or me, a door slams or a gunshot


**


Two Poems Written in Haste at a Local Reading
(And Later Revised When I Typed Them)


Homogeneous Solutions


According to a Transvestite maybe
My physical coffee hates your poop stain.
Your face is that poop stain. Many thank yous
For stealing my secret admirers. They're so addicting.

Meanwhile, these ideas demand intentional systems
In order to have something be about them. And you,
Ever the baboon, undress yourself like champagne
Before the dawn (of which you know nothing)
With complete anonymity. And still they persist.

They will make travesties of your travesties
So that sunlight never sees them. But sunlight
Already never sees, with it's absolute and utter
(completely redundant) lack of eyes.
Everyone makes mistakes that last forever.
Everyone accepts the things they never say are true.


* * *


The Night We Killed Lenin


On the way home, traffic jams up. The tire flats.
"Have a cigarette," I said, "You'll feel better."

We rearrange the kitchen beforehand.
We spoke of the table as reductio ad absurdum.

You never told me how you knew I was lying, just:
"I agree with everything, except the fact you said it."

The glass breaks before it shatters.
Very good boys deserve fudge.


**


Bad Imagery


I, slug of the forest
do not see, hear. But
you know that you know that already.

Congratulations.
You entail my background.

Our subject likens it
(and subjects like to thicken each)
to private dilemmas.

The right turns you make
angles and reservations canceled

Not all facts are true facts.
Not all true facts remain so.

We all get paid in lies, fact
and life to regret

What else is there but yes and no
or I do not understand.

Nature does a lot.
The forest cannot see.


**


Imaginary Friend


I took LSD when I was six and now there's nothing left to write about.

I thought skinned knees gashed leather purses, a thoroughly unclean porch

A black box, entirely plastic and plastic wires, shell, hub, voiceless curtains

Console no counsel no consolation, indoors all summer.

This much is true I know.

As a child I played a children's game no other child had known


bright cherries tantalize the darkness of my own box a stand-in I could not concede

Three manners of figure, three, whatever the body as it enters the mouth young

The joint is the thing, the way it bends, like the hump of a pillow

Its pregnancy, it is pregnant or a pregnancy that belongs to it

It is a pregnant joint in any case which is a kind of cancer

We called this playing doctor, doctor help me I have an urgent blink inside


I court them and give them voice contort a fiction of the universe each lives in

And everyone could peek or flatten their leg with a wormy log

They would become incredibly flexible their knees shattered almost like people

All of this one or the other of us must have imagined as now

Her real name Tex, I was convinced, grinding her plastic hip, it was perfect.

I had a name for that but never did pronounce it the same way twice


**

return to sawbuck 5.1

**
Nicholas Michael Ravnikar lives in Southeast Wisconsin and teaches communication, writing and reading there. He has also worked extensively with non-profit organizations as well as prisons and schools in a variety of creative capacities, from designing and facilitating workshops to producing videos. While studying for his MFA (2008) from Naropa University, he received the Robert Creeley award, and he graduated in 2006 with a BA in English from the University of Wisconsin. Gold Wake Press recently published Luxury Pocket Slide Rules as a free e-chap, and other work has appeared in otoliths, boo, Monkey Puzzle, Fact-Simile, Swap/Concessions and Cannot Exist. He publishes the irregular web-zine and chapbook series The Bathroom and co-organizes the Racquetball Chapbook Tournament.

Leigh Vandebogart

3 poems


**


Especially When Watched

The oceans and the seas are laughing,
because we know nothing and we
dance too much. Or maybe
the waves are laughing because
we don’t dance enough and things
are getting hard right now.

Look at all of the stranded foam,
crushed shells,
translucent jellyfish like imaginary cakes,
and look at all the sand! Oh my god,
don’t forget about the sand,
of course sand,
all of it listening to the laughter, laughter, but
not laughing, just
laying there, laying, listening
in the way only dead things can.

We walk and we do not know,
and we try hard not to dance,
or
we try very hard to dance well,
all the while with the booming
crashing
laughter of the water.


**


but it was too hot


so I dreamt
instead, stories of tree-houses and closeness.
building community after
early morning walks in the park,
not too humid out before we slipped back
into bed.
driving back from downtown,
there was a monster on the sidewalk
dark flowing hair and a grimacing mask,
he was waving his arms at passing cars and I thought,
this is not Halloween yet,
but hello.

alone now, working,
watching steam float off the top of tea into darkness,
the quiet thin line between autumn and winter fast
approaching, you can smell it in the air,
something like fear
something like
hello.
hello.


**


this is for you, and you, and you


You can feel the ocean
in the air this morning,
waves in every stupid raindrop,
and the garbagemen sound like seagulls
when they say hi.

Your voice is on my phone, so I listen
mostly out of curiosity,
not because I care
(don’t get the two confused).
It’s the start of a new week and I’m disappointed
again, already, thank you.

Everyone clicks away behind our eyeballs,
squinting to make sense;
no-one knows what we want.
But here –
listen, carefully, and watch the sidewalks.
Trip once and you’re done.
Bye-bye.


**

return to sawbuck 5.1

**
Leigh Vandebogart is a recent Brooklyn transplant, by way of Albany, NY. She is currently a special education teacher at a middle school in Queens, and just finished her first year teaching sixth grade. When she isn't in front of a class and wrangling twelve-year-olds, she pets and looks at her cats, writes poems, walks around Brooklyn, and drinks beverages of all sorts. She's had poems published in Chronogram Magazine; in Other: ______, an Albany poetry publication; and in a chapbook through FootHills Publishing entitled liquid starlight and nonsense (even though she prefers you ignore the chapbook’s existence entirely).

Keith Higginbotham

3 poems


**


What He Did

The TV was off
and on the coffee pot

slipped out the drive up
in the long shower, shaved

and put on flowers, assumed
he’d slept in the phone.

Exhausted another three weeks
at home, out the window, into

and out of seem, cynical, a big
big trouble, rock music bed, dark

streets of difference. The belt
buckle bloodshot black tarp face

of the motel across the seat
drew up beside him and settled

into the shade of his shirt and jeans
behind his blue-eyed voice.


**


Madonna of the Cul De Sac


she stole up the
house of teeth
of a lost family
collecting herself
in shorthand

outside, a swimming pool
crashed into
the fireplace –
a liberal smash

strings of birds
roared up
the circular driveway
of a cadet branch
fallen into
poverty

she said society
was not a guest
on her eyebrow
of cigarette smoke

and she abandoned
typing on a small
silver tray


**


Suggest a Title


the burden of wonder
across a screen
circumspect, knows
a skeleton town.

it is but a pure
frontier, not really
into being. neither of
these names never
existed, the opposite was.

any other more
would explain invented
times, galaxy of the
still who.


**

return to sawbuck 5.1

**
Keith Higginbotham's poetry has recently appeared in ditch, Eratio, O Sweet Flowery Roses, and Otoliths. His chapbooks are Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press) and Prosaic Suburban Commercial (Eratio Editions). Visit his blog at http://ihaveproofthatsomeofthisiscorrect.blogspot.com/

Jessica Rainey

Extracts from

ENDOMA

(and around)

ENDOMA

Construction of Endoma began in 35PrE with the major exterior and interior structures completed by ENTRY. 15km in diameter, 3km at peak, Endoma has an exterior surface area of 353.25km. The shell is a double layer of 166,200 neo-ethylene tetrafluoromethanol (NET) hexagonal panels, supported by 16 main beams, 208 supporting beams and 1664 subsidiary beams. At the summit of the structure - one-third outside, two-thirds within - is MAMILLA.

stage one recharge

you ease yourself back...lie flat

your body...fully aligned

you close your eyes

you feel

warm..comfortable..content

you breathe in...release a sigh

beneath you the recharger holds your weight

you feel

heavy..full..lethargic

below you

the form

warm...waxy

cradles you...lulls you

deeply

you breathe in...smile

your muscles relax...your tensions dissolve

you release...your breath...slowly

you feel

the waxiness give

in light pin pricks

the sensation hooks

on the soles of your feet

runs

up the back of each leg

gathers

at the base of your back

threads

along your spinal cord

and up to cast off

at your crown

these lines.........tingle......in anticipation

you tense...breathe in

you think...you feel

warm..heavy..comfortable..content

but you feel

hot..uneasy

the form beneath you is holding you down

you hold yourself back...hold your breath in

you feel...your body...resisting

somethings dissolving

you try to relax

feel the warmth of the wax

but you feel

tense..unsettled

you sense

the tingling

intensify

you try to relax...but resist

you try to invite the intrusion

so insistent now forceful

so animal almost brutal

you have little choice

your seams

rip........open

hot

pins

prick

you

feel

your skin

dissolve

Postcards from Inside

I

View from Hillthree of the South Downs. Lush green

Gives way to growing fields to natural

Parks and gardens: such a idyllic scene!

In the north, woodland, where the magical

Greenfingered weave their wicker world. Round stream,

The Circumference glitters, beautiful

Blue border despite its impurity.

Here four tributaries, full of reeds, cleanse

Our inevitable waste, the cycle

Feeds the central lake, the perfect circle,

Still, clear. Blue and green… imaginary lens?

No. The Floor: grounding our frivolity.

THE FLOOR

Covering a surface area of 177 km², The Floor is two thirds earth, one third water. Around the interior circumference of ENDOMA is a river, 0.5km-wide. This river has 4 tributaries that feed a 3km-wide lake in the centre; they also separate the 4 earth sections. These feature forest in the north, downland in the south, meadow and tended parks towards the centre, and various essential constructs in the east and west. Aside from the areas cultivated by the GREENFINGERED, nature is allowed to be nature.

stage two recharge

removal of waste

one and two

internal flush

external scrub

Postcards from Inside

II

Above glows interconnectivity

As dusk falls below. Four disks, The Ovals,

Dominate: they host our activity.

Between, descending, on the ordinals,

Four ringed forms: they aid our ability.

These are linked by routes to peripheral

Places: the higher ovals, outer spaces.

The Upper Network, our constellation,

Our city vision, geometrical

Positions charted with mathematical

Precision. And there our recreation

Time enhances our Endoman faces.

THE UPPER NETWORK

Suspended and animated above THE FLOOR, the Upper Network consists of: 4 OVALS, 3km by 2km, 1.5km above floor level; 4 RING STRUCTS, 1km in height, each with 4 rings diminishing in size from the base ring to the peak; 4 smaller UPPER OVALS, .05km by .03km, 2km above floor level; and 2 observation BUBBLESTRUCTS attached to the side of the dome-shield. These structures are all interconnected via 2 HICIRCLERS, 8 ROUTES and 14 vertical LINKERS.

stage three recharge

Calcium, chloride, chromium

copper, magnesium... Zinc

deficiency equals impaired

immunity. Increase intake

to nought point five milligrams of

iron, iodine, sodium.

Excessive phosphorus equals

absorption rates reduced. Depletion

comple…

But they’s glowing.

P does not make glow.

Aw, they was looking green.

Potassium, selenium...

no trace element evident.

No trace?

Selenium test negative.

But yesterday there was no no trace,

today we must have trace.

No trace. Boost obligatory.

Now. A B C D E Folic

A K. Energy report please.

Well, they took a pickmeup or two... or…

How many?

Four.

What?

Sugarrush, Hi-skifter, Lone-Endo, Blast.

Not good Sub conscientiousness.

I know, I know but…

desired participation

in a dynamic experience

equals energy required.

No excuses. Four sugar high

PMUs are not conducive

to health, are not conducive to

wealth, are not conducive to a

refined recharge, a refined re…

Alright. Alright. Is conducive.

Forecast please. Do not overcast.

Do not overcast? Yet

undercasting is conducive to

the destruction of health, wealth

and Sub relations with a recharger.

Do you know how to know

what happens next?

These animal minds have

whims, fancies, urges.

They have their own wayward ways

and these ways involve

pickmeups. Or

skifting out the excess.

Update please.

We anticipate an average 24hours as follows:

mental activity : high : input : 2 times 4hours

mental activity : low : output : 1 times 4hours

physical action : high : input : 1 times 4hours

physical action : occasional : output : adding up to 2hours

mental creation with highs and lows, emotional : output : 4hours

mental, physical, emotional prep : our 2hour session with you.

We do not have any aches, pains, twitches, itches or sores.

We do not have any fears, phobias, niggles, or gnawing anxieties.

We did not have any health warnings or free radical alerts.

We are not requesting any booster options,

special flavours or colour conditionings.

We express a preference for the colour:

green.

(Aside from a little excess sugar

skifted out pre-recharge)

we feel our current state of health to be:

satisfactory.

Thank you. Preparing

vitamineral mix.

Postcards from Inside

III

Underside, multiple layers debase

Our pristine upside. The mechanical

Production of needs must still be the case.

We sift, shovel, smelt raw material

Into more material and surface

To breathe in within this monumental

Structure, encompassing our past foreseen.

Two hundred years, more, since the exigence

Of Outside sealed our dome-shield; construction

Barely complete; our Entry instruction:

Do not look out. With The Circumference

There and no bridge, we look within and dream.

Ovella

I am lying on a field of bright bright yellow. Beneath me, an undulating surface supports my natural curves – the small of my back, the arch of my neck, the bend in my knees. Above me, against a backdrop of deep deep blue, coloured pods float. I am fascinated by this scene. There are 352 pods floating above me, most are green or blue, some red, orange, purple. They pulse, these pods, slowly, occasionally, as though shyly vying for attention. I watch a small green pod glow; it is subtle, the pulse, I have to keep watching. The pod returns to constant colour and the pulse moves to another – blue, further away, larger. I have trouble judging their size sometimes, I know they are not all the same, or equidistant from each other, or me. My eye wonders to another, further still, red, small, and another, closer, bright orange, big. I watch these pods for hours, lying on my back, looking up. They do not actually float, the pods, they change colour; but with the slow pulsing and subtle changes, they appear to float. They hang, suspended from an arboreal: there are nine of these in total. Each arb has eight branches: they are long, these branches, between 200 and 300 metres. The arb I am under is one of the larger ones: 300 metres tall, with a trunk 50 metres in diameter. This arb, these pods, have a total capacity of 50,000 motes. My focus shifts to the drifting motes in the spaces between the pods. They are everywhere, these specks, existing at a different pace to the pods. They drift around aimlessly, independently, until a pod begins to pulse, then, there are those among them that sense the change, that begin to shift, that find the direction and move, move, until all are moving en masse into the attracting pod. Then calm again. Then, when a pod begins to fade, they flow out suddenly en masse, starting small then spreading, spreading out into the space, until it is impossible to follow any one of them, lost amongst themselves. Then calm again. Occasionally one or two tiny motes dart across the sky space to be swallowed up by a pod already loaded, but generally the calm – the floating, drifting – sweeps quickly back to the space. But then another shift, further up or further across. My eye darts until I recognise that despite the general background of calm, despite the floating, the drifting, the rhythm is in fact fast; there are pockets of speed up here everywhere, all hours. 3,849 pods hang suspended over Ovella, and there are several on her surface, looking like fallen fruit. Ovella, that witch, the enchantress, holds 750,000 of us. Unable to resist her temptations, I too lift up, become a mote.

stage four recharge

ingestion of stodge:

slow-release

energy plus

nutrients needed

i d en it......too

I am

currently

(left forearm 4 bands) .......................................................... in year4 .............................................. (semi-permanent, cyclical)

(right forearm 3 bands) ................................................... of the 3^nd15 ................................................ (permanent, increasing)

I have

(on my back) ............................................................ 326 lines/shapes/swirls

(on my front) ............................................................. 17 lines/shapes/swirls ...................................................... (all permanent)

(around my ring finger) ....................................................... 2 rings

these make me

208/326/17/E ................................................................ (permanently)

my tattooist tells me

the circle on my right shoulder blade is in a grand trine with the swirl in the small of my back and the dot just to the right of my left armpit

I am (therefore)

ingenious ...................................................................... (permanent?)

nu has read ...................................................................... my genetic profile

nu has interpreted ........................................................ my genetic profile

nu has created ...................................................................... my identity

I have

faith in my tattooist ............................................................................................................................................................................. (?)

I can

highlight a line/shape/swirl ....................................................................................................... (temporary, semi-permanent)

fill in the gaps (colour only) ........................................................................................................ (temporary, semi-permanent)

hide a permanent band/line/shape/swirl ................................................................................................................. (temporary)

I cannot

erase a permanent band/line/shape/swirl ............................................................................................................... (permanent)

They are

me

TATTOO

At the end of the 1^st15 an ENDOMAN is given es adult identity, a full body tattoo. Semi-permanent bands on the right arm indicate the FIFTEEN CYCLE; on the left arm, which year within the Cycle. The number of lines on the back and front indicate the day and hour on which they was born, respectively. The number of rings on the right middle finger indicate which order within the hour they was created. The designs are influenced by an interpretation of the GENETIC PROFILE by a designated TATTOOIST.

stage five recharge

you are lying on your back...enclosed within the recharger...your eyes are closed

you feel

warm..relaxed..clean

your body has been washed

you can feel

a substance...swirling...around

you feel

soothed..supported..floating within

your needs have been assessed

you have been fed

you feel

clean..fresh..ready

you can feel

the fluid apply to your form

and you like

this sensation

it soothes you..strokes you

smoothes you..coats you

the substance layers onto your shape

and you feel

touched

like you want to be touched

you feel

warm..washed..wanted

the waxiness moulds around your form

you feel

new

like you have

a new skin

supple..sleek..impenetrable

you like

the feel of this overskin

tight over your body

it envelopes you

this overskin

enhances your own

it energises activates

improves you

you feel

an energy electrify you

you sense the recharger dutiful

and your mind awakes

as your body lies still

for the past ninety-five minutes

you have been recharging:

proceed to active input

THE OVERSKIN

The overskin is an additional layer applied to the exterior of the body. Not only does it enhance the function of natural skin and provide added protection; it also eliminates the need to produce clothing. The overskin has a thermoregulation system that can be consciously directed to specific areas at specific temperatures. It is thinner over the hands and thicker on the soles of the feet. At the point of any opening it thins out to nothing with the exception of those below which remain covered. The overskin is applied during RECHARGING.

**

return to sawbuck 5.1

**

Jessica Rainey is a British writer living in Barcelona. Her work has appeared or will appear in All Angles (a bilingual English-Catalan short story anthology), Barcelona INK, Dusie, e-poema.gr, Páginas Rojas, Ricci Ricci Journal, and as a winner of the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s new poet competition.