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Fall/Winter 2009-10
tom oristaglio
scott summers
cindy childress
tom rechtin
james b. nicola
debra rymer
doug draime
corey mesler
rebecca schumejda
chris crittenden
arlene ang
joey nicoletti
brad johnson
lorie allred
elizabeth kay
alexander russo
nissa lee
kenneth gurney
jessi lee gaylord
keith brighouse
ajay vishwanathan
ethel rohan
william "cully" bryant
julie steiner
Steiner Interview
by Alex Nodopaka
Jennifer VanBuren
Jai Britton
Alex Nodopaka
Patrick Carrington
Mannequin Envy in memory of poet and artist Douglas Gamrath
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Tim Kahl
Winter 2009
The Mannerist
The comic gropes a woman in the crowd,
takes her into the men’s room, leaves the club
and urinates on the sidewalk outside.
His manners suffer, but he understands
the appetite for outrage.
He understands the crude smack
of the lips, the vulgar leer
that makes you so uncomfortable.
Oh, yes, you, the mannered poet,
the one who likes to play
hide and seek among the commas,
I watch you ration your lines:
canapés, kipper snacks, no lunch meat, trés chic.
I admire the cramped quarters you design,
the caution you display to keep your
interests safe. You inspire the backslapper
in me, so I throw an elegant party
and threaten to breastfeed
all my guests. I am not mannered
so much as manured, mired in
my own eccentric habits. The door stays
open when I’m on the throne,
for everyone to see. I urinate out
in the tule after I’ve coached Little League.
Pity those of us who don’t know better . . .
go ahead, begin! Oh, you mannered poet,
who fails to escape through the labyrinth
of your lines’ sharp turns, lead
your reader to follow the tortured rules
of your turn, turn, turn
into the maw of emotion—
heightened for effect.
Then raise your reader
out of his theater seat
to walk out of the poem later
with a feeling deserved and named
so he doesn’t feel cheated.
This I ask out of respect
for your sophisticated direction
of the comma and the colon.
Oh, you mannered poet,
you look tired after all your effort.
Wend your way to the gentle finish.
Go home and get some needed laughs.
The Great Book
I had a great book which kept track of
every instance of human exchange.
. . . I wanted to be a different species,
a bat that fluttered between the blood meals
it shared. But I am not a bat.
I am not a moral beacon either. I repeat
a game where the winner is allowed
to cross over into childhood.
There are four of us now digging in
the sand together. Then one boy runs
and takes all the shovels. The rest
of us wear our buckets on our heads.
I guess the subtle thoughts of the ethologists
who are watching us. They denote our status
with a series of crude symbols and hashmarks.
I have seen the great book they have written,
kept a copy locked in my filing cabinet
with my dull knives and fishing tackle.
Tonight I dine alone on three blood oranges.
Again I read all the names mentioned
in the great book of the ethologists.
They insist I have ruined my species.
But I assured them the situation is
more complicated—it is easier to be
selfish the more anonymous one is.
So I leave tomorrow with the great book
strapped around my waist. My destination:
the barely disguised expanse where
the great book has finally found its audience.
Three Middle-Aged Postures of Futility
I wrap my life in aluminum foil
for the kids to find me later
on a shelf in the fridge
where I can linger past my freshness date,
knowing I serve to sate their hunger.
I could be collectible bear
stuffed with the soft filler
of my grandiose adolescent
dreams. Now I’d settle for
simply being necessary,
not stuck in dust motes
on a ledge, overlooking
the pranks of my five-year-old
passing out of his adorable stage.
I am the last move left on
the chess board, still insistent
that king is slain by pawn.
I argue with dusk’s lamplight,
draw moustaches on the well-groomed
models in Sunset Magazine.
I am angst mixed with venom,
roiling. My body hiccups, growls
and burps. It attacks. I publish
my most desperate groans and sighs
in the air-conditioned air.
Tim Kahl’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, American Letters & Commentary, Berkeley Poetry Review, Fourteen Hills, George Washington Review, Illuminations, Indiana Review, Limestone, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, South Dakota Quarterly, The Journal, Parthenon West Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Texas Review, and many other journals in the U.S. He has translated German poet Rolf Haufs, Austrian avant-gardist, Friederike Mayröcker; Brazilian poets, Lêdo Ivo and Marly de Oliveira; and the poems of the Portuguese language’s only Nobel Laureate, José Saramago. He also appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog The Great American Pinup (http://greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com/). His first collection is Possessing Yourself (Word Tech Press, 2009). He is also the editor for Bald Trickster Press, which is dedicated to works of poetry in translation into English. He is Vice President of te Sacramento Poetry Center and hosting coordinator of the weekly reading series there. |
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fall 2006
The Experiment
After the experiment in bed is over, we release
a pair of perfect breaths, hoping they will have
some bearing on the luck of our descendants.
Our guts growl out at the rumble of the netherworld
around us. We firmly believe that from this ecstasy
will arise the start of a slow crawl up and out of
our present condition. This is the climb
to the prepared ground of the adored garden;
we are the figures on the mint tray, lying
as vines numbed by the bliss of being groomed.
But go on and stain us as blue as the dye on the slide.
Watch our slow divisions transpire; note how our
chromosomes migrate along their mitotic spindles.
We are not a part of the wild, steadily gnawing
on hides. Neither are we leaping from branch
to branch, squealing and searching for allies.
We are not asking to be excused for our impulses,
yet we are not sacrificing our noble gestures either.
We sigh with joy when the president pardons a
Thanksgiving turkey. We appear to be guilty when
the neighbors start spying on the Kleenex we've torn.
We have survived the criticisms of our instincts,
the remarks about our reflexes, the damning diagnoses.
Our worn bodies intend and respond behind
the showcase glass with a crack in it. And in
the imagined dark of the room, our daring hands
leave hints of their routine blessings.
So, as humans, we are willing to throw on some music
and see what happens. Let our bacteria mingle
in the damp. We endure with our huge heads
directing traffic across the skin's surface.
The body parts are wound up and they hop about
like some two-bit gag gift handed out in a grab bag.
The iterations are noted, the data charted.
Every generation is observed to see what kind of
absurdity develops from the system of glances
and touches. We discover a new species within us
as you, the veteran investigator, study us
and calculate the ratio of finesse to foible.
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