Archive
Frui
Mom always loved the rain. She loved the sharp edges of the stones
washed with it. Because she liked things clean.
It cleans every alley, she said.
God must like things clean. She was sure of this
more than the broken zippers
and the washed take-out boxes she saved in the pantry.
She loved to bleed.
Maybe she finally sensed God’s cleaning in it.
by Angela Koh
How Appurtenances Are Made Sacred
Her long silk robes and knitted caftans doused —
torn to shreds, soaked in gasoline, and set ablaze —
the shattered remains of her guitars tossed
on the burning rags, her entire household,
the caravan’s contents, her cherished possessions —
pots and pans, white lace shawls, brass candlesticks —
were burned and both her beloved horses shot.
Sleep had deceived Ulla; her knife would not sing.
Ulla, the old gypsy queen, has passed on.
She will need her possessions in the afterlife.
No one should be sent off to the spirit world
without their things. All wealth is “sad money.”
Only in death is there pleasure without spend.
We dressed Ulla as for her wedding day.
by Alex Cigale
Download the MP3
Trickle-Up
In New York,
I would walk down
three flights of stairs
and buy cigarettes from
Key Food.
I would fancy myself
melancholy, meaningful,
poetic, and would pay cash.
I scoffed at the stolid
Manhattan banks, their
spires scratching the ancient sky.
Now, at a Flying J in Abilene,
I only yawn and swipe my card,
noticing my wrist is
pale where my watch was,
and my knuckles are
sharp and pink, and I am
growing older. I take
the receipt, and think
somehow, all I have spent
is floating now, slowly
and silently as smoke,
until it reaches the exact same place.
by William Sea
Year Abroad Room and Board
piece of china
called a boat
my heart in it
by Merry Speece
Collective
At first his requests seem
reasonable. He wants to learn
to sew. He wants no stain
of sweatshops on his clothes.
He wants a seamless
ethical life, no frayed
edges of hypocrisy.
At first, we have fun.
Of course, I’d always dreamed
of doing this with a daughter,
but I’ll settle for sewing with my son.
He’s been a bit adrift.
It’s good to see him settle
into a hobby.
But then he wants to know
who made the cloth,
and all our efforts unravel.
So hard to live an upright life
with all one’s values in alignment.
He decides there’s nothing to be
done but to raise his own goats and sheep,
and soon he attracts like-minded pilgrims.
They’ve moved out to the country
where they raise organic vegetables.
There’s a homebaked bread collective
and a vineyard and winery,
and, of course, cruelty-free cloth
and clothes of Christian design.
They weave, and break bread together,
and pray without ceasing.
i swarm
by Nico Vassilakis
(If you can’t see the video, you need to download Flash.)
Critical Mass, Vancouver
There was no way to determine
the criticality of the mass
of happy, hooting cyclists
kinetic on the downtown street
on the last Friday of April,
but one guy at the corner
who had waited too long
in his silver suit
to cross that street
felt compelled
to flip them all the bird,
as though the chain reaction
they were creating
would reach him
eventually—
the fallout of two-wheelers
an affront to his muscle
car life.
Meanwhile, and in contrast,
the line of customers waiting
at the Japa-Dog stand on the corner
was growing exponentially—
it was, for the moment,
a new equilibrium.
by Alan Girling
blue Raleigh
Loose-mudguard rattle, sixties’
teal and white
and your faithful charger
on through the seventies
and eighties.
The only thing it guzzled,
your energy. One day
in the nineties
just before you finally
dump it,
the boys and I spot it in town
outside your work, parked
in its usual bike rack,
a donkey in a stable
of mountain-bike
thoroughbreds;
an object of ridicule
and their shame.
Already they’d forgotten
the once-familiar kerklunk
over our driveway’s kerb,
the handbrake’s strangled screech
outside the front door,
those announcements
that you’d arrived
home from work
their cue
to hurl their small bodies
headlong
into your handlebar arms.
Chapbook Contest: We Have Winners!
Announcing the finalists and winners of the First Annual Qarrtsiluni Chapbook Contest.
At the outset, let us say thank you: thank you to the poets who submitted fifty manuscripts of astounding variety and complexity to our contest, thank you to the first-round readers and to Dinty Moore, our 2009 judge for taking on the extremely difficult job of deciding among such excellent work. Choosing the poetry that speaks to us will always be, to some extent, subjective, and it’s not only possible but likely that a different set of judges would have come up with a different set of choices. Because of that subjectivity, and our own desire to encourage written expression, experimentation, and creativity, Dave and I have always had a love/hate affair with contests. So we want to congratulate and thank all the poets, and reiterate that the quality of the work – as is so often the case at qarrtsiluni – was very high, and the choice clearly difficult. We’ve learned a lot in doing this, and hope all of you will be thinking ahead to next year.
THE PROCESS: Eight first-round readers, all of whom are former guest editors of qarrtsiluni, read the fifty submitted manuscripts in order to narrow the field to a shortlist of no more than ten. Each chapbook, identified only by title, was read by at least two readers. A shortlist of ten anonymous manuscripts was then forwarded to Dinty Moore for his final decisions.
On September 1st, we’ll begin online publication of one poem from each of the shortlisted manuscripts, and the winning chapbook in its entirety. The winner will also be published in a professionally designed paper edition, and available for sale.
THE SHORTLIST:
Paper Covers Rock, Chella Courington
Calamity Jane, Diane Gage
The Three, Richard Garcia
Wavelengths, Dick Jones
Prison Terms, Diane Kendig
Influence of Two Moons, Kit Loney
The Goatfish Alphabet, Kristen McHenry
A Walk Through the Memory Palace, Pamela Johnson Parker
ashes, ashes, Susanna Rich
And Not As She Was, Jeneva Stone
THE WINNERS, with Dinty Moore’s comments:
First Prize:
A Walk Through the Memory Palace, by Pamela Johnson Parker
The language is textured, clear, and sometimes disquieting, the images both sensory and sensual, and each line crafted with painstaking care. Whether writing about rich gardens, sagging breasts, or the ink of a tattoo, this poet sees through the obvious to something radiant on the other side, painting a startling portrait of an intimate world. Not a wasted word here: the nouns are like gemstones.
Pamela Johnson Parker is a medical editor and adjunct professor in creative writing and poetry. Her poems, flash fiction, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in qarrtsiluni, The Binnacle, The Other Journal, New Madrid, Pebble Lake Review, Holly Rose Review, 6 Sentences, Mipoesis, Muscadine Lines, A Journal of the South, and Anti-. She is also the featured poet in the April 2009 Broadsided series of poetry and art. A graduate of the MFA program at Murray State University, Parker lives in western Kentucky.
Pamela has had three poems published in qarrtsiluni previously.
Runners-Up:
Paper Covers Rock, by Chella Courington
Crisp narrative lines filled with energy, indignation, and fierce beauty. The images can take your breath away, and the title poem is one I’ll never forget.
With a Ph.D. in British and American Literature and an M.F.A. in Poetry, Chella Courington teaches writing and literature at Santa Barbara City College. Having moved west with a fiction writer and two cats in 2002, she finds that California provides her imaginative space. Her recent poetry appears in Mademoiselle’s Fingertips, Permafrost, wicked alice, Iguana Review, and The New Verse News. Her first chapbook, entitled Southern Girl Gone Wrong, was published in 2004. She’s new to the pages of qarrtsiluni.
The Goatfish Alphabet, by Kristen McHenry
All manner of creatures combine in exuberant lines full of foxfire and jellyfish, rock-teeth and tongue-muzzle, Miss America, St. Clare of Assisi, and our frailest secrets disclosed. These are lovely poems.
Kristen McHenry is a resident of Seattle, Washington and is a poet and freelance writer by night, and health outreach worker by day. Among other publications, her work has been seen in Wanderings, Trellis Magazine, Boston Literary Magazine, Tiferet, Sybil’s Garage, and several anthologies, including Meanderings and Flowers Bloom in the Moonlight. She is currently a finalist in the national competition “Project Verse”. She is the creator and facilitator of the Poet’s Cafe, a weekly poetry workshop for homeless teens at the New Horizons drop-in center in downtown Seattle.
Kristen lives in the Ballard neighborhood with two cats, two firebellied toads, and one husband. She loves to sing, but only in the car with all of the windows rolled up.
This will also be Kristen’s first publication in qarrtsiluni.
So there you have it. Stay tuned: we hope you’ll anticipate reading these poems in September as much as we look forward to publishing them.
Qarrtsiluni Chapbook Contest 2009
Final Judge: Dinty Moore
First-round Readers: Ivy Alvarez, Rachel Barenblat, Dale Favier, Brent Goodman, Tom Montag, Anonymous, Peter Stephens, Carey Wallace
Contest Coordination and Print Publication: Beth Adams
Qarrtsiluni Managing Editors: Dave Bonta and Beth Adams
qarrtsiluni 