. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A N D R I V E R J O U R N A L - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Welcome to the Sand River Journal. Our goal is to provide a proper setting for some of the better poetry associated with the newsgroup rec.arts.poems. We aim at an objective standard, if such exists for poetry, but also strive to include diverse voices, not excluding our own work. These poems have all been previously posted to r.a.p. and appear by authors' explicit permission. They constitute copyrighted material, and we claim ownership only to any poems we have authored. Sand River Journal is posted to r.a.p and related newsgroups and is archived at etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry. The PostScript version features high-quality typesetting and is well worth printing to hardcopy and sharing. We hope you enjoy this unique selection of poems. Erik Asphaug asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu Zita Marie Evensen * ac869@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu John Adam Kaune jkaune@trentu.ca _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Issue 13 -- Mardi Gras 1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ----------------------- My Love is a Changeling ----------------------- My love is a changeling -- All variance, progression, and transition. Now who would dare to have her stay In some dull, resolved and static way? Not you nor I nor any other. For she speaks to us as the blades of grass While erupting through their concrete slabs And she'll remain the same in staid Through all her days of transience. Scott Cudmore scudmore@peinet.pe.ca ------------------- Not the worst thing ------------------- It is not the worst thing about sexual obsession that it heals, in time; that the liquid muscularity of the 20s, which turns to the fixed and arduous craving of the 30s, dims like the memories that defined the scope of youthful romanticism: the time you threw the beer bottle through the window... the morning you woke on an unknown floor... the night you lost the car. Nor is it the worst thing to learn that the height of inspiration will not be defined by those mornings you stared across her high hard bed at dawn, transfixed by the rise and the fall of the raft of blonde hair flowing across the watery silk of her gown: voracious, as if you could devour her completely by watching and play the act over and over again, pull closed the circle and live within the loop for all time. That the standard remains solid is reassuring; though revised from gold to silver it is not devalued, and it is not the worst thing that the currency of passion in the end is spent less on reminiscence and revision than in present speculation: not so much expended on what might have been, or on the worst that could have happened; or as to why you lived on, with no more than the dim hope of your heart to heal; or where what turn in the road might have led; but on how fat has she become, and if we met again today, would she know me, before I spoke? And did she ever get that job up on the hill? And does she still make that fantastic ratatouille? Michael McNeilley mmichael@halcyon.com --------------- Cave of Dreams --------------- If fish were wishes floating on a wave of songs from peri's throats that caught the breeze in toothy nets they cast into the cave of dreams, would anglers drop their lines in seas to snare their fondest hopes? The flounders swim in open circles through the bottom weeds; they feed on hopes. Enchanted flounders skim the sandy bottom; they ignore the foolish needs of human vanity. I have no dream of wishes granted by a flounder's tail. I have no hope that peris' eyes will gleam with love for me. It's just a fairytale to lull a child to sleep, a fancy or a dream, a veil that's fallen to the floor. Karen Tellefsen kat@ritz.mordor.com --- old --- she harbors a girl with crossed eyes and a pruned face like a shrub. an owl in her pocket, hardened by the discovery of darwin can't get rid of the dark, or the onyx eyes floating in its milk-bottle belly. wintry paws brush like straw on the bed, and she comes home only to tell me about breath and the hollowing out of eyes. i can see her bones through skin, the marrow strings the form. not a bee but a spider who never flit but waited, and not a tongue resurfacing to lick, but teeth solid and stuck in gum like screws. she is glued to herself, an overture of pure light. beyond the sheets, she can see the little girl, all wrapped and muffed for cold sea days and unveiling of sun. she can see the rope she jumped to hide the scrubbed bile and then again, she can wonder about heaven like she did by the wood stove in the parlor of her buttered mother. no, the firing of little bugs all around like a light source doesn't give her more life just light to see the web between digit. i sit by her now making my bread and wiggling my newness. its not nice but i'm young and so oiled and fancy in my walk. i hook her with my tail. honeyed was the way she held me and now, i am the swing. Hillary Joyce haj2@cornell.edu ------------------- For Durnstein Ruins ------------------- From the spire to the ruins, history faced the seasons as the river below crept by quietly with no intentions of staying. At the hands of time, the horses' heavy breathing fought with the wagon wheels for the lead role. But now, from the ruins to the spire, one can only imagine. Vicki S. Fosie fosie@iiasa.ac.at -------- Nuptials -------- Behold the arching aftermath of passion rushing through me like a mountain wind. Feel her tremble, pushing to fruition, draining every terror from my mind. If anyone can gaze upon this water, leave it undisturbed. She will be mine forever, and we'll both grow mad as hatters, drunk as children on the nuptial wine. Erik Asphaug asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu ---------------- guildford ararat ---------------- cathedral court ararat antedeluvian cycle racks half-skeletons of whales beached after the flood with their last meal of rusty bicycles still inside them Paul Connolly P.Connolly@ee.surrey.ac.uk ---------------- She's Gone Again ---------------- rain turns the cement to black shifting shadows streetlights become menacing eyes searching through the fog i walk alone again accompanied only by boots crunching into ice and a breath fog prayer floating into the moonless night Jody Upshaw jupshaw@hfm.com -------- untitled -------- Walls of red logs, adze-squared, heavily chinked in mottled yellow clay, mantel arrayed in copper pots, pewter plates, spoons, a green and yellow speckled plant (what did you call it?), two navel oranges, a leaning chessboard, ancient, _ancien regime_, mahogany, fruitwood inlaid, with a copper dipper hanging casually there; below the mantel, good stonework, mortar-washed, a delicate linen lampshade, white, in white grape leaves and clusters; lathe-turned lamp stand (from your shop?), rich polished rock maple; beside it, a clock in brass and walnut, its fly specked face roman numeraled, always at eight o'clock, and the couch upholstered in scenes from Plutarch, fragile to the eye, yet sturdy as are all things here: when I see you, my friend, it is always in this room that I see you, sitting before the chess men, offering latakia and smoke, saying pawn-to-king-four, even though I know it has been open to the leaden sky now so many years, the heavy oak floor boards piled with fir-cones, rich in mosses, growing morels, and only the chimney standing among wet pine woods recalls the richness of your pipes, your Bach, your Ruy Lopez. Richard Bear rbear@oregon.uoregon.edu -------------------------- Stalin Enters the Seminary at Tiflis, 1894 -------------------------- Claim now the lanterned world, your sketchpad of possibility! the deans exhorted us that fall. So many applications read, prayers said. All year he'd run, stiffly, to class. Once I saw him in his wooden shed. For days he'd gaze at an open page till one night facts gave in to him: If still enough, he could detect the resting atoms of his perfect freedom. The earth had seemed a mystic's place, a windy vista of statements arrayed. Now his winter's course of blood tapped messages no protest would touch. In January dreams he saw faint outlines, high weathered slopes last named by God. Next morning he walked out to them all. A century's ticking has settled nothing. He took paper with him and wrote: The Lord's torchbearers won't find me here. Paul Raymond Waddle c/o erickson@library.vanderbilt.edu -------- Untitled -------- Funny somehow - the tungsten orange lights off brown brick walls, the shining off melted snow, puddles on the pavement as winter begins its freeze, stops in thought, and starts again. Funny somehow - how far I really am from those I'm really close to classrooms in orange and brown tears on pavement, and winter coming on strong. Kirk D. Knobelspiesse kdk2963@ritvax.isc.rit.edu ------------------- Parenthesis of Loss ------------------- The motorcade snakes its way through cold, near-empty streets. Winter has marked its territory with graffiti of gray snow. We pass buildings that seem to cower wasted and pathetic. I sink deeper into the front seat of the lead car - the one reserved for next of kin. My son-in-law drives, they sit in back: my mother, talking quietly to herself, pointing out every passing street sign, wondering aloud how much further. Sandy next to her thinking, perhaps, of her father's funeral, how the year began with her loss and ends with mine; how, this year, our marriage has been one of parenthetical existence, bracketed by loss. A beige-gray sky covers us with sallow air, dollops of black birds litter empty trees as our small procession enters the cemetery gates. I watch the birds, expecting them to follow - emissaries of death making official my elevation from immortal youth to mortal eldest son. Jerry Dreesen jdreesen@xray.indyrad.iupui.edu -------------------------------- I'll send it to you as an earing -------------------------------- over here the sun goes down in saffron skies yes over the land this leaves the roses & the lilacs for the marine horizon the ocean in silver blues & greens folds & unfolds the water patiently & whenever its patience ceases it marks (with white) the creases as the water jumps out of its skin & pounces seethingly after the sunset in the cloudless afterglow on the cold slick wet sand flow the slow glazed lilac tongues watch the land dry up & forget its water (it's the sea's caresses) but the sea always presses its case the crashing is constant the crashing the constant wuthering give me breath & take away my speech this half-forever is a halfway-house to arizona's deserts beaches of perfect solitude there is no perfect solitude on this beach only half-solitudes cluttered with beggar birds today i found an old shell worn down to a smooth a piece of artwork crisscrossed with delicate grooves so perfectly worn flat round & slim unshell-like & tiny with a jewel's beauty worked by nobody Marek Lugowski marek@mcs.com ---------- for nicole ---------- i want to paint my toenails funky colors like jungle green & atomic tangerine & vivid violent motherfucking purple i want to eat all the green skittles out of the bag so my tongue turns green & run around freaking ppl. out i want to yell sex sex sex in the middle of a busy sidewalk just to see how ppl. would react i want to get really drunk & barf all over the president of the universe i want to lick your bellybutton until you scream dave palmer arxt@midway.uchicago.edu ------------------------ Snapshots -- Bedlam Boro ------------------------ Grand dad's not got Anything to do today 'Cept sit around his checker set And wait on old Pop Lundry to come down Off Cooper's Ridge to play. I watched him rock Away this morning talking To his bird dog Bellaret. She don't leave the front porch much, now, either 'Cept when they go out walking. And just as dusk Collects along the valley's rim All the boys and young men come To listen and be hypnotized by tales Of how the valley is and has always been. "Eighty-eight years old And the Keenus Bridge collapsed! One righteous groan at Mandy Wheeler's weight (Mammoth Mandy's four hundred pounds of fat) Then rubble sixteen feet below. Amanda too. You know Her screams were heard from Willisville To Fiddler's graveyard (fifteen miles apart). And it took two good mules A hard days work to pull Her from the mud." And he enchants them With the miners and the whores With the wild side of the mountain, The ridge wise boys, the foothill clowns And the troubadors. "The people haven't danced in Willisville Since Charlie Waters coughed himself Black lung until He died. And he was young! Younger than the ages of collected things.... His nickel dates rented the parlor And his white gold watch Doesn't wear him any longer At the stem. Because we hocked it! We hocked it for the band (The Keenus Creek Quartet) And they played "Barbara Allen" as we planned And planted Charlie in the ground." So go now, Down from these older mountains And listen to the valley sage "He's a good ol' boy" Pulling at his pipe and telling lies - counting All the ways he didn't make it rich. "'47 was a bitch! I lost my cotton to the bug, My dog to endless age And my farm to Jimmy Lundry's poker game. Boy - pass me that ther' jug Yes sir - '47 was a year!" JJWebb jjwebb@cruzio.com ----------------- no license at all ----------------- A sad thing, my pencil to this page. I don't know why the characters are formed, why I say clouds on the air thin and falling. I don't have any kind of license, waking only to roll over in the dawn, so dense and silent with its narrative, bleak bleeding through the off-white drapes. Sadder still, the mockingbirds on power lines singing car alarms and refuse trucks in reverse. They are wise but I am none the wiser. Last night I slept with no music, alone and fetal, so cold, I wished I could be a cake spatula between the mattress and box springs. The warm kept swimming away. There've been dreams where I felt so much I could only stand there weeping. This is all I've ever felt in a dream, except the tingle of those bullets in my back when I was killed trying to save a girl from terrorists in the cafeteria. John True jtrue@acpub.duke.edu --------------- rituals of dawn --------------- It's his 80th birthday, and Jack Lalane raves on about the junk we put into our bodies. Boils, pimples, aging and death scream down like bad health bombs upon our foolish heads. As he lectures he pumps the barbell up and down like some ancient hypnotic device. He has wrinkles older than I am, but his biceps agelessly expand. You wouldn't wake your dog up in the morning and give him coffee, a donut, and a cigarette, would you? he asks, and as he stands, sipping carrot juice in the Southern California dawn, a verdant light pours in through picture windows framed in shades of palm, and rollicking white puppies circle him like earthbound doves. But then the dog is back to wake me up again, his wet grey nose insistent, and I knock over last night's final glass of scotch, cursing and he shies away, then pokes once more with that sharp nose as if to say get up, let me out, make coffee, you lazy bastard, and how about a light? Michael Mcneilley mmichael@halcyon.com --------------- looking at klee --------------- colors merging colors into mist flowing with the water and the paint imagined symbols -like eyes of one just kissed rose stained-glass veiled by a poet's plaint distant chimes of colors soft and mellow waterfalls of music and of hues spring concertos savoured in Grieg's hollow ballads selvedge with a tinge of blues a universe espousing my existence transported from these concrete walls of flesh through folded time and vision's persistence into ethereal dreams and cosmic space a half-shy smile proferred with mischief bend a candle laughing at a furious wind zita marie evensen ac869@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu ---------------- quiet intrusions ---------------- don't try to bleed me i've rained cherry blackbirds in the middle of winter and fought mexican pelicans on baja beaches don't try to heal me i've picked orange agates off the windy dunes at shipwreck shores and drank from lonely distant phonecalls don't try to feel me i've ridden south bend train crashes and soaked in savannah nights by flickering roadside attractions don'try to dream me i've bent my frozen bones with strawberry flames and manic silly string at monkey moon shots and skeleton parades. peter j. tolman an445@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu -------------------------------- The Goddess in Como Conservatory (After Toulouse Lautrec) -------------------------------- She wanted a shadow as much as a friend yet she yanked drunkenly the thing on her leash. Elegantly tired of the familiar faces, she had the talent to snag men by the eyes. Killable and toothless all soon surrendered; whatever powers they once had soon left them. Here was an extraordinary success, hands and knees and other parts approaching her from every corner in a prayer of peristalsis. In her was a map charting decades and distances broader than the thoroughfares of light she delighted in. What she wanted was a pavement to the stars of the crushed bones of her numberless supplicants, and her worry was that somehow all the things she dearly wanted, were they to prove as clear as the teardrops she'd extracted, one by one, she might get. Mike Finley mfinley@mirage.skypoint.com ----------- Renaissance ----------- You are the rasp that rips my husk the seed so old and dried. It opens as you enter in crest on your floodtide. The swollen seed now sprouts and buds love filled and satisfied. Alma Engels alma@indirect.com -------------------------- The way of small creatures -------------------------- I do not seek them yet they come like small animals of the forest they arrive silently beside me not touching but with the hint of their presence near me so that when I move aside they may pass through as is the way of small creatures they announce their beings with a vast silence. Ralph Cherubini ralph@bga.com ------------ Monkeybumber ------------ French toast air slides under my bedroom door where James has finally escaped, giant peach and all. I hear my father, not a scream, something with more power and direction. "Has he said Monkeybumper?", James asks, his sketched features staring at a point beyond my head, just like I do in school. "I'm not sure, James, it sounded more like Motherfucker." James sighs as I turn the page, burying him between chapters six and seven, never allowing him to change the story again. Christopher Simons 211simons@wmich.edu --------- Ann Marie --------- divorce brought her city maturity to dull bungalow hell pastel suburb one ticket town to my high school one grade 10 seat behind my own too big too bold to blend with anorexia peer pressure cooked trendy pastel girls her hair drooped long and greasy into smudged black bloodshot eyes she sold me her Beatles Abbey Road for 5 bucks needing money to buy temporary escape out of boredom but for absolutely free she taught me to smoke curb sitting student parking lots of leather grimy faces and smoke delicious and shrouding blue grey no pastels no halos just cool and hot Player's Light regulars held between first two fingers spread as lips love suck cheeks sunk the brown sweet weedy taste deep and hold tight my mouth my lips my excitement too wet i'll ruin the filter she laughs a husky loud raspy throat noise keeping my attention rapt Ann Marie got enough sold everything worth anything money to leave my boredom and move back to Montreal her largeness her loudness never missed by the pastels Karen Hussey ai500@freenet.carleton.ca ---------------- balloons at dawn ---------------- they sleep silent bound and patient on the earth huge currents stroke their brilliant flanks rippling grace in grooming light in warm yellow air with the handle in your fist you prod them the air screams as flames leap to wake them they rise from a dream of sky Bruce Yingling bryingling@delphi.com ----- stare ----- _twinkle twinkle where you are, tincture picture, blanc et noir._ I cupped the sky with a small-moon smile - then the triptych of the cosmos beamed closer - while still I gaze through Orion's grasp I wander. Dawn creates these possibilities - to seek an answer in the depth of milky seas. John Adam Kaune jkaune@trentu.ca --------- Ereskigal --------- Go, it cries, one veil each gate and eyes are madness. The green of dye and gray-pall afternoons that loom forever mornings. The green of fall. A travelling mouth, no muscles, no lungs, all velvet teeth between rocks and slowly rising a green thief to trunks. Yes -- not the hanging southerners but sloth and anti-equinox a birth that kills and steals back to the vagina-hall and guards green cups as innocuous velvet dragons. Moss, I mark. You -- twining earth in bulbous birth (which gate? Two? Seven?) dead limbs to sculptural tapestry frills -- a Victorian sorceress twine turn Celtic knot. Now somehow you sprung from your sapsucker life. Death-feast on death to death-feast on hoary dryads -- hoary wrinkled thick skin, high crowned elephant-limbed, but alive. I can't wait, you say, and eat them to frill yourself. See? Thread for a rug. Death is Picasso. Life is paint, silver-canned, not swift as we, not miracle-cloud-thrall. Mushrooms, I mark. And I brush my arms and brush and brush -- cobwebs, can't remove or see. Something is glowing or fading there. Windburn flecks dissolving lips' Cupid bow. Glass savage-torch-lit-- a wild Muse with serpentine tongue Melpomene I am not drunk -- oh it goes to mushrooms again and my pubic hair curls moss -- Jenne Micale jmicale@drew.edu ----------------------- mother suckles universe ----------------------- mother expressed it as food for a mouth and the echoes gave rise to this patchwork creature sitting watching itself being made on TV as the circle gets tighter the eyes pressed against the tube fuse with it electrons and fluids mingle becoming the next creation in the next vacuum and mother finds the skin left behind and mother suckles universe Ray Heinrich heinrich@va.stratus.com ------------ feeding time ------------ boy at the door, cutting your teeth on my form, mottling up my porch with your guilt, carve me some pity, you, with the belling eyes, your bag full of sadness weighs like an oath, forgotten or mislaid. i'm the one that should be sad, me, with my made milk. the house where my mending happens is paved with curses, soot bones, orchards of poems, unripe, picked. and you, banking your scooped out eyes against the screen, you know the poems, the hips, the lap and cuddly wounds. into the street with your head. like alice, you hoped for better. no hearts, certainly not a queen. instead, your jacket keeps you warm, holds your skin in place like a dream of uneven spaces. i am a thigh, i am a hand held sage. wink at me. go ahead. hillary joyce haj2@cornell.edu ------- The Hat ------- Today I saw a hat lying on the pavement with a note attached that read _An invisible man_ _stands before you,_ _imagine my plight_ _and be generous_ It was raining and feeling sorry for him I added a coin to the pile in his hat while in a shop doorway across the street a man with no hat looked quickly away. J. Brookes sacaik@thor.cf.ac.uk ------- Markets ------- one. --- two step past mangos tomatoes, dizzy from charcoal and kerosene fumes a leap of faith lands you here sunday morning Maxwell Street Chicago's gauchos wear tall white hats the march wind doesn't dare steal in the hollows of their throats gold crosses press belief against skin as they stir pots and turn tortillas a vendor's cry translates - this market Chicago Mexico Taiwan the jade and flowers we left behind resurface on card tables - hubcaps imposter perfumes foreigners again the taste of strange juice runs down our chins wary eyes watch us buy a beggar's yellow pencils follow his gentle, wobbly gait. two. --- she swims face down on asphalt navigates refuse and legs her right arm propels left clutches shirts, plastic wrapped above her the Night Market. he spits a wad of betel two dictator's faces one cherry blossom land by her head she does not count the coins or watch him lift the shirt carry it away ignore the haggling foreigners fake Rolexes pale hair streaked red and green beneath the neon. three. ----- he walked the market a hungry moon followed stopping by a steaming cart he perched on a three legged stool ordered wide noodles floating in broth pieces of jade the moon longed for soup broke her orbit everyone fled but the man his face in his bowl and a woman her back to the sky. her limbs break like a clay jar where can a goddess fallen find soup? in the Market the floating eternal market her arms outstretched her back to the sky. Irene Sosniak isosniak@indiana.edu