Severance by Susan Lewis

Severance

1.

left in time

            for the gasp

            (what a blade can do)

            (clod of dirt)

Do you have an answer to this shadow?

Do you have a measure for this scent?

            (more afraid or vacant)

            (back turned on high flame)

While misted eyes harden to pebbles,

            fallen leaves ground underfoot.

Pass logic,

            pass the obedient word.

The body idling,

            the mind laboring for handles

            (convert abandonment to what should be).

A matter of anything but defeat.

            (Convert anger to the misted gaze).

For two lives split these minutes,

            save them—

                        for zero turn your back

                                    on their slow leak.

That we must fail a given,

            the salt of surprise until you turn your back,

                        this stopped start

                        (turn back)

2.

string of sapped balloons, for instance

            (breeze-bumped)

            (tender salvage)

snowflakes dying on your cheek 

            (tower of light)

pearled moon in the solid sky

            (dark flowered air)                                         

closed throat stoking the body’s fire,

            bright heat to begin & end us:

           

            the world too beautiful

                                    despite these flaked years:

a sharp thing to pierce our weak keening

            + rest

            or fade,

an end to this terrible abundance.

Dull & cruel

                        shot with beauty:

linoleum streaks clouds in a western sky,

hoarse neglect of crowded metal howl of passion,

murder lust missed caress—


_______________

Susan Lewis is the author of AHow To Be Another” (Cervena Barva Press, forthcoming 2013), “Commemorative Edition” (White Knuckle Press, forthcoming 2013), AAt Times Your Lines@ (Argotist e-Books, 2012), “Some Assembly Required” (Dancing Girl Press, 2011), “Commodity Fetishism,” winner of the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Poetry Award, and “Animal Husbandry” (Finishing Line Press, 2008).  Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in a great number of journals, includingAtlanta Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Boog City, Cimarron Review, Eclipse, Fact/Simile, Monday Night, The New Orleans Review, Phoebe, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse (online), and Verse Daily.  She is Editor of MadHat Press and Managing Editor of MadHat Annual and MadHat Lit. Her website is www.susanlewis.net.

On Storm Day

 by Vernon Frazer

while diversion
rebuked its weathered breath
a lukewarm seat
spins inverted
across an arboreal replay
*
neon feathers dream
a late-waking lassitude incumbent
past a breaking dawn
that bled new platform laminate
repute imperiled the passion-dead
version repeating delay the storm
*
plaster invasion tissues
grate a ductile reprimand
impaired awnings flare
shrieks of metal shred
through fronds of palms
on polyrhythm winds
*
the fashion imbued
cortical dismay with critical heat
unclaimed sutures arm
the threat with a crossblown wind
___________________

Vernon Frazer is a regular contributor to this blog. He appears in AlteredScale.com 1 & AlteredScale.com 2. He will also appear in the next issue, coming out in the spring.

"No Resolve" by Julianne Davis

(Click on box below to see picture)

(drawing on artweaver 

and paint programmes)

_____________________

Artist Statement: I am a self-taught artist from the UK. I enjoy writing, art, and I sometimes make short films. I have two children, both feral.

"The Time of No Day" by Julianne Davis

(drawing on artweaver 

and paint programmes)

_____________________

Artist Statement: I am a self-taught artist from the UK. I enjoy writing, art, and I sometimes make short films. I have two children, both feral.

Vernon Frazer on Animated Film Poetry

"Fared Warning," a piece of animated film poetry recited to musical accompaniment by Vernon Frazer, appeared in AlteredScale.com 2. What follows is a short interview about it.

What is the process you go through when creating animated visual poetry with musical accompaniment?

Each project is different. Usually I write the poem, with or without animation. If I write the poem first, I usually do the animation next, do the recitation, then find the music that fits all of it as best I can. After I've completed the basic animation, I time the recitation and the effects of the animation so that they will synchronize. Sometimes I improvise the music completely, other times I cut and splice one section into another. "Fared Warning" is my first attempt to wriie, animate, recite and compose simultaneously. I'd write and animate some phrases, then improvise bass and reed lines over the passage, write another section, then improvise more music. At a certain point, though, I saw where the music was heading in relation to the text. I ended up jumping ahead and finishing the text and animation, then improvised the instrumental parts for roughly the last half of the poem. I'm pretty sure I redubbed the reed parts. Blending them can get tricky at times. So, the process of doing all three together didn't succeed as planned, but as a process it allowed me to do all three about as simultaneusly as I can.

______________________

Vernon Frazer contributes regularly to this blog.

Forks off TOKYO BUTTER by Thylias Moss

a review by Jefferson Hansen

____________________________

Tokyo Butter on Amazon.

Subject Disruption by Julianne Davis

_______________________

Artist Statement: 

"I am a self taught artist from the UK, I enjoy writing, art, and I sometimes make short films.

I have two children, both feral."

Rendez: Vous

                    by Susan Lewis

You might be a fragment of a magic nation;

& the small fish, mouthing the glass.

& the eyeball, rolling in regret.

& the tentative tongue.

My skin is raw where it is unmatched.

My bones are sore where I’ve been another.

Don’t forget the words I meant to say.

Don’t forget immersion, which emulates our loss

(wed as you are to probability)

(led as I am by possibility)

—the low of pleasure sampling

our speculative past.

You’ll want your fingers back,

I’m not done marking them—

swollen as they are with fog & dread,

glazed as they are with our slant need.

This light is hyperactive or afraid;

it can’t stop bouncing.

It glances off the water

like someone crazed in love.                           

The ancient pier rots,

an island in the river:

Detached from its old use,

feeding its resistance to new trees with shaky futures.

Perhaps we shouldn’t focus

on their tender roots.

Perhaps it’s best to join the busy lanes,

which might ever take us back.

___________________________ 

Susan Lewis contributes regularly to this blog. Her work will also appear in AlteredScale.com 3, the Internet arts journal with which this blog is associated.

"Besides my work as an editor at Madhatters' Review, I'm the author of “How To Be Another” (Cervena Barva Press, forthcoming, 2013), "At Times Your Lines" (Argotist e-Books, 2012), "Some Assembly Required" (Dancing Girl Press, 2011), “Commodity Fetishism,” winner of the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Chapbook Award, & “Animal Husbandry” (Finishing Line Press, 2008). My work has appeared in many many venues, including Berkeley Poetry Review, Boog City,  Cimarron Review, Cross Connect, The Dirty Goat, Eclipse, Fact-Simile, Fast Forward, Fourteen Hills,  Fugue, The Journal, Kitchen Sink, Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Lungfull, Monday Night, The New Orleans Review, Ninth Letter, Other Rooms, The Otherstream Anthology,  Pool, Phoebe, Raritan, Seneca Review, Snow Monkey, So To Speak, Sycamore Review, Verse (online), & Verse Daily. My collaborations with composer Jonathan Golove have been recorded & widely performed & my collaborations with artist Melissa Stern have been exhibited in New York City & Seattle. My website is www.susanlewis.net."

Is it time to go? by Julianne Davis

_______________________

Artist Statement: 

"I am a self taught artist from the UK, I enjoy writing, art, and I sometimes make short films.

I have two children, both feral."

Representation (Object Constancy)

                           by Susan Lewis

1.

Should this?

Should this be this?

No it to blame,

Homeric pretense;

or ring to this rhythm

(brick in a bucket)—

like breath

(pushed out, let in)

like any height,

ducking the branch

(a bodied maybe)

(a bodied thus we yield)

guarding something of ambition,

something of regret

—or this way we have

to live

without excuse—

(pushed out; let in.)

(that + the moment’s question)

& catch our breath

(between demand & neglect)

not remember, but

you are forbidden,

not pleasure, but

something we never.

The task of young fingers

combing the encounter

for lost consequence,

for not question

or answer:

should this?

Should this be this?

2.

click

(this door closing)

relief

(stutter of lost thought)

what we’ve done

(aged words & other demons)

massed minutes hard as pebbles

(click)

            unless grit-toothed,

                        salved,

                                    animadverse

(in lieu of pooling

            round a schoolyard)

            or unbent,

                        idea’d,

                                    underextended

until the folds splay

            (salient & charged).

click:

(another door, still closing)

            minute,

                        without moment—

this only show             half  over,

                        unbegun—

too much

(still draining the possible)

cracks widening,

            pains routed

                        (taken root)

the decline from point zero

            still steep,

                        still dreadful

_____________________________

Susan Lewis contributes regularly to this blog. Her work will also appear in AlteredScale.com 3, the Internet arts journal with which this blog is associated.

"Besides my work as an editor at Madhatters' Review, I'm the author of “How To Be Another” (Cervena Barva Press, forthcoming, 2013), "At Times Your Lines" (Argotist e-Books, 2012), "Some Assembly Required" (Dancing Girl Press, 2011), “Commodity Fetishism,” winner of the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Chapbook Award, & “Animal Husbandry” (Finishing Line Press, 2008). My work has appeared in many many venues, including Berkeley Poetry Review, Boog City,  Cimarron Review, Cross Connect, The Dirty Goat, Eclipse, Fact-Simile, Fast Forward, Fourteen Hills,  Fugue, The Journal, Kitchen Sink, Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Lungfull, Monday Night, The New Orleans Review, Ninth Letter, Other Rooms, The Otherstream Anthology,  Pool, Phoebe, Raritan, Seneca Review, Snow Monkey, So To Speak, Sycamore Review, Verse (online), & Verse Daily. My collaborations with composer Jonathan Golove have been recorded & widely performed & my collaborations with artist Melissa Stern have been exhibited in New York City & Seattle. My website is www.susanlewis.net."