FIRST LITERARY REVIEW-EAST
THE DUET
Tonight the city
sky is clear, Orion has
set to the rhythms
of a guitar duet on
rooftop café, the streets are
quiet of traffic,
the plazas void of souls, and
in this rooftop room,
my fatigued soul sets, drifting
on rhythms of that duet
Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose poetry appears in over 400 journals on six continents, and 23 collections of poetry – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023) and Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and thrice nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures at www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or https://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
DECEMBER 2010 - HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
‘Tis the season to be ... broke and stressed out! So take a break from the holiday shopping madness, grab a cup of eggnog, and let the magic of poetry revive you! Our gift to you: 12 glorious poems, one for each day of Christmas! And whether you are celebrating X-mas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or none of the above, may all the joys of the season be yours! Again - a special thanks to Karen Neuberg for her editorial assistance - and her sweet friendship!
Answers
because the hoods wore hoodies
because the hoods wore hoodies
& the cooks ate cookies
-Bob Heman
Bob Heman's small poems have appeared recently in NOON: journal of the short poem (Tokyo), Otoliths (Australia), Cannot Exist, House Organ, and Blueprint E-Zine. He edits CLWN WR.
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Hieroglyphs
Words released
Birds hover
Their droppings perform magic
Lemon juice on disappearing ink
This dull and pointless note
A rusted knife left in an alley
The balloon sagging in your living room
Introspection
-Dd. Spungin
Doreen Spungin, who writes as Dd. Spungin, taught children with special needs in the New York City Schools and now serves her own needs by writing poetry. She is the host for Poets In Nassau On The Hillside. Her work has been published in Humanities/Aitia, Asbestos, Long Island Quarterly, and Brave Hearts, a publication for which she writes a monthly poem. She is involved with the Long Island Poets for Darfur commemorative program anthology. Her poetry will appear in the forthcoming anthologies: Writing Outside The Lines, Long Island Sounds 2010-2011, and Toward Forgiveness.
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Dark Zen (for E.S.)
The sky is a pile of blue thread at my feet.
I am worried that I will not
grab something important before I evaporate.
You say grace, I say luck.
We walk noon-ward in the stubborn wind.
You look at me with can-opener eyes.
Prayers flutter to the ground
like propaganda dropped from warplanes.
For Christmas, give me fame and a sledgehammer.
-John Amen
(From At the Threshold of Alchemy)
John Amen is the author of three collections of poetry: Christening the Dancer (Uccelli Press 2003), More of Me Disappears (Cross-Cultural Communications 2005), and At the Threshold of Alchemy (Presa 2009). In addition, his work has appeared in numerous publications nationally and internationally. He has released two folk/folk rock CDs: All I'll Never Need (Cool Midget 2004) and Ridiculous Empire (2008). He is also an artist, working primarily with acrylics on canvas. Further information is available on his website: www.johnamen.com. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. He founded and continues to edit The Pedestal Magazine (www.thepedestalmagazine.com).
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Experimental Theater
The sky across the World cries
of Death and Despair.
The crazyman on a forklift.
In a smaller room the Professor
and I share a commissary sandwich.
I understand none of this.
The curtain drops half way.
2 stagehands inch out.
(No one knows what's going on).
-Mark Sonnenfeld
Mark Sonnenfeld is an experimental writer, a collaborator, and a publisher. He is active in the international small press scene, having to his credit numerous chapbooks, broadsides, give-out sheets, and spoken-word sound collages on cassette and on compact disc. He is greatly inspired by The Beats and current innovative artforms. His work has appeared in a plethora of underground magazines, and in 2006 he was featured in an anthology of avant-garde American poets titled INSIDE THE OUTSIDE. His work is archived at more than a dozen U.S. university libraries, as well as sites in Europe and South America. In a recent article, Eric Greinke of Presa Press, said, "Sonnenfeld embodies the true spirit of the small press movement".
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Worry
Because it has a shimmer that hovers over everything, you take it for party wrap, place it on a small (the blue one) mirror on the shelf you can see from your bed. Looking at it from a downward angle, well . . . you have your visual infinity. What fun! You can run amok inside, always believing you'll find the one true way out. Meanwhile, you keep busy appearing as though you have purpose.
-Karen Neuberg
(Originally appeared in Wazee)
Karen Neuberg's work has appeared or is forthcoming in many online and print journals and anthologies, including Barrow Street, Melusine, or Woman in the 21st Century, PoetryBay Magazine and Switched-on-Gutenberg. She is the author of the chapbook Detailed Still (Poets Wear Prada Press 2009), is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, holds an MFA from the New School, and is associate editor of Inertia Magazine. Links to her work can be found at http://karenneuberg.blogspot.com/
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The Man on Lexington
there he is
stoop stubble
laid back
rubble voices
talk to him
panoply loss
cacophony
crying womb
hear me
scrap books
like bugs
trash picks up
pay taxes
no rations
takes patience
-Robert Gibbons
Robert Gibbons is a writer living in New York City. He has published in Uphook, Stained Sheets, and Nomad's Choir.
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no equal
what i want is razor
edge cutting not well crafted polite;
don't need to see a bruise
but feel the wound
the blow that caused
what the poem is
trying to show
what i want is
the hot searing kiss
in a man's phone voice
burning inside when we talk
in his eyes when we meet
what drives voice: breath
without which there's no life;
all poems fail when it comes
to the touch of flesh
-Linda Lerner
Linda Lerner was born and educated in New York City; her next full-length collection will be published by New York Quarterly Books in the Spring, 2011. She’s published thirteen collections of poetry. The most recent: Something Is Burning In Brooklyn (2009, Iniquity Press/ Vendetta Books) Living In Dangerous Times (Presa Press, 2007) and City Woman (March Street Press, Fall, 2006; the last two were Small Press Reviews’ Picks). Her poems have recently been published in/ or will be in the following journals: The New York Quarterly, Onthebus, Louisiana Review, Paterson Literary Review, Chiron Review, Tribes, Van Gogh’s Ear, Home Planet News & online in New Verse News & Rusty Truck, et al.
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Made in Cambria
Language prevents visibility from failing
Language unpeels the immediacy
Ready to apologize for interrupting
Language speaks and having spoken
diagrams the phony traps of grammar
Velvet moss succession, language
greens the laws of mutual addition,
stitching the preamble into your dress
Full moon towing a white carcass
across the vault-cracked slate sky
Language appeals to second nature
Emily Brontë naked and braying
Why the art of writing is all ajangle
Look even the clerks of dust live for love
-Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is a New Romantic sonneteer. He studied with Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley at St. Mark's Church. After studying with Allen Ginsberg (who wrote an introduction for his second book) at Brooklyn College, Wright received his MFA in poetry. Publisher and editor, he currently runs Live Mag! http:www.livemagnyc.com A column of Wright's poetry criticism called Rapid Transit appears regularly in The Brooklyn Rail. Wright's graffiti-based collages have been included in several group shows. He had a solo show at AC Institute in Chelsea in the Spring and will be at Turtle Point Press Gallery next Fall.
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Her Heart is Like a River When it Starts to Rain
in the streets of town people begin to move a lot faster. a few umbrellas open up.
they resemble black hibiscus flowers. a businessman hurries by, he has his collar
turned up. a young man standing under a ledge bums a cigarette from another
man standing under the same ledge.
where are the pigeons? disappeared into the eaves i guess. and look! a few white
ducks, where'd they come from? they're walking down the middle of the street as
if they own the place. not much traffic in this town under normal circumstances.
you can't catch a cab in this town
not for love or money. both of which are in short supply to the woman at the
woollen shop. she is single again. she has cold hands. arranges a few skeins of
wool as she looks out through the plate glass window. she looks across the street.
she peers up into the sky between
raindrops. wonders should she close up shop. should she let the cat out? hopefully
the bridge outside town won't flood like it did last time. her heart is calm it goes
pitterpat. her heart is full to overflowing. she is capable of anything right now.
her heart is like a river when it starts to rain.
-George Wallace
George Wallace is author of nineteen chapbooks of poetry and host of poetry events in New York City and Long Island. He teaches at Pace University and is writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace. He served as the first Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, and is the editor of several online and print journals, including PoetryBay , the Long Island Quarterly, and Walt's Corner in the Long Islander.
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Cruel Babylon
Thunder, cruel master, sounds far away,
Ashes blow in the sky.
Fear walks the street, cries ring out,
Filling the empty square.
Tremors move the land, the valley,
Of death and desolation.
Death walks the winding streets,
All is barren, all is lost.
Lava flows near, fires rise and dance,
Ending desperate life.
Hope slowly dies, life departs,
Death reaches out.
Red chariots fill the square, troops fire,
Then fall back.
Iron arrows fill the way, iron sharp,
Hard, and fleet.
-Jerome Brooke
(From Hunters of Dawn, available from Amazon Books)
Jerome Brooke was born in 1949. He now lives on the coast of Siam - Paradise. He has written Mirage : Dance of the Sun - and many other works - available from Amazon Books.
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Atone
I breathe in what breathes me in
Creating nothing but clean presence,
While a tongue and chord for atoning
Mute history with a twist of perspective,
And stream thoughts so far away it's meaningless to think.
A star bursts in me and gathers a new star in me that bursts in me-
They are creations of time in my atoning,
And my walking changes land to water, then awareness, then our oneness.
In my death, I will not rise again
Because I have risen to a death
Where strings, with no end either way, desire no tuning.
-Cliff Satriano
Cliff Satriano has been writing poetry for several years and is now putting together a book of poems with a mystical, imaginative bent. He works full time at Dowling College's HEOP and teaches remedial English there. He recently discovered Seamus Heaney and wonders how he missed such a gifted poet all these years. [Editor's Note: Mr. Satriano reports that this is his first publication - and FLRev is proud to present this fine poet to the world!]
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That December
plum and jade
light, the
last strips
of frozen salmon
sucked into the
Berkshires. Deer
in the wood
pile, Hawthorne.
Your blueberry
sweater. Blue
eyes as stars
wrap us in
wings bright as
angels we made
in the snow of
sheets later
-Lyn Lifshin
Among Lyn Lifshin's recent books: THE LICORICE DAUGHTER: MY YEAR WITH RUFFIAN, Texas Review Press and from Black Sparrow at Godine: ANOTHER WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE ME, PERSEPHONE, BARBARO, BALLROOM. Her Web site is http://www.lynlifshin.com/.
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Your Thoughts and Comments:
We are pleased to have received some nice feedback on poems in the November issue. Here is a sampling of your thoughts:
An anomymous reader writes: PA [by George Held] is a satirical gem. I like the way the poem moves from quatrain to quatrain in three sentences, with interesting slant rhymes throughout. The analogy of versifying to drinking is cleverly done -- and convincing. The poem should be mandatory reading in all MFA programs.
Jerome Brooke, who has a poem in the current issue, commented on two poems, as follows:
Anish, City Girl
The girl answers the knock - warm, inviting, lips very soft, she holds the night in an embrace. Was the girl on a date? Did she see an old lover in the night? The poem captures a sweet second of time, burned into memory.
Ivy, Tanka
The girl who has power to capture a lover. The poet gives us a picture into the soul of a pretty girl. Lady, with eyes that bind, take my soul, we will become one.
Editor's Note: My thanks to all of our talented contributors. Peace on earth, good will towards men, AND GREAT POETRY IN THE COMING YEAR - AMEN!