22 May 2010

Peter Goodwin

Christine Klocek-Lim

Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

Peter Goodwin

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Russian Democracy

Had I a better sense of history, I would have known that the euphoria
that accompanied the collapse of communism in August of nineteen
ninety one—I was there! An eyewitness to history!—would not last,
that cheers and exuberance would not usher in the dawn of democracy,
that those three days when some Muscovites faced down tanks
was not necessarily the greatest achievement of the Russian people
and even if it was, euphoria, courage, ecstasy will not build democracy,
cannot liberate Russia from a thousand years of autocratic rule, Oh how
we cheered for Yeltsin, tore down statues of tyrants and dreamed
of a future which had nothing to do with the past little realizing
that a people long used to abuse may define democracy differently,
little realizing that the Russians had long ago made their compromises
with communism, moderating it with deals and favors, creating their own,
informal social fabric which sustained them and when communism
collapsed so did their social safety network, and crime which had been
contained and organized, now burst open—a septic boil— spread
and stained and swallowed the stillborn democracy. No one cheers
for Yeltsin now, no one cared when he departed, yearning for a tzar
who will restore order, even if just a small man, and flowers
placed on a Memorial to the Gulag,
placed with such hope, have withered.

Bio:
Peter D. Goodwin resides in Maryland, close to the Chesapeake Bay, writes poetry while providing succulent treats for deer, rodents, birds and insects.
Poems published in his chapbook No Sense Of History; the anthologies September eleven; Maryland Voices; Listening to The Water: The Susquehanna Water Anthology; Alternatives To Surrender; and various journals including Rattle, Scribble, MainStreet Rag, Dreamstreets, Lucidity, Bent Pin, lunarosity,Delaware Poetry Revire, Yellow Medicine Review, LunchLines, Memoir(and), Prints.



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Christine Klocek-Lim

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Gadreel

— fallen angel, “God is my helper,” taught mankind about weapons of war

Her heart burned despite the cold subway, the explosive packs on her belt and back heavy and hot as grief. Around her the ignorant faces of the enemy: petals on a wet branch, the mother tree infested, already dying. Best to put them down. And after, perhaps they would be cognizant, their souls suddenly reborn into reason. She would explain how their lethargy killed her husband, her brothers and father. They would mourn their negligence, their disregard for her people, her homeland. Or perhaps she would meet them again and they would be no different: their torpor infinite, spanning death and life over and over again in terminal apathy, their souls cursed, unforgiven. No way to know. And so she recreated herself, made her body into the spider that bites in darkness, her widow’s veil more battle mask than shroud. Her handbag full of nails, the shrapnel reassuring despite the lurching car, the click of the track, as she waited for Lubyanka station, the last stop. Morning never more beautiful than right now.

(http://www.calgaryherald.com/columnists/suicide+bombers+dying+revenge/2923173/story.html) (http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/29/russia.subway.explosion/index.html)
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1262222/Moscow-metro-bombings-Chechyna-link-emerges.html)


Bio:
Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. In 2010, her manuscript “Dark matter” was a semi-finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and her manuscript “The Quantum Archives” was a semi-finalist at Black Lawrence Press' Black River Chapbook Competition. She has two chapbooks: How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications, November 2009) and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press, March 2010). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Poets and Artists (O&S), The Pedestal Magazine, Diode, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry and her website is www.novembersky.com.



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Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

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Remembering Rosa Luxemburg in the “New” Times Square

Rosa, the porno theaters have vanished,
but the dreams remain.
They’ve only migrated from the realm of shadow
to the blare of billboards

The flashing lights reveal your face, exhausted after a rally,
......after yet another essay completed
........but
Rosa, I’ve lost the words to this poem.
I’ve lost my way to you.
Frantically, I’ve searched my old computer,
even the floppy disks. To no avail.
All I have are these lines scribbled down about

The scope of your vision,
your finely wrought theories,
now so buffeted by vogue winds
and the claims of identity politics and multiculturalism
.......the singularity of your stances—
the courage of your opposition to the “Great War”
—the slaughter of workers everywhere—
even when others caved to the pressures of nationalism,
even when it landed you in prison,
your insistence on freedom and international solidarity and democracy
even in revolution’s heady throes,
your critique of Lenin’s reign of terror,
even as you knew what was to come,
those many years, sometimes with Leo, sometimes without him,
how the absence of his embrace could never deflect you for long,
truly a life in love and in struggle,
in loving struggle, in struggling love,
all of this, Rosa, has made its way into the memory halls of justice,
into the meetings of the groups that trickle into basements
seeking somehow to end the carnage campaigns of today

and yes even if that very sweep erased the particular,
even if the interconnections of nation, minority, and self
never found fruition in your analysis—
you, the immigrant from Poland, the woman with a doctorate and a limp,
the Jew relentlessly attacked in anti-Jewish terms—
even if that. Still,

Rosa, you resist my rose colored glasses.
Your ideas are too immense;
the events of your life are too neon—
from your revolutionary schoolgirlhood in Warsaw
to your corpse dumped in the Berlin canal after torture¬—
to be squeezed into a single soliloqu/ode,
even one this unkempt, this ungainly

So I summon you here,
.............here,
beneath the claims for revolutionary bikini briefs
the announcements of new gadgets already outmoded,
the fabrication of craving for all things superfluous
the beams of searchlight oblivious to the sweatshops
and the sex slaves invisible to the dragons of grace
and the homeless men shouting for retribution and shelter and fifty cents
near the lone, if never lonely, military recruiting station
by the ruins of the glory holes and the ghosts of go-go boys perished,
I fondle the shards of my credit card, and I pause, gasping, to ask:

Rosa, Rosa, how did it come to this?


Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Leo Jogiches (1867-1919), leaders in European social democracy


Bio:
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Insatiable Psalm (Hershey, Pa.: Wind River Press, 2005) and What Stillness Illuminated/Vos shtilkayt hot baloykhtn (West Lafayette, Ind.: Parlor Press, 2008; Free Verse Editions series). He was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists. Visit his web site at http://www.yataub.net.



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08 May 2010

Gary Beck

Chris Brandt

Stephen Jarrell Williams

Gary Beck

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Radiation Rhapsody

Strum a chord for me,
and I shall improvise…

Sparrows sit upon the window-sills
watching in bewilderment
as snot-nosed children
cower under desks
in the schoolrooms of the world,
while daddy’s working hard,
building rockets…

Presidents and Premiers
(protocol is not forgotten)
send each other formal notes,
while people read the pamphlets
of atomic age survival.

Shall I be a garbage man
and haul away the ashes?
But who will haul away my ashes,
if the whole world crashes?

Ride with me…
Put your farecard in the turnstile to annihilation.
The "A" train stops at Times Square station,
opens it’s pneumatic doors,
ejects the crowds whose rhinoceros roars
are silenced by a blinding flash,
a sudden flood
of molten slag

No more rush hour.
No quick latté at Starbucks.
Just a large crater
that will glow at night
for the next hundred years.


Bio:
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook 'Remembrance' was published by Origami Condom Press, 'The Conquest of Somalia' was published by Cervena Barva Press, 'The Dance of Hate' was published by Calliope Nerve Media and 'Mutilated Girls' is being published by Bedouin Press. A collection of his poetry 'Days of Destruction' was published by Skive Press. Another collection 'Expectations' was published by Rogue Scholars Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. His poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.


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Chris Brandt

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Fear As A Principle Of Social Organization

Fear nukes. 1953, duck, cover, crawl under
your desk, the same desk where you carve your name
and have to stay after school for a week, sanding it
by hand under the teacher’s icepick eye. Learn fear.

Fear father. When your father comes home…
Mommy, will daddy be in a good mood?
You understand why I must punish you? That this
hurts me more than you?
Daddy please! Love fear.

Fear God. He sees you, knows when you cheat,
when you touch yourself, when you think
your dirty little thoughts about Susie, he’s
a bit like Santa Claus, only real, and he
can make you go to hell. Worship fear.

Fear acne. Fear wearing dumb shoes, cliques,
being left out, getting turned down
for dates, for a part in the play, being
the last one chosen for softball or soccer,
fear showing you care. Fear yourself.

Fear sex. Fear girls, fear women, fear boys.
Fear hairy palms, syphilis, wet dreams,
not knowing how to undo a bra, sweaty hands,
coming too soon, not coming. Fear desire.

Fear getting a job. Fear losing it. Not knowing
the right word, saying the wrong thing, gossip
and office intrigue, drug tests, the boss.
Fear candor, fear secrecy. Fear everyone.

Fear aging, fear skin growing slack, joints
getting stiff, eyes weak, desire limp, thought
thick, memory thin. Fear nothing
to do, fear loneliness. Fear


Bio:
Chris Brandt is a writer, activist, translator, carpenter, furniture designer, theatre worker. He teaches in Fordham's Peace and Justice Program. Poems and essays have been published in Spain, France, Mexico and the US; translations in The New Yorker and by Seven Stories Press, UC Berkeley, and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.



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Stephen Jarrell Williams

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Black Crude

Doing her dance
on a plastic tarp,

she calls herself
Mother Earth...

A high stage
above a packed house,

cheering wildly
they want her to strip...

She curses,
tearing her expensive dress,

hissing at them
getting what they deserve...

Black oil pouring from her grin,
gushing out between her legs,

flooding the isles,
drowning the gauntlet of men,

out the windows and main doors
a river of black crude,

submerging their shiny cars
and butt of their city,

down street after street
waves deep into the farmlands...

She's gyrating now,
laughing,

lighting a match
to her slick body,

the whoosh of flames
cauterizing the entire planet.


Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California.


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