Silenced Press (silencedpress.com), a journal and small literary press, has just accepted The Art of Raining for their online publication. Please check them out! I adore the quote prefacing this poem, a single line amidst the chaos of Pablo Neruda's intelligent and oft big-headed memoir. I still cannot confine with definition 'the art of raining', cannot build walls around or perspective upon a concept as fluid as the metaphor within it, but it yawns and stretches within me back to childhood, through the future, seeming to connect every memory I cherish and every memory I fear...the art of raining...something we cannot lose...
The Art of Raining
“The art of raining…has now been lost.”
-Pablo Neruda, Memoirs
I walked blindly into her hands,
the sea somewhere behind me,
asking why.
What fire, wind, and rain
has chosen to leave standing
and the ferocity of the vanished’s
returning, often in conversations silenced
over vast tablefuls of food and friends,
that moment all consent to mass introspection,
often too in bullet casings, polished silver,
lodged in the lung of endless answer-waiting,
when extraction could shut down the whole system.
Once we spoke the unspeakable, but no longer.
Is this the belief she whispers to my sleep, as if from Isla Negra?
That somehow tears are wine if we admit our weeping?
The sky over the sea, blindly eyeing my back,
storms and calms and wonders
why our countless words for rain.
To it there is one, synonymous with love,
and one for love, synonymous with why,
and one for why, synonymous with rain.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Poem in an Upcoming Chapbook- River Anthology
The River Poets Journal (www.riverpoetsjournal.com) will be publishing a chapbook later this year anthologizing poems about specific rivers. I am excited to hear my poem, Two Hometowns on the Same River, will be included! If interested, they are still accepting submissions for this chapbook until 9/30/09 (guidelines online). Two Hometowns on the Same River was composed about the Danube, which connects many major Eastern and Central European cities, and near which a friend's father grew up in a small village in Romania. After a long conversation with him at a wedding, in which he half-drunkenly rolled through a litany of childhood memories, I returned to my own memories of the river...resulting in this poem...
River Poets Journal Publishing Love Poem "Reunion"
Reunion, a multi-sectioned love poem written in Vienna, has now been accepted by River Poets Journal. The issue in which it will be published is due Oct./Nov. 2009. Please check out the journal at www.riverpoetsjournal.com.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Hawaii and Portland
It's presently 3:50am and I've just woken for my flight to Portland and beginnings of new experiences, friends, poetries, and fresh air to find a journal I admire, The Hawaii Review, has accepted my poem This Other Island for their upcoming print edition. What a wonderful way to inaugurate this new journey in my life!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Aries - poetry acceptance
More good news this week! Aries: A Journal of Creative Expression has accepted my poem Foreigner for publication in their 2009 print edition. The poem was written about my time in Greece, though it could be anywhere, about the fears and odd pleasures of anonimity. Please check out their website at www.department.txwes.edu/aries/Aries.htm.
Literary Bohemian in August
Literary Bohemian, an online journal of adventurers, wanderers, and seekers of experiences and peoples, has accepted my poem Icelandic Horses for their August 2009 issue. Check them out at www.literarybohemian.com.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
...Keep Driving...
I've always rather liked this poem, Keep Driving, and am excited that after quite a bit of effort since its conception last summer it has finally found a home. Concho River Review, a 22-year-old print journal from Angelo State University in Texas, will be publishing it in its Spring 2010 issue. Concho River's website is www.angelo.edu/dept/english/conchoriverreview.html.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Arlington Literary Journal Issue 27 out!
Issue 27 of ArLiJo is out, available at www.arlijo.com. Three poems had previously been accepted here. I've included one below, a poem from Iceland's endless sagging-roofed empty fisheries. Please check out the other two, The Day Before and From Under a Sari, on the website!
Distant Vacation
Of all industry- the gutted refinery, sagging like a body
unused, that still cries from the ceiling
last month’s rain.
Step outside, into winter, and the Northern
Lights spume alien green, distend, pressed
between the two glass slides-
endless night and its soil. Why the distance
of words like alien? What is being enlarged,
investigated, the illnesses in our blood.
White cells, too low. Something
of the unknowable elicits a promise
that it resides in us too, that foreign
tricks of light are our tongues,
that a fishery rotted still stands
because someone someday will replaster the ceiling.
It is too dark to recognize as more than shadow
the unpenned horses and mangy wads of sheep above.
But something must exist to cast them
forty feet long down the white hill.
The pigeons cling desperately to the village steeple.
The unmanned ships in the harbor still prowl for fish.
Distant Vacation
Of all industry- the gutted refinery, sagging like a body
unused, that still cries from the ceiling
last month’s rain.
Step outside, into winter, and the Northern
Lights spume alien green, distend, pressed
between the two glass slides-
endless night and its soil. Why the distance
of words like alien? What is being enlarged,
investigated, the illnesses in our blood.
White cells, too low. Something
of the unknowable elicits a promise
that it resides in us too, that foreign
tricks of light are our tongues,
that a fishery rotted still stands
because someone someday will replaster the ceiling.
It is too dark to recognize as more than shadow
the unpenned horses and mangy wads of sheep above.
But something must exist to cast them
forty feet long down the white hill.
The pigeons cling desperately to the village steeple.
The unmanned ships in the harbor still prowl for fish.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
White Whale Issue 1.2 Out!
Please check out www.whitewhalereview.com for the long-awaited Issue 1.2, which contains three of poems alongside work I admire, especially for such a young magazine.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Flowers in September...
My poem Flowers, written about the gypsy women and children who swarm markets and outdoor cafes in central Europe with their sad stories selling flowers to tourists, has just been accepted for September 2009 publication in The Shine Journal, an online publication seeped in natural spirituality and beauty. Check it out then at http://theshinejournal.com!!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Arlington Literary Journal- 3 Poems!
Arlington Literary Journal has accepted for publication three poems: The Day Before, Distant Vacation, and From Under a Sari. I'm particularly proud these poems have been selected by ArLiJo given their dedication to serious, intelligent literature.
See below blurb. And please check out www.arlijo.com...
Arlington Literary Journal online also known as ArLiJo, is located in Arlington, Virginia and sponsored by Gival Press.
The intent of ArLiJo is to feature a variety of authors/poets/artists from around the globe whose work provokes readers to comtemplate issues, etc.
In this spirit, the editor, Robert L. Giron, invites authors/poets/artists to share their work which promotes understanding and sensitvity across borders, even if initially the work may cause one to take a double-take.
See below blurb. And please check out www.arlijo.com...
Arlington Literary Journal online also known as ArLiJo, is located in Arlington, Virginia and sponsored by Gival Press.
The intent of ArLiJo is to feature a variety of authors/poets/artists from around the globe whose work provokes readers to comtemplate issues, etc.
In this spirit, the editor, Robert L. Giron, invites authors/poets/artists to share their work which promotes understanding and sensitvity across borders, even if initially the work may cause one to take a double-take.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Wildnerness House Literary Review- 2 Poems this July
Two of my poems, Walk With Me Now and No Fire Left to Ravage, both part of my ongoing love poems book, the former written in Santorini, have just been accepted by Wildnerness House Literary Review. Please check them out at http://www.whlreview.com in July!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Paradigm Spring 2009 issue out!
Ah, Springtime again...whirwind of pink blossoms dancing off the trees, expectations of warmer climates renewed, and a barrage of issues from previously accepted journals. Paradigm's Spring 2009 issue also is finally out! I'm rather happy with the poem they accepted a few months ago, Still the World, and am enthused to see it finally in print. Please check out: http://www.paradigmjournal.com/sagan.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge...
Still the World
Why fret the vastness of the world?
Trample endlessly its belly, hungering
for its thighs. Embrace there a sun,
sweat it out, dreaming of frost.
Return full-circle
to kiss the winter dew of its forehead.
It amounts to the same
if never you broke the landscape
of your semi-circled arms,
the digested minutia of your home
spun in earthworm time,
regretting the absence
of foreign suns and frosts.
Still the world
fits snugly an eye socket,
is the size of the last dime
in your pocket
you’ve been saving
to quench your thirst.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge...
Still the World
Why fret the vastness of the world?
Trample endlessly its belly, hungering
for its thighs. Embrace there a sun,
sweat it out, dreaming of frost.
Return full-circle
to kiss the winter dew of its forehead.
It amounts to the same
if never you broke the landscape
of your semi-circled arms,
the digested minutia of your home
spun in earthworm time,
regretting the absence
of foreign suns and frosts.
Still the world
fits snugly an eye socket,
is the size of the last dime
in your pocket
you’ve been saving
to quench your thirst.
Verdad Spring 2009 issue out now!
Please check out http://verdadmagazine.org/vol6/poetry/williams.html, Spring 2009 Volume 6 of Verdad, which has two poems of mine, one written in Athens (see below) and one in Austria (written while reading Ted Hughes in the Alps)...
As a taste, "Hostel Room on Sofokleous Street":
Again I awake to the choppy syllables of motorbikes
dissecting the night. Greeks and Turks and boys
with much to prove battle the dogs
for dominion of silence. Without a clock
I only know refuse and shadow conjoin
and insomnia s leprous limbs stretch and groan
to introduce day.
Heated like the space between closed doors,
weighted like a cemetery,
this city no longer ancient emits a phosphorescent sigh, a neon outline.
History cannot loosen its grip
and the shutters of my barren room
keep out only what I desire.
The first chunk of night
that brought me back to this world
questioned "what city has awoken me?"
But the panting, hounding predawn people
strangling the streets
and the forever wandering
black bearded cassocks
and the meat marketers
displaying their morning fleshes
and the halves of statues time has left us
only answered in homeless pigeon coos.
Feigning to recognize my beloved sea amongst the shouts
of pastries and black coffee, ouzo and rotten fruit,
abandoned alleyways and bored, cyclic buses,
the almost-sun's perennial voices,
I also feigned wisdom,
shaded the broken moment
with a canopy of home.
All things foreign adopted a darkness.
The loose configuration of fears and desires
inaccurately named dreams
sung to my open eyes.
I approached the exposed bulb
to confirm my inner walls of brick
but within such light switch movement
awaits a cockroach and a lie.
So I sat in this certain darkness
just outside dream
and waited alongside it
the skittering feet of daybreak
and the monument of people
that would bring its own sea,
its own vast, unforgettable silence.
As a taste, "Hostel Room on Sofokleous Street":
Again I awake to the choppy syllables of motorbikes
dissecting the night. Greeks and Turks and boys
with much to prove battle the dogs
for dominion of silence. Without a clock
I only know refuse and shadow conjoin
and insomnia s leprous limbs stretch and groan
to introduce day.
Heated like the space between closed doors,
weighted like a cemetery,
this city no longer ancient emits a phosphorescent sigh, a neon outline.
History cannot loosen its grip
and the shutters of my barren room
keep out only what I desire.
The first chunk of night
that brought me back to this world
questioned "what city has awoken me?"
But the panting, hounding predawn people
strangling the streets
and the forever wandering
black bearded cassocks
and the meat marketers
displaying their morning fleshes
and the halves of statues time has left us
only answered in homeless pigeon coos.
Feigning to recognize my beloved sea amongst the shouts
of pastries and black coffee, ouzo and rotten fruit,
abandoned alleyways and bored, cyclic buses,
the almost-sun's perennial voices,
I also feigned wisdom,
shaded the broken moment
with a canopy of home.
All things foreign adopted a darkness.
The loose configuration of fears and desires
inaccurately named dreams
sung to my open eyes.
I approached the exposed bulb
to confirm my inner walls of brick
but within such light switch movement
awaits a cockroach and a lie.
So I sat in this certain darkness
just outside dream
and waited alongside it
the skittering feet of daybreak
and the monument of people
that would bring its own sea,
its own vast, unforgettable silence.
New Amarillo Bay Issue Out Now!
Check out: http://www.amarillobay.org/contents/contents.htm. Here you'll find two of my poems written while in the midwest.
As a taste, "Idaho, Moments After Sunset":
Lamps unsure if they've longer to wait
before darkness completes itself
and I unsure if their volleys
of flickering and hesitation
is the sought sign — when to know
if I'm ready to leave?
Ah the comfort, rejuvenation
smiling children impress on the crazy.
But upon that russet,
sallow cusp of horizon
day has broken
into glass shards lining the highway
and the children,
horders of all things
reflecting even the scantest light,
have skived their curious fingers
and retreated.
Stars like grains of white sand
emerge from a desert newly black,
Lilliputian divinities
who too age one more night
but will live to see another.
People enjoy imparting lessons
without awakening first in prison
or in heaven
and define bad water
as all rivers never crossed
and I who claim to be different
still cannot identify
which of the uninterrupted voices
scalding this desolate summer road
will find me the land
where music is no longer necessary.
As a taste, "Idaho, Moments After Sunset":
Lamps unsure if they've longer to wait
before darkness completes itself
and I unsure if their volleys
of flickering and hesitation
is the sought sign — when to know
if I'm ready to leave?
Ah the comfort, rejuvenation
smiling children impress on the crazy.
But upon that russet,
sallow cusp of horizon
day has broken
into glass shards lining the highway
and the children,
horders of all things
reflecting even the scantest light,
have skived their curious fingers
and retreated.
Stars like grains of white sand
emerge from a desert newly black,
Lilliputian divinities
who too age one more night
but will live to see another.
People enjoy imparting lessons
without awakening first in prison
or in heaven
and define bad water
as all rivers never crossed
and I who claim to be different
still cannot identify
which of the uninterrupted voices
scalding this desolate summer road
will find me the land
where music is no longer necessary.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Lullaby of the Spider
More good news! Red Wheelbarrow, a print publication of DeAnza College, will be publishing my poem Lullaby of the Spider in their 2009 national issue. This poem, slightly bittersweet, is an imagistic comment on memory. They've also included some very complimentary comments from their readers, which is both rare and truly lifted my spirits (as if one's spirits can be low late Spring, 90 degrees, preparing for a cross country move and new life!). Their notes:
One of our readers wrote:
"I felt like the convoluted and sometimes archaic syntax had an interesting effect in Williams' poems, creating a voice of detachment that complemented his imagery of the West. I especially liked how the sense of desperation in the beginning of Driving Nebraska gave way to a reluctant acceptance of loneliness. I also liked the haunting imagery in Lullaby of the Spider, and the way the poem slowly unraveled much like the strand of spiderweb it described."
They're still considering another poem, Driving Nebraska, for this issue too.
One of our readers wrote:
"I felt like the convoluted and sometimes archaic syntax had an interesting effect in Williams' poems, creating a voice of detachment that complemented his imagery of the West. I especially liked how the sense of desperation in the beginning of Driving Nebraska gave way to a reluctant acceptance of loneliness. I also liked the haunting imagery in Lullaby of the Spider, and the way the poem slowly unraveled much like the strand of spiderweb it described."
They're still considering another poem, Driving Nebraska, for this issue too.
New chapbook near completion!
I'm in the midst of completing compilation of a new chapbook, The House We Live In, to submit to contests. The gist, if one can be so arbitrary, is a mix of...well...here's the blurb I'll be including on cover letters:
At its heart a single question struggling to use language to clarify and answer itself, The House We Live In exposes an ongoing conversation about God, politics, otherness, and our attempts to place a period at the end of any sentence. From appreciation of Hafiz, Kabir, Rilke, and the dreams we forget upon waking, The House funnels personal conundrums and uncertainties through experiences accrued worldwide, from Damascus to Reykjavik, and through everything newspapers say and do not say. The House spans 26 poems over 35 pages, broken into two books, each focusing on a different attempt to answer the question that, by the end, continues to struggle with its own definition.
Wish me luck! I've some confidence in this piece...
At its heart a single question struggling to use language to clarify and answer itself, The House We Live In exposes an ongoing conversation about God, politics, otherness, and our attempts to place a period at the end of any sentence. From appreciation of Hafiz, Kabir, Rilke, and the dreams we forget upon waking, The House funnels personal conundrums and uncertainties through experiences accrued worldwide, from Damascus to Reykjavik, and through everything newspapers say and do not say. The House spans 26 poems over 35 pages, broken into two books, each focusing on a different attempt to answer the question that, by the end, continues to struggle with its own definition.
Wish me luck! I've some confidence in this piece...
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Desert Voices- Two Poems
The Spring 2009 Desert Voices just came out both in print and online. Two of my poems, In the Western Night and Preparing for Fire, both written during my cross-country adventure two summers ago, are within its pages. The pdf version of the print issue is: http://pages.paloverde.edu/staff/desertvoices/desertvoices.pdf.
Or, to make it that much easier:
Preparing for Fire
The juniper attacked us from behind
as a lover might, silk-handed,
and off-guard we swaggered drunkenly
back to campfire, as if facing the smell
would dull its charms
and return our distracted conversation
to things mighty, abstract, and unseen
waiting for us over the next sandstone wall.
Each twig we cast sparked infinitesimal fireworks
like dying candle spit
like fireflies adding themselves to the sun,
and the light did not war against the darkness
but lifted us with it
to where, though unseen,
it could still be felt.
Dreams of junipers began to trickle over
the faint of heart, those simple enough
to gaze upon a fire and be warm,
leaving me alone
just outside its perfect halo
boasting brashly to a gathering of stones,
geckos, and broken ceramic pots
that though smaller than a juniper spark
I’d not be taken quietly,
fondling my words like a sword, distracted-
savage Ares speculating aloud to statues of himself
where the blood goes in peacetime.
In the Western Night
Blue sparks raining from the sky
as if from two great metals clashing,
and a scream swallowing itself.
A half-dead mare, the half that bears its soul.
If argued correctly, the other half, they claim,
cannot also suffer.
Flies gather round its groin.
Metals clash, blue sparks,
and the shoe slips on, unnoticed.
And in my heart German shepherds
tempering the prairie wind
by gnashing their teeth
and pouncing upon the slightest sound.
And every sound a distinct fear,
every barn door rusting out, creaking,
and yet there is comfort
in condensing all life into a moment
and waiting for the next,
which this time will be it- it
and yet nothing like it-
like being the author and the poem
and fearing which will longer endure.
In the western night without illusion
the landscape crawled under my shirt
to die.
I still hear the rusting of hinges
and pounce upon every sound,
and still her eyes aglow beside me
spark blue and fall to the sheets,
heavy metals.
We’re awaiting another scream
that can swallow itself.
The shoe slips on unnoticed
Thursday, May 14, 2009
And Then Like a Saber
Parts of And Then Like a Saber, a multi-sectioned poem, have just been accepted by Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Scheduled for publication August 2009 at http://www.glass-poetry.com.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Oklamahoma Review Spring 2009 Out!
Please check out The Oklamahoma Review's Spring 2009 issue at http://www.cameron.edu/okreview/vol10_1/10_1.pdf. My poem about Texas, South Texas Shadow, is on page 37.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Nibble- Issue 7 Out Now!
Nibble Issue 7 was just released! Hardcopies are available via http://nibblepoems.wordpress.com, where they can also be viewed. Look for me on page 3...
The Evansville Review Vol. XIX 2009 Out Now!
I'm excited to announce the 2009 issue of The Evansville Review is now in stores, where my poem Et Cetera is amongst some of the finest voices in America, like John Updike, and international translation, like Borges and Bertolt Brecht.
Friday, May 8, 2009
I Dream a Horse...
In addition to below posting of Poem of the Week at Illogical Muse, they have also accepted I Dream a Horse, a poem about language's fragility and flexibility, for an upcoming issue. Find it soon at http://www.geocities.com/illogicalmuse!!
Poem of the Week!
As Summer Sinks Over Erlauf Lake is now Illogical Muse's Poem of the Week! They discovered it at Verdad (http://verdadmagazine.org/vol5/contents.html) and apparently they choose one poem a week after extensive online research, and this little ditty about beauty and fragile love in Austria will be up in their pages soon (http://www.geocities.com/illogicalmuse/poem_of_the_week.html)...
Garcia Lorca x3
Wow, I'm happily surprised to say For Federico Garcia Lorca, previously published in Barnwood International and Language and Culture, has now also been accepted by Poetic Diversity, for publication Aug. 2009 at poeticdiversity.org. I've been previously published years ago at this site and am excited to find my work in its pages again.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Poetry Extravaganza in Portland tonight!
As hoped, I've found an open mic while here in Portland, OR. I'll be reading tonight sometime after 7pm at Poetry Extravaganza at the Someday Lounge on 125 NW 5th Avenue, Downtown. Looking forward to hearing some Northwestern voices!!
"In the Wilderness Between"
"In the Wilderness Between" has just been accepted for publication in June 2009 at www.linesandstars.com. It's somewhat of a love poem, part of the Maelstrom half of an ongoing book of love poems split between the beauty (Illumination) and terror (Maelstrom) of love beyond reversal and recourse- ie, that self-destructive, almost mythical, but very real...true love...
Friday, May 1, 2009
Big 5 0 ...Paradigm publication!
A weary 3:30am preparing for a flight and yet I'm lucky enough to find Paradigm Journal has accepted "Still the World" for publication in their upcoming May 2009 issue. Including fiction, that finally makes 50 journals that have published my work! Very excited as things have truly been pulling together these last months. Now it's time for that book deal, yes?
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