The Munyori Literary Journal (http://www.munyori.com) has accepted five poems for acceptance for their March 9th online edition. The poems: On Footprints; On These Warmer Nights of Sleepwalking; National Anthem; Little Sun, Pinpricked Night; Oia Sequence.
I'm particularly excited as this online journal is based in Munyori, Kenya, which in addition to poems published in New Zealand, Fiji, and the UK, truly fill me with a delight and sense of purpose that supercedes publiations merely in the US...
I would like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to the Editors...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Love poems now up on Seven Circles Press
4 love poems previously accepted at Seven Cirlces Press (print edition this summer) is now available online at http://www.sevencirclepress.com/johnsibleywilliams.htm. They're part of an ongoing love poems book that circles and circles like a shark and is nowhere near completion....
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Winter Sequence, Santorini
Winter Sequence, Santorini
The children, spirited as early snowfall, still poke the mongrel dogs
and bored donkeys, but the zeal of cruelty has faded.
Each town has wasted its breath on summer. Shops deserted.
Vibrantly painted homes climbing steadily up from port
drained of contrast, without raw sun to reflect.
The giant tongue covers cloud and sky, unrolls over the street.
The sand I hold could be murderous ash cooled over centuries,
Minoan doom, or a dead man, more recent.
Cunning life begs as stray kittens, laps the milk now crusted
from tourist season, begs for more-
more water, more shells emptied of ocean,
more crosses and bells to appease or confront Nea Kameni-
more of what abounds. Never enough.
I read the varied initials of winter:
the dizzying handwriting on wind, the fading recollection
of gulls and footfall, a retreat to songs of despair and toil-
shows the character of naked rock, the blood it lets into the sea.
All things settle in different places
like the sun cradled low in the vineyards,
swallowing in bottles the sweet wine unsold,
or the island’s tense voice spoken up through feet, leg, heart,
in a seasonally lightened mezzo soprano.
The children turn their eyes on me,
myself an empty town sleeping,
but I’ve a longer stick, my weariness and regret
measured in calendars that have not witnessed them.
We all- leery children, treasonous tourist, ghostly streets,
eternal morning drifting out to sea- circle each other
with soft hands and dangerous claws, viewing our open veins
as if from a train window at midnight.
-in the upcoming River Oak Review
The children, spirited as early snowfall, still poke the mongrel dogs
and bored donkeys, but the zeal of cruelty has faded.
Each town has wasted its breath on summer. Shops deserted.
Vibrantly painted homes climbing steadily up from port
drained of contrast, without raw sun to reflect.
The giant tongue covers cloud and sky, unrolls over the street.
The sand I hold could be murderous ash cooled over centuries,
Minoan doom, or a dead man, more recent.
Cunning life begs as stray kittens, laps the milk now crusted
from tourist season, begs for more-
more water, more shells emptied of ocean,
more crosses and bells to appease or confront Nea Kameni-
more of what abounds. Never enough.
I read the varied initials of winter:
the dizzying handwriting on wind, the fading recollection
of gulls and footfall, a retreat to songs of despair and toil-
shows the character of naked rock, the blood it lets into the sea.
All things settle in different places
like the sun cradled low in the vineyards,
swallowing in bottles the sweet wine unsold,
or the island’s tense voice spoken up through feet, leg, heart,
in a seasonally lightened mezzo soprano.
The children turn their eyes on me,
myself an empty town sleeping,
but I’ve a longer stick, my weariness and regret
measured in calendars that have not witnessed them.
We all- leery children, treasonous tourist, ghostly streets,
eternal morning drifting out to sea- circle each other
with soft hands and dangerous claws, viewing our open veins
as if from a train window at midnight.
-in the upcoming River Oak Review
For Federico García Lorca
For Federico García Lorca
I found death happily
spinning old cloth
in my father’s basement.
I sat beside him
to embroider the plain vestments
but each stitch
blackened to ash
between my fingers.
His fat, nimble hands
just kept churning
fabric yards over the cold tiles,
though I asked him
to slow.
I was alone in the house.
I had a key.
My father had left
the procession.
Silence.
When the sun finally broke in,
it strengthened my thread
and in the light the garment
was black too, ashen,
my thread yellow.
Death just kept sewing
and in the silence
I began working hard
to catch up.
-published w/ Barnwood International @ http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_26/Williams.html
I found death happily
spinning old cloth
in my father’s basement.
I sat beside him
to embroider the plain vestments
but each stitch
blackened to ash
between my fingers.
His fat, nimble hands
just kept churning
fabric yards over the cold tiles,
though I asked him
to slow.
I was alone in the house.
I had a key.
My father had left
the procession.
Silence.
When the sun finally broke in,
it strengthened my thread
and in the light the garment
was black too, ashen,
my thread yellow.
Death just kept sewing
and in the silence
I began working hard
to catch up.
-published w/ Barnwood International @ http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_26/Williams.html
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Saturday, 2/17, Reading(s)
Updated Saturday reading schedule:
2:15-3:15pm
Brockton Library Poetry Series: http://gbspa.homestead.com/Calendar.html.
304 Main St, Brockton, MA
(and very likely)
8-10pm
Open Bark: stonesouppoetry.blogspot.com.
Out of the Blue Gallery, 106 Prospect St, Cambridge, MA
2:15-3:15pm
Brockton Library Poetry Series: http://gbspa.homestead.com/Calendar.html.
304 Main St, Brockton, MA
(and very likely)
8-10pm
Open Bark: stonesouppoetry.blogspot.com.
Out of the Blue Gallery, 106 Prospect St, Cambridge, MA
Monday, February 16, 2009
Stone Soup reading tonight- 2/16/09
I'll be reading at the open mic at Out of the Blue gallery in Cambridge again tonight, tea first at 1369 Coffehouse. I'm thinking a little political poetry might be in order, given the state of things. I'd love the support/friendly faces. I'm also seeking someone perhaps interested in filming the 5-10 minutes worth of me reading one of these Mondays. Huge favor payable in hugs, kisses, coffee, wine, or all of the above...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Stone Sagas- in newest The Journal and upcoming Poet's Ink
Stone Sagas
In Reykholt his statue inspects the old church’s
slight movements, doctrinal pauses before light
warms the wood pews, its garden of crosses
shaved from the hillside, also the sun-bleached
lava fields, fluttering mountains, awkward streams
keeping back the fjord’s distant glare, overseeing
the various separations.
The colorful doors of the scattered houses all close
in greeting. Winds panic from all sides,
graying the sky. My eyes stone in response
as I read the great sagas of our time,
those even history cannot shame.
In the margins I note such fear
solitude bears, its proximity to stone.
No music whistles from the land. No overtures.
No warnings. Only the brash noise
used to startle time into progressing.
The misspelled experiences. The old tongues
buffered by unyielding monuments
hands could never write or, in a definite image,
reshape.
In Reykholt his statue inspects the old church’s
slight movements, doctrinal pauses before light
warms the wood pews, its garden of crosses
shaved from the hillside, also the sun-bleached
lava fields, fluttering mountains, awkward streams
keeping back the fjord’s distant glare, overseeing
the various separations.
The colorful doors of the scattered houses all close
in greeting. Winds panic from all sides,
graying the sky. My eyes stone in response
as I read the great sagas of our time,
those even history cannot shame.
In the margins I note such fear
solitude bears, its proximity to stone.
No music whistles from the land. No overtures.
No warnings. Only the brash noise
used to startle time into progressing.
The misspelled experiences. The old tongues
buffered by unyielding monuments
hands could never write or, in a definite image,
reshape.
Confessional Hymns- in new Flint Hills Review
Confessional Hymns
Bless us, fertile new morning.
Bless the barrage of tangerine light
streaming through the thawing pines.
Bless the slight wisps penetrating within
these bedroom windows,
balancing upon her forehead.
To whoever misses the conch’s hermetic ocean voice
grinding and honking down the avenues,
bless those ears pressed to concrete
who know history never fully unfurls.
Bless the gathering hummingbirds
who resuscitate night’s lost shadows,
swarming into a single crab
splayed across our bedroom wall,
legs furiously kicking the air.
Bless the beasts conquered and belly up,
accepting without pretense the slaughter and their breath.
Bless all the things each sea coughs up.
Bless their ignorance, their well-lit tree within.
Bless the bountiful cold waves
sleep polishes our wounds,
our nightly flight taken with Icarus
and our awaking moments before the sea opens its mouth.
Bless the moment between waking and understanding,
when such purity of new morning blinds us
to what the night undid.
Bless us, fertile new morning.
Bless the barrage of tangerine light
streaming through the thawing pines.
Bless the slight wisps penetrating within
these bedroom windows,
balancing upon her forehead.
To whoever misses the conch’s hermetic ocean voice
grinding and honking down the avenues,
bless those ears pressed to concrete
who know history never fully unfurls.
Bless the gathering hummingbirds
who resuscitate night’s lost shadows,
swarming into a single crab
splayed across our bedroom wall,
legs furiously kicking the air.
Bless the beasts conquered and belly up,
accepting without pretense the slaughter and their breath.
Bless all the things each sea coughs up.
Bless their ignorance, their well-lit tree within.
Bless the bountiful cold waves
sleep polishes our wounds,
our nightly flight taken with Icarus
and our awaking moments before the sea opens its mouth.
Bless the moment between waking and understanding,
when such purity of new morning blinds us
to what the night undid.
Kafka- in Cadillac Ciccatrix
Kafka
Around the same time he affixed feathers, wings,
so too a wire-meshed pen,
and hunched over his meager seed allowance
commenced to peck at his cage.
Years forgot themselves
as housecats their missing claws
and though he pecked still
well after he’d razed the pen,
savagely attacking empty air
as if it held his freedom,
this ongoing dust worship
finally took the place of flight.
Around the same time he affixed feathers, wings,
so too a wire-meshed pen,
and hunched over his meager seed allowance
commenced to peck at his cage.
Years forgot themselves
as housecats their missing claws
and though he pecked still
well after he’d razed the pen,
savagely attacking empty air
as if it held his freedom,
this ongoing dust worship
finally took the place of flight.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Poet's Ink acceptance
A little good news on a frigid day. Poet's Ink just accepted my poem "Stone Sagas" for their February 2009 issue. It should be posted online soon at http://www.poetsink.com. This poem has been previously published by The Journal, which was just released last week, so it's wonderful to see it in two places, print and online. I've always felt strongly about this one, and after countless rejections, as usual, this news is a little stormcloud parter...
Reading tonight- Cambridge
If interested, I'll be reading at tonight's poetry open mic at Out of the Blue art gallery, via Stone Soup Poetry, in Central Square, Cambridge. Open mic is from 8-9pm, headlining poets from 9-10. I'll try to get to Cambridge early and, if so, will be at the 1369 Coffehouse, right around the corner. Cup o' joe on me.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The Journal #25 now out
Issue #25 of The Journal, a UK based literary review with special interest in translations and Scandanavian work, is now out, with two of my poems, "Stone Sagas" and "Autumn Rain" included, the former written about a village in Iceland I visited a few years ago. Website: http://www.freewebs.com/thesamsmith/index.htm.
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