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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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?