Davod Applebaum - F.J. Bergmann - Zoelle Egner

Michelle Gaddes - Howie Good - Ed Higgins

Monica Mody - DLW Pesavento - Phill Provance

Jacob Russell - Joel Sattler - James Vance 

♠       ♥       ♣       ♦

Nouvelle Poésie de Guerre

Davod Applebaum

Helpless in Gaza

the gift

red veined
amrita stem

drains

below
a snare of gnats

fallow with
the undead

in ghost
procession

Once a lily

the thing sinks
pencil-pointed
in day-Glo daze
like a spider kiss

it will shave hull
grey from a canopy
to blend force
with fire smoke
that breezes breath
to never put out

back-hung it droops
God-glory a tongue
about to suffer speech

F.J. Bergmann

Pseudoscience

     What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man,

     but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
        —Richard Feynman

We disagree more than you realize:
no matter what you think, the loaves still rise,
the malt and grapes ferment, dead life compresses into oil;
all these transform through chemicals, microbes—and soiled
illusions, grounded dreams.  This is not as dull
as it might seem to you: your eyes
are bigger than the sugarplum inside your skull.

Outside deception’s glum amusement park,
dizzy with longing, you press your nose
against the tawdry gleam that sparkles
from the distorting glass of superstition
and watch a silly, illogical ride that goes
around and round the spindle of sensation
and ends up in the same sunken position
where it began, like time or tide.  The ticket
is as expensive as a college education; yet
you say you tried, but it was hard,
and you couldn’t stick it out for all those years.

And now you still believe the miscegenation
of myth and wishful thinking,
the lurid, luring circulars that prey upon your fears,
a chokechain for your brain--
you hand the leash to anyone who asks.
At Ellis Island our ancestors stood in line
bringing their baggage of beliefs through Immigration
a set of brightly polished, obsolete
medical instruments and alchemical flasks.

Roll up!  Roll up!  The very last chance to sign
up for the miracle cure. The sacramental whine:
Get your hagioforensic fragments over here!
Float down the tantric tunnel of the past;
regress into a previous incarnation!
Tell out the rosary of your past lives:
a Balkan minister, a servitor of Cyrus,
the loveliest of Solomon’s sequestered wives,
a sinister Neanderthal, a snail, a spider, virus!
dust mite, yeast, bacillus, blue-green alga ... another virus.

Mail-order custom substances (FDA-approved!)
to make the ones we lust for in our hearts desire us
and give us psychic sustenance by telephone
to save us from a fate as dire as
jail:  the one where you’re alone, at night,
and there’s nothing on TV. Inhale
a fragrant herbal pheromone (improved
and new!) that will solicit Ms. or Mr. Right!

The things you still believe ... get out of here.
You are aggrieved; you fill the air with keen lament;
you might as well be drinking
pale moonlight; you might as well go clear
with the distilled white night of moonshine.
You’ll never justify your thinking:
there are no radio implants; there is no “secret element,”
no sheaves of alien-crushed corn bow down,
no ley-lines tense against the stripped and sere
brown fields, and Heaven is for fools.

There is an art for anyone who sees
that out there, Venus and Mars are stark
and silent; but science is capable of frolic:
the universe is an all-night carnival,
a billion-ring circus (and you the bumbling clown);
splendid Ferris wheels of stars and galaxies
spin ever outward, outward from the pinpoint past.
Under the microscope, a sideshow: inside the tent,
in a haze of lipid veils and liquid jewels,
ciliate fringes flicker on dancing microflora.

I am neither religious nor an alcoholic,
though I take temporary refuge in an amphora
every now and then:  it doesn’t last forever.
In times of open banditry and covert ballistics
a virgin in the vineyard offers no protection
to toppling towers or mayqueens in the minefields
gathering their rosebuds, flocks and thistles.
In the lexicon of flowers, columbine means disaster now.

Along the ecliptic, the bestial, archaic, astrologic
shell of sun-signs superimposes upon the vast
incandescence of known space like a fool’s-gold cage
around the old blue world; around our rage,
our impotence to move the continents or skies.
in spite of those who twist statistics as well as their own lies.

You, who claim to blame the misdirection
of everything from affection to guided missiles
on inventions and their parents (necessity and freedom),
cower underneath your psychic mindshields,
behind the feng shui arrangement of the orc
and orca statuettes--with real crystals! You say it isn’t fair,
you say that I’m unkind; but I do care,
as much as anyone who ever had an axe to grind.
Grasping at short straws and lack of common sense,
you are resolved to disagree; where’s a solution
that can be used to sterilize or cleanse
an opaque vision through a rose-tinted contact lens,
dregs of ancestral fallacies in infinite dilution?

Zoelle Egner

Acres

When she moved back to California,
she bruised America into her left arm.
For weeks, people asked if she had done it on purpose.
It was so precise.

A freckle to mark the Four Corners.
That blood vessel, the Mississippi river.
A blemish where Rhode Island should be.

When it finally faded,
one state at a time,
only the indentation remained:
a crater in the paper blank of bicep.
All the acres she lost.

Fairytale

The man with the octopus heart is worried that this world is overrated.
He's got all eight legs working on different things:
this one picking a lock,
dragging through the sand,
smoking a cigarette like it's possible underwater-
but nothing works.

The man with the octopus heart is very often alone.
Not too many fish out there looking for a light.

He sees anglers and electric eels,
swordfish and pistol shrimp.
He recognizes these oceanic gangsters by their magic powers.
Fumbles with his own methods of disguise.
Hides in a coconut shell, just in case.

He sees porpoise pods and sting ray wings,
clown fish stroked tenderly by anemone arms.
All he wants is to turn his cloud of ink in.
But those killer whales and tiger sharks,
albacore and giant squid,
leave him wondering if maybe the hermit crab hasn't got the right idea:
 Maybe lonely means nothing is about to eat you.
 Maybe schools only protect if you've got others to trust.
 Maybe it's no coincidence most fish only live to mate once.

He has heard too of mythical seahorses with great family dynamics,
decorator crabs that carry their ecosystems with them.
But the threat of sea gulls is too great to breach the surface,
the threat of sea snakes to great to stay exposed on the sand,
so the day he meets an anchor, he thinks:

maybe, this is my chance.

Michelle Gaddes

Crow

A silken crow peered into my room with worldly eyes of gold
I smiled at him; surreal familiar, gateway to the other world, I am told.

As black as dead smoker’s lungs and stark like a star
He reassured, danced a little and delivered messages from afar.

Crow reeked of carrion, festering up on the highway
He returns to bloated entrails day after day.

His beak is immaculate and wing span wide
Oh for a joy ride! Only for the day, I cried.

Crow rings a bell, ominous necro-tinkle unknown
Into green ether, with secrets a plenty he has flown.

For now... into sudden midnight lagoon mists at noon
I await your return; leave bread on the post under a barren full moon.

Each day you visit, swift and out of the...blue
Through a crack in my window, your eyes, it’s you.

Surrounded by magpies, your Morlocks who prey
On corpse-spent maggots as sweet as the day.

Pariah
 
I am the pariah steeped in quagmire; around I creep
And nay say a peep
Who in the mist delivers a kiss?
Ether and spirit I keep.

I am the pariah I have to admire the light
Shining through a crack.
The world almost dead except for
The babe in my bed.
The raven and its claws in my back.

I am the pariah I am no liar; I will die in a gutter
With no bread and butter.
Kamikaze survivor, no night time jiver
Condemned for anything i utter.
My shoes are grey hearses in July.

Howie Good

A Little Prayer Against Annihilation

 
The better angels of our nature, drunk these last few years on stolen altar wine, fall out of windows and stagger off into the chorus of lights, chanting, Holy, holy, holy, but in a kind of unconvinced way, because it’s not the season yet for U-pick blueberries, the pearl-handled snow about as empathetic as the smoke used to put a hive of bees to sleep, only to dream of brown bears in black leather jackets running amuck in a supermarket in California with the juvenile poetry of zip guns and switch-blades.

Ed Higgins

from inside out

like the grain of revealed wood,
heat rising from an august wheatfield,
a redwing hawk shrilling overhead

rain squalling aslant at the window,
certitude in uncertainty’s sure return,
gargoyles pouring grief from agape mouths

the light of full moons in your eyes,
a shoulder to quiet your ill heart,
laughter, pure helium balloons rising

we will go on like this, heart-bruised
carried with and against life’s flow.

Monica Mody

portable states

my abrupt head
flooded with a call

lolls onto paper

tripling
its foresight

trained to mince
draperies

into insights

launches
portable geniuses

stark devils
outfitted in pretend
tights

prayerfully mantis

troubled out of
scarce existence

head forgotten
and flung wide

peeling stopovers  
into gripe

she doobles in
springfields of mice

signed, sigma & george
in atelier

DLW Pesavento

Surgeon's Journal

Trauma Surgeon Journal entry:

Urban Front, Devil's Night, 2037 Anno Domini, 0200 hours

Patient X: Admitting Diagnosis: Multiple GSW   

Pre-op Diagnoses: 

Multiple GSW x 16: bilateral chest, right upper arm, right lower arm, right zygoma, right anterior thigh, right lateral thigh, right lower abdomen, hypogastrium, left upper quadrant, right hyochondrium, left lower quadrant, suprapubic abdomen, right hip, left axilla, lumbar region.

Post-Op Diagnoses: 

Bilateral hemo-pneumo thoraces, multiple small bowel perforations, colon perforation, rectal injury, bladder injury, penetrating liver injury, splenic injury, gallbladder perforation, gastric perforation, hemoperitoneum, retroperitoneal hematoma, right femur fracture, superficial femoral artery injury, zygoma fracture, multiple muscle hematomas, pancreatic hematoma, perinephric hematoma.

Brief history:

Young unknown brought into the E.R. by paramedics in extremis  and unresponsive. B.P. 60/0. Intubated upon arrival. Cervical collar/spine board, with velcroed compression vest and trousers on. Left pupil was  reactive to light. Right eye intact (not readily visualized secondary to periorbital hematoma).

Brachial and saphenous cutdowns performed, followed by insertion of large bore cannula (direct I.V. tubing) and bag-compressed rapid instillation of multiple liters of normal saline and crystalline solution, followed by multiple units of O neg. blood (followed by fresh frozen plasma, platelet transfusions in the O.R. to obviate thrombocytopenic bleeding diathesis). Broad spectrum systemic antibiotics administered. Chest x-ray revealed missle in each pleural consistent with pnemo-hemo-thoraces without proximity to the cardiac silhouette. Plain x-rays of the abdomen revealed mulltiple bullet fragments, as well as extensive buckshot in the right lateral abdomen extending to the right mid upper abdomen. A bullet was seen in the midline abdomen at the L1-L2 level. Lateral view, possible vertebral spinal canal region. Head and neck plain films unremarkable, except for bullet fragment in the right zygoma. Rt. midshaft femur fracture noted and ortho consulted.

In the operative suite, the compression vest and pants were judiciously decompressed to  avoid hypotension. Pateint was carefully moved from the spine board onto the operating table. With the patient in the trendelenburg postion, bilateral subclavian catheters were placed, cannula-penetrating the clavipectoral fascia and anchoring the catheters with 2-silk. Bilateral chest tubes were placed laterally at the 5th intercostal spaces, anchored, and connected to suction. Chest tube blood loss Rt. 600c.c. Lt.400c.c. B.P.100/60. CV surgeon consulted. Warming blanket placed and labs drawn. Nasogastric tube and foley catheter placed, gross hematuria.

Examination:

GSW: bilateral chest, right upper arm, right lower arm, right zygoma, right anterior mid-thigh, right lateral-medial thigh, right lower abdomen (shotgun) with extruding bowel/intestinal contents/omentum, hypogastrium, left upper quadrant, left lower abdomen, suprapubic abdomen, right hip, right lateral hypochondrium, left axilla, and palpable entrance wound lumbar region. Heart/lung sounds were readily audible. Digital  r. exam revealed blood. Arterial Dopplers of the right popliteal, distal dorsalis pedis and posterior tibialis were absent (audble on the left) suspect for femoral injury. A vascular surgeon was consulted who explored Hunter's canal, finding a superficial femoral artery disruption, and repairing the artery with an interposition saphenous vein graft, concommitantly while the laparotomy was in progress (see his report).

Technique:

With the patient in the supine position, the chest, abdomen, and extremities were prepped and draped in a sterile fashion. A midline vertical incision was  made from the xyphoid to the suprapubis, entering the peritoneal cavity. Massive hemoperitoneum was suctioned expeditiously. Intestinal and gastric contamination was widespread. A self-retaining retractor was placed strategically and lap. sponges used generously. Extruded bowel was reduced from the abdomnal wound. Exploration revealed multiple perforations of small intestine, including the jejunum and distal ileum. No aortic or iliac injury.  Multiple small perforations from the buckshot were also identified along the duodem and pancreas associated with hematoma formation, Multiple mesenteric disruptions were noted and hemostats placed and vessels tied off and hemo-clipped. Multiple enterorrhaphies and bowel resectons were performed using stapling devices. Smaller perforations were sutured. Patient hemodynamically stable with a B.P. 120/80. No further significant abdominal blood loss. Thoracostomy tube blood loss abated. CV opinion: thoracotomy not indicated at this time.

Hepatic parenchymal injury noted in the supero-lateral liver and a hole in the gallbladder fundus. Cholecystectomy was performed, after identifying the gland of Lund and the triangle of Calot, clipping off the cystic artery and duct, mobilizing the gallbladder from the liver bed and electro-cautery achieving hemostasis. Kocher maneuver was performed exploring the hematoma of the head of the pancreas to R/O occult duodenal perforation.

The gastrocolic omentum was then taken down exploring the lesser sac and posterior stomach. No posterior gastric perforations were noted. The greater curvature and anterior stomach holes were closed with staples after dividing the gastroepiploic arcade with a stapling device. Splenic hematoma and laceration were present. Lap. sponges were placed in left subdiaphragmatic space, and gastrosplenic and lieno ligaments taken down. The splenic pedicle was intact. Splenorraphy successful. Diaphragms appeared normal.

Retroperitoneal hematoma along inferior vena cava negative for caval injury. Two kidneys palpable. Right perinephric hematoma around Gerota's fascia explored and no renal injury. Ureters intact. Perforations were present in the ascending and transverse colon. Colorrhaphies performed with stapling instruments. The white line of Toldt was mobilized along the ascending colon to R/O occult retroperitoneal colon perforations.

Bladder dome perforation identified and closed. No injury to the uretero-pelvic junction.The descending colon was explored revealing a large pelvic retroperitoneal hematoma extending below the peritoneal reflection, raising a high index of suspicion for rectal injury. Hartmann procedure was then performed, staple-dividing the descending colon and double-stapling the distal rectal stump, exteriorizing the stapled sigmoid through the left lower quadrant rectus abdominis as a colostomy cross-clamped with Kocher clamps. The abomen and right lower abdominal GSW wound where bowel had protruded were closed with continuous mono suture and skin stapled.

The entire peritoneal cavity was lavaged with multiple 10 liters of warm sterile saline, flushing out contaminants as well as possible. Retrieved bullets were sent to pathology. Drains were placed along the pancreatic bed, right lateral liver space and pelvis. Right leg splint placed and femur fracture Rx. to follow per ortho. Extremity wounds explored and not significant with brachial and radial pulses present. Instrument and sponge count correct. EBL 30 units. Sterile dressings and appropriate peristomal gauze in place. The patient was taken to the recovery room in hemodynamically stable condition, having tolerated the procedure relatively well, moving upper extremties but not his legs. The patient will be transferred to the ICU after serial labs and appropriate follow up, including neurologic and neurosurgical, with CT/MRI of spine to R/O the possibility of spinal cord injury.Total operative time 8 hours, 17 minutes. Time to write a poem. 
 

Phill Provance

St. Petersburg Has Many Churches


St. Petersburg has many churches that no one prays in.
Their soft serve-swirl spires are ironic like that.
You and I ellipticizing the Savior on the Spilled Blood,
speaking of what to name our house cat
as we drag our fingers along the garden’s toy gates and walls—
that is also ironic.

If there is anything ironic about St. Petersburg
it’s that no one may hold its spilled spires.
Or wouldn’t there be soft-serve blood and a toy cat praying in the gardens?
Or you and I ellipticizing our house name,
wouldn’t that also be a church?

When you look at a tree in a garden
it is clearer when you look at all the things that are not a tree;
when you sleep under a blanket
it is important to remember that it’s not the blanket that is warm
but the space between it and your skin.

I heard it is day for so long in St. Petersburg
that you forget that blankets are warm.
I also heard it’s so cold that when you piss
the stream freezes into a yellow arch.
The first statement is true;
the second is ironic.

The cat and I think talking about you in a house makes a gate ironic.
How else to explain the many names of spilled gardens?
If I had to forget about the day in warm blankets
I would do it by ellipticizing trees no one prays in.
I would drag my fingers in the toy blood on the walls
and piss on the church spires.

St. Petersburg Has Many Churches first appeared in Asian Cha magazine.

Jacob Russell

Since I Went Missing

It all looks the same
one might say
nothing has changed
the pigeons on the window sill
plastic bags rattling in the trees
the coming storm
that never does

One might say
nothing changes
if you have no memory
of how it was
One might say
it all looks the same

Looking out at the street
your glass house

the fistful of stones

invisible
the space where you used to be

The lines in the poem never change
one might say
the message is always the same

You don’t live here anymore
You never did
You never will        again

ROSA DE HIROSHIMA
written by Gerson Conrad and Vinícius de Moraes,

English version by Joel Sattler


Think of all the seedling children, telepathically
Think of all the blinded girls so inexactly
Think of all the women crippled ever turning
Think of all the scars like roses red and burning

Forget me not the red red rose so esoteric
The rose of Hiroshima, rose we all inherit
The rose of radiation, don’t know when it’s gonna come
The flower of the dead, the rose of the atomic bomb

No perfume no color red no rose no nothing
___________________________  

Original lyrics in Portuguese by Vinicius de Moraes:

Pensem nas crianças mudas, telepáticas
Pensem nas meninas cegas, inexatas
Pensem nas mulheres, rotas alteradas
Pensem nas feridas como rosas cálidas

Mas! Oh! não se esqueçam da rosa, da rosa
Da rosa de Hiroshima, a rosa hereditária
A rosa radioativa, estúpida inválida
A rosa com cirrose a anti-rosa atômica

Sem cor, sem perfume, sem rosa, sem nada

(Based on a recording performed by Secos & Molhados) 
  
SOLDIER WHY

a song of WWI and the Russian Revolution
 
Across the ice
a horse was riding
on a lake
a mile across
 
The gods of war
were playing dice
with every toss
a life was lost
 
The flames were high,
the night was black
the cold so cold
your breath could crack
 
A thousand eyes
were like the stars
a line of trees
like prison bars.
 
Soldier why?
Why is the war never over?
When are we going home? Will we ever get back home?
I don’t know, I swear to God I don’t know.
 
Across the ice
a horse was riding
the fight would start
before the dawn
 
We did it once,
we’ll do it twice
how long, how long
can this go on?
 
The reds were in
the whites were out
the commies digging
in for keeps
 
We had to learn
to live without
cause what you sow
the Reaper reaps
 
Soldier why?
Why do the shadows keep on moving
Why did the invaders have to come?
When do we learn which side we are on?
 
No matter what,
the wheels keep turning
no matter what,
the flames still keep burning
 
No matter what,
we desire
all our hope
ends in the fire
 
A horse was riding
across the ice
a finger was
yea or nay

A gun was raised,
the aim precise
tomorrow could
go either way
 
Soldier why?
Why is the war never over?
When are we going home?
I don’t know, I don’t know.
 
Soldier why?
Why believe all the lies they try to tell you?
Why believe in the Hell they try to sell you?
Why believe in a war that’s never ending?
 
Soldier why?
Why do the shadows keep on moving
Why did the invaders have to come?
When do we learn which side we are on?
 
Soldier why?
Why is the war never over?
When are we going home?
I don’t know, I don’t know.
 
Why do we have to die?

James Vance

Born of a Dying Sun

10,000 dying suns
Their embers congeal
Into a shapeless mass of energy
An infestation of decay and disgust
The infinite sign that will lay waste
To the minds of 1000 sentient races
Bringer of decay and death,
Chaos and Destruction,
Let tendrils burrow and writhe
Into eyes like a new sex
Never will the universe see it's like again