Poetry: Valentina Cano
It happened when I wasn’t looking.
It came, dragging its chains
of scorching days,
each fused to gather your image.
Artist Profile: Ernest Williamson
I’ve always been fascinated with visual art and poetics; however, I came to the realization that I was an artist at the age of nineteen. After a nervous breakdown, I began to create visual art at a feverish rate and interest in my work grew rapidly.
Poetry: Michael Brownstein
They could not bury them fast enough,
the rain thick and slippery, the mud a river,
and in the morning’s blue sky, a whip of cloud,
pink haze, great green vines hugging short trees to strangle
He’s a Vampire
Not long ago, a noted academic
Told me, in reference
To my misuse of the word “polemic”
In an abysmal book review sentence,,,
“Revelation”
Most things change,
leave shards.
The spirit-letter thing
stays hard.
-Guy Rotella
Illustration: Bryan Ramey
Man v. Car
I don’t know why I’m out here
On worn-down tires and pitted
Chrome, red and yellow sparks
Flying in little comets from
Looking at You, Twenty-Four Years On
We remember imperfectly, thank God;
you across to me; me across to you.
Still some measure of sympathy, I guess:
parity, we realized early on,
is one sure recipe for disaster —
Old, Old Seamus
was thirty-five and looking for death in
every phrase; would meet you half-way if you thought you couldn’t get at it. He knew what you were saying. He’d find it. Was every month now giving me another Mishima novel
A Retiring
With no way to get up there anymore
without hitching a ride with the old enemy;
disgraceful maybe, or just over-trusting.
The world stage changes ever faster these days.
Outgoing President George W. Bush at the Inaugural Speech of Incoming President Barack Obama
Man I’m never as free as when I’m there
racin’ that truck over the Crawford dirt,
’bout 60, 70, feels like 90 —
The Orris: A Cultural Journal 