Featured in this issue:    LOUIS ARMAND    PETER FINCH    ROBERT GARLITZ    KEVIN HART    BRIAN HENRY    TIMOTHY LIU    RUPERT LOYDELL    PETER RICHARDS    SUSAN M.SCHULTZ    TOBY WALLACE    MATTHEW ZAPRUDER back to top LOUIS ARMAND is an Australian artist and writer living in the Czech Republic, where he teaches philosophy at Charles University. His work has appeared in journals including Sulfur, Poetry Review, Heat, Stand and Meanjin. His books include Seances (Twisted Spoon Press, Prague), Erosions (Vagabond Press, Sydney) and Inexorable Weather (Arc). He is poetry editor of The Prague Revue and Plastic. COMPOSITION [RED] a scar of red granite cuts across the landscape like an open wound - or inner seam of flesh in the rock [in the word? [that touches it? that it seems to repeat but to which it bears no resemblance: the interior sea the desert ringing in the heart [in the verb? in the open wound, a scar of red granite (cutting across a landscape) [metaphor? as you approach it visually & from a distance: totem of static space horizontal & parallel that speaks from a pre-historic yearning of water of artesian plains far in the substrata--flowing out from a glacial depth like blood or dawn [merely? to vanish on contact with air - the shadow-play of crows spelled by myth the bone-brittle mirage of [finitude? beating wings low over the salt flats & drawn down into the entropy of their spiral COMPOSITION [AFTER BOYD, NOLAN] fixed in mundane matter the prone body - penumbral man - dissipates, the trace of an utterly contingent "this" . . . or dispossessed & devoured by space - convulsive - the post-galvanic twitchings of (trans-)coded flesh? dead-level plains with crow & skeleton tree, concealing an interior zone of primordial elements - inorganic - sub- stance as arcane as salt sulphur mercury - rising phallus-like from the white drought- cracked soil - the helioid genitals of a mechanised underworld - infernal seeds groping upwards to petrified light, flowering in the negative arborescence of [bushfires, etc. [UNTITLED]       for Cait an ashtree - stand there in its shadow the cradled death of leaves in autumn branches already black when you arrive at that point of departure finally will you have a name then? transcendence? will you know anything more than the last winter? the dumb apocalypse of an ashtree - of one standing in its shadow between the white lines of a window or horizon - & drawn almost to the needle-depth of an eye that perceiving it once believed it real back to top PETER FINCH has written more than 20 books of poetry, and compiles the poetry section of MacMillan's annual Writer's Handbook and the self-publishing section for A&C Black's Writers' & Artists' Yearbook. He is treasurer of the Association of Little Presses and is now head of the Welsh Academi, the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency. He lives in Cardiff, Wales. EARLY VIEWS OF AFRICA In my house my father loved the hymns on the radio. He's sing along waving his arms like a conductor while wearing a tea-towel to stop the potatoes he was peeling from staining his pants. No one went to church except me. I was sent. I would split my collection: half for them, the mission; half for me. Mine I would spend on Black Sambo bubble gum. Four for a penny. Worth more. There were planes in the skies in those days. Huge multi-engined fortresses that droned and lumbered and small stubby crosses that flew the loop over the playing fields and dived under the telephone wires just to impress my mother. When we sat for dinner with the gum stuck by the left table leg my mother would be flushed with god for she'd been singing too. My father would tell me, 'You eat this up, son, there are starving people in Africa.' I imagined them thin and pale with no crosses and never singing. On their radios would be the thrub of ritual drumming. When the collection got big enough we sent it to them. A Postal Order with a picture of our Queen and some stamps stuck on to make up the value. Valid six months, after that it would turn to dust. What did they do with it when they got it? They spent it on planes of their own and flew them in roaring circles and flaming loops over the endlessness of their jungles. FOOD DEPRIVATION AND LIFE EXPECTANCY Assuming that you are at all concerned you should think very seriously about the social and psycological implications of living many decades as an elderly person. Do you rll? En 100 ssk. If rmmmm is nn vig vig oldolder older extremely difficult. For example is 'undernutrition without malnutrition' womb achi ngly ness ll calor ll ns ns? Cd b. You w dn t nnn rr wor encid. Th essential f at tuf lof dic mm. Overt psychotic increase the large huge canvas yes indeed. Kp bdy ww ww. Kp bdy ww ww way. Dn. Amts of components even material decrs. Nut, fruit and veg, tt ny 1200 sk. We are generally programmed to age and eventually di. Mmm. Mxi mmmm. Vn ills lllllls ills cd b undertake ndert box buried vn vs burn instead. Gen lly yy sk hope his ths is ss kf ven the older wmhmm cra crik crok skn scll l. With a hammer. Carbno ss yik perso ven wei dn own d ev the weird cd wei too long. Card. S won ss t. Drk drk lls evn this deprivation thn evn this. Nml ven free accs ess cs ess ood ood. Lll twenty-seven rim bo drnk illus ease pain. Cd free veg verg puls n fbr for months. Not enough egg. Survery dark dk k dark n sss. Eat less for most of your life. Lot less. Best. MABINOGION TRANSLATIONS Bendigeidfran overlooked the sea from Ireland they could see the ships When they saw the ships near at hand certainly they had not seen them The ships were blessed by God and prospered with brocade This was certain God was near was he not? The brocade and the shields were pointing upwards for peace These are ships said Manawydan but we cannot see them It was an early Zen problem back to top ROBERT GARLITZ lives and teaches in central New Hampshire. His poetry has appeared in Sierra Nevada Review and The Lucid Stone. LOOM3 Opulent solitude passes in the fifth watch of the night. From the stones and roads you can hear the far centuries, that state of affairs after the lens has been broken. The face of the hidden pilgrim, only superficial minds approach with delicacy. Flatter the hyena within, and distill from the original outbreak of goodness, the lifted lily of benediction. Beadwork prepares us to create music stronger than the innocence of the world. You can feel the numinous ways of making new geometries from endurance. Smile and savor those bitter points of despair in the balls of the feet. Then dance with the impulsive sorrow of awe. Banal secrets show us how to adapt to this room. If we move toward ladders, paint black ecstasy on the walls and floors, volatile white illusions tempt us to cower. The flux of dawn grays by suffering heretical comparisons. DAILY MOISTURE BIRDS Daily moisture birds enjoyed gathering over the quarry where echoes echoed again and melded each into every one. back to top KEVIN HART's new book of poems Wicked Heat (Paperbark) was recently released. He is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. PRAYER O come, in any way you want, In morning sunlight fooling in the leaves Or in thick bouts of rain that soak my head    Because of what the darkness said Or come, though far too slowly for my eye to see, Like a dark hair that fades to gray Come with the wind that wraps my house Or winter light that slants upon a page    Because the beast is stirring in its cage Or come in raw and ragged smells Of gumleaves dangling down at noon Or in the undertow of love When she's away    Because a night creeps through the day Come as you used to, years ago, When I first fell for you In the deep calm of an autumn morning Beginning with the cooing of a dove    Because of love, the lightest love Or if that's not your way these days Because of me, because Of something dead in me, Come like a jagged knife into my gut    Because your touch will surely cut Come any way you want But come NIGHTS Midnight, she's up and walking out the back In bare feet, looking at a winter moon, With flat chinotto in a coffee mug. (I'm half-asleep and slowly stretching out Down the hypoteneuse of our big bed.) It's three o'clock: she's reading magazines And eating stale risotto con funghi Straight from the fridge with that fierce chili sauce. (I'm pulling down a pillow to hold tight That smells a little of her new perfume.) At five she's dragged the blankets over her And left a radio just barely on And, yes, forgotten to turn off a light. (I wake up saying I'll do anything And find the cat is staring in my eyes.) By six the sun is playing with our blind And children are all back inside their beds; Somehow the bedroom smells of wine and rice. (Still half-asleep, my hand goes home to her, She wakes up saying she'll do anything.) sleep, my hand goes home to her. from THE HALL 1 All summer long, the smell of gums in heat, And every night I've thought of that old hall On Tavistock, left on a scrap of land Near Oxley Station:              those Inala boys Gave a new coloured kid what for, near there, While he was waiting for the late train home. That was in January '69, And when, come light, they found him in long grass Around the back, 'he was set neat and still,' The local paper said. There were tyre marks, And someone found a knuckleduster there. It happened - broke out in a time and place. A narrow building, made of great long planks All painted pink: it stood on short, thick stumps, CWA in ragged loops of white. Some days that year, as summer dragged along, I'd half-imagine other trains would come With country women, yards of rusty white All flapping round their ample calves, Descending on the hall from Quilpe, Miles, Their bags stacked up beside a sugargum. Some days, I'd wander down the hill from school With a warm girl just out from Surinam, And take her round the back, in a wild patch Of shade, and we'd sit there a quarter hour, And I would run a finger up her leg Until I touched her knee, while talking low Of this and that,              right up from her white sock So very slowly till I reached her knee, And sometimes higher if her train was late . . . 2 The Missionary Baptist Church met there On Sundays for some seven years or so: Lost locals, mostly, and those homely folk Straight out from Little Rock in Arkansas Who sang us songs like 'Yield to Jesus Christ' (The preacher holding up a 'Give Way' sign) And bluesy southern hymns that squeezed the heart On humid nights, after a thunderstorm. There was a business man of forty-odd, Red in the face, and running fast to fat, Who quietly shook my hand while coming in And let thick tears pour slowly down his cheeks When the conversion hymn, 'Just as I am,' Was struck up by the preacher's pretty girl (A chord a finger wrong in the first verse). But his long sermon was the hot event: 'Woe unto thee that scattereth abroad!' The preacher cried one night, then flailed and wailed And lost his way, and told that sinners spend Eternity with fingers scratching boards. I always thought the big red man would break And stumble up the front, without one plea, And say, 'I'm saved! Praise thee, Lord Jesus Christ!' We'd all done that; we'd all been flicked by flame; Even that woman with a touch of lace Who lived alone on Cliveden Avenue, Who'd drenched the preacher's vast white shirt one night, Then turned to us, before the girl could stop, And screeched, 'I've sinned against the Holy Ghost!' She walked, less shaken than we were, straight back, And placed her Bible firmly on her lap. The preacher gave a few of us a lift, Accelerating past the Greek cafe (Inala boys with flicknives, cadging chips. . .) And I sat near a girl who used lipstick, And when we stopped outside that woman's house That preacher went right in, and turned on lights, And checked her cupboard slowly, dress by dress: The two of us alone in his back seat, Our fingers meeting somewhere near her leg; The V-8 grumbling underneath us both, The air on fire, lights clicking off and on. . . So we run out of world, not time: And even if we peel away The morning light from dappled things There is no chance that we will see This fountain pen left on a chair For what it is. The world is love No matter what we make of it, No matter how we cut it up: The pen must know a hand on it. The great truths live just out of sight, Past what I know of you, or you Of me: so let's be calm and kind Until the great truths come to us In that gold light we've heard about And pens fly quickly to our hands. back to top BRIAN HENRY edits Verse, and was among the finalists for the 1999 Yale Younger Poets Series. His first book Astro-naut (Arc) was recently released in the U.K., and is forthcoming in both American and Slovenian editions. AFTER READING CHARLES WRIGHT, I GO OUTSIDE TO THE DEAD RIVER Killer waxen stalks flourish in today's moribund aura, A lowdown sun cannot muscle its way anywhere But to my backyard, rife with others' litter and domes: A pocketful of pain and more pain              as the doctor prescribed. The pigeon that followed me from the last hill has dropped beneath My line of sight,              breaking its flight into emptiness - The orchard conceals assassin past behind apples Dwarfed by my shadow              and demolished by disregard. My last chance for a reckoning lost in memory's closet, I walk the river frozen in its tracks, no axis Of sugar here, no altius of grace or gratitude, As CW said,              nothing but light and the lack of light. It's that time of year, according to the farmer's almanac, For the worst in men to surface              and I mean daily; Partial explanations, the burnt man told us, can't crack The day open              so it's best to hold your self to yourself's self. The abyss returns into its own absence, divests itself Of emptiness, milking the fastened darkness stellar Until a weighty apple shatters the ice below: A ripple from here to nowhere,              mournful white road to nowhere. MY PINE CONE WAYS The cicada hum, the crack and splinter of words from well-wishers, condolence- givers. The high-five on a Friday afternoon. "These are the rooms we inhabit, the corners we have kissed ourselves into." Love comes in the mornings, lingers until 11:30 or so, then lunch: bagel, lox and onion for you, almond waffles with Freestone peaches for me. "These acts of communion leave us bereft, so to speak, mute and awkward, all thumbs when dexterity is essential." Rooms of varying sizes - oval the most sensuous, of course, then dodecahedral, triangular, octagonal (in that order). The curves of plaster are forever underrated in the roles they play. The landlord confiscates the porch swing, our security deposit dwindles into the red. We line the kitchen floor with sod, wait for the roots to dig in. "Don't you see, these rooms of degrees unknown feed into each other, occupy all our time, our thoughts, pineal as they are." "Don't include me in your pine cone ways." A pellucid screen at the front door waylays intruders, the blue light on the ceiling a sure sign of privacy foretold. We know we're safe in this stronghold. The leaves sear into fresh soil, print our faces in the ground. The picnic has begun. We stumble over the influx of pollen. Swollen membranes will be our death, the white-faced hornets in the shed our life. ROAM To traverse the barren plain our goal, the notion of common accomplishment    wanes in porchlight. Our quadriceps ache and relief is nowhere if not behind the shoji.    Your war cry - "Onward megacephalics!" - gets you past the gatekeeper    and into your lean-to. "Just because" doesn't slip me into the inner sanctum.    Our aperçus weigh heavy on us today. We forget the lowest denominator    and its daring escape into the populace - no escape at all, just a numb feeling,    not unlike the slink and slither of the insincere who rally the forces for an unforeseen event.    "This is exactly what many people do" your lament, it brings the delivery boy    to his knees, wallet proffered for the honor of such wisdom from one so lens-poppingly    lordotic, swimmingly convex (like an eyeball) and concave (like its socket). "The passage was difficult    but Lazarus arose on time." back to top TIMOTHY LIU's books of poems are Vox Angelica (Alice James Books), Burnt Offerings (Copper Canyon Press) and Say Goodnight (Copper Canyon Press). His poems have appeared in journals including Denver Quarterly, Grand Street, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Paris Review and Ploughshares. Visit his website at euphrates.wpunj.edu/faculty/liut. HOME OF THE BRAVE reduced to rubble our democratic vistas unable to outlast far-right terrorists who plan to poison water supplies as we wine and dine in whistle stops trying to outbully operatic regicides curled inside the tail of a treble clef floating on the outskirts of a forgotten town where patriots bored from shooting at paper targets put complete bomb-making guides online while orphans playing stick ball sift through cases of crackerjack hit lists faxes anthrax sold by mail some triggers and detonating fuses left inside that local ballot box HEAVY FREIGHT a handprint fossilized on a child's startled face a bout of fisticuffs as witness to love's excess straddling another bride as the bouquet flies ferruginous tresses spilling over marble fonts into some abyss eleemosynary grunts instead of sermons on the mount as grounds for divorce where orphaned souls stampede down ungulated clefts bikini wax ripped off depilatory forms to appease an ultramontane satrap instructed in orthography by missionaries caught red-handed in compromised positions trying to micturate into the rutilant night SIRENS SINGING of a lover's eyes newly-minted in maternal din anxieties complete with pink fiestaware jarring the hours a hundredfold where vocal mutilations hover over a violin come unstrung no talk only grunts washed up on shore all those hag-infested hours redolent with fog her laughter's rickety bridge seldom crossed emotions clocking in instead of punching out the taste of it percolating on that stovetop licked by dawn by way of telegram a truce delivered yet somehow always the wrong address the come-on instead of a goodnight kiss back to top RUPERT LOYDELL is managing editor of Stride Publications. His recent books include Home All Along (Chrysalis), Background Noise 1-3 (tel-let) and Shadow Triptych (Maquette Press). He lives in Exeter, Devon, UK. CONVERSATION Why do you insist on the word poetry? It is the simplest thing in the world. What have you invented? It is made up of borrowings and collages. Is this how chance must be defined? There are accidents always and everywhere. Form is unique, it does not repeat itself? I hope to let words exist without thinking about them. What kind of audible results will be produced? The air is filled with music we cannot hear. How is sound dispersed? In nature, at every moment, there is amplification. What is this movement into the air? Circles of sound, laughter, and language. Who speaks in your inner chambers? I prefer the notion of conversation. What 'other' are you talking about? A stranger at the natural limit of our vision. Where does devotion come from? From trying to find the point of balance. Do you suppose that tranquility exists? That's what the nothing is in between us. What is the name of the noise of the rain? We no longer know the exact definition of sadness. ON & OF THE PAGE of the way of the wanderer    on its own feet of the indefinite article of internal rhyme    on syllable count of technology of transformation    on the landscape of the primitive of the forgotten    on I can remember of the oval head of one body part    on the other hand of discourse of things said    on aesthetics of a dark day of fish, buffalo and bird    on her nature of the associative of the forgotten    on of closed verse of escape from    on the next page of our assumptions of hiatus    ontology of invention and composition of the final line    no essential truth back to top PETER RICHARDS teaches at Tufts University near Boston, Massachusetts. His poetry has recently appeared in Harvard Review, Meanjin and Westerly. WHICH OVAL HER MINISTRY Which oval her ministry sought to ignore depends on the crown she reneges back to when cushions (dimples despondent) suggest a rescinded corsage. She decrees three ovals crushed inside another might impact the flowers I shove out past the dune eluded for days, we constrict all the way blue into begun. All the way blue into begun, teach me the circles that erstwhile over the surf a light to confide in. Light from her scepter (some divers mistake it for depth) bores past the seafloor cataracting with ovals. WARNING BRETAGNE From her problem shoulder I see daring little corsets bobbing in the moat. I can wash myself in all the hand-bitten mirrors flicking from her tower. Defender of lesser things, even the seashell watches over her shoulder. Seashell listen to me - hair without cunning O hairs of creation. Hand under hand I climb down one of you corrupting the hiss. A THIRD TREE It was I and not all the world who took the blow from his ambient seizure. Like promise, like death without meaning, like he came with always frank and sullen precision and now off with some new need fulfilling my trance. I was skilled at the moans and not just my last one took up with his truly. Wilderness - the very word made us go wild and feel like an island sang for the sea. For high tide I thought all the figures and when I parcel paint on his shoulders, I martial tribes on the rocks. There was always some way, and this way the dust excites 'till the end. O we had sunrises and such natural effects as a cowbell and wood violets comprising the quiet. Where it put love to sleep I saw no good reason proceeding and the death mask gardens can be. Ours was always one part collision, two parts roam, and not even this hurled city corrupts our all time fuchsia. back to top SUSAN M. SCHULTZ edits Tinfish. Her recent publications include Addenda (Meow Press), Holding Patterns (Wild Honey Press, Dublin) and Aleatory Allegories (Salt, U.K. and Australia). A new chapbook is forthcoming from x-poesie of Prague. She lives in Hawai'i. from MEMORY CARDS Yank my chain. Pallid the leash-men. Spasm in the back spells nine, number so fine. Show me writing that is not narcissistic, that doesn't come from the hysterical female, the drunken male (elephant tusks and so on). She wants to call her thesis "the oppressed chick codes"; wonders if to feel guilty for laughing. The memoir as a form is like cinder, grows around an invisible yet empty center, caldera lacking heat. The horses are a magnificent line, my high school teacher said. And that aside from suicide, which the governor claims is "a selfish act." Who knows nothing, one imagines, of interminable pavement, the mind without prescription (New Zealanders "prescribe" books). We can't leave you here alone, my mother said. The man with an orange VW bus jumped from the ninth floor across the street from me in Makiki, and his body lay on the lot for hours. A white cloth covered him; there was blood on it. The man who helped in the yard wondered why I took it so hard. His father killed himself. 10/12/99 "My miserable life," he said and laughed. Arbiter of pronunciation, religious gunman! His shrill shirt ballooning, the poet falls to his death by water, prophesying the past as if it were his to spell. Anxieties not of influence but affluence; how to spend one's syntax otherwise than in the clear purchase of what means. To observe before the filters kick in is to be obscure, precisely because we're not there yet, at least not in language. "Now that's a bull ride!" the announcer shouts. Scalapino sees the orchid flapping, coal miners lining up like ants, but there's no basis for metaphor so even its tyrannies are erased. Replaced by formlessness within form, stylized chaos events like the Red Sox' latest loss, which can't be blamed on an umpire's angle of sight. The man in blue's invested in narrative authority; the fans throwing bottles are the avant-garde. One guard got in a fight with a member of the opposing team. "It's a pity someone has to lose," my mother always said. 10/18/99 back to top TOBY WALLACE is an Australian poet who has been traveling through Europe for the last two years. He is currently completing his novel The Characters. His poems have appeared in Meanjin and Verse. SEED OF BOOK 1 It entered the city. It has a day in the unequal game. It's not a person, like the machine that detects humans. It has an endless image; it has another image. It will deny the city. 2 It entered the city. It has a life that is without a word. It's not an answer, like the future that protects questions. It has a story to tell; it has another story. It will deny knowledge of the city. 3 Why was it jealous? It had a day to decide what to do. It's not a problem, like the man that incites murder. It has a choice to make; it has another choice. It will betray the book. 4 It entered the city. It has a life that is without a meaning. It's not a child, like the seed that rejects the book. It has no job to do; it has another meaning. It will betray the idea of the city. CHAMELEON Endless the labyrinth that is a path and feverish For loved is the fever, the self-effacing truly; It talked divine and justly. The beginning : Spaceless plain as a streak, man's freedom unmeltable; The core is the adventure, the yield a sensual Coat of the animal. Long enough is the lover. And now in the city in immaculate, the form A rest of his body, beneath its pure elaborate That is the unclaimed fragment. The beginning : Everything has changed, there is opening now And a glove of process, which the stranger, Which the stranger. . .which the gesture undoes And now in the city, let us walk now As if memory were an animal, there are none here Anymore, no longer is the endlessness an image For the watcher. There is nothing here, then; And where is the animal, he is caught in the body Of the fever, which may or may not subside. back to top MATTHEW ZAPRUDER's poems are forthcoming in Quarterly West, Verse, Barrow Street and The William and Mary Review. His translations of the Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu, from his book Secret Weapon, have appeared in Verse, Meanjin and International Poetry Review, and will be appearing in subsequent issues of Salt Hill and Fence. BROWNSTONE Sarah I never got to show you the while you were leaving between us and its table covered with versions of continuing plastic flowers once watered by laughter and choosing (how is it now they are wilting) or the shelves I fell down for an hour lifting my eyes and handing them to the student of normal psychology who came to sit in your chair and left with Logic in his briefcase meowing among a few signed scraps of regret or what at last blossomed instead of spring in the lot across from our bed and its favorite white widening into and how I never was seasick except on the sea and never again while falling LJUBLJANICA I wanted to ask you. But you were already dangling above your Alps in the gold claw of sleep. Like a fallen climber you were twitching and scratching the white expanses. Soon you will wake among brilliant snowcaps and take your tablets of ice down into the world. You will tap on the wooden door of the border, until they return the face on your identification papers and turn a blind eye upon the cart you pull creaking through the gate. You will smuggle yourself like a donkey, then glint for years in the grey canal, living among an abandoned tree. Only your fingers warm and confused will drowse on like stars in your jacket lining thinking how imagination troubles. I wanted to ask what to whisper to Sava in the rowboat that knew me when I was a taperless flame. What are the terms of the treaty you signed among your old friends madness and radiation. What is the difference between peace. YAHRTZEIT I could easily rise at the foot of the bed to say in a white prescribed garment don't be afraid it is just as you imagined like me like sighing into the next room or had I not forgotten wickeder pleasures I could whisper into the shaking ear it's as if you've been shielding your eyes in our pockets until we need them to tremble before the black wall of the mausoleum until a visitor full of love or boredom of wonder enforced idly takes a name down to hold it in mouth and elsewhere unbeknownst stirs like a breeze but truly I am made each time to forget each time I find myself perched at his feet stealing dreams already on the way he opens his eyes for a last time perhaps as a crow over and over the terrible wheels perhaps he needs to suffer a little more in his white country without any snow only alongside his shadow train passes until he sees me I am a flower a woman named he is coming to claim me just as he first stood under a tree tall powerfully built glistening with brass and bandolier he loosens his grip on the metal bar and towards me rises we rise towards her she died first she said he was shining