Thank you for reading Issue 27
Beginning now, Unlost will be published twice a year. Watch for our next issue in February. Submission period: 1 November-31 December 2021.
Issue 27
Unlost #27: time travel is no longer supported
Issue 27
Richard Fox*
Unlost #27: time travel is no longer supported
Begin Reading Here
Matt Quinn
Carla Sarett
Julie A. Sellers
Jac Jenkins
Wallace Stevens Examines Modern Poetry
Fold (materials – time, scissors, flat surface)
Sarah-Jane Crowson
Postcards from the Underworld Page 45
Postcards from the Underworld Page 44
Sue Burge
Michelle Gil-Montero
Michele Rappoport
*Richard Fox has been a regular contributor of poems to both online and print literary journals. Swagger & Remorse, his first book of poetry, was published in 2007. He is currently working on several collections of spoken word & soundscapes, which are available for EZ listening online at Bandcamp.com (searchable by his name). He holds a BFA in Photography from Temple University, Philadelphia, and lives in Boise, ID.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Michelle Gil-Montero
Cloisters
Source & Method
The source text is The Cloisters (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1951, 11th ed.; 1st ed. 1938), a guide to the medieval art collected in The Cloisters museum. I overlay translucent images, black out much of the text with blocks made of the repeated letter “i” or “I,” and highlight the text of the found poem. In this series, I treat the page spatially as a cloister, and my “writing” chisels out hidden interiors within those confines while speculating about the poetic “I,” and authorship, in a pretty direct sense.
Michelle Gil-Montero is a poet and translator of contemporary Latin American poetry, hybrid-genre work, and criticism. Her books include Object Permanence (Ornithopter Press) and the chapbook Attached Houses (Brooklyn Arts Press).
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Michele Rappoport
At the urging of a friend
I took my brain out
showed it to people who were interested
shared it with my family at a reunion
the double triangle, the six-pointed star
floating disks, twisted ribbons
it was amazing
I was determined to make a journal
a deep paper breath
to shift my state of being
from chaos to coherence
I didn’t have to be perfect
there is no eraser in life
triangles rotate on a center point
spiders create homes by weaving
I can indeed make something beautiful.
Source & Method
Source text: Joy of Zentangle by Suzanne McNeill, Sandy Steen Bartholomew, Marie Browning. Design Originals. 2013.
Michele Rappoport’s writing has appeared in various literary journals, including Right Hand Pointing, Delmarva Review, High Desert Journal, The Centifictionist, and Art in the Time of Covid-19, an anthology of pandemic writing and art.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Michelle Gil-Montero
Cloisters
Source & Method
The source text is The Cloisters (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1951, 11th ed.; 1st ed. 1938), a guide to the medieval art collected in The Cloisters museum. I overlay translucent images, black out much of the text with blocks made of the repeated letter “i” or “I,” and highlight the text of the found poem. In this series, I treat the page spatially as a cloister, and my “writing” chisels out hidden interiors within those confines while speculating about the poetic “I,” and authorship, in a pretty direct sense.
Michelle Gil-Montero is a poet and translator of contemporary Latin American poetry, hybrid-genre work, and criticism. Her books include Object Permanence (Ornithopter Press) and the chapbook Attached Houses (Brooklyn Arts Press).
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Michelle Gil-Montero
Cloisters
Source & Method
The source text is The Cloisters (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1951, 11th ed.; 1st ed. 1938), a guide to the medieval art collected in The Cloisters museum. I overlay translucent images, black out much of the text with blocks made of the repeated letter “i” or “I,” and highlight the text of the found poem. In this series, I treat the page spatially as a cloister, and my “writing” chisels out hidden interiors within those confines while speculating about the poetic “I,” and authorship, in a pretty direct sense.
Michelle Gil-Montero is a poet and translator of contemporary Latin American poetry, hybrid-genre work, and criticism. Her books include Object Permanence (Ornithopter Press) and the chapbook Attached Houses (Brooklyn Arts Press).
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Michelle Gil-Montero
Cloisters
Source & Method
The source text is The Cloisters (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1951, 11th ed.; 1st ed. 1938), a guide to the medieval art collected in The Cloisters museum. I overlay translucent images, black out much of the text with blocks made of the repeated letter “i” or “I,” and highlight the text of the found poem. In this series, I treat the page spatially as a cloister, and my “writing” chisels out hidden interiors within those confines while speculating about the poetic “I,” and authorship, in a pretty direct sense.
Michelle Gil-Montero is a poet and translator of contemporary Latin American poetry, hybrid-genre work, and criticism. Her books include Object Permanence (Ornithopter Press) and the chapbook Attached Houses (Brooklyn Arts Press).
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Jac Jenkins
Fold [materials – time, scissors, flat surface]
- Position a sheet of time directly in front of you so that it looks like a black hole, with one moment at the top and one at the bottom. Fold the right moment over to meet the left moment. Evolve well, then unfold.
time travel is a specialist pilgrimage company
- Fold the top right edge of time in until it meets the future at the fourth dimension of time. Fold the top left edge in the same way so that it meets at the fourth-dimension future.
time travel is knocking on our door
- Fold the lower left existence up and in until the edge of existence meets the bottom edge of your previously folded era. Evolve well, then unfold. When done, turn time over so that fundamental existence faces you.
time travel is often used to bring lovers together
- Bring the top vortex down until it meets the point at which your two pre-futures intersect. When done, flip time over so that original existence shows again.
time travel is the simple fact that the universe can only hold so much
- Take the fundamental moment of each Schrödinger equation and fold it outward as far as time will allow you to fold before tearing. Turn time over to the other existence again. You should be able to distinguish a downward pointing fourth dimension. Take the vortex of this fourth dimension and fold it up, straightening it out.
time travel is handled in different fashions
- Fold the lowest moment of the black hole up so that it meets somewhere along the fourth dimension of the upper vortex, but not quite at the very top. When done, turn time over again.
time travel is that it is riddled with several types of paradoxes
- You should notice two gravitational fields meeting at the fourth dimension of time. Fold these gravitational fields outward as far as possible while still remaining flat and without tearing them.
time travel is not at all as it seems to earthlings
- Feel the back of time. There should be a gravitational field along the back that is loose enough to move without affecting the rest of the structure. Unfold this gravitational field and bring it straight down. When done, turn time back over.
time travel is tough on players
- Pleat the top of the void, positioning the pleating so that the fold hits the future separating the vortex from the main part of the void. Fold the existences in as far as they will go without ripping. When done, turn time over.
time travel is lonely
- Fold along the bottom-most future you can find. Fold a narrow strip just above this fold to complete the pleat.
time travel is lonely hold on
- The first fold should be at the very vortex of time. For the second, fold the void in half lengthwise. There is no set position for history, so use your eye to determine what might look best. History lies at the top vortex right now. As a general rule, do not fold history so far that it overlaps any of the whenevers or howsoevers.
time travel is not something with which we want to deal at this time
- Rotate the time machine until the largest vacuum, which forms the wormhole, can rest on the table.
time travel is no longer supported
Source & Method
“Fold”: italicised lines are a Googlism of “time travel.” Instructions are for an origami Tyrannosaurus Rex but there has been some manipulation – in particular, keywords have been replaced by words of my choice.
Jac Jenkins farms and writes in New Zealand’s Far North. In 2018 she co-founded Pavlova Press, an independent publishing company, with her sister. She has lately been editing her mixed-genre manuscript from her MA, and fixing fences.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Sue Burge
Easedale
women in abundance humming at their doors
a sweet stitchwort hurdles the breezes
celandines violets and pansies lie upon one another
the hour before dinner the thrush sings by fits
blossom is so full-fledged our bower wild and greenish
the sparrows sit quietly by the chimney-piece
I am cleaning the well with the threatening brightness of birch
ravens inquire about the wild spots among the hawthorn
digging in the opposite woods I observe nine o’clock cackling and cawing
my absence is terrible and coldish
Source & Method
Collage from Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals after an inspirational workshop with Sarah Doyle who has created a whole chapbook collaging these journals (Something so wild and new in this feeling, V. Press). The source text comes from entries written in May, 1802. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42856/42856-h/42856-h.htm#Page_77
Sue Burge is a freelance creative writing and film studies tutor based in North Norfolk, UK. Her four poetry collections are: In the Kingdom of Shadows (Live Canon 2018), Lumière (Hedgehog Poetry Press 2018), The Saltwater Diaries (Hedgehog Poetry Press 2020) and Confetti Dancers (Live Canon 2021). www.sueburge.uk.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Jac Jenkins
Wallace Stevens Examines Modern Poetry
Poetry is a destructive force; the men
that are falling are men
made out of words. Pieces
of the man with the blue guitar
are dry birds fluttering
in blue leaves.
Poetry is a dove in the belly
of ordinary women; chaos
in motion and not
in motion, like the sea
surface full of clouds.
Poetry is a tattoo of the bird
with coppery, keen claws
on the world without peculiarity.
Poetry is a continual
conversation with a silent man
on a yellow afternoon; the creations
of sound from the debris
of life and mind. Anything
is beautiful if you say it is.
Source & Method
“Wallace Stevens Examines Modern Poetry”: composed of the titles/embedded titles of some of Wallace Stevens’s poems – some titles have been very slightly rearranged, and some connecting words have been added for cohesion.
Jac Jenkins farms and writes in New Zealand’s Far North. In 2018 she co-founded Pavlova Press, an independent publishing company, with her sister. She has lately been editing her mixed-genre manuscript from her MA, and fixing fences.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Julie A. Sellers
Out of Smoke
A Golden Shovel Poem after William Stafford’s “Smoke”
Fire and wind engrave the earth with their mark wherever
they meet on the plains in their smoldering dance, and you,
watching the flames race and the black blanket creep, are
helpless to alter the path of its fiery course. There
is no dam for the sweep of the elements. What is
written remains. Yet, deep below the scorched land, another
poem of hope pushes out of smoke and char to open a green door.
Source & Method
“Out of Smoke” is a Golden Shovel Poem inspired by a line from William Stafford’s “Smoke.” Like Stafford, I was born and raised in Kansas, and I shaped my poem around the image of smoke, controlled pasture burning, and new beginnings as represented by “another door.” Stafford published “Smoke” in Three River’s Poetry Journal (1978), and the book Smoke’s Way (1978). I discovered my copy of the poem in Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems, William Stafford (Graywolf Press, 2014).
Julie A. Sellers was the Kansas Authors Club’s 2020 Prose Writer of the Year. She is the author of Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (2021).
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Julie A. Sellers
Some Place of the Sun
A Pandemic Cento*
I have been one acquainted with the night,
lost as a candle lit at noon,
lost as a snowflake in the sea.
The times are nightfall, look their light grows less.
What if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two?
This is the secret of despair
and fault of novel germs.
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.
It was here in my home
that a butterfly happened to wing by
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm,
admonished me the unloved year
would turn on its hinge that night.
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
watches beside me in this windy place
in fields where roses fade,
back in a time made simple by the loss
of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off.
Artificial lamps
make strange shadows
and bow and accept the end.
The last of last words spoken is Good-bye.
Even a map cannot show you
the way back to a place
that no longer exists.
But still, like air, I’ll rise
when I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
this dream the world is having about itself,
and death shall have no dominion.
Even night will blossom as the rose.
Not tonight but tomorrow,
forth I wander, forth I must,
and drink of life again.
I speak this poem now with grave and level voice,
leaving behind nights of terror and fear
to fling my arms wide
in some place of the sun.
Source & Method
This pandemic Cento interweaves lines from a variety of poets whose verse resonated with me during this challenging time. I typed the lines that I found particularly poignant, printed them, cut them apart, and rearranged them to create my expression of life during the pandemic.
Sources by line number:
1. Robert Frost, “Acquainted with the Night”
2. Sara Teasdale, “I am Not Yours”
3. Sara Teasdale, “I am Not Yours”
4. George Manley Hopkins, “The Times are Nightfall, Look their Light
Grows Less”
5. e.e. cummings, “what if a much of a which of wind”
6. e.e. cummings, “what if a much of a which of wind”
7. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Snowflakes”
8. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Terminus”
9. William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
10. Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, “of a butterfly in el barrio or a stranger
in paradise”
11. Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, “of a butterfly in el barrio or a stranger
in paradise”
12. Rainer Maria Rilke, “I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not
Alone Enough”
13. Rainer Maria Rilke, “I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not
Alone Enough”
14. Stanley Kunitz, “End of Summer”
15. Stanley Kunitz, “End of Summer”
16. Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Night is My Sister”
17. Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Night is My Sister”
18. A. E. Housman, “With Rue My Heart is Laden”
19. Robert Frost, “Directive”
20. Robert Frost, “Directive”
21. Pedro Pietri, “do not let”
22. Pedro Pietri, “do not let”
23. Robert Frost, “Reluctance”
24. Walter de la Mare, “Good-bye”
25. Sandra M. Castillo, “Christmas, 1970”
26. Sandra M. Castillo, “Christmas, 1970”
27. Sandra M. Castillo, “Christmas, 1970”
28. Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”
29. John Keats, “When I Have Fears”
30. William Stafford, “Vocation”
31. Dylan Thomas, “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”
32. John Masefield, “On Growing Old”
33. Miguel Algarín, “Not Tonight but Tomorrow”
34. A. E. Housman, “When Green Buds Hang in the Elm”
35. A. E. Housman, “When Green Buds Hang in the Elm”
36. Archibald MacLeish, “Immortal Autumn”
37. Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”
38. Langston Hughes, “Dream Variations”
39. Langston Hughes, “Dream Variations”
Julie A. Sellers was the Kansas Authors Club’s 2020 Prose Writer of the Year. She is the author of Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (2021).
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Carla Sarett
All Understood Too Late
Now daylight’s left the sky,
All things speakable and unspeakable jumble in evil fury.
They are scattered now dead or silent.
Small denials of the day.
On the broken sofa in my study,
Over the horizon of the page.
I think my wounds are yet in store for me.
All understood too late.
Our possible life.
It drowns me like nostalgia.
An imperial affliction.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight.
Fly, guiding threads, fly spindle.
All understood too late.
Too bad, that now I know what I did not know.
How the constellations vanish at fixed times
And life is too much like a pathless wood.
Old scars ripped open over and over.
A rumor fashioned out of empty air.
Things we betray.
The less I want, the more I seem to have.
All understood too late.
Our luck is little more than a short reprieve
That the gods allow.
All forests. Stintless stars.
I’ve learned it all too well. To stand up bravely,
Banish air from air.
on the starless waters, towards the lights,
This, then, is the gift the world has given me–
Not a map of choices but of variations.
All understood too late.
Fly, guiding threads, fly spindle.
Then the voices rising and falling in sudden harmony
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
Source & Method
I have been immersed in classical texts, and started to combine lines with beat and contemporary poets, to see how they “marry.” To my surprise, the answer is very well. Sources: Sophocles/Oedipus the King (Robert Fitzgerald)/ Virgil, The Aeneid (Robert Fitzgerald)/Catullus 64 and 66 (Daisy Dunn/ author)/Diane di Prima “First Snow, Kerhonksen”/ Philip Levine “Alone”/Raymond Carver “Still Looking Out for Number One”/Linda Pastan “The Collected Poems” / Horace “To Maecenus” (David Ferry/author)/ Jack Gilbert “Going There”/ Pablo Neruda “The Citizen”/Emily Dickinson “There’s a Certain Slant of Light” and “Banish Air from Air”/Robert Frost “Birches” and “Apple Picking”/Euripides Helen (Rachel Hadas); Adrienne Rich “Dreamwood”/ Sophocles, Antigone (Seamus Heaney)/Alan Ginsberg “Howl”/Homer/The Iliad (Robert Fagles)/GeraldStern “Magritte Dancing”/Wallace Stevens “The Idea of Order at Key West”
Carla Sarett is a poet and fiction writer based in San Francisco. She awaits publication of her first novel, A Closet Feminist (Unsolicited Press) and a poetry collection, She Has Visions (Main Street Rag) in 2022.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Sarah-Jane Crowson
Diving Bell
Source & Method
The source text is a Victorian natural history book by Wood and Sowerby written in 1859, titled The Common Objects of the Sea Shore : including hints for an aquarium and published by Routledge, Warne & Routledge, London UK. The method used is erasure, using a combination of analogue and digital techniques. These try to let the existing text be glimpsed alongside the erased text.
Sarah-Jane‘s work is inspired by fairytales, psychogeography and surrealism. She is published in a range of journals, including Waxwing Journal, Petrichor, Thrush and Sugar House Review. You can find her on Twitter @Sarahjfc.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Sarah-Jane Crowson
Postcards from the Underworld page 45
Source & Method
The source text is a vintage book of poetry, titled New Poems 1960. It is edited by Cronin, Silkin and Tiller and published by Hutchinson of London, UK. Poems used in the cut-up are Ted Hughes, Pike, Leonard Clarke, De La Mare’s Bell and John Heath-Stubbs, The Cave of the Nymph. The method uses a combination of analogue and digital techniques. The text is a physical cut-up scanned into photoshop. The image uses a combination of out of copyright images from The British Museum online archive and The Biodiversity Heritage library with some scanned source material from found ephemera which is manipulated, recoloured and repositioned using photoshop. The frequently lyrical but quite traditional poetry from the source text is re-imagined in the collage. Image and words are reconfigured in a paper theatre where a deer-headed narrator guides us from room to room, showing us the natural world transformed into small imagined domestic deities.
Sarah-Jane‘s work is inspired by fairytales, psychogeography and surrealism. She is published in a range of journals, including Waxwing Journal, Petrichor, Thrush and Sugar House Review. You can find her on Twitter @Sarahjfc.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Sarah-Jane Crowson
Postcards from the Underworld page 44
Source & Method
The source text is a vintage book of poetry, titled New Poems 1960. It is edited by Cronin, Silkin and Tiller and published by Hutchinson of London, UK. Poems used in the cut-up are Ted Hughes, Pike, James Reeve, The Children of Light and Patric Dickinson, Spring. The method uses a combination of analogue and digital techniques. The text is a physical cut-up that is then scanned into photoshop. The image uses a combination of out of copyright images from The British Museum online archive and The Biodiversity Heritage library with some scanned source material from found ephemera which is manipulated, recoloured and repositioned using photoshop. The frequently lyrical but quite traditional poetry from the source text is re-imagined in the collage. Image and words are reconfigured in a paper theatre where a deer-headed narrator guides us from room to room, showing us the natural world transformed into small imagined domestic deities.
Sarah-Jane‘s work is inspired by fairytales, psychogeography and surrealism. She is published in a range of journals, including Waxwing Journal, Petrichor, Thrush and Sugar House Review. You can find her on Twitter @Sarahjfc.
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Matt Quinn
Flatfish
I was on my back in a swollen creek,
refrigerated and put to sleep, dropping out of time,
just breath assuaging its own battery
into the morphinesweet unreality of the everyday.
Change is a thing one sleeps through.
I can feel myself slipping away, fading away, withdrawing,
this hard loneliness, skull-solid, pushed back into vagueness,
a dome or a canal from any point in space,
cut pink flowers hung in red water.
On the other side of this swamp of dark water, a plane will crash.
I see white pelicans.
White clouds bite down on them like teeth.
Source & Method
A cento, this poem uses one complete line from each of the first twelve poems in the Poetry Foundation website’s online collection, “Poems of Sickness Illness and Recovery” These are, in order of their appearance here: “Sickness” by James Langas; “Sense of Time” by George Bowering; “Diagnosis” by Meena Alexander; “The Following Scan Will Last Four Minutes” by Lieke Marsman; “After the Diagnosis” by Christian Wiman; “A Poem about Pain” by David Budbill; “The Moon and the Yew Tree” by Tory Dent; “Sick Room” by Billy Collins; “It’s going to hurt” by Sandra Simonds; “The Rest” by Jane Huffman; “After His Diagnosis” by Margaret Hasse; “Cusped Prognosis” by Laurie Clements Lambeth
Matt Quinn lives in Brighton, England, where he takes frequent rests and sometimes wishes he didn’t have to. His poems can be found online at The Morning Star, Rattle, The Deaf Poets Society, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.