Andy Fogle

Five Found John Brown Poems

Title & Etymology Mix

calling forth
a beginning

calling forth
a cross

calling forth
the vulgar

calling forth this terror
this secret this quaking

calling forth
this walking towards

calling forth
Black abolition

calling forth this new
dominion

calling forth this
outbreak of secret god

Source & Method

I’ve been interested in abolitionist John Brown for a long time and recently received a grant from Saratoga Arts up in upstate New York to visit his farm, read, talk to people, and write poems. This is the beginning of one vein of that project and is based on a single old newspaper article from the Baltimore American, which collected the headlines of various newspapers reporting on Brown’s seizure of Harpers Ferry. It’s fascinating how the media framed that experience (and it implies a bunch for the public too: how they would “receive” the experience, but also maybe what they were ready for, how newspapers figured readers would best take it). As the titles within label it, I begin with the common nouns from those headlines, adding just a touch of light, simple language (usually just “It was…”). From there I work in the etymologies of those common nouns, then a mix of phrases from just the titles, a mix of phrases from just the etymologies, and then a mix from both.

From “HOW WOULD IT FIGURE IN HISTORY” Baltimore American, November 14, 1859, front page. A special thanks to Heather Thomas and Erin Sidwell at The Library of Congress for locating the newspaper article for me.

Andy Fogle is the author of Across from Now and seven chapbooks of poetry, including the forthcoming Arc & Seam: Poems of Farouk Goweda, co-translated with Walid Abdallah. Music’s at fogle.bandcamp.com.

Issue 25

Andy Fogle

Five Found John Brown Poems

Etymology Mix

calling out
accursed Virginia

calling out
war by some

calling out
this god that causes terror

calling out
the straw forager

calling out
the timid:

to do
begin

to do
rise up

to do
be at the helm of

to do
erupt

to do
walk towards

Issue 25

Andy Fogle

Five Found John Brown Poems

This Mix

great Virginia
nipped in the bud

Black beginning
nipped in the bud

Black abolition
nipped in the bud

Black excitement
the new old scare

Issue 25

Andy Fogle

Five Found John Brown Poems

Common Noun Etymologies

a mob is a vulgar crowd
a mutiny moves to rebellion

rebellion is war by some
war is mixture, confusion

aggression is a walking towards
conflict: a striking together

business involves care, anxiety
an affair is something to do

emeute: to move
emotionally, a pack of hounds

a conspiracy agrees
a plot is a dense crowd, a secret project

treason is a handing over
excitement calls out, calls forth

a government steers,
is the helm of

a foray (straw forager)
plunders, raids, searches for food

to riot is to quarrel, debate
a riot is dissolute living

those who are scared shrink from
panic, this god that causes terror

quaking: the chatter of teeth
outbreaks burst, erupt

invasions go into
insurrections rise up

an uprising wakes,
gets out of bed

beginning? begin
crusade is a cross

Issue 25

Andy Fogle

Five Found John Brown Poems

Common Nouns as Statements

It was aggression, a riot, emeute
It was a plot, a conspiracy

It was an insurrection, mutiny
It was an invasion, war, treason

It was a crusade, an uprising, rebellion
It was a conflict

It was a provisional government
It was a mob

It was a scare, an affair, a foray
It was a quaking

It was an outbreak, a panic
It was business

It was excitement nipped in the bud
It was the beginning of sorrows

Issue 25

Barbara Sabol

After Ruin

Sometimes I hear the earth’s sunken voice,
……a throat-slit pouring silk, saying
…………this is water; this is darkness;

this is a body fitting your description. Saying
……we can never be without loss
…………too long.

The cemetery expands its borders―little milky crosses
……grow like teeth. I knew I would lose you. Why
…………do stars break the morning sky?

I’ve engraved your name
……on the palms of my hands. We are two guests
…………on an excess, fugitive cloud.

Some say we are living
……at the end of time. An afterlife
…………of parts―rubble, but not without shape;

the sunset’s patchy rust; a creek of shadows; a body
……displaced against the pull of the waters.
…………No me, no you. No beginning, no end.

Come home, come home, the five porches weep.
……Old bone home―mottled mildewed wallpaper
…………like a wet coat we couldn’t put back on;

a naked animal in search of a pelt. Some things
……are hidden from us: the film of old water in a well;
…………glaciers in a slow dissolve.

Eight weeks of deluge and gloom, but dear eager earth
……makes its impossible offer: one thousand birds in the hand,
…………well water sweet for a hundred miles, and light,

more new light. How kind time is. Messages from the dead
……arrive like calm white birds with a gift, and all
…………the sky there is fills my throat.

Source & Method

Cento, drawing from poems by Malachi Black (“Sifting in the Afternoon”); Robert Bly (“Living at the End of Time”); Rachael Boast (“Disfigurations”); Mahmoud Darwish (“To a Young Poet”); Dan Gerber (“Often I Imagine the Earth”); Robin Gow (“Sacrament 1); Chloe Honum (“Spring”); Luther Hughes (“Stay Safe”); Susan Kelly-Dewitt (“Reading St. John of the Cross”); John Koethe (“Murray Gell-Mann”); Joy Ladin (“Forgetting”); Sylvia Legris (“Gazetteer of the Back Yard”);John McCauliffe (“The Ax”); Spencer Reese “(At Thomas Merton’s Grave” and “ICU”); James Schuyler (“Scarlatti,” “Sweet Romanian Tongue”); Eleanor Wilner (“Encounters in a Local Pub”)

Barbara Sabol‘s second full-length book, Imagine a Town, was awarded the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions poetry manuscript prize. Her awards include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. She lives in Akron, OH with her husband and wonder dogs.

Issue 24

Anhvu Buchanan

Ears ( Joy Luck Club Erasure)

I bit back my tongue.
among strangers

my name

held the sun’s fire

I saw only white

ears whispered secrets

Shh! Shh!

sacrifice

and

lean away from the wind

Source & Method

Erasure: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

Anhvu Buchanan is the author of The Disordered (sunnyoutside press). He currently teaches in San Francisco and can be found online at www.anhvubuchanan.com

Issue 24

kerry rawlinson

two erasure poems, with original artwork

bird secrets

fish of life

Source & Method

Erasure poems, with original art. Found sources of text attributed below the title of the piece. “Word” erasure docs available upon request.

Decades ago, autodidact/ bloody-minded optimist kerry rawlinson gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil. Now she stalks Literature & Art’s Muses around the Okanagan Valley, still barefoot. http://kerryrawlinson.tumblr.com

Issue 24

Emmeline Solomon

Society Must be Defended

Down there where it can’t be seen, down there where it is neither seen nor monitored by anyone, it is following a deep, coherent, and premeditated trajectory.

The great, tender, and warm freemasonry of useless erudition.

We are forced to tell the truth, we are constrained, we are condemned to admit the truth or to discover it.

Power passes through the individuals it has constituted.

It is always easy, and that is precisely what I hold against it.

People with dust in their eyes and dust on their fingers

born in burning towns and ravaged fields.

We are all inevitably someone’s adversary.

And something fragile and superficial will be built on top of this web of bodies, accidents, and passions, this seething mass which is sometimes murky and sometimes bloody;

Cynical rage in all its nudity

This Mythology tells of how the victories of giants have gradually been forgotten and buried, of the twilight of gods, of how heroes were wounded or died, and of how kings fell asleep in inaccessible caves.

Those who find themselves, perhaps for a time – but probably for a long time – in darkness and silence.

There is no blood and there are no corpses.

A knife to our throats

The knife at our throats

A double outline or a twin

Two branches that grow from the same trunk

A circular knowledge which derived knowledge from knowledge

This too is hateful

Someone else begins to say “I” and “we”

This is no longer the glorious history of power; it is the history of its lower depths, its wickedness, and its betrayals.

It was not power’s ode to itself.

A stable dyssymmetry or a congruent inequality.

The bastard sons of the adventurers of the night

The present is no longer a moment of forgetfulness

Death was now something that slips in to life, perpetually gnaws at it, diminishes it and weakens it.

It is a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads that, while they might not be infinite in number, cannot necessarily be counted.

To make it proliferate, to create living matter, to build the monster.

Sources & Method

Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the College de France 1975-1976, English Translation by David Macey. Beautiful sentences arranged in order of appearance in an attempt to find a through-line.

Emmeline Solomon is an artist and educator who lives and works in Albion, Michigan. She holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, a BFA in Printmaking from the Maine College of Art.

Issue 24

Michael Brockley

A Gratitude Cento

When Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge, all the animals ate from it, too. I want to write about warm milk silent as a bee hive. Hot-buttered grits and of all the places where they might shine. I want to write about three strands of hair. About something more human than lava. The time no one laughed but me. I want to write about feeling bored and counting snowflakes stamped in silver while spelling out my new name. I could solve problems. Get the answers I want. Nothing goes down easier than when what there is to lose is everything. I want to write in a place where fireworks percuss. Loud and certain as the auctioneer’s racket. Let the conversation be bilingual. Go ahead and eat the poem. Flaunt its imperfections. Re-write the narrative on a darkening hill. We will kill or die. Or become the lion.

Source & Method

Bibliography:

When Adam Ate from the Tree of Knowledge, All the Animals Ate from It, Too, Nickole Brown
Bitter Vision, Wendy Vergoz
The New Twilight Zone: ‘Empty City,’ Jennifer Knox
Hot-Buttered Grits, Allyson Horton
After God, Jennifer Browne
Hands, Siv Cedering
The Lava on Iceland, Katy Didden
After Taking Me Home, Heather Sellers
Pandora Speaks, Karen Kovacik
Coming Home, Kendra DeColo
Project Challenge, Liz Kershner Whiteacre
Immersion, Patti White
How It Is, Alice Friman
Robinson Escapes to the Cape for Independence Day, Kathleen Rooney
After the Auction, I Bid You Goodbye, Aimee Nezhukumatathil
The Contract Says We’d Like the Conversation to Be Bilingual, Ada Limón
Here, Kim Addonizio
Show Off, Allison Joseph
P. S. Assault, Alessandra Lynch
Creek-Song, Shari Wagner
Become the Lion, Traci Brimhall

I composed “A Gratitude Cento” to express my gratitude to the women who had influenced me as a poet. It is based on lines I selected from twenty-one poets who had instructed me in face-to-face workshops or in virtual workshops during the current pandemic. I am truly grateful for the help each instructor gave me.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have recently appeared in The Thieving Magpie, Last Stanza, and The Twin Bill. Poems are forthcoming in Flying Island, the Indianapolis Anthology, and the Exeter Hometown Anthology.

Issue 24

Jacsun Shah

To-Do List

Tap lightly, and everywhere

beneath an awning tinkling with raindrops

Kiss the back of a slender petiole

Whisper sea-secrets into a shell

Admit what pales and what thaws

Dance until the sweat soaks your hair

Search out a new queen

Scramble them and think––

the words for that one thing without an end

Protect it, the light on the wall

Scrub the heavy storm air

Drop fears and shame

Scatter them like ashes out the window––

fibs and edits that snatch identity

Taste the motion, even as you walk too fast

Cage the lion who prowls in your mouth

Close upon the words, then a rose, then nothing

Source & Method

Cento. Lines, in order of appearance, from: Laura Romeyn, Grace Shuyi Liew, Yu-Han Chao, Charles Harper Webb, Kelly Weber, Arielle Hebert, Amelia Martens, Tony Mancus, Thomas Hummel, Lisa Summe, C. J. Scruton, Laura Gamache, Heidi Seaborn, Natasha Schapova, Rusty Morrison, L. A. Johnson, Donald Revell

Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah: A.B. & M.A. English; M.F.A., PH.D. English literature, creative writing–poetry. Published: various journals/anthologies; chapbook; full-length book. Winner––Literal Latté’s Food Verse contest 2018.

Issue 24

April Garcia

John

Source & Method

April Garcia has appeared in multiple anthologies published by both the Laurel Crown Foundation of San Antonio, Texas and Southern New Hampshire University, and in Northwest Vista College’s Spring 2009 literary journal The Lantana Review.

Issue 24

Matthew Schultz

A Strange Voyage

The moon peeks between impenetrable clouds.
Steely seas, cold blue, roar against majestic crags
that tower over our rickety vessel. We do our best,
hours before dawn, to catch the lights below:
twinkling fish that promise another dream.

The blinding sun, an island on the horizon,
disappears the stars into morning. Upon
the swaying deck, children ask about something
that stirs beneath, brooding a doleful song
about unkind eyes––rapiers of silver.

A still evening, we drift past a foreboding
town: floating, deserted: a place of bad omens.
Something cries below, the boat pushes on.
Storm clouds some way off, an elder awakes
from a vision but refuses to speak of it.

The winds begin to howl; mauve hills
on the horizon. Restless, the starlit ocean
for as far as the eye can see teems with dead fish
adrift on the blue. Our future is uncertain.
The sacred, never-ending sea begins to surge.

Source & Method

Twitter Bot: @str_voyage // compiled and collated bot messages into a coherent narrative poem.

Matthew Schultz teaches Irish Studies and creative writing at Vassar College. He is the author of two novels––On Coventry (2015) and We, The Wanted (2021). His most recent poems appear in Thrush and Eunoia Review.

Issue 24

C.B. Auder

United States of Millennia

Source & Method

Collage from junk mail and bridal-industry magazines. The busyness of the image speaks to the way young people must navigate their hopes and identities around political schisms and a constant barrage of corporate advertising.

Despite all the bright and shiny distractions, C.B. Auder sometimes creates artwork, stories, and poetry. They edit the online journal Claw & Blossom.

Issue 24

Shloka Shankar

seep (v.)

What if

all the fun

seeped

out of man?

It would

confirm everything

I know

to be true.

Source & Method

An erasure digitally culled out from p. 105 of A Longer Fall by Charlaine Harris.

Shloka Shankar is a poet and visual artist from Bangalore, India. A Best of the Net nominee and award-winning haiku poet, Shloka is the Founding Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press.

Issue 24

Lauren Paredes

weather report no. 1

Source & Method

Source: The Boys’ Book of Airships and Other Aerial Craft;
Method: My nightly ritual

Lauren Paredes is a storyteller across mediums with a soft spot for the unusual.

Issue 24

H. C. Phillips

I am born in this

I am born in this month
to someone else’s suns
clouds drifting, like mountains moving, without seeming
dug from the white sand ocean dream
waves and waves and waves.

What have I come for
Footprints dug deep into the beach, left there
and cracking into halves. Weightless bodies
printing my grandfather’s wilderness
stolen from bodies and bodies this
bobbing softly in the water,
rock me back to myself

The me is from shoulders down for air
echoing from the cavern behind
with a long tear at the top that I know I should have stitched,
I labor to bring forward a virgin breath

I come to the same place
my pulse beating strong and steady
I will be here longer
Born: as act against, into.

Source & Method

A cento with lines from these poems, which were published in places in which my own work has also been published (reflecting the poem’s theme). The final line is a self-citation, entering my own voice into the literary sphere.

“Birthright” by Fran Bourassa. Wordplay at Work, RCLAS’ e-zine, Issue 66 (online)
“Emoji of a Crystal Ball” by Halle Gulbrandsen. Lines+Stars, Spring/Summer 2019 (online)
“Looking the Other Way” by M. J. Iuppa. Lines+Stars, Summer/Fall 2016 (online)
“Cancun” by Heather Louise Walmsley. emerge 16, The Writer’s Studio Anthology, SFU
“Nearby is the Country” by Lois Roma-Deeley. Lines+Stars, Summer/Fall 2016 (online)
“Landscape Fabric” by Cameron Morse. Lines+Stars, Spring/Summer 2019 (online)
“The Fall” by Alyssa Moore. Columbia Journal, Issue 57
“Sepia” by Carole Harmon. emerge 16, The Writer’s Studio Anthology, SFU
Excerpts from “Disfigured Hours” by Brian Batchelor. Columbia Journal, Issue 57
“Dermo Sparkle” by Dia Felix. Columbia Journal, Issue 57
“Dialogues” by Adriane Giberson. emerge 16, The Writer’s Studio Anthology, SFU
“My Chair” by Lawrence Bridges. The Write Launch, October 2020 (online)
“On Irish Accents” by Shelby McBane. The Write Launch, July 2019 (online)
“Hello Dear Visitor” by Elizabeth Novotny. The Write Launch, October 2020 (online)
“Familiar Cycles” by Cynthia Megill. The Write Launch, October 2020 (online)
“life after death” by Barbara Carter. Wordplay at Work, RCLAS’ e-zine, Issue 76 (online)
“The Rock’s Lament” by Chanel Brenner. Lines+Stars, Summer/Fall 2016 (online)
“Rebellion in the Night” by H. C. Phillips. Wordplay at Work, RCLAS’ e-zine, Issue 76 (online)

H. C. Phillips currently writes and studies neuroscience. Past forays include studying physics and an upbringing in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. For now, nestled in the mountains of Port Moody, Canada.

Issue 24