GAS Featured Poet: Michael Ceraolo

 

Michael Ceraolo is a 64-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) and has two more full-length books, Euclid Creek Book Two, and Lawyers, Guns, and Money, in the publication pipeline.

Letter to an Insurance Broker

Man walks up to Postal Clerk to mail a certified letter a few days before Christmas.

Postal Clerk:  Do you need stamps, or anything else?

Man:  Not today, thanks.

Postal Clerk:  Is anything in here liquid, perishable, hazardous, etc.?

Man:  The letter could be harmful to someone's ego.

Postal Clerk:  Thanks.  I needed a good laugh at this time of year.

                           

                                  THE END

The History Game Show (Episode 3)

And tonight's show is

                                   FEAR FACTOR

                                                             with host Russell Alger

                                                             and co-host Charles Eagan

Tonight's challenge:

                                 Will the soldiers in Cuba

                                 eat the beef procured for them

                                 from American companies?

                                (disparagingly referred to as "embalmed beef")

(Stock footage of soldiers eating.)

Thousands of soldiers have accepted the challenge, and their prize for doing so:  far more will die from food poisoning and disease exacerbated by food poisoning, than will die in combat.

                                       THE END

GAS Featured Poet: James Cochran

"I am a proudly Appalachian writer, transplanted from the soil of Southeastern Ohio to the hilly streets of Charleston, West Virginia. I embrace the practice of mindfulness through writing and enjoy listening to the neighbor’s wind chimes. I believe in the power of writing to access and understand our shared experience in a way that can heal and empower all of us."

February 

Awaken to wind chimes and crow song

to follow highway of dazed February

 

sunshine, cut-banks piled with shattered

ice formations like ruined chandeliers.

 

The stubborn COVID winter asked us all,

“How much more can you take?”

 

We answered with chemo and blood

tests, then small vanilla milkshakes

 

and filthy piles of snow in the grocery

store parking lot where sparkling streams

 

of meltwater run the gutter

and disappear into storm drains.

 

How can anguish and nothingness

and hope live together in the small

space of the heart?

 

It was a thing that had to be done…

it was the thing that could be done.

Eavesdropper

 

I.

 

by day I do my work as interpreter (interprete)

remotely, at home, by telephone (teléfono).

I parrot the words of otros, feeling them

flow through me like electricidad through

conduit (conducto). For the minutes or hours

the calls last I am merged in séance with

disembodied voces, we live our lives

together, though their problemas are

not mine, I’m only paid by the minuto.

 

II.

 

press 2 for Spanish (oprima dos para español):

911 calls, parent teacher conferences, workers comp,

ancient medicare enrollees, WIC, car insurance,

home foreclosures, tech support, but most of all,

the immigrants waiting in detention centers…

 

III.

 

Do you have any heart problems?

No, I have two bullets in my head

from an attempt on my life.

They were unable to remove them

in the other center where I was.

That doesn’t have anything to do with your heart.

Do you have heart problems or high blood pressure?

No heart problems, just these two bullets in my head.

 

IV.

 

There were a lot of cockroaches in the cell where I was.

At first I would kill them, but after awhile I started to talk to them.

I told them that they could crawl on my body, as long as they didn’t

go in my mouth or ears… I needed the company.

 

V.

 

At home everyone in the family has their own bed, even my wife, because I like my space.

I have a big bed, and when I’m asleep the kids will sneak in and get in bed with me.

Now I’m in here on this narrow uncomfortable bunk and all I can think about is

how I wish I could have my kids in bed with me. I miss them so bad it hurts.

 

 

VI.

 

Sometimes, I’m just sitting there, and I feel like I have powers…superpowers,

like one of those Power Rangers, like I can just point my hand at the wall

and make a hole in it. But then I reach out my cane and touch the wall

and there’s no hole there. I don’t tell anybody about this because I know

they would just tell me I’m crazy.

 

VII.

 

The workday ends with a dial tone, no more voices in my head.

Bullets, cockroaches, lonely bunks, and superpowers evaporate,

and I head out to the YMCA to exercise and exorcise my pain

and the pain of others, still not knowing what number to press

for freedom, safety, healing, or a second chance.

GAS Featured Poet: Victor Clevenger

 Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing.  He is the author of several collections of poetry including Scratching to Get By (Between Shadows Press, 2021).  Together with American poet John Dorsey, they run River Dog. He can be reached at: crownofcrows@yahoo.com

3 Haiku


over morning coffee
discussing who heard
a mouse’s footsteps

stress relief
a child finger painting
the sun

ever-changing
the paths that lead us to
the madhouse

Contemporary Tanka


young girl at dinner belle
crawling through milkman's dreams
dainty spider legs
trudging across greasy floors
her crisp smile & our bacon 

 

Contemporary Tanka

morning begins
writing words that’ll disappear…
my lost notebook
like distant thunder taunting
small children with sidewalk chalk

GAS Featured Poet: John Dorsey

photo by John Walz

John Dorsey is the author of several collections of poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), and Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles, 2021). He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Punk Rock is Cool for the End of the World

for Ed Smith

you can’t hear screaming

over the sound of the radio

on a wooded highway

where a cat curls up

with the noise of youth

forgetting there was ever a time

& place for anger

before just diving into a mosh pit

of rivers & more rivers.

In the Morning, for Dan Wright & Carl Sandburg

maybe you would’ve liked each other

watching the fog creep in

each paw with its own shape

each body is a different city you could love

a gentle rain you could hold onto

or let slip away

through a crack

in the window

like an act

of forgiveness.

GAS Featured Poet: Kevin Zepper

Kevin Zepper teaches at Minnesota State Univerity Moorhead in Moorhead, Minnesota. His booklength publication, Moonman, was published by Jules Poetry Playhouse Press in 2018. With four published chapbooks to his credit, a fifth is currently being circulated, The Shaman Said. In addition to writing, Zepper enjoys photography and acting.

English Department

Some folks refer to our department as the “little castle on the quad.” When students graduate, they have their photos taken in front of the English department because it looks “college-y,” sharply contrasting with the other buildings, which look like businesses or banking institutions.

From my office, I hear a student tour guide say “this is where all of the English classes are held, though it’s quiet most of the time.” After a pause they add, “they say it’s haunted. A janitor accidentally hung himself from a thick rope by the stage. They’ve had ghostbusters and paranormal types come here to see if they can make contact.” The guide chuckles and the prospects laugh and move on to the next department building. This is a rare day for me, cleaning up my office. I used to hang out in this building when I was a student when the ghostly haze of cigarette smoke hung in the hallways like vapor sheets and ideas making themselves visible without the aid of device. I am less here, my old haunt, guiding students online at home, a spirit in the machine. In the midst of all these self-truths, maybe a new myth needs to be spun in this quiet keep of stories. Maybe the one about the aged English teacher, who was found dead at his desk, grading 101 composition papers. But, they might see through this one…

 

Buffalo River Bend

Fishing from a steep bank on the Buffalo River, under an old elm. The best for shade and waiting for bites on the hook. Across from me, on the other shore, a painted turtle suns itself on a grey oak log over the water. I angle for the fish, watching for the bobber to twitch, bounce, then disappear into the green. The turtle dips its head, stretching its neck and nods once under the summer sky. A dark shell, drawing all the light and warmth to quell the cold blood. My skin, cool to the touch, like a stone or sunken log. The turtle finally sees me, and we lock into a monumental stare. The moment freezes. After apprehension, curiosity, then acknowledgement. The turtle tips from the log and kerplooshes into the deep pool of the bend. A daydream follows the momentary trail of bubbles away from my shady spot. The red and white bobber, solitary, unmoving in the river water, my thoughts swimming with a painted turtle.

Road Flowers

i.

As we cross the Colorado border into New Mexico, we see our first bundle of plastic flowers and an aluminum cross. They are on our right, in an emergency stopping area for semis with failing brakes. There is a steep drop on the other side of the sandy shoulder. There is a steep drop into the canyon between the banded mesas. As we continue through the pass, the curves in the road, and the high desert, we see more memorials as bountiful as the piñon and scrub oak. For us, it’s a graveyard we can really leave, markers sprouting from every hairpin turn, sheer drop, or somber arroyo. The perma-flowers weather well here, with shades of red everywhere: red for heart, passion, anger, fire, blood. The Historical marker near Ojo Caliente has a mound of memorials, including signs of fresh cut carnations and baby’s breath. On a plaque of plastic stone, in large letters reads, “unsolved murders.” It is here where we cross the border of accidents into the realm of the intentional. 

 ii.

 The feral flowers have broken through the asphalts’ cracks at rads edge. Along the old 52 bypass, some stretches show heavy growth between failing concrete and tar patchwork. The roots of the wild easily break through the diminished crust and hard scrabble. Groups of white daisies flourish, mustard plants wave from the roadside of the ditch. Near a corn field, a pair of sunflowers sway, bright hitchhikers hoping for a life to a space filled with bright family. Mixed flowers fill the torn pockets of civilization, florid defiance! At sundown a western breeze kicks up and the flowers gently bob and wave. This is their farewell dance before a return to darkness and the bowing of heads.

GAS Featured Poet: Dee Allen

Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California U.S.A. Active on creative writing & Spoken Word since the early 1990s. Author of 7 books--Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, Skeletal Black  (all from POOR Press), Elohi Unitsi  (Conviction 2 Change Publishing) and coming in February 2022, Rusty Gallows  (Vagabond Books) and Plans (Nomadic Press) and 42 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far.

IN EXCHANGE

___________

I feel for the antediluvian forests 

Being systemically cut for

American lumber for building

Spreading more civilisation,

European biomass for burning 

As factory-made fuel, new

Means to spoil the air--

Critters of the trees, of wings and paws,

Forced to fly and crawl to new lives 

Of displacement--

Their original homes in exchange

For uncertainty--

THE PECAN TREE

_____________

Before age 12:

Put me in a high place 

And the fear of falling

Would defeat me.

At age 12:

To break from boredom

Sitting inside the house,

I walked outside,

On a whim,

To my aunt and uncle's backyard

To climb up

A pecan tree.

Limb by sturdy

Nut-bearing limb, 

My bony pre-teen self

Made like an annual cicada

Clutching the bark,

Scaling up, up, 

Up and away

To the deciduous

Tower's highest point.

As my spindly arms 

Held tightly onto the super

Steady trunk of the pecan tree,

My eyes beheld 

A whole world 

Different from ground level:

Many chimneys, rooves, metal TV antennas,

Building blocks to aerial

Suburban stretch for one mile,

Alone in an alien dimension that

Included the top of my house.

The climb up the pecan tree

Was easy.

The climb back down

Was the real

Test of courage. A matter of

Reversing my moves

Very carefully.

I no longer feared high places.

GAS Featured Poet: Lorie Greenspan

 Lorie Greenspan is publishing director at a Deerfield Beach, Florida, book publishing company. Prior to moving to Florida in 2015, she was a newspaper editor in New Jersey for more than thirty years. Her poems have been inspired by the death in April 2020 of her husband of twenty years following a long illness. She also has written a middle-grade fantasy novel that she hopes to publish next year (2022).  

Written on a warm day

How does summer feel to you? 

My summer feels like the scratchy floral fabric of a couch 

rich with the smells of all the sweat and crumbs 

of the days and weeks of childhood, 

and the musty lingering of humid walls and woolly rugs. 

 

Summer feels like an overgrown lawn of weeds, 

Queen's Lace, and dandelions, 

or the plastic strips of an outdoor lounge chair

that hug but never mold to your body 

because that would mean 

it was your chair and no one else's. 

And that couldn't be because everyone sat here. 

 

Summer feels like the open window of the bedroom after a thunderstorm 

when the droplets cling to the screen 

and the western angled sun, low on the horizon, 

shines its beams through them and the metal of the screen 

and the dewy scent of the grass become the things you measure across time . . . 

 

It is now this summer, and now this summer, 

and these things become the rusty skeletons of seasons long gone. 

 

It's funny, as you go about adult stuff in a new place, 

where there are no more plastic strips on lawn chairs 

and the couch has long been sent to the dump that you can still feel all of it, 

as if time stands still in the mind, 

as if the mind stands immobile against time 

as if time and the mind are in a race to see which gets priority – 

the lawn chair, the screen, 

the pebbles of stone in the driveway which we didn't mention, 

but are still there –   

all of them do, of course. 

 

That is the thing about growing old. 

Your mind is time 

and it won’t suffer abandonment. 

Tim Gaze Interview #2 by Michael Jacobson

 

MJ: You have a new collection out Glyphs of Uncertain Meaning, can you talk about your book and explain what it is all about?

TG: I reckon I've explained it well in the introduction to the book. From among my many hundreds of pages of glyphs, I've selected a broad range which reproduces well in black & white. They're mostly  minimal compositions, many of them less than a poem. Singly, they might not seem to have much weight, but collected together, traversing many styles and techniques, they add up to something heavier. Overall, I'm using visual rhetoric to argue about human made signs.

MJ: You started the first website dedicated to asemic writing. What is your view about how asemic writing has grown, especially on the Internet?

TG: From roughly 2000 to 2007, I was obsessed with spreading the culture of asemic writing, which included the www. A few years back, I realised that I had let go. It's marvelous to see that the seeds that I and a few other people planted have grown in several different directions.

MJ: Do you still make asemic writing or have you moved on to something else?

TG: I've stopped making full page, deliberate pieces where I stand next to a blank piece of paper before starting. Occasionally, while talking on the phone, I doodle, but these are small, rough & often don't feel finished.

Meanwhile, I was recording sound poetry for several years, culminating in the album Sounds. Since then, I've been putting together a weekly radio show called Sound Poetry etc for sound poetry and similar sounds, acting as collector and curator more than primary creator.

It's a strange time for creativity. I'm exploring and compiling things I did in the past, such as sound poetry or asemic writing, but don't currently feel much of an urge to create fresh works. In October 2020, I did over an hour of improvised sound poetry live-to-air on Copperpipe Radio, which felt really good. If I performed more sound poetry at the moment, it would sound like a less intense, less inventive version of the live-to-air performance. Gardening is a recent interest which I'm giving my attention, especially learning about edible weeds.

MJ: What was your process as far as the creation of your soundpo album Shapes?

TG: Mostly improvising in my home studio, then later choosing the best bits. As with asemic writing, I've learned that being in exactly the right mood before beginning to record my creations is the most productive way to work. If I capture 10 minutes of sounds that I've never made before, then relax and turn off the recorder, I'm satisfied. Later, with fresh ears, I decide which ones move me most strongly, and which ones contrast with each other, or are too similar to each other.

MJ: Are you interested in publishing anymore issues of Asemic magazine?

TG: Probably not. It served its purpose in helping to expand the culture around asemic writing.

MJ: You started Asemic Editions which is the brother/sister press to Post-Asemic Press. What do you think about the current diversity of publishing as far as asemic writing is concerned?

TG: I'm probably not all that much in touch with the current playing field. I'm aware that quite a few literary publications accept submissions of asemic writing. A few publishers that I am slightly familiar with are the Danish publisher Non Plus Ultra and the UK publishers who put out Steven J Fowler's books, such as zimZalla and Hesterglock. My plan with Asemic Editions was to focus on sequences of abstract or asemic work, more like abstract graphic novels than collections of single pages of asemic writing.

MJ: Does Buddhism still factor into your life? Do you meditate?

TG: "Buddhist" was the handiest word that I could find in your first interview, to give some idea of my outlook. Walking, which helps me let go of the internal verbalisations of daily life, is the nearest thing I do to a meditative practice. I'm intellectually curious about traditions such as Zen Buddhism, Chan Buddhism, Sufism, philosophical Taoism and so on. However, I'm aware that this isn't the same thing as seriously practicing any single one of these.

MJ: What would you like to do in the future?

TG: Tidy up my unpublished pages of asemic writing. I have several in styles which haven't been published yet. Tidy up my sound recording. I might get cracking on an older book project that I'd put down. Usually, my intentions for the future don't pan out as I might expect them to in an interview such as this!

Since the late '90s, Tim Gaze has been active as a poet, writer, publisher and performer. In particular, he has been very involved in the field of asemic writing, publishing Asemic Magazine and setting up the first website, www.asemic.net. His works include the graphic novel 100 Scenes, glitch poetry collection noology and sound poetry album Shapes. Recently, he completed a degree in linguistics, and hosts the radio show Sound Poetry etc. Dance music such as batida by the Principe Discos artists gets him going. The Adelaide Hills of Australia, in the traditional lands of the Peramangk people, is his home.

Michael Jacobson is a writer, artist, publisher, and independent curator from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA/Turtle Island. He is the author of Works & Interviews, the senryu poetry collection Hei Kuu, and the noise poetry album Schizo Variations. Two forthcoming books by Jacobson are Somnolent Game (2022) and id est (2023). His book publishing project for longer works of asemic writing and experimental poetry is Post-Asemic Press. Since 2008 he has curated The New Post-Literate: A Gallery of Asemic Writing.

The first interview Michael did with Tim is at Litro and can be read here.

Above are some sample pages and cover art from Glyphs of Uncertain Meaning by Tim Gaze.