GAS Featured Poet: Jane Downing

 Australian poet Jane Downing’s work has appeared in journals at home and internationally, including Meanjin, Cordite, Canberra Times, Rabbit, Not Very Quiet, Social Alternatives, Otoliths, Live Encounters, e.ratio, Last Stanza, and Best Australian Poems. Her collection, ‘When Figs Fly’ (Close-Up Books) was published in 2019. She can be found at janedowning.wordpress.com

Dashed Hopes

The blowflies are talking to me

from the window sill

sounding like a radio 

                        badly tuned –

words fuzzed beyond meaning

resorting to a morse code

of short headlong chops

against the glass pane

                       the long dashes

my answering cracks

against the brick wall of the day

A Song That Never Ends

When you are Bambi’s mother

you know your death

is necessary

for the plot

which does not stop

you planning your revenge

             turning your doe eyes

on the audience

for a subliminal second

brimming with remember me

to every little girl

who

growing up to be a mother

may not yet acquiesce

to the tropes of the narrative arc

 

 

Su Zi's Review of DOMESTIC BODIES by Jennifer Ruth Jackson

    The lineage of modern American poetry is now a century of voices, some of which have been levitated into the canon—the voices we find most anthologized, most taught to students. As scholars find perhaps marginalized voices from history and that work is seen anew, out of its time of creation, certain aspects of the canon gain in wider recognition. Our cultural sense of discovering marginalized voices and amplifying that work is familiar enough when the artist is dead; however, the living artist is a conundrum in the tempestuous weather of social expectation. Taboo topics, although the pillars of the American canon at a historically safe remove, challenge the humanity of us all. 

    What is taboo is a culture can vary, but globalization has homogenized differences into what is sometimes cute exploration—a new type of food, public pajamas; yet certain taboos seem entrenched in westernization and often invert previously revered social positions into ones of stigma; from wise elder to covid disposable. We do not discuss the covid disposable, and what history makes of this will not glow up the humanity of our current culture. We do not discuss the covid disposable even at cultural events, which exclude even as they publish photos of the very throngs that are the core of jeopardy. The covid disposable are the disabled and the not-yet-disabled, the most vulnerable among us, and their American voices ought not to be shunned now, as they too sing our canon.

    Among those whom we now teach as our literary giants was Wallace Stevens, who has not been as readily cited as being as influential as other modernist poets; yet this influence is readily perceivable in the recent publication of Jennifer Ruth Jackson’s Domestic Bodies (Querencia 2023).  Stevens himself did not bother with literary throngs and was recognized after years of work. Jackson’s acknowledgments page too shows years of work, with individual poems finding publication some ten years before collected publication. Such career trajectories are common enough in poetry, as in the arts overall; however, Jackson’s work resonates with aspects of Stevens’ work that are distinct. This resonance can be seen in the poems “Absentee Father” and “Those Who Inherit”, which begin, respectively, with  “Pause, cut the applause off mid-cheer/And screams mod-screech like a bird of prey” (46) and “Come, hungry hippos, another of your ranks has died”(52) that has a metrical echo of Steven’s widely anthologized poem “Emperor of Ice Cream”.  Jackson’s meter throughout this work has a musicality, a tendency towards line emphasis of the quadratic familiar in our culture.

    Jackson employs the Objects of Americana, a path now traditional in modern poetry, and recognizable as American highways, family dinners, bathtubs. In this use of the prosaic, Jackson often allows the metaphor to become symbolic, the poetic delight of a tightly constructed collage, a moment of being privy to the internal experience of living the poem. Jackson is also overtly disabled in this text, and the juxtaposition of that taboo within the framework of an American life will certainly challenge any conditioned thinking. In the arc of the work, Jackson introduces us to disability both in sensual hints—as in “You On The Palate” begins with “Let me taste you again and discover/ (with this chemo mouth) what flavor” (36)—and the medical nightmare of disability “I’d Rather Be Dead Than In Your Shoes” (26). Furthermore, Jackson’s text centers an identity poem “The Word Is ‘Disabled’”, that begins with “Yes, I am that cripple with calloused/knees and suede-soft soles” (56).  The fifth stanza refines this phrase to ‘I am that wheelchair, no name or gender/when you talk about the space I take.”  While the identity becomes one of other to object, Jackson’s point is made through the subtleties of alliteration, rhyme, and other auditory repetitions.

    This is a densely poetic work, well-constructed and well-worthy of inclusion in any scholarly consideration of Steven’s influence—intentional or not. In our era of challenges both to our curriculum and our personal health, Jackson’s work offers a well-crafted consideration from a point of view that has been held taboo for far too long.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.

GAS Featured Poet: Jim Murdoch

 

Jim Murdoch lives down the road from where they filmed

Gregory’s Girl which, for some odd reason, pleases him no end. 

He’s been writing poetry for fifty years for which he blames Larkin. 

Who probably blamed Hardy. Jim has published two books 

of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.

 

 

The Ship of Theseus

 

 

There are many kinds of memories,

wallows, flickers, triggers and icons,

but the most vital of all are anchors,

tethers, ties that bind us to our past.

 

Some refer to them as proofs which,

is probably a more appropriate term

as proofs require outside verification

and Reason cannot be bought off.

 

The opposite of remembering should

be dismembering I would've thought

since remembering is reassembling.

Now if only it were as simple as that.

 

At what point do you stop being you?

I'm not the child I once was but insist

I'm the same person despite the fact

we don't have one atom in common.

 

What was definite is now indefinite.

I don't remember the bench we sat on

but as one bench is much like another

does it really matter which bench?

 

Memories, like every part of a human,

are short-lived and in a constant state

of flux but there is a limit and in time

even anchors get displaced by beliefs.

 

Beliefs supplant memories with ease.

Like stem cells they become whatever

they're needed to be and who can tell?

I believe we sat on a bench you and I.

 

I believe. I believe.

 

 

 

The Week of Indescribable Things

 

(for Carrie)

 

There are many things people describe as

indescribable that are eminently describable.

 

Vomit, diarrhoea, acrid piss: all are

easily describable. We just don’t want to.

 

What I want to describe,

what should be easy to describe,

 

is the pleasure water provided me at the time,

cold water running over my hands.

 

My hands are not sore but

hands know how to read the pain.

 

Afterthought

 

There were other indescribable things this week,

the way my wife cared for, endured with and simply

endured me. No words. No words. No words.

 

As she sat with me as I cried as I read

the first part of the poem to her in the dark.

No words. No words. No words.

 

 

Bishop, Bukowski and Me

 

 

The reason my poetry disappointed me

for so long

is it wasn’t great.

I thought poetry should be great.

Not necessarily great thoughts

     (not everything’s that profound)

but do great things with words.

 

Took me sixty years to realise

all poetry needs to be is poetry.

 

Occasionally,

like a Philly cheesesteak or a meat sub,

it’ll be great

     (more by fluke than design

          (some happy confluence of events))

and that’s great, really great

but, hey, even a not-so-great Mac and cheese

fills a hole, right?

 

People imagine Bishop was a better poet

than Bukowski and, technically, yeah, maybe.

What does “better” even mean?

 

I should stop beating myself up over this.

Featured Poets/Artists: Jerome Berglund & Marjorie Pezzoli

 

Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. His first full-length collections of poetry Bathtub Poems and Funny Pages were just released by Setu and Meat For Tea press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Yavanika.

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/BerglundJerome 

BLOG: https://flowersunmedia.wixsite.com/jbphotography/blog-1/ 

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/berglundjeromehaiku/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/JeromeBerglundPhotography/

Jerome Berglund

& Marjorie Pezzoli

 

Yet Again

 

cover

 

no one was watching

black and blue

crimson streaks

 

their badges

 

águas mil

suing

for peace

 

watch repair

 

time steals air

second hand sweeps

hourglass breaks

(Marjorie Pezzoli is a silk painter for 25+ years, visual artist, storyteller, and poet. Her writings deal with grief, hope, cosmic wonders, and stuff that catches her eye. Her poetry has been published in numerous anthologies since 2019. Many of her writings are inspired by her photographic observations taken while walking Beau, the dog with Betty Davis eyes. Marjorie looks for words that are worth a thousand images. www.Pezzoliart.com)

 

 

John Wayne’s Brain

 

You thought John Wayne was gone,

But a piece still remains.

On a shelf in some closet,

They’re keeping his brain.

 

It looks like a scrotum,

All wrinkled and pink.

Yet that’s where it started,

Those nightmares, just think!

 

He gave it quite freely,

You’d believe felt flattered.

Did he know they’d filet it,

‘Twould appear should be battered?

 

Past owner felt apart,

From all other noodles.

Which helped him immensely,

Turning them to strudel. 

 

In that mind those dozens,

Made for oils on canvas.

Value mere extrinsic,

To glut playful madness.

 

John Wayne was steadfast,

His friends never thought twice.

Wife trusted the smell,

Was because of dead mice.

 

Hope that tissue’s well-guarded,

Under strictest lock and key.

That no bumbling Igor,

Might find and set free.

 

 

Baboon’s Blood

 

 

spicy

noodle bowl

steaming

botched

home haircut

 

 

did me

like

artichoke

hope dip

was satisfactory

 

 

rich man

eyes tray

on carpet

by hotel room

once was hungrier

 

 

people

who have so much

so angry!

…bindle’s lightweight

easy to carry

 

 

playing

self at chess

no thrill

or mystery but

can always win