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POETRY
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MOLLY KAT
SHE-HOWL I I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, Dragging limp limbs through the polluted streets at dusk, hunting down smiles with machetes and a loaded AK 47, Cherubic faced scene-sters with matted, unwashed hair, counting back to last December’s Counter-culture, Who put starry eyed eclipses on the full moon with five hits of high power blotter acid, Ate their birthday cakes with little sisters and mounted the night, saddled up their Shoddy vans or Subaru wagons and launched into poetic dystrophy, Who
sat on Gogh’s starry night, Who broke the mirror so reflections could no longer be tangible, carried inch-long segments of pink straw in their back pockets, and buried a dog tag at ground zero for the red hydrants that could never water down the fiery mechanisms of kamikaze fighter pilots, Who took off their clothes, ran naked into the night shouting “I am God” with bug-eyed black pupils and a hierarchy of acceptable collegiate behavior, Who were told in formal font not to set foot on academic territory due to inhumane habits At night owl hours with black light responsive feet and glow worms on their Tongues, Who pulled their brains out their ears and threw them into paper wastebaskets for the next generation to dissect, for roaches to prey upon, for all the garbage that Channel 12 news shovel lies over, Who throw flaming toilet paper into Halloween eve trees, egg the Pentagon, and protest picket signs from the safety of their white picket fences in suburbia slums, disingenuous to any cause, Who made entire apartment buildings smell like stale tobacco and drunken sex and never remembered their own names at day break, Who slept past noon for five years to wake once at 9 am and get plowed down by an oil Tanker, With a clean bill of health and four more months of probation till that last bite of the apple fell from Snow White’s lips, Incompatible story lines to dwarf our imaginations and expect the unintelligible,
impossible fairytales that Pampers and Who handcuffed their dreams to society’s worst nightmares and dragged demons behind pickup trucks in the dirty south, Who replaced burning crosses with nooses on a dirty south campus, strange fruit hanging on a gnarled forgotten limb, Who vomited into portapotties after bad vibrations took over Burning Man and the echo of decades’ moans littered native battlegrounds, Took
a pound of golden caps and stems back home to
and tucked their little chins into green wooden benches at Park, Surrounding themselves in spent needles and junkie juice heads, mouths watering at fresh meat and unabated hooks at the fish market, Who wandered aimlessly in broken glass alleys with bare feet and missing teeth, leaving no trail from their home in the West Coast, Who flashed neon signs at underage eyes and questioned the locomotive’s mobility, Who popped their pink chewing gum bubbles, spit out a wad of flavorless rubber, and hailed the next cab toward alphabet city, Standing on the cement steps outside the Nuyorican, feeling for Pinero’s footfalls, getting hit on by an overweight Algarin, and Celebrating Bob Holman’s birthday with the angelheadedhipster’s themselves, Garbed in fresh troll suits and dance party flats, or one sneaker and no shoe laces, or big black boots that zip to thigh high heaven, Who stayed awake for eleven days on cocaine and whiskey and forgot what sanity was, couldn’t differentiate reality from hallucinations in murky swamp wonderlands on
rainy Whose baby sister’s ballet toes drew tears at a physicality of art too beautiful to bear, sobbing into the vortex of time, searching for a vulgar means to an end, Who
flew overseas to shake hands with the back for a job well avoided, Whose migraines owned a prescription pad for endless Percaset and OxyContin, drank Robitussan in teenage wastelands, and never knew the name was really Baba O’Riley, Who studied Ron Jeremy laughing, and shaved off all the hair on their bodies after learning a bald groin could make their dicks appear longer, Who were a generation of individuals, a generation of mine me ownership and electronics, standing in line overnight to get the fourth Harry Potter book, tickets to see Hannah Montana, or Kanye West, and were really only one moving mass of carbon copies, Who forgot the coffins of the forever 27 and buried Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Brian Jones 6 feet further underground, Only to accidentally overdose on heroin, or choke on their own vomit in a drug induced Slumber, Who
eternally foraged through the rich trash of Coast
of Who had commercials for tampax that made young women think bleeding is a burden instead of a blessing, Who ate pussy until their tongues went numb, then funneled vodka down their open throats and howled into the full moon, Who destroyed communism with a capitalist fist and ate cherries with genetically mutated absent pits, couldn’t find watermelon with seeds and made reference to the city street kids in high top sky blue Reeboks, Who proved their manly hood by wearing pink t-shirts and still calling civil unions separate but equal when the civil rights taught us separate is inherently unequal, Who had Harleys and leather but didn’t know any reality of Hell’s Angels, who tattooed meaningless hearts and flowers on their hips and ankles, or had tramp stamps superimposed under their skin, Who taught a generation of teeny bopper type teens that showing off supple skin and calling your friends sluts was socially acceptable, in dire need even, Who watched Britney Spears shop naked and Lindsey Lohan go to rehab without Amy Winehouse, Who set horrible examples and starved while gnawing reality TV with no role models in sight and tunnel vision for McDonald’s golden arches, Who shoved fast food down the pipe dreams of half pipe skater kids, one last kick flip for the road until the sea opens up and swallows youth, Who narrowly avoided sirens in black and white worlds and painted rooftops with graffiti art, eating souls with rusty spoons, Who swallowed ecstasy with naked seraphim women and had orgies on sticky stained bed sheets in freshman dorms, Who bought anal beads for their armies and stomped rainbows to death to remember who the real enemies were, And slept naked in trenches, dust covered and armed with fully automatic weapons to fight daddy’s war for oil and throw homosexuals off the third story balcony duct taped between two mattresses, Who made an enemy of any airport harboring a long beard and turbaned head, who did random cavity searches on every 17th person that all just so happened to be named Muhammad, Who waved at the surveillance camera’s as they stuffed Gucci wallets down their pants and slipped Maybelline mascara into their knock off purses, Called God a black woman and prayed between her legs for hours every night, listening to the Doors on Vinyl and shopping at the Dollar General, where things cost three bucks instead of one, Who
walked down 125th in of the 45 barely hidden on his left hip, Who voted for a black man the rednecks tried to associate with Osama Bin Laden because of a grammatical rearrangement, Who subway surfed till Bleeker and Bowery and screamed their life story into a mic that smelled like India Pale Ale, Drank blue moon when they had some cash to throw around, and chugged five dollar pints of Magic Hat from the tap, Who celebrated their 22nd birthday in Maracuja’s with Brooklyn Brewery Beer and stumbled
through Who slit their wrists and plastered bangs over their eyes to welcome suicide into pop culture, who couldn’t successfully make a slip knot and never hung themselves with a jump rope, Who died in their own closets, who closed their own caskets, and wore Cruella’s foundation on their soft lips, ripe with death, Forgot what our elders had learned and opened the gateway to hell, masked in cheap tinfoil, painted gold, Who
journeyed to strap overalls over one lonely shoulder to fall in love with a homeless poet on his last lifeline, Who
drove to and booze to smoke three dollar packs of camels, Who slept in seedy Jersey Hotel rooms and handed the Spanish maid their dirty underwear as compensation, Then
crawled off into the hazy sky and took a subway back to Tourists, Who
travelled to because a true New Yorker owns every street they set foot on, Who symbolically turned index fingers into skeleton keys to open all the doors to the loonybins, nuthouses, and drunk tanks to let the maniacs roam free in midnight solitude, and hand paint bic lighters as tokens of their love and appreciation for the mild hallucinations of grey alleyways, Took cans of cold Chef Boyardee ravioli and ate them with bleeding thumbs, letting
fifteen-year-old lips blow truckers on I-90 and pretend free, home of the brave To listen to the brakes squeal and the tires burn out as an eighteen wheeler sideswipes a new driver, sixteen and six months, Who listened closely to William Carlos Williams when he said “Poets are damned but they are not blind”, swallowed thirty pills and bled internally until the sun rose and fell on a newly decaying corpse, and massacre our villains, We, who play grand theft auto before we know it’s a crime, and beat police officers with big purple dildos, Who sever the limbs of childhood and burn them shut, with new scars to sulk at and
paralyze us, masking the fear we convince ourselves rests in those other Middle Eastern countries nine of ten Americans cannot locate on a clearly labeled world map. II What poster of Uncle Sam and his big pointed finger paralyzed your only bones and sucked your imagination and individuality out through your ears to cast into the melting pot, blend with Absolut and pour down the hyena’s throat? Fuck! Fuck it all! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Unshaven armpits! The homeless feet in Swiss cheese socks, the cancer patients, the old and dying! Fuck! Fuck the incomprehensible jailhouse we’ve locked our self expression into, and fed on a diet of milk, bread, and red wine, Fuck sand storms and beer goggles, fuck our soldiers and our women, rape and pillage our desecrated bodies and leave bones not even flies would land on to defecate, Fuck unity, sanctity, and sanity, fuck the idea that there’ll ever be a black, female, Asian, or brown president, Fuck the bullets that went through Martin Luther King Junior’s head, John Lennon’s head, Janis’, Jimi’s, Van Gogh’s and Fuck the one that failed to find Bush’s temple, Fuck
the Holocaust, the and unknown soldiers, What they did was meaningless if we let our lessons die with the purple abstractions that grow out of garbage fed land, landfills stuffed with leftover Thanksgivings, balled up Christmas wrapping paper, and every Valentine’s Day heart that was ever broken irreparably, What pain shattered lives will live on in full revenge if we can’t come to our senses and save what little we’ve left of humanity and rebuild where we burnt life to the ground, Dreams! Aspirations! Generations! Life! Fuck it all, unless we’ve got condoms, unless we can make love to little boys from foreign countries, unless we’re learning something from the ashes of our past disasters. III Allen
Ginsberg! I’m with you in the marshes of
mashed along tree roots in the I’m
with you in Where you’re madder than I am, I’m
with you in Where the buffalo roam, I’m
with you in Where I took off from school in honor of Hunter S. Thompson the day he killed himself and drank whiskey till I puked blood on the corner of Bowery and Bleeker, I’m
with you in Where all the great writers share the same Mac book I’m
with you in Where a homeless woman mutters to herself, a dirty baby doll with one arm suckling on her exposed tit, I’m
with you in Where I’ll never be an equal to the world because I’ve got ovaries and can’t grow A beard as nice as yours, I’m
with you in Where the crazies still publish obscene odes on the windows of the skull in supernatural darkness, and contemplate jazz on cold water flats, I’m
with you in Where two gay lovers kiss in the village, sing songs sweet as seraphim harp strings, and hold hands in front of every Republican bumper sticker I’m
with you in
When Howlfest comes to won a hundred bucks for carrying on your tradition, and further defiled her own corpse with more black ink, I’m
with you in In my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across
over in your grave, because a person with a pussy re-wrote your masterpiece.
See/Hear Molly Read She Howl, Part I
Molly Kat (Goldblatt) is a 21-year-old New York-based performance poet. In 2008, she made the New York City College Regional Slam team representing the Bowery Poetry Club. MK has performed at the Bowery in many slams, often taking first (which is how she funded her tattoos). She's also performed at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Bar 13, and Howlfest in Tompkins Square Park, where she took first in the Slam Competition. She studied at SUNY Purchase, Westchester Community College, Cambridge University in England, and is now an undergraduate at Binghamton University. Her next goal is to tour with sister spit. She is currently obsessed with Daphne Gottlieb.
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“I Discover the Spring in the Autumn of the Live:” Reading Basanta Kar’s The Unfold Pinnacle
The title of this piece comes from “Tempest,” one of 63 poems that
comprise Basanta Kar’s The Unfold
Pinnacle (2008). It is spoken by a twenty-five-year-old HIV positive
mother from I find the singularity of voice of most (though not all) of the poems
remarkable because all of the women and girls who are the speakers of the
poems are marginalized in some way. Many are refugees, from inside and
outside of Yet at no point in my reading did I feel: “this has already been
said.” While giving the reader an intimate, outraging sense of the many
strands of overdetermination that shapes the lives of the women (and those
of the central, absent men) of The
Unfold Pinnacle, Mr. Kar never subjugates the personal to the
political. The poems matter because the women matter, not the other way
round. But poetry that can make readers sit up and take notice — this is
poetry that matters, too. Basanta Kar, whose previous collections The Naïve Bird and The Silent
Monsoon were published in India, is seeking a publisher for The
Unfold Pinnacle. I hope he finds one in Here are four of the poems I liked best; they were hard to choose but I think these show some of the range of Mr. Kumar’s skills — not the least of which is his talent for listening.
Three rivers’ confluence and the holy land, god incarnated tranquil and serene - pilgrims cross seven seas some serve, some deliver to bidding all mesmerized to holy blessing in return; wealth adds to same treasury peacock feather shines. I see with your eyes today, limbs crawl, climb the stairs step by step pass time with the shrine divine solidarity purges the disgrace. a darkness beneath the gleam.
My daughters live with present I forget the past look for occasions special exhibit dirty attire, lifeless pose draw a demand in public; at a time divine altar alters the best of costume people throw cash and kind, a salvation to suffering compassion un-breeds the contempt. (Sixty year old Other Backward Caste (OBC) single woman beggar from
Champaran temple, Raipur,
Border II Birds chant hymn, petals and leafs decorate I take a bath, they brush mehendi on canvas for a day, I am a fairy queen. He steals the soul, I tie knot nuptial kingdom of diamond greets hero of pearl and gold Udanit sanctuary to Tel river, bullocks in the cart stretch steps Tel reconnects and connects I cross border at the gate. I look for a life to the state sugarcane and jatropha, crop obeys the pattern of system a defy to pluralism I witness a silent extinction nature’s bounty mocks at mad scramble ecology mourns to death. Sick, and starved he breathed the last air son migrates for a living states boast for a better living village turns to a truckers’ hotspot who hears a mother’s voice? Beads of moisture drenches, nerves tauten I go back and forth experience flood’s fury, heat and blitz with folded hands, pray and express my gratitude for a token dole recipient. Some curse, some bless. with the coming of the goddess I await preserve finest rice for his sweets in nature’s bounty I am a mother my skin, hanging in folds from bony limbs is exhibited in photo frames. (Forty-year-old Munda Lohar tribal widow from Sandhi Kulieri,
Dharmagarh , Kalahandi, Orissa
,
Blue Line I washed the body for a canvas disposed to be tinted beginning to end scars of color, chanting of the hymn decorate the altar. His brush paints, my red artery vibrates spring unburies the bud, I breed three flowers. And it is a decade I gulp the pill sugar coated till he got naked vanished finishing treasures of a woman. The city is same, new capital redesigns I adapt to battle at a receiving end tricky is this age warmth attracts the wrath mockery to competing interest every one wants to paint I vouch to fight, but bend at one point. I love colour and I love making each peace one of a kind. A strange encounter, uncommon and unusual he discovers my space beneath ruthless voice I discover to share voices unfold. Alas! He is part of life but, cannot be partner in life. Sleepless nights darken colours of youth my libido rises and meets in solitude this dissertation a curse I get mad and wild, the rebirth is not on time I return to reality a mother dedicates the canvas for sibling. (Thirty year
old deserted woman from Urla Industrial Estate, Raipur
, Chhattisgarh
, Soil I was reshaping fitness swinging fruits ripen exerting stink for breezes gentle rays of the morning sun drying and lilting: this hilltop a new-way paradise sermons of Buddha, lights of Pagoda, enchanting echoes, a message of peace. Everything is private, personal; birds and butterflies carry the souvenir. we unearth divine mysticism. Wrinkled skin, unpolished visage, bruised wounds: farewell to youth, the colors of the past, monsoon changes, seasonality stresses land static, population dynamic; the yellow flower of Neighbors encroach. stop here, your land is mine. stranger in my own home a laborer in my own fields, fair skin, fleshy muscle, damsels visible in dark tribe, lust drain values and ethics, a pawn in the market, body bears the chain, eyes only speak. We never exercise, fall short to voice, for refugees a new-way puzzle, the family home, the kith and kin, my birth soil, dream to breathe the last air as a citizen to refugee. (Seventy-seven
year old Tibetan refugee woman from Mainpat, Surguja, Chhattisgarh
,
Check it out: Contact
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| ANDREI GURUIANU
After the Factories Closed Down This place has too many beauty parlors and too many people who talk of what used to be. Factories and jobs, Saturday nights at the drive-ins. The men drive old Chevys down to the supermarket, buy less and less each year. But they are loyal to all that remains of the good pain, honest work for an honest dollar. They walk up to the register now, and when the women with names like Linda, Peggy or Donna ask about the day, the old men say with a smile that they are trying, just trying, and the women who punch the numbers say, that’s right, that’s all you can do. And they all nod because it is true. Then the old men get in their cars and drive home along the old roads they remember in a different time when there weren’t so many bars and neon, take-outs and Laundromats and beauty parlors on every corner. No use, they say, in trying to put a soft face on a hard life that only gets harder when there is nothing left to feel but pride.
The Chinese Musician
Caught in Flight The clown is taking off his painted face, the crooked smile. The lions caged lie low, their wet lips smelling of fresh blood while the elephants stand looking bored with the routine. Far below the numbered rows, a solitary figure sweeps the dirt, and the trapeze hangs motionless from its strings, high above the safety net suspended as an afterthought. The evening crowd that came to be amused eases toward the door, a silent hum replacing the giddy sounds of wonder, of children chirping still about the man who swallowed fire then lived to take a deep and gracious bow. All appears in place within the striped, circular folds of the pavilion, except for the sparrow beating its small wings against the canvas. The lone bird pauses briefly on a wire, then renews its wild flight, feeling for the way out. It seems that her small body suffers, endures a moment of captivity, untrained yet like all the rest to appreciate the calm of blind obedience. Outside, the last of the audience will climb into their cars, yield to the embrace of traffic, the sincere loneliness of night. Afterward, maybe the quiet of dinner will follow, and conversation, or an ice cream cone indulged in with guilt along the road. The tent walls will come down tonight only to be built again. Living rooms will flicker into life under the glow of television screens. Romanian-born poet Andrei Guruianu is the recently appointed Poet Laureate of Broome County, New York. He is a Ph.D. student at Binghamton University, has several poetry books and chapbooks to his credit, and is the founder of The Broome Review, a literary publication. Andrei is a frequent contributor to ragazine.cc.
MYRON ERNST
A Morning in Cairo- The Nile Plaza Hotel
Dust everywhere and I feel so old. The pyramids are old too; I’ve seen them many times, in photos. I wonder if it’s worth my while though, taking the tour bus to see them up close. I could read my book about the pyramids here in the room or out on the balcony, sipping licorice tea. After the smog rises, I may be able to see them from afar— It might be better that way; the millennia have eroded and crumbled the core stones, and the polished, luminous slabs of limestone that
encased them, so long ago… I imagine how it was then; on a floodplain, a reaper stoops low over shoots of wheat grass; he straightens to rest, and looks out there; he is dazzled, awed and pacified… and the Nile cruise to Abu Simbel for the gods Re-Herakhte and Amun-Re? I’ve read they let themselves be cut into pieces for a dam, carried away and put together again…I’ll order up a waterpipe from room service; the gurgling and the aroma of honeyed tobacco may put me to sleep, dreaming of Egypt.
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