Symmetry Pebbles Issue 4

3. Dear Reader,
First off, apologies for the huge delay in the publication of this issue - for those waiting to see their work
published, and those who have waited patiently to read this issue. Technology cannot be trusted, not even in
2012. Computers are capable of dying at any moment it seems. I now have new technology, and thus Issue 4
finally makes it to your screens.
Now then, good news and bad news has filled the past few months here at the SP Headquarters. First, let me
tell you the good news. Rodney Nelson and Symmetry Pebbles have received a Poetry Kit Award 2012 for my
selection of Rodney's poem One Winter which you can read, if you haven't already, in Issue 1 which is available
for download in the 'Archive' at www.symmetrypebbles.com. This was a pleasant surprise, having submitted
my selection back in late 2011, I had completey forgotten about the competition, and with Symmetry Pebbles
being a left-of-centre publication, though I personally believe in the strength of the poems I submitted, I kind
of dismissed the idea of winning – that showed me! Rodney's poem will be in an anthology e-book to be pub-
lished by Poetry Kit. This news also came just as I was reviewing Rodney's new collection 'Metacowboy'
which you can read in this issue, how conveinient!
Now, the bad news I received recently. Symmetry Pebbles featured poet of issue 3, Victor Church, passed
away on Monday 19th March 2012. Victor was in hospital at the time I was putting together issue 3. I was ini-
tially intending to do an interview with him, but due to his ill health he was unable to partake in this so I wrote
up a feature instead. When I last spoke to Victor he wasn't going to be in hospital too much longer and I was
sure, that though is health might not have been what it was, he would be able to get back to his writing. It was
a complete shock then to find an email from his agent waiting for me in my inbox telling me of Victor's passing.
In remembrance of Victor and his work I have dug up a few poems of his from the SP archive and republished
them here along with a few other notes and links to further work.
With that I intend to keep this letter brief, and I dedicate this issue to Victor Church.
Sincerely,
Richard Thomas - Editor
3

4. By Richard Thomas
Back in November last year (2011), I collaborated with artist Fiona Graham in a poetry and photography ex-
hibition called Inspired. The exhibition took place at Birdwood House in Totnes, UK and we kicked it off with
an opening night poetry reading by myself and fellow Totnes poet Jade Moon.
The exhibition was based around the ongoing cycle of inspiration that can be made from one person to another.
Fiona selected ten of my poems and responded to them through the medium of photography how she saw fit –
the result was a wide array of portraiture of people she knew and didn't know, expressing their reactions.
On another wall we displayed ten abstract photographs and next to them put up a blackboard for people to
write their personal responses to those photos on first seeing them. Over the course of the week, using a camera,
we kept a record of all these responses from the public.
My part in this exercise was to -without taking further looks at the abstract photos that started the process –
take what was recorded on the blackboard over the week and use these responses as inspiration to write a brand
new poem. I began by jotting down each single response in my notebook. Amongst these individual responses
there seemed to be a handful of reoccurring themes: isolation, solitude, distance, time and space. I did some
freewriting using the responses directly to begin with, constructing new phrases from the words I was given
and also making new word combinations. This helped form new ideas for the direction of the poem. I started
to draft some first verses in an automatic manner just to see what came up, but after a handful of different
drafts going in different directions I felt that I was relying too much on the blackboard word for word and
wanted to find a way to distance myself a bit, so that rather than using the responses directly I was just literally
using them as inspiration to form something fresh.
I started to let the responses on the blackboard, their words and images, just flow through my mind, a bit
like music playing in the background. This is when I came up with what would be the first line in the final
draft of the poem: 'In an all white sun I sleep'. I think this came because three words from the blackboard kept
coming to the forefront of my mind, as if they felt they were the most important. Egotistical words I call them.
Those words were 'Sunray', 'Sleepy world' and 'All white', and they seemed to just melt into the phrase above.
From here I let my imagination go wild and used that opening line to trigger an automatic narrative. What I
ended up with was a whimsical tale of a Star Man who longs to die and come back and grace the world with
the soothing quality of his snow. A love poem of sorts. It was very interesting, when I reached my final draft,
to look back through my notebook and see how my ideas developed, and to see how the final product had come
from that first set of photos. Creativity can take journeys of all shapes and sizes it seems. If you asked me on
the first night of the exhibition what I thought I would be writing about in response to the cycle of inspiration
we had started, probably my last thought would have been the poem I am about to present to you.
I am encouraging readers to continue this cycle of inspiration by responding to my poem, whether it be via
a submission of a poem, essay, article, photograph or piece of art. The best pieces will be published in a future
issue of Symmetry Pebbles. Remember, only go from the poem I have written, the idea is to ignore anything
that has gone before that, in order to keep the cycle constantly going to fresh places. The theme of the next
issue is ‘Descent’, I think that bodes well with the cycle of inspiration.
4

5. 5

6. The poem:
GOOD REASON
TO DIE
In an all white sun I sleep
figureless, moving closer to myself
to which the Star Sisters hit me up with:
'Wake from that in which you lie!'
and so I wake and groggily reply:
'But the sun is going to die,
so I shall sleep on and go out with it,
a loyal ember, a promise I'll keep,
and then I can come back as snow
and be divine in my all white flow.'
To which the Star Sisters reply
as quick as a comet: 'Fair enough.'
The sun fades like a mouldering orange,
I sweat my juice, I melt my mind
and become the purest snow, divine,
and the Star Sisters whiten their shine
and the seas and soil are that of sheepskin -
in such aesthetic the world is peaceful,
a candescent calm hushes through the universe
and all people everywhere make love to this verse.
‘Good Reason to Die’ is now published in my debut colelction of poetry ‘The Strangest
Thankyou’, available from Cultured Llama Press - www.culturedllama.co.uk
6

7. CONNIE A. LOPEZ–HOOD
SIGNS
Once upon a time a street sign turned into an elephant. He sold it at the local farmer’s market and came
home with two baby kittens that had no tails. She was allergic and smashed their skulls against the wall to
stop her sneezing. She was allergic to their leukemia. No one cared that she cried and everyone was
shocked when she didn’t.
Upon this other time a street sign turned into a giraffe. She fed it gumdrops and stroked its neck. It hatched
two quails, which revolted against her—pecking, then gobbling at her toes. Her ballet slippers were now too
large. Finger-snapping did not make up for toe-tapping. Before long, she forgot how to dance. No one
wants to dance if your shoes don’t fit.
Once upon a sign, a swan flew out of her tub while she was bathing. Its neck was contorted and patches of
feathers were missing. She recognized it as a power animal and lifted her mouth to kiss it. Its feathers were
sharpened quills and they stabbed her eyes, macheted her skull. When she died, the bathwater turned to
mustard gas, her skin to shit. The swan did not.
Connie A. Lopez-Hood has served as a Poetry Editor for two years for the Ghost Town literary
journal. She spearheaded and edited the 2011 chapbook anthology "Blankets & Other
Poems: Poetry for the People of Japan", in which proceeds were donated to Red Cross
Japan Relief. Her work has appeared in Gaga Stigmata, Our Stories Literary Journal and Po-
lari Journal. She is currently working on a collaborative chapbook entitled "Operation: Lifted
Flowers".
7

8. L.E. SULLIVAN
THE HARPIST
CIRCA 1978
I was tortured on a subway
by a man who carried a harp
the strings could slice bodies
like egg yolks, watery bodies
He poked eyes into me—eyes
that were naked tree branches
and my skin gave way with ease
I bled water alive with leaves
of lightning and sand
in narrow space, cracked dimness,
I saw those leaves become glass.
L.E Sullivan is a musician who lives in Nacogdoches, TX. Her work has appeared or is forth-
coming in The Southern Poetry Anthology: Louisiana, Sphere Literary Magazine, and North-
wind Magazine.
8

9. MICHAEL RATCLIFFE
WALKING ALONG
THE RIVER FUJI,
THE POET BASHO
FINDS A CHILD
ABANDONED BY
ITS PARENTS
A child by the road,
crying in the autumn wind—
great Basho leaves food
and takes away an image
from which he forms a poem.
If he had taken
the child with him, would he have
mastered poetry?
Or, would he be known only
as a man who saved a child?
PATUXENT
RIVER STORY
They flow, county to county,
pushed by tides of indignation,
slowed by pools of indifference,
unseen, unnoticed, unknown by most
(and they would be appalled if they knew),
but they are there,
at the bars near the track,
on the corners near the cheap motels,
in the parking lot behind the diner.
They flow, county to county,
in a jurisdictional eddy,
Anne Arundel, Howard, Prince George’s,
pushed by the police from one to the other,
one to the other, one to the other,
9

10. in a slow, continual cycle.
Do we care to know who they are?
Or what they want in life?
They flow in a different channel,
dead ended,
caught like so much debris behind a strainer,
eddied, swirling, stopped,
watching as the Patuxent flows freely to the Bay.
Michael Ratcliffe is a geographer, working and writing in the suburbs of Baltimore and Wash-
ington. His poems have appeared in The Copperfield Review, Three Line Poetry, Do Not
Look At The Sun, The Little Patuxent Review, and You Are Here: the Journal of Creative Ge-
ography. He can be found on-line at http://skiminocycle.blogspot.com and on Facebook
at Michael Ratcliffe's Poetry.
TATJANA DEBELJACKI
TOO LATE FOR
THE SOUTH
It seems that we're late.
There was no need to hurry.
The branch was thin and it shook all down to the trunk.
The cars rushed down under. The snow covered everything.
All of a sudden, a turtle-dove moved as if about to fly,
and then it fell down under the wheels of a limo.
The frozen male swayed on the branch.
Tatjana Debeljacki, was born on 23.04.1967 in Užice. Writes poetry, short stories, stories and
haiku. Member of Association of Writers of Serbia -UKS since 2004 and Haiku Society of Serbia
- HDS Serbia, HUSCG – Montenegro and HDPR, Croatia.
10

11. STUART BARNES
THE WORLD
MAP
I face it daily, a blue eyed heliotrope,
never sleeping, terrified of complacency,
this mid-twentieth-century world map,
fifty something crimson lines catapulting
imaginary aircraft over oceans.
I face it daily, a blue eyed heliotrope,
lines a reminder of busy motherly
hands: string art: signs of the zodiac.
This mid-twentieth-century world map
– the cartographers anonymous yet loving –
has nothing to do, I’ve realised, with geometry –
I face it daily, a blue eyed heliotrope,
I should know – but everything to do with fractals:
there’s divine imperfection – e.g. coastlines – in
this mid-twentieth-century world map.
A whore for nothing less than a miracle
(‘O Magdalene, restore me to nineties Russia!’),
I face it daily, a blue eyed heliotrope,
this mid-twentieth-century world map.
Stuart Barnes is slowly arranging the manuscript for his first book of poetry, and writing his first
novel. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.
11

12. ASHLEY CAPES
SOOTHING
THINGS
she lifts a lady-of-the-lake arm
to rub at smudges on the sky
until it is clean again
and the business of rain is finished
and all the ponds are full
and frogs can be happy
and I become jealous of them
for just a short time,
until she tells me soothing things
and I sleep on the couch before sunset
and wake to the stars
tapping silver fingers on my window
and then she is gone of a sudden
and the house seems to sag
with her absence.
Ashley teaches Media and English in Victoria. He moderates online renku site 'Issa's Snail'
and his haiku chapbook, Orion Tips the Saucepan was released by Picaro Press in 2010. He
occasionally dabbles in film and is slowly learning piano. He also loves Studio Ghibli films.
12

13. M I C H A E L E S T A B RO O K
BLONDES IN
BLACK DRESSES
Blondes in black dresses in front
of the theater, smoking, giggling, sashaying
in their swollen bodices, proud,
flicking their heads back
into the night - modern blondes.
Blondes in black dresses resplendent
in the purity and surety and vivacity
of their eternal, irrepressible womanhood,
the folds of thin, velvety cloth,
clinging like bat wings to their forms,
subtle, darkly alluring - placid cool-headed blondes.
Blondes in black dresses their perfumed essences
wafting on cool breezes, floating
out over the sea, their voices, murmurous
and whispery, rising and falling occasionally
in outbursts of confused chatter - melodious blondes.
Blondes in black dresses blondes in black dresses
calling out to me like the Sirens
called to Ulysses.
Michael Estabrook is a baby boomer who began getting his poetry published in the late
1980s. Over the years he has published 15 poetry chapbooks, his most recent entitled “When
the Muse Speaks.” Other interests include art, music, theatre, opera, and his wife who just
happens to be the most beautiful woman he has ever known.
13

14. LUIS CUAUHTEMOC
BERRIOZABAL
ABSURD
RAMBLINGS
He heard the songs of crows
all day. He heard absurd
ramblings in his dreams.
He could not live like this
and sought to get all sounds
out of his ears. He went to
the ear doctor. He told him
he wanted the sounds in his
ears to stop. He could not
get the doctor’s help. A great
sorrow filled his heart. He told
the doctor to go to hell.
He beat his ears until they bled.
His doctor hospitalized him.
At night shadows spoke to him.
In full delirium he could see
an eagle eating a crow.
He found this liberating and
imagined a world without crows.
To his horror this was just a dream.
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in the mental
health field in Los Angeles, CA. His poetry books and chapbooks were published by Pygmy
Forest Press (Raw Materials), Deadbeat Press (Before & Well After Midnight), New Polish Beat
(The Book of Absurd Dreams), and Poet's Democracy (Peering into the Sun). Kendra Steiner
Editions published his latest chapbook Digging a Grave. Alternating Current Press will publish
his poetry book Songs for Oblivion in 2012.
14

15. JOSÉ LUIS GUTIÉRREZ
SWEET
INQUISITIONS
When with velvet tongue and honeyed eyes,
with skilled Ursuline hands she unsheathes
you and invites you to burn shame on her milk sea
of skin and after in the equatorial climes of release she
coaxes you into confessing your heart’s filthiest secret
hold it tight under your tongue like a salt pellet
perforating the slug into contorted dance
like a caged bird who once let loose
will sing down plagues upon the denizens.
Instead make some gnomic pronouncement
about the virtues of residual heat in cooking
or the latest status of a public option—
if this goes unheeded the improbable vectors
will find you and with pinpoint precision strike
down your latest conquest or worse turn
your modest life inside out like a sock
the wind soughs its brutal narrative through:
for once your hollowed anatomy
tuned and calibrated to the dissonant
menace of locusts as they swarm the field
stretching out like seas or eternity, their urgent
measures punctuating the firmament’s great fires.
José Luis Gutiérrez is a San Francisco poet. He is also the host of the BookShop West Portal
Poetry Series. His work has appeared in Spillway, Eratio, 99 Poems for the 99 Percent, San
Francisco Poets 11, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, Margie, Letterbox, DMQ, Apropos Literary
Journal and is forthcoming in Scythe Literary Journal, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Thrush Po-
etry Journal and the Mutanabbi Street Anthology due out 2012 through PM Press.
15

16. CARL KAVALDO
THE
BANANA
i’d noticed the banana
for the first time,
though i’d been in
that room now
for an hour and twenty minutes.
then the banana
came there
into my vision,
sitting with some apples and oranges in
a round, porcelain fruit bowl,
tan colored with
indian design.
it’s good.
i had been absorbed
in kitchen-table
early morning self-preoccupation,
daydreaming, musing
that much
not to notice
the banana with
the color of the gold
of the sun.
Carl Kavadlo is a poet and short story writer. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife.
16

17. C H A R L I E
G U Z M A N
'What do you mean by a poet?
A person who writes, without being a writer.'
- Orpheus by Charlie Guzman
Interview by Richard Thomas
How long have you been writing poetry? list specific names like Sylvia Plath, John Berryman,
Thomas James, Octavio Paz, Dylan Thomas, Comte
I’ve been writing poetry since I was around thirteen de Lautreamont, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rim-
– nothing to be proud of. I was mostly writing out baud, Federico Garcia Lorca, Dean Kostos (my men-
my frustrations, with no focus on either word or tor), William Blake, and the list goes on. I think the
form…just images. My first poem was written by thing that has inspired me the most in any literary
force, after I attempted to plagiarize a school assign- piece is how an image is created: “A hornet tests my
ment – I was caught and told to write right then and sculptured skin” (Room 101, Thomas James.)
there. It has been the past few years where I’ve re-
ally focused on my work, inspired by the English Is your poetry influenced by other artforms?
classes I took at CUNY.
Most definitely. Paintings have also took my interest,
Who are your literary influences and inspira- even more so in the past few years. Artists like Van
tions? Gogh, Bacon, Klimt, Blake’s engravings, Warhol,
Lachaise’s sculptures, and a few random pieces here
Always a damn hard question to answer. I could and there from different movements (Romanticism,
17

18. Surrealism). Music has also been a definite influ- I’ve been inspired by each and every one of the sur-
ence, specifically No-Wave, Futurism, Blues, realists, from their writing to their art work to even
Jazz…wild stuff. their movies. I think one of the main exercises that I
do, which I believe many of us writers do at one
How did 'The Epistles' poems that are published point or another, is automatism – that is to put your-
here come into being and what do they mean to self in an almost trance state and write away until
you? you are writing automatically. The usual result is a
mess of words, but meanings and/or images tend to
The Epistles is my first real project in poetry. I hope slowly ooze out of the chaos. There is also another
to make a long-length book of them in the future, form of automatism that I use with friends, which has
similar to The Dream Songs by John Berryman. I one person writing and the other person saying ran-
had been reading up on epistolary works and saw it dom words throughout the automatic process. It is
as an effective tool to get out a message, but also an hard to explain the results, but I’ll try to anyway. In
effective way to understand the person writing the the process of automatism, I place myself in a state in
letter (and those they are writing to). Then I asked which my subconscious has fuller control. By using
myself the question, a simple question: Who am I? random words, I attempt to put my subconscious in a
During the same time I had also been researching trance – to essentially delve deeper than it (if it ex-
my heritage…my identity as a Puerto Rican...my ists). Some other techniques I use are The Exquisite
connection to the Island. From there the idea Corpse and the cut-up technique (as described by
flowed. I would write about a character (a fictional Tristan Tzara, though I have tried the technique pop-
I), who becomes stuck on the island and is writing ularized by William Burroughs). I use the techniques
back to his family and friends. I use the word to develop the ideas that I’m writing, be it an image
“stuck” because I think it perfectly describes the po- or an emotion. My interest in Surrealism is also polit-
sition I feel, being stuck between cultures. I am ical, in much of the same passion as the original sur-
Puerto Rican, but for a long time I denied that part realists. I believe the movement has much to do with
of myself; yet nothing really replaced it – I was just understanding who we are as people and trying to
a weird kid living in Brooklyn. For me The Epistles break those boundaries (the status quo) to develop a
have become something of an exploration into the new state of consciousness.
many facets of my identity, as an artist and a person.
I’m also trying to write to those who are also in my Can you see the surrealist movement coming into
position – from friends to strangers. fashion again and perhaps finding a bigger and
more influential place in contemporary poetry?
“...I WAS JUST
Or do you think it will always be a bit specialist
and slightly under the radar since the original
movement has passed?
A WEIRD KID I’ll be a little critical here. I can’t see a surrealist
movement coming into fashion again, not in the seri-
LIVING IN
ous way the original surrealists took it. If people at-
tempt to bring it back, it will likely be a watered
down version that simply focuses on the artistic side
BROOKLYN.”
of Surrealism – similar to what Dali did to surrealism
when he brought it to the US. Though I strongly be-
lieve that literature (in the last fifty years) has been
profoundly influenced by Surrealism in subtle ways.
I can see that surrealism is a big part of your William Burroughs and his cut-ups, Plath/James in
work. I understand that you are very interested their images, and the widespread use of the games –
in using the surrealist games and Oulipo exercise to list some examples. I do wish that the movement
to help create your poetry. Could you tell us would start up again though. These tense political
more about those techniques and your interest in times really call for it…the Occupy movement…re-
Surrealism in general? ally call for artists getting together, experimenting on
their works, collaborating, criticizing the status quo
Yes, surrealism is definitely a big part of my work. (and all systems supporting it), creating a bigger
18

19. (even terrifying) voice, and to fully push the idea structure to develop true creativity. As a group, we
that “Poetry should be made by all.” (Lautreamont). wanted to experiment with combining the two, fold-
ing the scale onto itself. One of the first experiments
What's the poetry scene like where you are? that we did, which will be in the first issue (if/when
it is published), was combining the freedom of cut
In my experience and opinion, it’s been really ups by using prose pieces we wrote on a specific
mixed. I’d claim that poetry just isn’t important to subject – gentrification. I believe the results are bril-
the public anymore and has become a hobby for liant. As for the current state, I am unfortunately the
many in “the scene”. For the people my age and only one working on it. I wanted a team, a group,
younger (I’m twenty-three), it has become hard to but it has been very hard to form a steady one. To
understand poetry and relate to it. I think it’s mostly top things off, this is my first experience trying to
because poetry has been relegated to academia. My create a publication…it has been a hard ride. Still, as
first interaction with poetry was in an academic set- I said, I’m very passionate about it – so I’ll work on
ting. I think most people would say the same thing, it until I feel it’s just right for publishing.
and it wasn’t taught properly. Then over the years
“...POETRY
the same work and authors are taught again and
again, until there is simply no passion in it. And the
scene shows it. Most people my age and younger
JUST ISN’T IM-
tend to go for slam poetry, because it provides some-
thing new, something more in tune with our cul-
ture/heritage or just our lives in general. Yet
PORTANT TO
something is definitely lost with slam, and that is the
rich history of literature. Some may not agree with
this assessment, but I look at it from the audience’s
THE PUBLIC...”
standpoint. People simply don’t get excited by a
sonnet, a sestina, a pantoum – unless it has some
drab humour or cultural references. I’ve seen people
barely clap to brilliant pieces, with rich words and
images, and then I see people hoot and holler over a What are your plans for the future as a poet?
slam where the person describes how everyone
wants to fuck them! I do have one positive note to I’m currently out of college, though I do plan to go
state about the scene: there are brilliant ideas, im- back at some point. Right now I’m just focusing on
ages, words, and rhythms flowing through it. There my work and trying to write out the first book. I plan
is a passion there that I wish would be more sup- on trying to put myself out there more publically,
ported, widespread, and publicized. and hell, try my by best to make a career out of it. I
truly believe in the strength of poetry, of literature,
You run the publication Burro Char, could you and how it can influence society as a whole. It may
tell me a bit more about that? not be practical, some would even say “sane”, to
base a living on it, but it’s my life. I’m just hoping
Unfortunately, it has barely been running. I am very for the best.
passionate about the project, which is why it hasn’t
folded yet. The main idea of Burro Char was to de- Is there anywhere online that people can find out
velop a group/publication that would have artists more about you?
and writers (and anyone really) to collaborate and
hopefully develop something new. The idea stems My blog, which I will soon be updating regularly
from several influences: The Surrealists, the Oulipo, again, is called Shattering the Mirror that Birthed
and the artistic scene of the 70s/80s (particularly Juan Mirador (http://beelzelfallen.wordpress.com/).
with artists like Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, It is a blog where I talk about my currentl literary
and Andy Warhol). We wanted to develop something goals/frustration and where I have an ongoing proj-
free, yet structured. In my opinion, the Surrealists ect where I am creating personas (similar to what
and Oulipo stand on two sides of a scale of expres- Fernando Pessoa did in his work). I also give some
sion. While Surrealism offers a freedom, especially updates on Burro Char and any other projects I want
with automatism, the Oulipo demanded absolute to put out there.
19

20. CHARLIE GUZMAN –
THE EPISTLES
DEAR FATHER,
I’m here.
I’m among the smudging palm trees of
my airplane window,
among my translucent reflection.
I’m among the people speaking in tongues:
“Que bien, que bien.”
I walk in tile cracks;
through security and
Bacardi bottles.
I get lost in labyrinthine corridors,
meeting my luggage
at the middle of
baggage claim.
A man offers me a taxi, speaks English.
I smile, say
si.
The sky is cloudless.
Airplanes become mosquitoes,
their engines leaking
blood.
I ride the taxi “home.”
Thirty bucks, with
tip.
Cubist house: Our home.
Paint peels in tears,
exposing the bony concrete.
I see the blocks and their arthritic
joints.
I see a staircase
guarded by crested anoles.
They attach themselves to the slanted
corners of the
walls.
They even sunbathe on the slats
of the jalousies
that leaks me into your empty
room.
I see the ants huddle in the corner.
A mirror reflects
the cinereous web poised
above their heads.
20

21. I take to exploring
the cracked panapen
leaking white blood
into the drain
of vertigo road.
I explore with feral dogs,
who claw and chew
at my sides.
We hunt the pieces of past –
broken watch gears
guarded by iguanas.
I explore in silence.
I speak my own tongue.
I speak the null.
Sincerely,
Tu Hiyo.
13 July
DEAR HERMANO,
I pick watch gears
from iguana nests.
I stumble upon mangos
comprised of
hypodermic needles.
You stalk me from a piece of
broken mirror
clutched in the skeletal hand
of a ruby conquistador.
I follow the shadows
of hanged men,
nooses still around their
necks.
They slither across
the walls
painting stripes with duck
blood.
I run the very boundaries
of our barrio
chasing the sun!
I swallow the horizon!
Sincerely,
Isa Isa.
13 July
21

22. DEAR MOTHER,
I’m here, at the old
house.
The old walls
have kept their cubist shape,
except for some holes.
They were gored by
the ivory bulls of Spain.
Ants hide in the corner
of your room.
A lone spider – a hand above them.
They live together in a framed picture
of constant
war.
I walk through the vein roads.
Asphalt bleeds down
the hills.
Dogs maraud.
Kittens hide in tropical shrubs
eating mangos.
I watch you from the eyes of a child.
She sang, like a finch, and
flew away.
Love,
Tu Hiyo, Isabalino.
13 July
22

23. M E G AN K E L L E R M A N
THE
CITY
Thin grass grows over
the tops of the city.
Rooftop gardens are planted
on every building’s flat head
to fill any possible bare patch
that might suggest some weakness.
Birds screech around their crowns
and dip down to dust the windows.
The buildings lean into the little ones
and their flight paths,
flatten them with complete transparency.
Jealousy drives them; grief stops them.
The buildings bow too late
to catch the guts and clumps of feathers.
They sigh reverently, vents
exhaling dust, and tell
the murdered spots of life
that at least they had lived
with their bodies, straight through—
they didn’t need life planted
into their heads, made to dream
as a thing they never could be.
Life was a clumsy implant
in an unnatural thing.
Megan is a recent graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson’s undergraduate Creative Writing pro-
gram. Her poems have been published in Scribblers and Catfish Creek, and she received
the Andonis Decavalles Poetry Scholarship twice, as well as an MFA Award for Excellence
in her major at FDU.
23

24. ALLIE MARINI BATTS
THE MYTHOLOGY
OF THE NIGHT
SKIES
you were once a man
square but bright
incense in the dark
your story, told by Greeks
naïve, the way we
lit sticks of incense and prayed
wantonly to false hopes and square gods
and stars, naïve offerings
and devotions meant to keep us safe
protections and punishments
remembered in the
rotations of the planet
naïve, how we thought
you loved us
and would keep us safe
IMPRESSIONIST
PAINTINGS
Pre-Raphaelite, she is painted in perfect strokes
if not in your memory,
in the jealous aesthetics of my Decadent heart.
Allie Marini Batts is a New College of Florida alumna, meaning she can explain deconstruc-
tionism, but cannot perform simple math. Her work has appeared in over forty literary mag-
azines her family hasn't heard of. Allie calls Tallahassee home because it has great trees to
climb. She’s a research writer by day and is pursuing her MFA degree in Creative Writing
through Antioch University Los Angeles and oh no! it's getting away! To read more, visit
http://kiddeternity.wordpress.com
24

25. WILLIAM DORESKI
YOUR CASUAL
PRIVATE
PANTHEON
You’ve crowded your house with cots
for the many guests you expect.
You’ve only one bathroom yet
claim you can house fifty people.
Night falls in shades of brown
the Old Masters would appreciate.
I’d rather sleep in the street
than number myself among others
in your casual private pantheon.
Don’t tell me to console myself
with five minutes of your precious time.
You expect your other guests before
midnight, panting with luggage
and groaning after flights from Spain,
Italy, Argentina, China,
and Guam. Shuffling among the cots,
I find the bathroom and wash up,
wasting as much hot water
as I can. Thanks for the drink
you press into my hand. Maybe
I can smile and greet your friends
if I’m slightly drunk. The cots fume
with years of night-sweat. Borrowed
from the Salvation Army, they gloom
like open graves. The blankets,
bought for almost nothing at Goodwill,
fume with unrequited disease.
Are you sure those guests are coming?
Midnight has passed in a drizzle
of freezing rain. The streets gleam
and the silence comes between us.
I choose a cot and lie as flat
and small as possible. The night
leans over me propped on its elbows
and sighs the way old mothers do
when their sons plod off to war.
25

26. FROM A
FORENSIC
TEXTBOOK
From a forensic textbook I learn
that to determine if one’s girlfriend
is a hermaphrodite one sets
a house on fire with her inside
and with a spectrometer checks
the tonal value of her screams.
You doubt whether Marcy is human—
her sex life pantomimed in shadows,
her body constructed of layers
of silt and mud, like a Golem.
Fire can’t harm but might scare her
into revealing her dual selves.
Bring her to the abandoned house
in Seltzer Lane. I’ll pour kerosene
down the chimney and ignite it.
With a spectrometer borrowed
from Harvard’s optic science lab
we’ll measure the wave length and hue
of all available screams.
You say you don’t want to violate
her sexual-mythic privacy?
You believe her technical data
shouldn’t frighten or interest you?
Her blonde gaze makes me shudder.
When I see you arm in arm with her
I fear that your nether regions
will flash-freeze and detach. But why
should I worry that your organs
won’t be suitable for transplant
when you don’t seem anxious? Doubt
could scar like acne if you don’t act.
What if she’s from Neptune instead
of Venus? Her pastel aura
may conceal sexual gadgetry
that you’d better discover before
one night it discovers you.
26

27. QUEEN OF
THE ISLAND
The lake sports three hundred islands.
Searching requires weeks or months
of coast guard boats dropping clusters
of uniformed people toting food,
stretchers, radios, and blankets.
You could be anywhere. Eloping
with the ghost of your first husband,
leaving a note proclaiming yourself
Queen of the Island, sparked this search.
I expect to find you neither
dead nor alive. The winter islands
offer cottages ripe with canned goods
and easily burgled. You and the ghost
should find shelter and food enough
to keep your mutual body going,
but the star-spangled sex crime
of your dreams will never occur.
The cold lake laps gravel beaches.
When it freezes over, the search
will continue with snowmobiles
and even dogsleds. Roaring, barking,
the mob will scour every island
to find and punish you for tracing
yourself backward into vacuums
where the spirit disgorges itself
in fits of primary colors.
The lake shivers in its skin.
Under weak winter sun the water
looks black enough to swallow
the flaccid bulk of the cosmos.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that—
your crazy expression glowering
in a dark cottage, your ghost lover
trying to calm you as the creak
of the planet’s axis amplifies
the very flaws you detected
two or three lifetimes ago.
William's work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most
recently Waiting for the Angel (Pygmy Forest Press, 2009).
27

28. NICOLE TAYLOR
THE
BODY
Four officers and five hours
in apartment 8.
Less than six months
she resided there.
Weeks later she was drinking again and inviting
strange men in who she had to kick out of the apt.
Then her pancreas and
other organs started failing and
she went to the local hospital.
She invited me to eat Easter
dinner there but no call and missing
calls for her until a week later an officer
asked neighbors "When did you last see her?"
The pancreas and the liver were proven the killers.
She has many hopeful projects, no MFA's and is an artist, a hiker, a volunteer, and a dancer,
formerly in DanceAbility. She blogs at www.apoetessanthology.blogspot.com, www.face-
book.com/Pushk1n, and www.oregonpoeticvoices.org/312.
28

29. EMILY HAIGHT
LAURA'S
POEM
J'ai besoin de sortir de cette maison!
There are ants everywhere--
On the floor, climbing on the walls
like tiny Russian soldiers (picking up corpses as they go; it‘s horrid),
In the tea kettle, in the coffee press, in the sugar!
And apathetic, dusky worms
In the tub. Inching along the perimeter,
Multiplying by hundreds daily.
J'ai besoin de sortir de cette maison!
If the ants and worms cannot manage
To eat my bleeding soul alive,
The walls, with their ever-changing temperament, will surely
Swallow me whole.
J'ai besoin de sortir de cette maison!
A friend of mine had a lady
Living inside of her yellow wallpaper. I couldn’t imagine
That being less aggravating than this,
Although that lady really did drive my friend mad.
Emily Haight was born in Whitefish Bay, WI. She received a degree in Creative Writing from
the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is currently living in the Republic of Georgia where
she serves as a Peace Corps volunteer.
29

30. BRYNN MCNAB
H|I
Here my knee is:
Apart from him, out of bed
In the same blue light that has portrayed Parisian mornings
I am a rectangle among rectangles, perched atop a golden ratio, in the simplicity Piet
sought.
Why did he never
Draw the dirty city,
Why always
The pier, the tree.
You wake in these places, you cannot sleep.
It is scraped, my own doing, but so is this wood
And not by me.
There is a dried envelope pasted to the air conditioner.
“Reference Guide” it rattles, empty, and yellowing to dust.
Behind our ears, Clark Gable makes his moustache known, over attempts, competitions,
The sounds of violins and telephones.
He speaks,
“The road?”
“Our road.”
“To you.”
“You never knew a crooked road could look so straight.”
“No rick, no…”
“You ought to be out dancing in the streets, kicking the hats off citizens.”
“Guilty or innocent – didn’t make a difference.”
“You outsmarted yourself baby, now I can do my job.”
“I couldn’t … I couldn’t… so I killed everything for us instead.”
“You couldn’t feel so bad if you had to.”
And here he sleeps, snoring irregularly – like I used to do to you – smooth, speckled,
shut-eyed.
The skin stretches tight on his hips, curling into laugh lines when kneeling.
Is here. Is now.
Wicker painted black and a blanket with roots of Gothic and Aztec architecture
But it encloses his body like a stained sea:
Blue and green with blotched red,
As if some shark had killed.
“Anyone you can count on?”
“No one.”
“That guy is in no position to comfort you.”
As the pus wells up where my shoes used to be.
And a mucous film sticks to his throat
30

31. Making the sound of
Bubble gum film stretched out between teeth
And inhaled,
What a trick:
On the CRT screen
Our shootout peters out within crowds and fireworks.
I have self-published poetry, short stories, and essays in an art gallery setting, and have
worked with numerous emerging artists contributing written elements to larger projects.
STELLA VINITCHI
RADULESCU
PARIS IN
SEPIA
It's like a beat in my head
cold weather and soupe gratinée
once in a while a poet throws
himself into eternal
life
the Seine takes his body
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, Ph.D. in French Language & Literature, is the author of several col-
lections of poetry published in the United States, Romania and France, including Last Call
(2005), Diving With the Whales (2008), Insomnia in Flowers (2008), All Seeds & Blues (2011), I
Was Afraid of Vowels (bilingual, Luke Hankins translator, 2011).
31

32. LUCAS WEBSTER
MAY THE WINE
TAKE A CHAIR
He thinks the answer is in a bottle,
but we wait for the message to come,
floating over telegraph poles
and descending wires with soluble grief
like the tears on our cheeks
We had a chance to re-enact world war one,
running through lanes of coiled teeth,
dressed up like angry dogs,
sharp like the despondent pain
of losing a reverence
He will fall off the cart like a bubonic victim,
sodden in guilt at his corked worms
that will seep through his flesh
consuming layers of anaesthetic osseous,
like the weight of our situation
Perplexed we both stand in reminiscence of regret
the affairs we never confronted,
the desperate sound of mother’s voice
reminding me of my desperate cry
when that lost girl left me
We find ourselves tearfully pouring
sepia onto the photographs
assimilating memories without need for colour
draining morality through lack of moderation
like the wills of our abating minds
Romancing the French Revolution, keeping a level head, rolling landscapes from the
tongue, but is yet unable to whistle.
32

33. MOHSEN JABBARI
FOG
It rolled down the hillside—
an avalanche in slow motion
minus the weight of tons of snow
swallowing mossy tree trunks
in one slow, erotic gulp.
We parked the car by the road
skirting the valley, now filled with
fog flowing into further fog
like a flock of flying white serpents
furling, unfurling out of a myth.
Born and raised in Zanjan, Iran, Mohsen Jabbari is arguably the only Iranian poet composing
solely in English in his country. Besides doing a master’s degree in English literature at the
University of Tehran, he is currently putting together his first chapbook. His poems have ap-
peared in The London Magazine, Pomegranate, Symmetry Pebbles, Rangoli, Esque, The Pif
Magazine, etc.
33

34. VICTOR CHURCH
A EULOGY
Symmetry Pebbles championed poet and featured poet of Issue 3 sadly passed away on Monday 19th March
2012. His talent was that of pure poetry, bold and charismatic. I feel it is important to keep this level of talent
alive, which is why I am re-publishing three of Victor's poems from Symmetry Pebbles archive. You can also
read more of Victor's work in Issue 1 and Issue 3 which are available to download from wwww.symemtrypeb-
bles.com and further information can be found at www.victorchurch.com. Now, over to Victor...
BETRACHTUNG
So there! Some
Say wunderkind,
Some
Say perfect fool,
But most don’t give a damn, of course.
I laugh, for I’m
Both
Genius and
Lunatic.
I cannot
Tell what’s true or
False,
Whether any
Of my work’s worth anything at
All, or if it’s
Just
Wasting time, and
Laughable.
But I know
Not if my mind
Has
Gone, or if the
Longest distance is from Mother
To Goodbye. All
Ends
With me pissing
Gainst the Wall
34

35. I'M TALKING
TO THE CEDAR
TREES
I’m talking to the cedar trees:
They always seem to understand
Whatever grief I spill on them,
Whatever blood I shed.
And as I speak,
So eagles snap the topmost shoots,
Fly off unto a distant rock, drop seed
To grow in gravel, morphing to
Stone forests on the mountainside,
Flint clusters to bear witness to my pain.
I’m talking to the cedar stones:
They do not seem to understand;
They spit back words in secret fonts
From long-dysfunctioned worlds;
Gaunt souls from long-forgotten dreams
Still haunt me with their ruptured chords;
Fast-forward through once verdant limbs,
Now fractured gangrene claws.
I’m talking to the cedar trees:
They tell me that the words I write
And all the whisperings I hear,
The eagles understand.
WEIHNACHTSBAUM
I’m
As I used
To be: erect and vibrant, hardcore
Branches reaching out for
You to take, unfold, unwrap, to
Share
Your soil, and
Decorate the needles of my limbs.
Be silent whilst His hymns
Help shed the guilt that smothers me,
That
Hammers nails
Into his innocence. His bloodstained
Flesh whose shattering pain
Infests the tree from which he hangs.
35

36. Metacowboy: poems by Rodney Nelson
Review by Richard Thomas
METACOWBOY: poems. By Rodney Nelson. (2011. The Moon Publishing and Printing The Moon) 34 pp. $14
In Metacowboy, the latest collection of poetry from Rodney Nelson, the reader is placed carefully in the
lonely and longing mind of a pseudo-cowboy who finds escape in his Northern Great Plains. Amongst the
mountains, the bushes, the range and the buffalo our narrator debates his identity arguing that though 'I am not
seen in rodeo/ shitkicker/ or/ stetson' (“OUT”) he's '...a rhinestone saddlebum like you' (“NOTE TO MIAMI
BEACH”).
These poems are as delicate as they are bold and strong, beautifully surging and dancing across the page,
words often offset giving emotional emphasis and a sense of desperation and eagerness to the poems. This
plays well with the range of personal subjects Rodney touches upon throughout the collection – there is a def-
inite feeling of yearning here, a yearning to reach a point of fulfilment and ease with the life he has lived and
is living. This ease starts to be collected as Rodney recalls his childhood with romantic effect remembering
himself as '...the boy of them to end/ July with an arm out the window' and observing what he's learnt of himself
and his surroundings since: '...but I had a nose of the world now/ and knew witch hazel when I smelled it'
(“EAST OF WALLA WALLA”), and can 'admit to being frayed and too late for/ money- or woman-making
ambition', and though later on in the collection he remembers and feels the aching of the mistakes and misun-
derstandings of youth in lust as shown in the later poem “METACOWBOY LETS ON TO CATTLE KATE”,
he knows he can find resolution in letting '...the prairie be acedia...' and find a state of not caring for his personal
position anymore, much like the worry-free, young bull snake who '...rather/ wait in morning sun-warm trail
than hide...' (“JULY IN WYOMING”). Metacowboy is very much about finding that sun-warm trail that can
only be obtained in accepting yourself.
36

37. In Metacowboy, Rodney displays great technical ability in mainly freeverse that literally lassos you from
one page to the next. Though unpunctuated and often wild freeverse appears to be the main technical contender
in this collection, Rodney does give a slight nod to formal verse occasionally, most notably in “CHANTS
FROM NO ONE OTHER” (an excerpt from his long poem “NO ONE OTHER”, which can be found else-
where), and though he doesn't conform completely to formal poetic tradition here he does show an acknowl-
edgement and understanding of it:
they needed not call you Ishmael
unblest unburdened with fame or money
no one on way with no one other
you slipped the country drunk at night
and you can see it ever now
this very moment
they needed not call you Henry David
who had not built a chicken coop in
San Francisco Flagstaff Fargo
if I went eighty-five would die
you thought but did so anyway
y no volveráááás
The poem continues with further stanzas of the same length and repetitions.
I'd recommend this collection particularly to reader's who enjoy the works of Diane di Prima, Gary Snyder
and other poets who give an edge to being amongst nature. This collection of poems comes from The Wild
West and is quite the dangerous pastoral, and quite the insight into Rodney's life as a North American – once
you're in you're in.
You can purchase this book here - http://moonpublishprint.com/catalog/index.php?route=product/product&fil-
ter_name=metacowboy&product_id=112
37