by Harvey E. Parker

Download the podcast

Harvey E. Parker is a visual artist who teaches Gifted and Talented in four public schools. His interests include mythology, history, maps and books. Most of his work is currently in ATC (Artist Trading Card) format, the only requirement being that the finished piece be 2.5 x 3.5 inches, the size of a standard playing card.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

by Paul Stevens

One day I’ll write a poem so wild
It will knock you off your perch!
You’ll pick yourself up from the floor
Weak-kneed and cross-eyed, lurch

Towards me wailing, ‘I must have
That poet — give him to me!’
See, that’s why I write and write
And write this poetry.

Download the podcast

Paul Stevens (MySpace page), formerly of Leeds and Harrogate, late of The Strand, has taken up permanent residence in the Seventeenth Century where he may be found at the Mermaid Tavern, roistering intemperately, waving a tattered copy of The Flea broadsheets.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

by Peg Duthie

I have torched battalions of straw men
in my quest to spin an ending to my liking.
I have cajoled seeds into uprooting secrets
before they are even drowned or buried.
I have fleeced both witches and sailors
and clothed empresses with newsprint veils.
I have given nothing away, although
many who partake of my measures fail
to recognize that everything bears a price.
I learned this from you. Your prints form a ghost
under everything I touch, a phantom
under every map I sketch, and once
I cease to care about what left’s to lose, I
will free you from the lump lodged in my throat.

Download the podcast

Peg Duthie (website) shares a house in Nashville, Tennessee, with a small piano, a large dog, and a drawerful of knives. She blogs at Chrysanthemum.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

by Susan Elbe

for Francisco Alarcón
August 7, 1994

I, myself am not bird,
my bones, not hollow
easy flutes for song.

I, myself am not snake,
my skin not silver
husk that sloughs me new.

But I, myself am the green
voice jabbering
down the fields. My palms

push sky, reek of sun
and I cadence
the night with whispering.

I, myself take to ice, brittle
with rime, shimmy
in dry wind — chicome, chicome.

Download the podcast

Note: Chicome is the Nahuatl numeral 7. In Aztec mythology, Chicomecoatl (“Seven Snakes”) was the Aztec goddess of maize. She is sometimes called Goddess of Nourishment, a deity of plenty and the female aspect of corn. Her symbol is an ear of corn. Source: Francisco X. Alarcón. Other sources say that Centeotl, the Corn God, is the provider of the Spirit Soul (Teyollia) for days with the numeral 7 (chicome). There is a lot of crossover between Nahuatl and Aztec mythology.

Susan Elbe (website) is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals, including Blackbird, diode, MARGIE, North American Review, and Salt Hill. Her work has also been widely anthologized, including in A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books).

With Kelly Madigan Erlandson, Susan is the editor of qarrtsiluni’s Health issue, currently accepting submissions through November 30.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

by Zoe Polach

We had a list of all the things that were important. It was a long list, but not too long, because it was very carefully edited. Thrift was on it, and wearing pants, and so was keeping good records. We’d made too many mistakes to forget that one.

One day at the end of winter, we were debating over lunch whether we should add something to the list. In the middle of the discussion, a stranger wandered in. We asked her what her name was, where did she come from, but she just smiled and asked politely if there was enough to share. We said, of course there is (hospitality was #14), pull up a chair and help yourself.

We continued talking, and the stranger listened attentively. At the end of the meal she thanked us for our kindness. She was a wandering magician, and she wondered if she might pay us back by putting on a little show. We said, we love a good magic trick, what’ve you got?

With great ceremony she pulled out a deck of cards. They were bigger than your average playing cards, and we thought they had different pictures, but we couldn’t quite make them out.

After shuffling them with all kinds of fancy flicks of the wrist, she fanned the cards out face-down and offered them to the nearest person. Take one, she said. He did, and turned it over. It read, simply, #20: paying debts. He read it out loud, and everyone looked at each other.

The magician took the card back. This is my best trick, she said, proud and a little shy. She traced the letters on the card with one long finger and they disappeared under her touch.

We wanted to be polite, but we didn’t understand. She said, you’ll see it if you try again. This time the card read #14: hospitality. As the word dissolved we felt something, a feeling whose name we couldn’t remember. Maybe we’d better see it again, we said, sitting up in our seats.

We erased our portraits, too, and our mortgages, and lots of things that people believed in. And every entry on our list had gone up in smoke before we were done. We felt better than we had in years.

When we were finished, we told her that after all this, we had to know her name. She said, I forget, I’m sorry, was it important?

Download the podcast

Zoe Polach is from the Maryland suburbs of D.C. She started as a freshman at the University of Chicago this fall.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

by Steve Wing

Click on image to see a larger version.

Download the podcast

Steve Wing (PBase gallery) is a visual artist and writer whose work reflects his appreciation for the extraordinary in ordinary days and places. He lives in Florida, where he takes dawn photos on his way to work in an academic institution. He’s a regular contributor to qarrtsiluni, as well as to BluePrintReview, where he has a bio page with links to some of his other publications.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

In the spirit of rewarding a few of our otherwise unpaid authors for the use of their work, this year we thought we’d start sending in nominations for the Pushcart Prize. International readers or those outside the North American small press literary scene might be unaware of it, but in many circles the Pushcart is so prestigious that a mere nomination is considered worthy of mention in an author’s bio — as if the highly subjective and arbitrary selections of a couple of yahoos like us says anything meaningful.

But then we thought: why not ask qarrtsiluni readers to help find our six nominations? That seems like one way to make them a bit more meaningful. Any work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry that has appeared in qarrtsiluni since January 1 would be eligible (here are the minimal guidelines), which encompasses the Mutating the Signature and Economy issues as well as the currently unfolding Words of Power. Remember to hit the “Older entries” link at the bottom of each page to navigate through an issue. Grab permalinks by clicking on the titles.

Please leave suggestions in the comment thread for this post (or if you’re shy, email us: qarrtsiluni [at] gmail [dot] com), up to six nominations per commenter. And tell us why. We are much more likely to be swayed by articulate arguments and personal reactions than by numbers of “votes”; this isn’t a popularity contest. Please don’t nominate your own works! Aside from that, anyone is welcome to make suggestions, including first-time readers, but we will probably give somewhat greater weight to suggestions from those who regularly comment here, indicating a long-term engagement with the magazine.

We need to print out and mail in our nominations no later than December 1, so we’ll be making our final decision before the end of the month, and will announce the nominations by an update to this post. In the meantime, we’d really appreciate your help in combing through the archives.

—Beth and Dave

:: :: :: :: :: ::

by Colleen McKee

His heart was a poppy, paper-thin.
From the women’s balcony I heard it
during the silent prayers.
His shoulderblades trembled under his tsallit, weapons
I wanted for myself. Blame it on Lilith,
on boredom. Blame it on dirt
got into the mikveh. Blame it
on my red hair, or the gap between
my front teeth, which is a sign
of lustfulness in women, or at least distracts men
from my lack of beauty. But on what
shall I blame love? I asked him
to bring me a loaf of challah,
made in his mother’s kitchen.
I was his first. It was easy from there.

The rebbe’s son, I would meet him
a bit before dawn, holding a lamp,
the cellar door barely open.
Koomt tsoo mir — my hand in the door,
pulling him in, under the earth
fragrant with apples. We kissed
in the darkness of apples.

Upstairs, we smoked cigarettes, and the last of the night
clung to our skin: the dark gold of tobacco,
red gold of his hair, the silver of moon
and of smoke. Our picnics in the garden
of my hand-embroidered bed. A few braids of challah,
the twice-blessed wine, the spiciest
wursts, slaughtered and stuffed by
my husband’s callused hands.
On the trousseau, a half-eaten apple
bruised red to gold.

How could I do it? you wonder,
soft and snug before dawn,
as my husband fed cows
from bare hands? I did it because
of my husband’s hands, because
they were twice as big as my own, animal-
grizzled and freckled and red, pushing
me down and inside me, pushing
beyond what I had. Understand, he was
what I wanted. But then, I wanted a pet of my own. I wanted
white skin of my own to whip,
to kiss and surprise, to bind.

We’d smoke my husband’s cigarettes, rolled
between his thick fingers, pilfered
from his gold case. One morning,
(my husband in Chelm to see about buying a goat)
we woke late to embroidered sheets smeared with ash,
dirty vines on the hem of the bed,
gray pomegranates where we laid our heads.
A dusting of ashes covered the floor —
my lover was the first to notice
the tracks in the ash, like a bird’s,
but the size of a woman’s foot. And the lid
was off my jewelry box, my necklaces scattered
in front of the mirror. Who had been trying them on?
My husband’s gold cigarette case
was newly engraved with some letters — Hebrew —
I cannot read — when I asked what they said,
my lover just clutched at his curls and wept.
Dybbuk, dybbuk, he muttered. Lilim, lilim, ach…
He drew diagrams in dust with his fingers
as I pulled up my stockings and braided my hair.
He told me to hide the cigarette case.
I dropped it in the well, watched the gold
Flash in the sun and the water.
There were spots in my eyes all day.
I told my husband it was an accident.

Today, the rebbe’s son barely looks up from his books
when I buy bread from his mother.
Every morning there’s a sea in my belly.
I can’t bear the salt sweat
beneath my swollen breasts, or the scent
of meat, though my husband makes me eat it,
for the child, he says, for the roses
in my cheeks. He hopes for a boy
and is happy, but I know it will be
a girl like me, that the restlessness
I bear inside me will beat
in her poppy-thin heart. For her I won’t bother
with ribbons, red ribbons in my hair,
or hers, in the doorway, the bars
of her cradle. I will name her after me. Everyone
will whisper, How can she do such a thing?
The Angel of Death is not so smart.
When he comes to your house, two with one name,
he won’t know who to take.

I am an animal, an animal in love.
Love is lodged in the muscle, the best cuts
of meat. Fire cannot wash love away, nor
can salt scour it clean.
Of ashes will always be embers.

When my daughter is born, I will hold her,
glistening red. I will kiss
her pink hands, her gold curls.
I will call her a shayne maidl.
I no longer fear
the evil eye.
I will take her
to the well, toss
my gold bracelets in first.
When she reaches for them,
I’ll give her a push.
All day long, I know,
I will be punished
by spots in my eyes
from her gold curls
flashing in the sun as she falls.
When they ask, I will say,
It was an accident.
Because, in a way, it was.

Download the podcast

Colleen McKee is the author of a collection of poetry, My Hot Little Tomato (Cherry Pie, 2007) and co-editor of an anthology of personal narratives, Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America (PenUltimate, 2008).

:: :: :: :: :: ::

by Barbara LaMorticella

Let everyone on earth who is alone now
reading, sleeping, sitting in small rooms
alone and meditating,
cutting wood, walking desperately through
dark nights

Let everyone alone and praying
Let everyone alone and grieving
Let everyone alone

Let everyone contained and pure
in solitude know — Know

That in the early morning hours
all the prayers of solitaries
rise vibrating out of the dim earth,
not like birds but like
the deepest voice of earth itself

Rise out of the tangled grasses
of individual living
the way the mist does in the morning —
softly, surely,

Reclaiming and replenishing heaven.

Download the podcast

Barbara LaMorticella lives in the woods outside Portland, Oregon, and hosts a poetry program on KBOO radio. She’s been a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and a recipient of the Stewart Holbrook award for outstanding contribution to Oregon Literary Arts. A retired medical transcriber, she’s performs her work widely and is working on her third collection of poems.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

by Penn Kemp

House. Hold. Man. Age. Meant.
Well. Well, whoever would have

guessed? Not me, when I was up
and away, running and running off

steam, that I’d return to a house to run,
the one I ran from forty-odd years back.

Now resounding, rolling round and
round the block, the wo(r)ld follows,

shouting curses, blessings, woundings,
winding me back here where I began.

Only courage lets me remain, lets me rest,
to maintain the stiff demeanour of brick

veneer by which I was raised. Rest and all
the rest is easy always. Words to swear by,

words to return here, open-handed. Home.

Download the MP3

Canadian poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp has published twenty-five books of poetry and drama, had six plays and ten CDs produced as well as Canada’s first poetry CD-ROM and several award-winning videopoems. She performs in festivals around the world. Her Muse News is renewed monthly on Penn Letters and on Facebook. Penn can also be heard on MySpace and mytown.ca. Penn is the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario for 2009-10, hosting the radio show Gathering Voices.

:: :: :: :: :: ::