Atmospherics Volume 1, no. 2 Fall 1994 Welcome to issue number two of Atmospherics. I was gratified by the good things that were said about issue one. As you can see from the author biographies, Atmospherics has reached around the world. Contributions come from as close as Toronto and as far away as Helsinki, Finland. The styles are as varied as the home bases of the authors. This makes me feel very satisfied because I wanted this journal to appeal to a wide range of authors. This issue is our poetry issue. I plan to have one special issue devoted to this genre each year. However, depending on what type of submissions I receive, I may have more than one special poetry issue a year. As always, Atmospherics welcome any submissions of short-stories, poems, and literary essays. Please include a short biography with your submission. Send them to: Susan Keeping (keeping@vax.library.utoronto.ca or ag351@freenet.carleton.ca.). If you wish to receive future Atmospherics via e-mail please send me your address and I will send out bulk mailings to those interested. Atmospherics is available on freenet.carleton.ca (the poetry and writers sigs), it is uploaded to some local Toronto BBS's and is also available through FTP at: etext.archive.umich.edu. It is also accessible through Gopher from the same site. So, enjoy this issue. I hope you find something in it that you like. Susan Keeping, editor =================================================== Atmospherics Volume 1, number 2 Autumn 1994 =================================================== Table of Contents: Poems by: Colin Morton Thomas Bell Scott Dexter Tuomas Kilpi John D. Anderson R. David Dowker Pearl Sheil Happy Charles P. Schultz Erik J. Davis George Belphegore Perry ___________________________________________________________________ This text may be freely shared amongst individuals, but it may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the authors and advance notification of the editor. Rights to stories remain with the authors. Copyright 1994, the authors. ___________________________________________________________________________ Adrift in Post-traumatic Space ------------------------------ "309.89 Post-traumatic Stress Disorder A. The person has experienced an event that is outside the range of usual human..." Nameless bones spread maintaining always appropriate distance. And there another psychotic killer slouches free and loosely toward Music City. And Josie faces Mecca, and Josie fastens cute buttons on an ice-blue top, and Josie steels herself for facing the faceless waiting for Big slices. B: The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in at least one of the following ways: ...numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma) as indicated by at least three of the following:... (6) restricted range of affect, e.g., unable to have loving feelings..." I live in your small dark rooms. And I wait for a window of opportunity to open. And I wait. I wait for the shadow that cannot be named to overtake us, to overtake me. Robert settled for various adjustments to that crimson paisley tie. seeking connection he could tolerate Clarkesville's quiet shaken by 3 killings Clarkesville, Tenn. - Annabelle Brown was washing the dishes from a spaghetti diner she had cooked for her boyfriend and two friends when she was shot in the forehead. "People are just going crazy these days." Do we admit this to poetry? Tsvetayeva recoiled in panic at what didn't fit. In Clarkesville a country singer thinks he can do whatever he wants Selling millions gives him the right to fire his handgun after a common dispute with three teenagers in Wilson County over the right to pass. And in Bosnia and in Russia and in Ireland the world of all religions and ethnicities is dying for lack of medical treatment. C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma or numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma) as indicated by at least three of the following:.... 1. Silence and 2. numbness and 3. staring vacancies overfill the 4. empty mantels and 5. guttered castles. And this is me and this I cannot control, this I cannot fix. Thomas Bell ____________________________________________________________ Preparations for a Journey I won't be able to drive all the way I'll reach a point too deep in mud the road so narrow overhanging branches scratch the windshield I'll have to carry on my back whatever I bring with me lash together whatever will float to ferry me. I'll find some island or mountainside overlooking all approaches or a cave so well sheltered I'll hear nothing but the rush of blood from heart to head see no colours but as seen in memory. Or a bend in the river where currents pause and circle on their way to the sea a coastline scoured by tides carrying with them remnants of worn-out continents. Or in some cave of light among the dark streets silent at last after midnight worn out by abandoned starts and fits I'll scratch at the page for words to begin again. Colin Morton _____________________________________________________________________ This picture of you I carry (Hell, its not even Kodak paper) fills me with exploding Green and Red and White confetti -heals my wart covered,diseased body cleansed me (dormant no longer) I am breathing again allofasuddentheairiscrystalinesunshine clear again I'm learning again teach me the parts of me I've killed for far to long I'm going to color your picture don't ask me to stay in the lines, though because they're your colors anyway and they should bleed into Everything you touch. sgd 5/23/94 Scott Dexter __________________________________________________________________________ Wet Flesh 1. why on earth books, magazines or television programmes never talk about the true mysteries of life, such as why do twins always wear the same kind of clothes, or why do blind blues singers wear sun glasses and why in coaches there are these tiny hammers in front of emergency exits and you are supposed to break the windows with them, come on you can hardly scratch a champagne glass with them, none of it makes any sense, do they think it is fun to bang a window for hours after a crash on the side of a road among all the blood and gas, there should be a serious tool so you could smash the glass with one blow, but no, the news is always full of some stupid congress and real questions are never answered 2. headless sumo wrestlers are being lifted into a truck in heavy snowfall, dancing figures in the church yard, too much sake or plain gravity, arctic duel, plastic carcasses sliding against each other, hands groping a feel from oiled bodies, the engine kicks in, the man strikes a board with chalk, free your mind but not like this, not into these words, fractals made by computers, the second letter of the alphabet is running around screaming its head off and a huge m falls from the sky, a final solution to small problems and frozen japanese escape to the highway hugging one another warmly 3. why don't we have restaurants for cannibals just like vegetarians, everybody could sell his or her body in advance to be used as food, kind of like organ donations, and after your death you are not taken to the cemetery but to the kitchen where they will prepare steaks, kidney pie and bone soup, human flesh might have an interesting taste and why is all this protein being buried while others are starving, besides it would be ethically more pleasing to be eaten by your fellow people than to end up as food for the worms 4. i saw a woman who looked just like you in the underground, and all the way from central i melted as wet flesh onto the rails, a three minute orgasm on a red plastic seat, legs twitching, hands holding a steel rail, a senseless grin on my face, an old man facing me glued his eyes to the ceiling where they were stuck and left tangling among ads, city announcements and blurred tags, a pair of blind eyes hanging in mid-air 5. maybe evolution starts to work so that we end up as more simple species, arms getting longer, backs arching, hanging around in trees, hair growing all over our bodies, soon the cities will be populated by reptiles with peanut brains, trees vanish and we wade into water, becoming even smaller, until there are just a few cells left, tossing around in the ocean, and then not even them, just a plain and empty planet that has time to think what went wrong and why. Tuomas Kilpi __________________________________________________________________________ If I could name every colour in this sky The eighteen shades of gray The pinks, purples, magentas The bruised blues, the white blues The so-dark-they're-black blues If only I could name them all before they're gone @ Happy, 1994 _________________________________________________________________________ Remember the future? The Star Weekly features effortless households of 2001 their model cities, skyways always clear and the colour of a pack of Players? We believed it! Though we'd looked down the bomb-sights of The Twentieth Century had lain on our backs in the schoolyard watching far off vapour trails of B-52s heading north we grew up expert in self-deception able to leap contradictions in a single bound. We cycled home from school in the mad adventure of air-raid drill supposing two minutes would save us and we'd rise from the wreckage of our homes to a life fit for heroes. Summer nights in the schoolyard far from city lights we stared up at Cassiopeia the North Star the Pleiades and talked of the eons their light took to reach us how we'd reverse that distance some day and what we would find beyond. Colin Morton __________________________________________________________________________ Fingers of a Man's Hand Daniel 5:5 Attached and breeding bold arabesques Of Mystery, this untenable abbotry shifts and settles, Clasps its fingers, casts a glance to the Lord: Animates this yellowed hillside with silent neophants In silent occupations, vessels of a fractious light. Detached and brooding on sinuous testaments Of piety, these obsolescent heirophants return in the night, Sated by simonious days, auctioning Seraglios of seraphim: the cheek pat or nose turned -- Shook, foiled intentions; these keepers of God. Matching the braided rhythm of the fading Potency of day, this one transcendent telling -- A lamp at the feet, a light on the path -- Rings the robes in to tranced sup: Stance and station penned, with no reverse. Meaning and meaning recked on fingers Taken in canvas Parsed 'neath the knife. Take what was left on the altar; the offer: The giving and the handing down, the raining down -- Down in the valley where the heathen chant like believers, Where thieves wear robes and proselytize: Decanters emptied, incantations cast like spider webs. Leave what was cleft on the table; the body: The sympathizing of your tents and 'tentions, Your rooms of coming and going (of meaning and meaning parsed), Ascending the babbling heights on a fractured stair Step up, each cloven fractured step. Cleave what was taken to your breast; the graal: The controlling and the telling of, the trolling and the song Chanced upon -- the minstrel beggar's only coin. Down in the valley, I quested and questioned, Tra la la la, tra la la la la. Erik J. Davis _______________________________________________________________________ I remember you said you had seen that wicked bird again "The Devil will pick your nose for a nickel" he said Can't smell anything other than coming events now I can see through your nipple Red, white and blue Jalapeno pepper Throw from the mound to the catcher Imperial police force, the corporate cops Squeeze the pepper on an open sore Lots and Lots of lotion--Jalapeno lotion Nose Lotion George Belphegore Perry __________________________________________________________________________ from "Machine Language" Crickets stitch the silence. Sleigh bells phase surf pulse conduit. Syntactic insect architecture as cosmic background noise or alien radio constellations. (There is no silence.) Sound reasons. Registers interference patterns, imponderable density of information. Meanwhile matter mutters. Incessant hydrogen whisper through summer filters even the soles of our feet communicate. * Complete possible thought reconciled with damage visors. Sky flakes like mica. Window resin yellow over the blue tiles of evening. Eventual rose and gold consensus sunset. Cultural isotrope. Clouds in votive envelopes. Distant apartment mesas. Sentinel vistas of vast acquisition. Collateral absence of emotion, feeling rather abstract. I and I maintain a shape consistent with the furniture, monitor the weather. * Having to do with. Liquid transition. Living system wisdom. Tectonic erotica. The body exults. Lustrous unfolding of limbs. lithe commotion . lineaments of affection and arousal * Dream logic dictates the absolute Necessity of the paleness of her shoulder finding moonlight and the cool smoothness moving beneath fluent fingers. sprawl of stars overhead * The jasmine overwhelmingly in bloom. Histamine effusion. Narcotic olfactory saturation. Body suddenly volatile. Ero-lunar perfume-induced trance. The fragrant path to knowledge. * If, as and when defined. * Resource of wind and sun and rain. The "temporary autonomous zone" of the garden on the balcony. Carnal anarchy of the vegetal, polysexual dispersal of information. culture-active, pan-species agency Wild life calls us. David Dowker _________________________________________________________________________ Dream of a Past Place I remember the door was unlocked. I must have walked inside. Half-lowered green shades. The smell of last week's crysathenums. It must be summer. I think I hear the chimes Of the cloakroom's wire triangles. Blinds pretend their holes are bright facets. I listen and emerald light dances on white walls Splashing copper freckles on wooden pews. This morning's pollen impregnates floating dust. From the antechamber Raspy leather soled footsteps Slip their notes under the door. Voices trickle across the floor upstairs. Done their potluck they rise, The female tide clearing, washing dishes. Plashing to one side, men dribble around the bumps On the wooden steps to go outside. Thumps, mixed with giggles, reach my mind; Children's bottoms seated For a second on each stair slide Down to the grassy parking yard. Outside some carry their own child. One holds her young man's hand. Proudly. Familiar friends greet me and ask me where I've been. I jot a message to my mind to remember. Another 'child' with familiar eyes hovers by, Waiting to have a word with me. He revs the life into his new-model car And smiles. Closing my eyes I lean back Into the Barbie-doll-smelling seat covers. I slam the door And he starts to drive me home. Pearl Sheil _______________________________________________________________________ The Party BLAST! Let others in the assault party know Where you are and what you are doing. A room has been cleared, The assault party yells. The meaning agonized, The militia slashed; The blood it elicits. Independent incision The communicator's intent. Charles P. Schultz ________________________________________________________________________ SEAFRAGMENT dragons plunge on paper wings their claws are fishhooks their muscles coils cardboard flanks and metal tails wide starlight eyes wired to their heads rotating and ancient with awake wisdom swoop swing dive turn over misty deep swinging waves underneath, flutterings of finny seaumbrellas and bearded crabs crawl through mud and fossils a huge seabeast with prehistoric scratchings on its back sleeps deeply beneath weeds, sleeps deeply in wet black people search the beach for washed jewels and shells springs and wheels, weeds and cogs to carve, polish, dream, and build into dragons SKYFRAGMENT there are tallmasted ships stranded in trees of the fir forest faraway, and landed on mountains misty green mountains the ships sway in wind stand silent in rain experienced metalwork masterful woodcarving masts are treetrunks swans are the figureheads, still intact sails sewn with heraldric patterns sails fluttering flags whispering magic among the leaves majestic in the sky, once navigated by nameless sailors through the clouds from palace to pavilion, when midsummer fire flies flew alongside, in the fir forest faraway THE FLOODED TRUTH OF MAPLINES a friend called me today "fish travelling west, eightynine hertz," she said, so i dont read to her any more. i passed the man with the windup key in his back who sells pale pieces of felt every day as i gravitated to the centre of the universe the buildings were covered with seaweed crabs crawled about the government office maze salty ocean lapped the statues and in the mist huge enigmatic things swayed. i got what i came for and returned home and went to sleep, and the maids folded up the day, and locked it away in a secret drawer. ANESTY she walks in her own way among the white tables, looking for the right umbrella the one with the silver frills and shade and the cool drinks. when she finds it, she will sit down and enjoy the friendly and sunny and welcome quiet and those already there will not say to her: anesty, take off that silly hat. FOAMING CORAL ORANGE the felty lineaments of the singer's face milky reflections of eternity in the jungle ocean the selky eye in the moon over the mountain gracing our view, glowing the landscape dome and watering the rapid rocks that cajole the broken eggshells bursting with rainbowy flags across this clear window a silky window jilted with billowing midnight fires fallen clouds flown fish voices freed while the singing skin and dying lips melt. John D. Anderson ____________________________________________________________________________ The spirit of your ancestors lives on in you, speaks through your eyes, when commanding respect, they turn your gaze, to search through the haze it finds the light, sees through the lies. You truly are cosmic. Deep, powerfull yet calm, like the ocean when the thunder strikes, stirring but the surface, throughout the night. You feel what's right, hearing through their souls, understanding their plight, your assuring gaze, overfilling them with might. And you too learn, as you float through this life, that it fills you with relief, the unending peace, which lifts you outwith those reefs to break free of this wheel, and dream and heal in a place, yet so real. R. ________________________________________________________________________ Birches Look! Fingers in the wind grasp at the sky. Leaves one by one getting away joining the birds. Sir? My students can't believe it's true. I'm the teacher. I'm not supposed to be the one caught gazing out the window. - Colin Morton ___________________________________________________________________________ Appearing in this issue: Thomas Bell "I am a former librarian and editor who is now a psychologist in private practice in Nashville, TN. I am married and have two adopted children. Poetry is what I do when I want to enjoy myself. I have been published in print (most recently in_Mediphors) and on the net." Charles P. Schultz "I have been a software engineer at Motorola in Plantation, Florida for the last 6 years. I have a number of technical publications to my credit, and I am the technical editor for one of Motorola's software engineering newsletters. This will be my first published poem.My hobbies include drumming and managing an expanding collection of over 30,000 baseball cards." Colin Morton Colin Morton has published four books of poetry, including _The Merzbook: Kurt SchwittersPoems_ and _How to Be Born Again_ from Quarry Press, which will also bring out his first novel, _Oceans Apart_, in 1995. David Dowker "'Doldrums' published in Poetry Canada Review (Summer/85) and 'The Critical Path' in the Instant Anthology (1987). Since then I have been primarily occupied with the (long) poem 'Machine Language'. I work for a stockbroker in Toronto." Erik Davis "Erik Davis has conluded by an inductive process that the most efficient manner of securing the duration and prolongation of our terrene felicity is by the impletion of the abdominal and thoracic cavities, together with a sufficient modicum of alimentary matter." Tuomas Kilpi "I'm a 27-year old student/author/editor from Helsinki, Finland.So far I have written five published small press books (prose and poetry). I earn my living by editing a small journal that deals with literature, music, art, politics - everything from Bach to Barks and beyond. I'm also studying philosphy at the University of Helsinki - and wish to graduate by next spring." Pearl Sheil She has had 2 poems published this summer, one of which was an earlier version of "Dream of a Past Place". She is a 4th year Applied Linguistics student at Carleton University, Ottawa. Scott Dexter "I'm working on my undergrad degree in Computer Science; I'm 22, I've had nothing published, my work comes from personal experience and from listening to my subconscious." John D. Anderson rrs Happy George Belphegore Perry _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________