Problem
I,
O,
I am I,
And there is nothing less.
In the distance,
Mathematicians scream.
Experiencing Metaphysical Reality on a Thursday Night
I once saw Aristotle
Ascending the billowing folds
Of the cumulonimbus,
Both draped in creamsicle orange
And pristine sulfur yellow,
Immersed in Southern sunshine,
But when I grabbed a ladder
And set it against the heavens
For him to get down safely
And maybe catch a bus,
He leaned down and asked
“But do you know why?”
Bio: E. M. Foster (also known as Emma Foster) is a writer and poet from Florida. Her work appears in Aurora Journal, Sledgehammer Lit, Antiheroin Chic, Your Daily Poem, and others. Her microchap Isosceles Triangles (2021) was published by Origami Poems Project. You can find more of her writing and other posts at https://fosteryourwriting.com/
Neither in swamp of clouds
or snarl of torrents
Nor in overbearing sky
or unassuming land
And not in hail of the sun
or blaze of dovelike rain
A song that silences sing
Colors that paleness holds to bring
Like a shadow under a fallen leaf
I lay soft, as an unanswered prayer
There till I'm blown invisible
as whispers to the consonant winds
Wolfpack Contributor: Sarika Jaswani5 poems by Sarika Jaswani2 poems by Sarika Jaswani /ArtInCrochet
Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?
Pasithea: My first experience in writing came out of grief and disbelief when my country’s prime minister Mr Rafic Harriri was assassinated. At that time I was in second year law school. I remember being in class when recording my civil law lecture when the window frame fell over and around me after the glass bursted from the power of the explosion. I remember running out of class to the open to looking up to the sky with rubble dropping into my eyes and my hair with the smell of burnt flesh and fire. It took me two weeks to process the shock and writing was my only release. Later, came travel for work in the Arab Gulf countries and the far East. After meeting my maternal side of the family who are Pinay-Hispanic, and enjoying exploring the Philippines, I found inspiration in the colorful cultural dances and the exotic beauty of the place. Combined with my love for schools of art esp open impressionism, I began to write religiously as a way to take a break from legal and academic writing.
Q2: Who are some of your biggest influences today?
Pasithea: From the contemporary writers? No one but from the old times Gibran Khalil Gibran, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rumi, Ibn Arabi, and Al-Motannabi. I like the power of rebellion for social justice, the clarity of mysticism and asceticism. For me intellectualism and impressionism are key to carrying a writer from a paper unto the hearts of his readers. A writer is someone who can mentally imprint on you.
Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing/art? Have any travels away from home influenced work/describe?
Pasithea: I grew up(if you consider mental and physical aspect) between Lebanon, Philippines, and Turkey(dad was Turkish Lebanese). Almost every place I’ve been to added to my plume’s quiver. For example Singapore added modernism, Bahrain easy going tones, Turkey intricacy etc. Sometimes a thing as simple as a pattern on a persian carpet being weaved right in front of you makes long to draw what you see in writing. When I write, I always choose open spaces especially when I travel. I choose spots where I can get to be in the background of the local rhythm where I can observe people and listen to life’s melody flow amongst the people I am learning about.
Q4: What do you consider the most meaningful work you’ve done creatively so far?
Pasithea: I used to think it’s just my #didactic poems but after realizing my love for history and mythology, I believe it’s my historical fiction pieces which I weave into them contemporary political current events. I mention Elissar’s Star Sapphire, Cedar’s Box, Cedars’ Morrighan Crow, and Elissar’s Tears.
Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer/poet/artist?
Pasithea: In 2019, when the Lebanese revolution happened, I felt it was a place for artists and a time to show one’s true heart by inspiring my people to be better. I wrote Truth’s Volcano a double lingo Acrostic. It was a poem half in Arabic and acrostic and half in english also Acrostic.
Q6: Favorite activities to relax?
Pasithea: I love to do gardening, travel, make perfumes, cook, listen to music, and take long walks.
Q7: Any recent or forthcoming projects you’d like to promote?
Pasithea: Currently I am a contributor here on feversoftgemind and uglywriters. I haven’t been pushing a lot of work since I am finishing my master’s graduation thesis in business law.
Q8: One of your favorite lines from writing or favorite art pieces?
Pasithea: I like Kagaya's digital art pieces and Thomas Cole's series of portraits called "Course of an Empire" from the Hudson River School of painting. As well as Leonid Afremov.
(c) Leonid Afremov
Arcadian Empire
A brush carved on the Hudson River
honed romanticism on its bristles.
Dipped in ideal rustic beauty; paints
a paradise lost in an industrial revolution.
Glorified in emotional trees
standing freely to defy norms
of enlightenment and aristocrats.
With clear skies and vast greens
Thomas expresses beauty’s notions.
A fresh morning in spring or summer
shifts a river further down as a crag
and boulder witness a peak fork
from a distance beyond.
Much of the wilderness
disappears into settled lands.
Plowed fields peer with lawns
unto newly built boats,
shepherds herding sheep,
and dancing settlers.
His individualism shows
as an old man sketches
geometrical problems
with sticks.
On a bluff by the river
a megalithic temple hides
beneath sacrificial fumes.
Ideally this fits pre-urban Greece.
The Arcadian Empire signifies
humanity and nature at peace.
A notion portrayed in activities
that relate safety for nature and its inhabitants
As far as poems I love Francis William Bourdillon's:
"The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one: Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done.
Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?
Pasithea: Believe it or not, sometimes you meet people online via websites like allpoetry who teach you technique through contests and prompts. Her name was Sylvia. She ran several contests and taught me from shadow sonnets to cinquains, to constanza, to rondeau, you name it.
Bio: Pasithea is an impressionist poet who dabbles in art and poetry. She enjoys writing about life and her experiences from different perspectives. She believes in art in poetry as in exploring art to emphasize its role in juicing creativity out of a quill. She enjoys writing poetry in symbolism laced with philosophy and psychology. Combined with varied styles and topics, her motto will always be: poetry is a passionate expression kindled by an impression unlimited by public conviction. To catch more of her work follow her on Instagram @pasitheachan or twitter @pasitheachan and on Ello @ello.co/pasitheaanimalibera where you can find more of her historical fiction and mythological or cultural short stories.
New Poems from Pasithea ChanPoetry by Pasithea Chan : “Surreal Assurance”
remember reading about L. Cohen discussion of discipline
in his family before (leaving) his shoes neatly beneath the bed,
lined in rows the Westmount childhood house of his
textile-merchant father.
Blossoms on the Plateau
scatter towards St. Laurent.
At a café, grab a late coffee, Mile End.
– Elated. Artwork to hang at Gallery ___ of
new punk energy competing with empty lots.
A poet encountered Cohen right near here chaotically sprawled
on a bench, static hat, shins crossed,
institutionally bemused.
My father knew clothing, my father knew hats.
In every secret life,
Danceclatter spirit memories,
Reanimated, the dead no longer leave
Gather under pelican shaped eaves
Refugees – taking leave, returning quickly as they arrive–
By harbour, ships, disembarking planes
At official hearings destinies decided by immigration board
on appeal. O, Canada — We who betray everything
–what are
We doing?
Searching landscapes beyond mythic voice,
first languages, anthologized wards
of mothertongue, come alive
to holy gathering, catchments of double-rainbows
above camera shop,
on The Main, to St. Catherine’s Street,
expanded histories,
Banging hammers,
gauntlet to throw down bargaining for life
observing, photographing,
the Ascending of the
descending notes,
at the gated freight elevators
in a cessation of rain, orchestral loft curtains
and a cacophony of rattling glass
in choreographic time,
threaded hum of industrial needles, machines,
for fancy fabric, the manufacture of
ghost suits in factories.
Did the street lineaments of longing shape
an arc to the sun in melodic time,
Word became difference
– without a promised pound of flesh —
each visioning, wisteria proposing
darker awakening. To bow and Curtsy. The
– Oars of the St. Lawrence remaining as if
Hallucinatory – at a farther reach –
Prayer,
Continuance. Swirling,
persuasive designs for some new disguise.
In rupture rapture————
Graffitied,
the needle in thread, the lacuna.
Stitches of erasure,
(by attendant lay kept at bay)
a homonym in nominal space
Ofidentity
en/closures.
When You Carry the Flag of Surrender
We aim for song.
Tilt to embrace.
First embouchure, embrace of red, then blue,
a burning white beneath the stair corrodes coruscating struts.
You waited to come back too long,
already threat gave you a name.
Beneath eyelids, the mourning bruised fifth notes.
Minor armies, advancing packs of card sharks,
upon arrival, slight a flock of black birds, ravens,
and your sister’s husband’s brutal conundrum commences.
It’s a war against nature.
We guessed wrong.
Planning for a siege at a craps table
along the loneliest strip
where hummingbirds dance a devious fandango,
on with nightclub nightmares.
You lifted up with urgency,
the urge, to surrender,
to carry the flag of surrender.
(And safely, the albatross of snow
glides ascending beyond Blake,
rising to the Gate of Hell
Wings shorn with fire).
The yellowing book, it’s pages.
If you are tired enough, you will fall asleep,
fall into the arms of a boulder,
spreading the night moth’s wings around you.
On the ocean, the burning partisan’s ship
sinks behind another neon moon.
Affair
Between the odd and even
I shall be a tailor, sewing pockets
with a wretched hand.
A corruption, failure
of the terms of service.
I gave them nothing, willingly,
I gave them nothing, undue dress.
A shaky signature, handshake
under duress, erasing
distressed seams.
The Committee of Horsemen
and their capital wives
Flying to a ceremonial, under
cloak, the war’s convoy’s coverings
Blanket the skies with parachutes.
I shall be the uninvited guest,
these twisted hands trembling,
winter branches at calico windows,
draperies.
Obscene broncho –
of obstreperous lineage.
Startling twilight of starlings.
Sinking Hesperus.
Rain
1.
The plane goes down
It goes down
It makes the sun
turn a pale green
a pale green
Packages of jealous
nauseous waitresses
That know no limits
know no limits
In the charnel house
in the charnel house
2.
Confusion of smoke
Bodies alight
by the fairgrounds
All the kisses you can
punch for a dollar twenty
five don’t be shy step
Right up
3.
Bop bop bopping
for the wormy wordy words
worthy apple of the jaundice
eye another round
of Government Propaganda
For the Shiny Happy People
4.
Free line dances
for the people
By the acid river backside
pouring out toxic sludge
5.
Captains of Productive
Industrial stewardship
on sacred ground whose
ground sacred check
the grainy almanac
in the gun-sites of the
Military Industrial complex
6.
We capture captions
speak in thought balloons
Sometimes arrogant
overtalking even
The gentlest Master
slips outside benign
speaking behind a billboard
for mouth wash
cattle in the fields, lowing
7.
“It will rain soon,”
Mommy says to
her six year old in Khakis
amidst the smoke beneath
the chocking ruins -- rains
down historical memory
8.
Insects rub their tentacled principal
legs together make the beat
of some new music written
by the Karaoke Moon
9.
We can count
all of the ways
that what was once here
no longer is.
Using an app with magic markers
we make asemic marks
on photographic paper.
Is there hope of change?
Are we impassioned?
Poisoned? What lies beyond
belief is belief in
our own ability to change
out of clothing
make the New Man
look possible
available
fallible as Merchandise.
1985 (A Drum)
A Leonard Cohen concert
New York, Carnegie Hall,
At performance end, more people
than one might imagine prepare for Rapture.
From handbags & from under
winter coats they rush towards the stage.
A price of admittance.
Recognizable is ritual.
My old friend, with whom I attend,
I shall never see again, while,
Field Commander Cohen,
Working for the Yankee Dollar,
Takes Manhattan.
Graciously bowing,
catching in light and furious, bouquets
of cornflowers and roses. The clarion call,
in spot lit time trumpet flowers
opening up pollen in a thousand-handed balcony.
Twitter: @frede_kenter @icefloe_P
Instagram: @r.f.k.vispocityshuffle
Poems 2, 3 & 4 are inspired by Cohen’s poetry book “The Energy of Slaves”
that was and is /now gone…gone….so still …the fragile shards of some unreasonable flower from half empty pockets torn from old coats ….entwines and blooms so there still this vibrant pulse ….the fleeting skein of some dense architectonic memory….always leaving, yet inside the vein beneath my skin and at twilight you are still there too and leave a card beside the wall on a scattered table….the pulse, the pulse….that I think is….though also ….gone….
2.
For Lou Reed (1978)
fragile unreasonable flower old full-length black autumn coat with pockets dogeared post card against a wall drifts from a scattered table books letters notebooks bloom inside the entwined half-full shards inside this midtown Manhattan SRO hotel
In the cold In the cold vibrant twilight In the cold vibrant In the twilight In cold twilight
Robert Frede Kenter is a 2020 pushcart nominee, poet, visual artist, editor and the publisher of Ice FloePress. Currently living in Toronto, work is published widely, incl. Floodlight Editions, Cypress, Burning House Press, Anthropocene, New Quarterly, Grain, Prairie Fire, Going Down Swinging, Fascist Panties, Cough, Fevers Of. The hybrid, Audacity of Form (2019), is available from Ice Floe Press. Check out Robert’s latest book “Eden” with Floodlight Editions.
Eden is a selection of hybrid pareidolia poetry which glides within abstract visions. Robert Frede Kenter’s mirrored shards dangle inside sensory gardens. Smoke encircles words communicating raw politics and myth through jazzy vibrations twinkling in the shadows. Kenter’s poetry contorts paint, collage, drawn figures, photos, and found text. This imaginative collection, along with his other works and collaborations spanning more than three decades, solidify his place in the experimental poetry scene.
Fevers of the Mind 