Icefloe Press – Fevers of the Mind

Book Review “Wiregrass and Other Poems” from Moira J. Saucer review from David L O’Nan

Pre-Order here from Ethel Zine https://www.ethelzine.com/shop/wiregrass-and-other-poems-by-moira-j-saucer

Moira J Saucer is a disabled poet living in the Alabama Wiregrass. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her worked has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada including Black Bough Poetry Freedom- Rapture anthology, Visual Verse, Fly on the Wall Press, Ice Floe Press, Mooky Chick, Floodlight Editions, and Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020.

Wiregrass and Other Poems review by David L O’Nan

I have been lucky enough to read Wiregrass and Other Poems and just the wonderful, melancholy collective works of Moira J. Saucer. I admire Moira's writing and have been inspired to keep writing short story style poetry & prose due to Moira encouraging me with a story I submitted a few years ago to IceFloe Press. I actually knew someone was actually reading my work again. I received a "Best of the Net Nomination" for this piece and thank Moira, and IceFloe Press very much for keeping my confidence and expanding my style of writings now into my 40's.

This collection from Moira, is the gut of her soul. It is the heartbreak, the sadness, the wanting to escape, the bewitching hour of living in the darkness and wondering if the moon will shine down on some Alabama Wiregrass tonight. It is a recovery, back into your own cynicism, to lost, to feeling Godless to feeling God is in everything. Wiregrass and Other Poems pours the aching hours of years into one quick ride that you learn the heart of Moira. The kindness of Moira, and where our mind goes when ends are coming. The Darkness of Moira. I sit in this same kind of wanting solace, but never seeing the real Sun. Almost like a ghost, the sun fades quickly just are you are discovering it is there.

"When You Fall" : "There you are conveniently sick and poor. You are trouble wrapped in thrift store clothes, a motley creature with little possibility for redemption" a sad poem about remembering a more youthful time as a woman and feeling trapped by the never-ending days that stretch our mind more and more into the unknown.

"I survived the dark descent, the five years of shame, poverty and-
and yes hell."

"Homeless and Broke" : A tale that feels like you're forever traveling long dark Alabama roads. As i've done many times traveling from Kentucky/Indiana to New Orleans by car. Forever on dark Alabama roads. You get that sneak of Mobile, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery. But then you just see shadowy trees that jump-stare at you like Frankenstein's Monster at 3 A.M. looking for the Waffle House sign that doesn't sound good. "I lay awake at night the pain from Fibro like sharp invisible knives thrusting and turning into muscle and tendon. The portent of my death" Long lasting pain just like a long night of dark roads....doesn't ever feel to end.

"Woman A/The" : A remembrance of glory days now feel like descent. "She lies in a cot. The roaches crawl on her white skin. Flies hover over her bloody chest"

"When She was dying" for Quinn : A poem about memories, where you'd like to stay in those memories. But family, a mother has to fade and you're never ready. "She wore an otherworldly glow flushed from love and cancer"

"Wiregrass" : A poem of the wildness that once was. Alabama nights lead to the mischief, the rebellion, the fun, the regrets, the sadness in old lightbulbs. "My days are spent cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, praying. Praying to stave off sorrow and madness, but sometimes these twin demons...wait outside the doors for blindness to set in, for gladness to fade"

"Wounds" A poem about caring for someone who no longer can care fully for themselves. The sadness they have seeps into yourself. And it just becomes too much to handle. "Our bodies knit together flesh so we can go on living...but the wound memory is always there"

"Flower Thief" A wonderfully put together poem that must be read. Very metaphorically, yet visibly strong. Imagery shines. "the pallid woman told him she saw me stealing flowers... they call me a flower thief my crimes stealing stars hope from the gods brilliant light"

"Kindness" Heartbreak poem....love, lost, love, deception, love, forgiveness, or a void. "She didn't fight the judgments. It was important to avoid ruffling waters, telling the truth. He had claimed to be an honest man, yet blamed her for his lust"

"Marbles" wonderful imagery. "I love marbles...bought beautiful ones in Chicago just to gaze at them lost now" comparisons of just watching something in amazement for what it is and not what it should be.

"Charolais" "The Whole property was once pecan trees and cattle...Now there is only a pasture"....

"Midwife for Robert" about friendship, motivation, refreshed, and appreciative of art, poetry, work, what a non-narcissistic view will help guide you to greatness when it comes to writing, art, your true heart's desire. The creative starvation sometimes has to be purged back out with the hope. "Poems began to die from lack of oxygen...the poems and I began to die"

"Origins, at Sixty-Five" I've read this poem many times and always amazed by how well it is structured together to convey to never give up what creates you and what you create. "I shook the grain out into my hand, ancient yet bright, polished and buffed by the seas"

"Summertime" Stuck in the muck of another summer down South during the hardest times, wanting to get out, but fate will not let you escape at this time.... "It's time for tornado season with no shelter, no place to hide, and it's god-awful-hot under the canopy of scabbed pecan trees"

"Loss" The frustrations during the hardest period of time as a grand whole for the country. Especially, when you are living down south and what is fed to you is a machine of mudslinging. "Pastels, beautiful colors, rolling onto emptiness of white space. I wept blending them-radiant pigments, a gorgeous burning nightmare"

"Night Visitation" "Roads in Alabama roll away like giant tar pits, the blackness-deafening, dangerous"

"Vampire Story" A story/poem about after you lose someone and you just search for anything to keep your mind off it. To infatuate yourself with anything. A story. Mundane, love, cheesiness, or just leave me alone everyone and let me transcend away for awhile.

"August, 2019" Very well put together poem using nature as a symbol in the imagery representing the blooming and the blackness of rolling clouds through the Summer. "The garden flowers now shriveled, having bloomed into scattered color madness"

"Chrysalis (Queer Butterfly)" "The open road is transformed...I wait for you in a garden dense and fragrant" a beautiful poem.

"Did I Tell You" "We create another self...dissociate to absorb trauma." "The Second self watches from a distance being battered and gets exhausted too" brilliant!

4 poems from Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020 by Moira J Saucer

Pandemic Love & other Affinities from Icefloe press an anthology

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.

*Announcements for October including release of Deluxe Edition of Before the Bridges Fell (Fevers of the Mind Press)*

Paperback & Kindle version of Cursed Houses is now available from David L O’Nan on this link below

Pandemic Love & other Affinities from Icefloe press an anthology

https://icefloepress.net/pandemic-love-and-other-affinities-an-ice-floe-press-anthology/

Please check out this wonderful anthology from Ice Floe Press in Canada. Edited by Moira J. Saucer, Robert Frede Kenter, Anindita Sengupta & Jakky Bankong-Obi. Cover design by Robert Frede Kenter “Pandemic Night” is a mixed media painting of aquarelle pencil & watercolours by Moira J Saucer

This book has over 130 pages of pandemic-era based poetry & art from poets around the world who are at the top of their game.

This book is also dedicated to poets lost during that time including Ice Floe Press contributors Cathy Daley and Kari Ann Flickinger. It is dedicated to everyone who lost loved ones, family members & friends during this ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic.

Poetry from Ewoenam Akahoho: little esinam (she left the world her beautiful crayon sketches) “and now, I have become the man who lights his cigarettes with the sun”

Roseline Mgbodichinma Anya-Okorie: A Function of Spaces “When we laid on green…looking up to the fogginess of blue…between dusk & dawn – When we clasped our fingers together & whispered “It’s two of us against the world…”

poetry from Akesha Baron (Mr. Duarte Mr. Rubin), short story from Ronna Bloom (Fall, Falling) Poetry from Yasmine Bolden (May Your Blessing Be Your People) “The Answers, the ‘unity’. Outside the sky bled sorbet orange” Poetry from V.B. Borjen (The Kites) “…counting bell chimes off the cathedral tower and the uncovered mouths of passers-by sharing booze in plastic bottles and flasks” Poetry from Paul Brookes (Is It Love To Be Glad You’re Dead), photography/art from Barney Ashton-Bullock, story by Matthew Burnside (Ramshackle Heavens), poetry from Sue Chenette (Etienne Brule Park, Sunday October 18, 2020), poetry from Marian Christie (Rapunzel in the time of Covid) “She braids and unbraids her lengthening hair, combs out the knots to feel pin-sharp tugs of pain. To feel” poetry story from Defne Cizakca (I Woke Up One Morning and You Were Not There), poems by Geraldine Clarkson (Raoul, Raoul) “who’d nuzzle the padlock on my tongue try to glean corn thoughts from my blank blue eyes tickle the nape” (Mannequin, with the melancholy gaze -) “Though you never look at me directly, I always wake to your pale blue eyes, raking the air just above my head,“Pandemic Paintings by Cathy Daley, Poetry stories from Nabina Das (How to Undo a Love Story 1 & 2) Poetry from Shome Dasgupta (The Dance of the Wayfarer) “Under a fresh beam of moon, a broken root, severed and twisted – a frozen echo waiting screaming to be released” poetry by Satya Dash (Accrual) “always to be seen smeared like a sun with its back turned, blemish conspicuous even when the page is turned over” poetry from Martins Deep (as i lay forget-me-nots on your side of the bed) “to an orchid growing in a vase filled with the humus of decomposed dreams”

Poetry by Peach Delphine (within this thicket of scar) “Tongue of shovel, bone of splitting, this body a basket of spark and cinder, when you hold me smoke lingers in your hair your hands come away with ash...poetry by Steve Denehan (Someday) poetry by Olga Dermott-Bond (Skin hunger) “Standing down river, I flinch at the hours, days, weeks we have lost to this iced babble; the hush of us grazes my skin-“ poetry by Chelsea Dingman (Valence) “Again, I ran past the lake this morning, trying to figure out why I run the same route, expecting to find myself anywhere else” Poetry by Damien Donnelly (All the Other Things that were also Alone, On the List) Poetry by Birgit Lund Elston (Were There to be a Choice) “and the fox with her playful kits in the woods at the back, how could I ever leave” poetry by K. eltinae (ms.call/) Poetry by M.S. Evans (Months as Worry Beads – A Suite of 3 poems), Poem by Sue Finch (A Peacock Butterfly Dries its Wings) “From the sink I have been watching them cast silhouettes like bats”

Poetry by Kari Flickinger (that’s why I came back to you) “after weeks of fearful quarantining in a hotel on the blazing outskirts of some California desert. You hear that mission bell?”Poem by Suchi Govindarajan (An old quarantine) poetry by Catherine Graham (I Ask, Can We Be Civil?) “Leathery wind pushes the mystery flowers my name; a stem when light opens a dress-carriage for my heart” (Parts of the Song Where the Dead Come From) & (Hold the Dark), poem by Roger Hare (Pandemonium), poem by Matthew E. Henry (split screen), Poems by Elisabeth Horan (Soft Ghost Sonnet) “may it bring more joy than I’ve become -myriad cut & stab of blood, wears it thin; surely becomes woven thread of skin…” and (Twentieth Anniversary) Poem by Rahma O. Jimoh (Pandemic Soulmates), Story by Silas Jones (Heading Out), Poem by Agunbiade Kehinde (Love Poem with Shakespearean end) “Who would have thought colours and cologne could change the images of a lover in your head – like a damning art”

Photo by Robert Frede Kenter (Lock Down #24) and poetry (Pandemic Moon: A Love Poem) “Sirens accidents red lights elevators of claustrophobia run through the skin of the city” photo/art (The last of it) Poetry by Rose Knapp (Daemonic Queer Club), Poetry by Laurie Koensgen (The Conjunction: December 21, 2020) “Let’s say they’re us, those silver pinholes in the sky becoming one blurred puncture” story by Henneh Kyereh Kwaku (There Was a pandemic & I wanted to be touched & you were about to be married-), Story from Emma Lee (Failing to learn life lessons from penguins) Photography by Robynne Limoges (Surrender), (Hospital Corridor #2 & #3), poetry by V.C. McCabe (Frostbitten & Faunal) “I miss you every breath. Aromatic snow, your skin & winter catapulting us under blankets, the choice to roast in your eyes…” story/poetry by Spangle McQueen (Perhaps Love: How to have your mother’s funeral in a pandemic), poetry by Jenny Mitchell (Mother of Pearl) “She is still in the coffin. I thought she would rise like a hymn, voice soaring up to the vaulted ceiling”

Poetry by Hasan Namir (2020 Was Before) (Growing up in 2020) (Wake: The: Fuck: UP) Poetry by Marcelle Newbold (Transient Comfort) “signifier of a storm, a gentle stroke to my skin each drop a universe, a meal to a whale” and (Dwelling), Poetry by Twila Newey (Common Light) and (Natural Selection), Story by Lizzie Olesker (Block), poetry by Charlotte Oliver (Pandemic Packing) “each colour sharpening the other, first Spring petals cried from blossom trees now shrivelled grey reminding me that all will pass and memories hold beauty safe...) poetry by Niall M. Oliver (Heart) Poetry by Bola Opaleke (Rind of a Pandemic) ” A mother feels the hurt of her baby’s flowering teeth on her breasts, but welcomes the pain as a penultimate symbol of motherhood” & (Before & After the Flood), poetry from Kunjana Parashar (To My Sister, Stuck in Another City), poem from Serena Piccoli (Foam) Poem by Maria S. Picone (We Should Not Forget) “should not discount the taste of slow times fabulized in romantic paintings-should not untie silence & sorrow“

Poetry by Kushal Poddar (Ring,Ring, Round and Round) “It is not really a beast-a shapeshifting leaf bearing the unbearable isolation of the early spring and falling into the deserted lanes of pandemic…It is not a real leaf” (Comorbidity) “The Winter thaws. Streets squiggle in the mud”poem by Lee Potts (A Concise History of the Wind) “Countless threads crossed above and beneath us The same blue as oceans You’d find on antique atlas showing the ends of the earth” art by Whiskey Radish (A Sortie), Poetry by Khalisa Rae (This Sounds Like Leaving) “Searching for replicas of our past with subtle differences thinking the subtle will wake us up from this looping nightmare” poetry by Vismai Rao (After my death by staring too long at the sea, I rebirth as mango seed) “with the barest of things: sunshine, water, unlimited oxygen. A hit of warmth and my body cracks open to shatter & dissolve” poem by Larissa Reid (The Mythologies of home) “That day, hear heart felt like paper. It had lost its shape, its weight, its very structure. It drifted lightly against the inside of her ribs” poetry from Monty Reid (from The Lockdown Elegies) Poetry by Andres Rojas (Time) (One)

Art/poetry by Moira J. Saucer (Myra: The Bitterroot Suite), Poetry from Anna Saunders (All the Fallen Gold) “I will keep this precious leaf until the underworld gods call for alms” poem from Preston Smith (Quarantine Love Poem) “I’ve found that growing flowers is hard in the Anthropocene. There is Tinder and there is tyranny, and they are both tired-“poetry/story from Ankh Spice (Here is the toll) “Yes, the bail, yes the scoop, I was and am still, now scooping the soft from myself to caulk the blistered wood.” poem from Alina Stefanescu (Imbibet) “The constraint lies on the bed with one head hanging off the edge” Poem from Samuel Stathman (For Archie) poetry by Claire Trevien (Or another exit door), poetry by Bunkong Tuon (No One Asked but They Did it Anyway, Visual poetry from Margaret Viboolsittiseri (a love letter to me (b&white version), (intent)

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with V.B. Borjen

Q1: When did you start writing and who influenced you the most?

V.B.: The curious thing is that I began writing before I was an avid reader. I wrote my first poems when I was about eleven. I had the good luck of having a very supportive teacher of Bosnian in the primary school, Ms. Murisa Jukan, who encouraged me by making me read these early poems aloud, to the whole class. They were ridiculous poems, no doubt, but their value was in the act of writing and my being acknowledged as “a poet” that early on. She would often end her lessons by saying, “OK, now Beganović will read us one of his poems.” (She never called us by the first name.) And out would come this big pale green binder that belonged to my late dad and in which I wrote those little things. My poor classmates had to endure all that.

Q2: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?

V.B.: When I was about fifteen, so second grade of gymnasium. I remember I was writing this fantasy novel and I have thought of myself as a writer ever since. I believe many people somehow fear this label. Toni Morrison famously said she thought of herself as a writer only after her third book, Song of Solomon, but it’s a mystery why. Perhaps people are afraid of the responsibility it carries, as writers are most often a sort of conscience of their time, or should be at any rate. I do not see a problem with thinking of yourself as a writer if you are prone to introspection and recording the goings-on of people and places around you, in words. Most of our lives are narratives of one kind or another. Our minds work that way.

Q3: Who has helped you most with writing and career?

V.B.: It would be hard to name any one person who helped my writing or publishing, there have been so many over the years and each helped in their own way. Some by sheer enthusiasm over my work, others by publishing the first pieces. Perhaps I could go with the firsts? Dr Dijana Hadžizukić was one of the judges in the first poetry contest I submitted to and which my manuscript won. (Mak Dizdar Award, 2012). She wrote a kind introduction to the poems. Then the novelist and poet Senka Marić, who published my first short stories in Bosnian at the online magazine Strane. My first poem in English was published by the essayist and EIC Cynthia-Marie Marmo O’Brien in the inaugural issue of Hypothetical back in 2013, and the novelist and editor Sakina B. Fakhri published my first short stories in English in AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought. My friendship with the brilliant US poet Heathen (Heather Derr) has been a great inspiration for years now.

Q4: Where did you grow up and how did that influence you? Have any travels influenced your work?

V.B.: I grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the ‘90s war and its difficult aftermath in the early ‘00s. Back then, that was simply the only reality I knew and I never imagined what kind of writerly repository those early experiences would prove to be. Perhaps I have made more use of those early years in my writings in Bosnian. My work in English has been a different kind of outlet, a place to experiment and broaden, much in the tradition of the modernist authors I’ve admired, while the writing in Bosnian has most often been focused on the particulars of childhood and the language the grown-ups around me used and continue to use. However, I see these two coming closer together lately. I don’t think I compartmentalise them so much any more.

Q5: What do you consider your most meaningful work creatively to you?

V.B.: Was it Márquez who said when someone asked him which of his works he liked best, “Always the latest”? We tend to be particularly excited about whatever we have just finished. On second thoughts, I could say my novel The Flux, the first draft of which I finished in 2014, has probably proved the most instrumental, not because of the quality of writing but because it taught me some valuable lessons, such as how to construct a longer work, how to persevere and finish it, as well as how to remain a poet, even in prose ― as Baudelaire advised.

Q6: What are your favorite activities to relax?

V.B.: Reading, naturally. Keeping a diary. A spot of painting. Films, series, music. Good walks. Good coffee and food. Conversations with friends. A great deal of travelling.

Q7: What is a favorite line/ stanza/lyric from your writing?

V.B.: It is not often the case that I like my earlier work, but there is a poem I am still happy with. It’s called “The Polish Triptych” and it was first published in Chicago by The Ethetic Apostle. It ends with the following lines:

You weave yourself closer
as I spear the crests of the
waves with my looks;

Far off in the distance
slow ships pass,
mammoths in the steppe.
But here, before us
the sea unloads gifts,
they thud and fan out
and

we leap,
caught unreadied
into life, unreadied,
unspared.
(c)V.B. Borjen

Q8:What kind of music inspires you the most? What is a song or songs that always come back to you as an inspiration?

V.B.: How about a little list? “Pass This On” by The Knife, “Sinnerman” performed by Nina Simone, “Dreams” by The Cranberries”, “Adiyo Kerida” perfomed by Flory Jagoda, “O Meu Portugal” performed by Amália Rodrigues, “Moya Malenkaya” ― Marina Tsvetaeva’s lines from “Lilly of the Valley” performed by Polina Agureeva…

Q9: Do you have any recent or upcoming books, music, events, etc that you would like to promote?

My poem “The Kites” has just been published in Ice Floe Press’ anthology Pandemic Love and Other Affinities, a great assembly of authors meditating on the recent global events which marked all our lives. Should anyone be interested to follow up, I have a flesh piece “Evaristo” forthcoming in BOMB, a short prose poem “Rovers” in Moist Poetry, and a longer lyric poem “The Grapevine” coming in Issue 15 of Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts.

In other news, this summer I have been selected as one of 200 fellows for Margaret Atwood’s Practical Utopias online learning experience over on Disco. The course starts soon and I truly look forward to working with people from different backgrounds and from all around the world on common social and especially environmental issues. You can find out about the many ways to join by visiting the course website.

LINKS:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Borjen

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samoniklo/?hl=en

Link Tree (with previous publications in English): https://linktr.ee/V.B.Borjen

Pandemic Love and Other Affinities: https://icefloepress.net/pandemic-love-and-other-affinities-an-ice-floe-press-anthology/

Practical Utopias: https://studio.disco.co/learn-live-with-margaret-atwood-course

BIO:

V. B. Borjen (he/they) is a Yugoslav-born writer and visual artist based in the Czech Republic. His first poetry collection in Bosnian won the 2012 Mak Dizdar Award, while his second poetry manuscript won the 2021 Darma Books Best Manuscript Contest in Belgrade and is pending publication. Borjen’s work in English and his visual art have been featured in EcoTheo Review, Folio, Rattle, The Maine Review, AZURE, Ice Floe Press, Parentheses and elsewhere. He has a further flash fiction piece forthcoming in BOMB, and poems in Grist Journal and Moist Poetry. He serves as Guest Editor of Palette and Frontier poetry magazines.

Photo: Self-portrait, September 2022

Bare Bones Writings Issue 1 is out on Paperback and Kindle

Cover photo by Paul Brookes of Wombwell

Bare Bones Writings is an extension of http://www.Feversofthemind.com . Themes we are Looking for Poetry/prose/articles/other styles of writing are for Adhd Awareness, Mental Health, Anxiety, Culture, History, Social Justice, LGBTQ Matters/Pride, Love, Poem series, sonnets, physical health, pandemic themes, Trauma, Retro/pop culture, inspired by music/songwriters, inspired by classic & current writers, frustrations. Artwork. Music, Poetry, Book reviews.

Issue 1 includes tributes to poets/writers that contributed to Fevers of the Mind in the past including Kari Ann Flickinger, Scott Christopher Beebe & Dai Fry.

A Fevers of the Mind Musician Spotlight on the albums of Marissa Nadler.

Short Interviews from the Quick-9 interview series with Khalisa Rae, Ron Sexsmith, & Shaindel Beers.

Poetry/Writings from Kari Ann Flickinger, Dai Fry, Scott Christopher Beebe, Paul Brookes, Bill Abney, Ankh Spice, David L O’Nan, Robert Frede Kenter (with poems about Lou Reed), Glenn Barker, Rc deWinter, K Weber, Robin McNamara, Elizabeth Cusack, an art/poetry collaboration between Lia Brooks & Phil Wood, the first 5 poems from Hiraeth Series by Kushal Poddar, Barney Ashton-Bullock, Spriha Kant, Jennifer Patino (with a poem inspired by Audrey Hepburn) and artwork by Maggs Vibo, Matthew M C Smith, HilLesha O’Nan, Lily Maureen O’Nan, Ken Benes, Jessica Weyer Bentley, R.D. Johnson, Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo, Norb Aikin, Andrew Darlington, Liam Flanagan, Christina Strigas, Lorraine Caputo, Conny Borgelioen, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Colin Dardis, Petar Penda, Helen Openshaw, Matthew Freeman, Christian Garduno, Eileen Carney Hulme, Colin James, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Marisa Silva-Dunbar, Kate Garrett, A.R. Salandy, John Chinaka Onyeche, Doryn Herbst

Links:

https://tinyurl.com/ypax2vte United States

https://tinyurl.com/54datkad Canada

https://tinyurl.com/mt2h72aj Australia

https://tinyurl.com/ye5mvrfh India

https://tinyurl.com/mvcuxe8c U.K.

https://tinyurl.com/54sjsnxv Spain

https://tinyurl.com/zesshx9a France

https://tinyurl.com/28h47hdd Italy

https://tinyurl.com/4a8ta8f5 Mexico

https://tinyurl.com/mrya4uww Japan

https://tinyurl.com/yvuz8thd Netherlands

https://tinyurl.com/y65mt5c3 Poland

https://tinyurl.com/5ee9dh3b Turkey

https://tinyurl.com/2v26mwuj Sweden

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.

Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren

5 poems inspired by Leonard Cohen by Robert Frede Kenter

art by Geoffrey Wren (c)

(Passing Through) (for L. Cohen)

Crossing laneway between old colonial buildings,

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”

Wolfpack Contributor: Robert Frede Kenter

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren

4 poems by Robert Frede Kenter published in Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020

4 poems from Robert Frede Kenter in Avalanches in Poetry

A Spotlight on IceFloe Press : Poetry, Art, Photography Creativity Sponge

4 poems from Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020 by Moira J Saucer

2 new poems by David L O’Nan on IceFloe Press (click links) today “Those Hazels, they Slice” and “Living in This Toxic Coalmine”

Wonderful Artwork from Avalanches in Poetry Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen by artist/writer Geoffrey Wren