Silenced Press

Short Note To The Generic “You” That I Sometimes Address As A Writer. Concise, To The Point, I Simply Must Nip This In The Bud Right Now.

Mike — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:28:14 +0000

Here is a piece of me.
You are not me.
Don’t come any closer.

Take this piece of me,
but don’t try to be me.
Go now while it’s still dark.

I’ll visualize your safe passage
and touch wood out of habit.
The rest is up to you.

Vincent Renstrom
Currently living in Ohio.

Nos Encontramos En Nuestro Sitio Especial A Lo Largo Del Continuum Espacio-temporal

Mike — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:04:11 +0000

El futuro no es el futuro, dice,
sino el presente;
y lo que ayer era futuro,
ya, por haber pasado,
no es ni el presente.

Nuestros pasados respectivos
no tienen nada que ver
con el hecho de que
nuestros presentes se han chocado,
pero lo malo de la historia
es que en ese choque de presentes
dice que se nos murió nuestro futuro.

Bromea que no tenemos futuro
y me viene con ese vocabulario
existencialista como si quisiera
sabotajear lo que nunca
tuvimos, tenemos, ni tendremos …
a menos que dejemos que se arme …
lo que se armase.

Vincent Renstrom
Currently living in Ohio.

A Once Upon A Love Of My Past Youth

Mike — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:05:51 +0000

It was not as if I,
I
didn’t care
for I swear I still most wanted to
but here we were again, I listening,
to your young and droning words, so stilted, so practiced, prepared and
too stiff,
too familiar,
and so of, now, in-affect,
maybe in their too familiarity for the me of who I am, now,
with your words, too passionate, too impractical,
at least for this me, my, now, more rational, sensible, mind,
as I can see, now, how, so unschooled you were in this art of love and war,
and in the keeping
of a woman, who in her heart, did not want to be kept,
as my ears and eyes smolder as if upon my mind is the start, the spark,
the, now beginning
of a purifying brushfire of my rebirth, personal—of my renewal, identity,
as I wish to wander, to explore,
the next one, the next man, the next one who
might too,
in my ears and eyes and heart, drone on and on about how he is the one—
the only one who is, now,
truly best, for me,
while I,
still wish for the next line the next chapter the next verse
the next page, already,
as I wonder, how,
I once in my idealistic and romanticized youth could have been taken in by your unbridled,
untrained,
voice, and line, and rhyme,
as I remember back to the cadence of your poetic words that were to me,
like music,
and caused within me, enrapture, vibration, need, and yes, even love, yes, even,
some love,
but here we are, now, as you speak and I cease in most anyway,
to care, to listen,
As I must raise my knowledged, quiet hand up to your rambling orifice
and place, so sweetly—
the soft kiss of my pulse-ed forefinger upon your bumbling lips,
and bid you as poet, as past lover, as my once beloved past love,
not sing.

Eric Pierzchala
Currently living in Ohio.

Evacuation Instructions

Mike — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:58:22 +0000

Listen for directions from authorized personnel:
which hopeless thoughts to avoid,

how long to wait for the destroying angels to tire
and the broken buildings to stop burning.

Remain inside the train if possible,
but if not, open the side door and go out,

and love the truculent witnesses to ambiguous events,
love witches’ gloves, dead men’s bells, bloody fingers,

love the street dogs that bark dismally
and the sunsets that can be beautiful if the light

catches the brick dust and swirling ash just so.

Howie Good

Hermitting

Mike — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 04:05:45 +0000

I’ll go through all my papers today
Sort through the poems and paintings and make a home
there: between the ink and the page. Delicate
strange,
a forgiveness I can accept, somewhere graphite grey.

Smelling like melted wax and lit cigarettes,
hair shoved back in barrettes,
avoiding the phone and door knocks, slinking
shyly among strangers, admirers, and mothers.
I have a hope.

mending myself with a crochet hook, tangling
up a garden of black and white flowers,
avoiding chores, pajama noon
I am a kid again.

new white,
burritoed in blankets, eyebrows kissed and
notebook in hand.

Angela Simione

Flowers From An Imaginary Garden

Mike — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:31:46 +0000

I plan next summer’s garden in my head,
where the bluebells will go,
the sunflowers, with the round faces

and bright yellow haloes
of the martyrs in religious paintings,
legions of bloodstained saints

whose lush wounds gleam like wet mouths,
and over here, I’ll put pink speedwell,
or maybe purple petunias,

weeping trumpets brokenly announcing
joyful tidings, and over there, the lilies,
licks of orange flame, because what’s heaven

without a vestigial concept of hell,
all the windows in the house vibrating
to the rumble of ecstatic thunder,

the mammoth heartbeat of God, if God existed.

Howie Good

An Interview With Jillian Weise

Mike — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:36:06 +0000

Jillian Weise’s first book, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, was published by Soft Skull Press. A chapbook, Translating the Body, was published by All Nations Press. Poems are forthcoming in Barrow Street, Forklift, Ohio, Pleiades and elsewhere. She is part of a project called “Poetry Everywhere” which debuted in the buses and subways of seven cities in February 2008. Jillian lives in Kentucky.

Alfaro: What are your three favorite books?

Jillian: Right now I’m swooned by Juan Ruiz’s Book of Good Love. The poems involve a lot of swashbuckling. I’m a big fan of Stein’s Mexico and Cortazar’s We Love Glenda So Much.

Alfaro: “Poetry Everywhere” sounds like an amazing project to be a part of. What cities were involved?

Jillian: Los Angeles, Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago (I think) and some others. It’s sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Film Department.

Alfaro: Very cool. So how did you get into poetry?

Jillian: I started writing poetry late. At first, all my poems were for this guy named Jude who wore beanie hats and smelled like Nag Champa and sat one seat to my right in Poetry 101. One time Jude thought I should take “Nostradamus” out of the poem and that wrecked me for a whole week. I don’t even know where Jude is these days. I heard he was snorkeling for turtles in the Coral Sea.

Alfaro: So you started out writing prophetic love poems? Interesting. Did The Amputee’s Guide to Sex start to take shape once Jude left for the sea?

Jillian: In part, yes, such as the cuttlefish poem. It gets fogged trying to remember what was for what and who was for whom. Mainly I was sitting beside Jude, then eating dinner, then to the sofa, then to the Coral Sea. These migrations tend to be the same: close, close, closer, far away.

Alfaro: So how did you get hooked up with Soft Skull?

Jillian: I sent the poems around in book form to many contests. This was very expensive ($400). I got a nod from a couple, but none wanted to marry the poems. I started wondering why I was paying a couple people–whose taste I didn’t even particularly care for– to read the poems. I picked three presses I really like and sent them ten poems with a query letter. I guess Tennessee Jones over at Soft Skull got the mail that day. And he loved the poems. So the book came out of the slush pile and into print. Which is pretty awesome.

Alfaro: Definitely. How do you feel about the state of poetry?

Jillian: The state of poetry is effing fantastic. “Fersher” (to quote Ben Mirov). I just listened to Maurice Manning read his poem, “Three Truths, One Story” on the Cortland Review’s site. Used to be, if I wanted to hear Maurice Manning, I’d have to travel by carriage or book a cruise to Sylvia Beach’s place.

Alfaro: The internet has done wonders. What are your writing habits?

Jillian: Bad ones. Other ones include long hour blocks. I usually start around 10, 11, midnight and go until 6, 7, 8 am. I can’t flip from one thing to the next. If I’m in something, then I’m in it entirely. I’m bothered by eating unless the character gets hungry too. Then it’s okay. It makes relationships tricky because a lot of people want to sleep at night with other people beside them. There is this idea that if two people don’t sleep beside each other between the hours of 10pm-7am then something’s wrong. I don’t know why that is.

Alfaro: You’re teaching now is that correct?

Jillian: Yes. At the moment, I teach playwriting. We cast and read-through student plays each day. At the end of the quarter, we take a field trip to the Post Office to mail plays to a festival or theater company. This group is really good at using the technology of today (texting, the web, stem cells, etc.) and translating that to the stage.

Teaching playwriting is also a crash course in producing, directing, acting, and set design since an emerging playwright has much better chances of seeing their work onstage via DIY methods rather than say Off-Broadway. Though anything’s possible. I love to tell them the story about Sarah Kane, the British playwright, whose work was ripped to shreds by the press. She gets a knock on her door the day after a performance. It’s Harold Pinter. And he’s got roses.

Alfaro: Do you consider yourself a poet, a playwright or more nondescript as a writer?

Jillian: Writer.

Alfaro: Do you have a project that you are working on at the moment?

Jillian: I just got an agent for something that’s in-progress but I don’t want to talk about it because I’m suddenly superstitious. Poets don’t have agents, typically, so it’s been really fun.

Other projects include … a second book of poems. Though I’m not rushing it. And a play for this theater company to consider. Mainly because they’re in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

Alfaro: You also recently left the country to visit Buenos Aires. What was that like?

Jillian: It was a blast. I planned the trip on a whim and once I got there I kept trying to figure out how to stay. Ultimately, finances decided for me.

Alfaro: That seems to be the way is goes. Where do you draw inspiration or what do you find inspiring?

Jillian: Here are some things I’m inspired by lately: SEED’s Tear-Outable Tool for Living in the 21st Century: Cribsheet #12, paper airplanes, Van Gogh’s Seascape, a poster of twenty doors in Buenos Aires, Exodus, and Joel Brouwer’s poem “A Report to an Academy.”

I also got pretty excited about a piece of cardboard in a shoebox that says: “Attention! It is our nature to create intentional cosmetic imperfections.”

Alfaro: How is Kentucky? Is there a vibrant writing scene?

Jillian: There’s a great scene in Louisville — Jeffrey Skinner, Sarah Gorham, Nickole Brown, Erin Keane, and Adam Day, who is likely driving his pickup right this moment and lining a badger poem. As for my current location in Kentucky, we used to be the playcave for Cincy with gambling, whores, red velvet, and go-go boots. This was the 1940s-80s. We now have a mega cineplex & the best thrift shop for lascivious vintage wares.

Alfaro: You were previously an intern for The Paris Review. Can you talk about that experience?

Jillian: I was at the Paris Review when the office was located right near river on the Upper East Side. So I spent a lot of time on a park bench facing the water with twenty stories to read and a coca-cola. It was a blast, but I realized I’m not good at skimming pages.

Alfaro: Well thanks for taking the time to answer some questions. Best of luck to you.

When Irrelevant Seems Germane

Mike — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 03:09:43 +0000

how can you be such an ass?

this seems like an imperative,
when in fact, it is an artistic
statement, preceded by years
of training and practice.

clean the garage or no sex tonight.

this also seems an impending allegation,
lacking germane context, but in fact
it is more precise than any
weather forecast. accented with glare
and condescending tone.

where the hell have you been?

can best be described as a philosophical
premise, stuck between capitalism and
socialism. an adventure in remembrance.

i usually respond:
where’s the remote?

Richard Lighthouse

A Note On Our Contributor’s Notes

Mike — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:33:47 +0000

Hello extremely attractive and highly intelligent reader. If you have not already noticed, (Of course you have noticed! You are very observant!) we now have contributor’s notes. We did not have contributor’s notes before because we never thought about it. Actually, we did think about it. We thought, “Hey, let’s have contributor’s notes.” And then we thought, “Nope.” We also thought that by not having contributor’s notes that this would level the playing field although we are not playing and we do not have a field. But now we are thinking, “Hey these writers deserve the credit and debit they deserve and the right to brag and/or boast and/or say a little something about themselves.”
So recent contributors now have notes. And from this day forward contributors will now have a note!

Diary Entry

Mike — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:20:08 +0000

(~~1/junio/07~~) 7/1/07

Mom got a job
editing a Love Journal.

I read desert rats
don’t need to drink
water for a month.

Dad’s back from Iraq,
he doesn’t miss his leg.
We love him anyway.

He got his green card today.

Sergio Ortiz