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Between

Between us daylight shifts water
to chalky fingerprints
on a blackboard sky.
You, anonymous girl, peel
by my frosted window again
in bruised banana car.
The white dusted lane, some distance
from my kitchen prison
never reveals your one-way smile,
only a blurred sheet metal mile.

Between us red flashes
winged ghosts into a cardinal’s
crown, piercing the end of another day.
I would not know you
if you stood near me reading,
silver cart filled with shitakes
and cheap white wine.
Tonight you offer inflated castles,
but tow them down the gravel
like wind dancing in winter grass.

Between us desire passes
turning pages of falling leaves
erasing the blackboard sky.
Did you angle a glance today,
me standing hands deep
in lonely soap and soup grease?
No. There was no chance or nod or toot
of horn, no loving angel born.
Just the evening road again, a bit of dusty
autumn air, chilled with time and rust.

SNAPSHOT

Silhouetted drummers
against a pink sunset riding on the waves.
An old man dances
and a little boy on a bike with training wheels grins at me.
Passing cars honk and passengers crane their necks
to see the source of the sound.
An innocent girl smiles sweetly as I stop to listen...
Captivated.
Tapping my finger on the tailgate of a truck
in sync with the rhythm of every human heart.

John Langford

Last Night

DREAM

The dream opens & closes
like a woman dressing
& undressing for a party
she does not want to attend.
Fresh baked bread going cold.
And the shimmering
of northern lights,
white ribbed wings
stabbing the snowy tree tops.
You lay naked & the wall is falling
open into space in a flash
and the wall goes on
like ten milkyways & the distant crackling
of stars. Frozen stars. Lucent lake ice.
And the voice is in the water.
New water, different voice.
The door is narrow.
Water breaks out
from the ice to the light.
Light years away from you.
It’s how I grow wings.
To escape.
It’s how we reinvent.
It’s how we float to the sky.
And we are ice, solid & thick & crystal.
But what I see in my sleep is fluid
like your tongue.
It moves & answers
questions before it.
It’s like that.
It’s like you.

A Natural History

by Jack Helder

I

They say Michigan white pine
rebuilt Chicago
after the Great Fire,
back when everyone believed
the miracle of trees
would last
five centuries or more.


II

Only nightfall stopped the ax and saw,
when loons began to mourn
from pinesmoke hovering the lake.
The dry mist stung the eyes like tears
as shanty boys and river hogs
downed stacks of redhorse beef
and echo plum beans
to feed the crosscut teeth of progress.


III

Hard to believe
no one was watching
loggers invent a language
for making moonscapes
and gutting rivers like a doe.
In photographs brittle as birch bark,
they pose on giant logs
laid out like so much wild game.

Behind a scratched glass case,
a neat quill script notes
each man’s name and wage,
the daily harvest,
and casually records
that near Traverse City
there was a tall white pine
yielding enough board feet
to build a house,
a giant that took root
the same year Columbus floundered
on the fresh, green breast
of the New World.


IV

East of Grand Marais
there’s a great log slide
like a mile-high scar
on the face of Lake Superior.
Across the landscape,
sand still bleeds
from a hundred high rollways,
and in every river
rest wooden relics
that escaped the drive
to sink beneath a silk shroud
or grow parched and hollow
in the sun.


V

A postage stamp of virgin pine
survived the locust march
to become a state park
north of Grayling,
which hasn’t seen a winged trout
since 1938,
long after the lumber barons
moved on west,
leaving a trail of Victorian splendor
from Saginaw to Manistee,
to become law offices
and funeral parlors
along main street.


VI

There was a time trees drew deep
on the earth’s dark marrow,
drank clouds of clear rain,
and so devoured the sun
that a man could walk
the entire state in their shadow.
But now one hot breath from Chicago
could sweep a forest flat,
expose roots pale as entrails,
and tear away the thin scalp
to leave bones
clacking in the breeze.

Across Michigan,
too many Manitou have died,
bereft among woods too soft
to nourish a myth,
their concentric rings too few
to encircle even our lives.


VII

Up in Oregon, rumor has it
some folks still spike trees
with a three-penny nail
to eat a sawmill blade.
The temptation is so great
that we might yet hope
to meet a spirit some day,
to at least hear the lilt
of her song in the wind,
glimpse her bright veil
draping like sunlight
from a canopy of hardwoods,
see the flutter of her skirt
in a turning season.


VII

Still,
every day,
the New York Times
requires the lives
of 50,000 trees.




VIII

Under sagging lodgepoles,
old men mourn the days of shade,
pass the pipe, and dream
of the Wasichu, “he who eats the fat,”
he who fingers his dull blade
and stares at the sea
from the edge of the earth,
then slowly begins to carve away
at his own heart.

THIRTEEN STEPS OF YOU

You watch your life shimmering
in blue logs
as your other brother
stokes the swimming sweatlodge
embers.

You stand naked
in a frigid stream
waiting for love to gather
enough steam to cleanse
your frayed around the edges life.

You shudder awake In Texas,
in the middle of a night
as another river rises from it’s broken bed
crawling up the thirteen steps
to occupy your empty bedroom.

You loved her before this blizzard
of rain and ashen dust, before the snow,
before, while sleepwalking through your life
you crossed an accidental bridge
into her.

6/7/89

My first wife would tell me over coffee in the morning. She'd say,"Well, do you remember last night? You did it again. Do you remember?" Then she would stare at me biting the inside of her lower lip fast like she does. Like her mom did. Like our daughter will. She'd just sit working her lip like that and wait, holding her coffee cup up to her mouth, with both hands, staring over the rim. Then eventually I'd say, “What?”, and look dumb like I didn't hear her. Like I didn't know what was coming. Like it had never happened before. Then she'd say it again. “Well, do you remember?" Then she would stare at me, now biting the inside of her cheek. Biting it fast like her mom did before she died of the aneurism. She'd just sit there chomping on herself. “Well? Do you?” "Do I what?" I'd say. Still playing dumb. "Do you remember? Last night?" Then I'd lie. "Yeah I remember, what about it?" And she'd say, "No you don't. You can't remember a motherfucking thing. Not one goddamn fucking thing. You were gone pal. Out of it. Blotto. Shit faced”. Then sometimes I would get up and walk out to the street and just keep going. I wouldn’t know where I was going. But, most of the time I would get up, pour another cup of coffee and wait. Wait for what I knew was coming.

Bogdanov Art

MONDAY MOON

You rape the nude darkness
Pink on the wet earthen edge
Lowdown southern fingernail moon
Slender devious parthian smile
Xactoed from black & battered sky
Your tiny sidekicks Venus & Jupiter
Act your sparkling eyes tonight
Your bare live oak arms dance up
To confiscate the snowflake frown
Your white teeth chattering down
Dominoes of shattered diamonds
You light the billion unlit candles

The Screamer Company-THREE

Over 200 drunken guests (and a few uninvited strangers) recently joined The Screamer Company in Austin to launch THREE, our latest art publication. THREE is the fourth edition of our employee-conceived and inspired international publication. Its only purpose is to provide an outlet for artists and poets to publish work, and to allow a group of crazies to gather and drink barrels of wine from our kitchen sink. (That means you Alison with an i) After we ran out, I personally made two trips to the well-lit 7-11 next door to the tune of $158.57 to buy various flavors of the grape for the well-lit. The first edition of our publication was titled “Zero” and each successive zine and party has grown in size and scope. Although Austin is well represented, submissions came from as far away as California, New York, Australia, Canada, Wales and Italy.

You can go home again

My daughter wanted a darkroom. She shoots a lot of images, with her cell phone, her digital camera, her Holga and the K1000 I bought her. She also processes film in her high school photo class. But she wanted a place at home where she could play. I found a complete darkroom on craigslist for a ridiculously low price so we spent the past two weeks setting up in a spare bedroom and bath. It's a nice little rig that can be up and running in minutes. College was my introduction into the darkroom and really that first photo class was a turning point in my art career. The magic of processing film and making prints was life changing. I talk to a lot of fellow creatives today who had the same photo epiphany. Maybe that's why so many art directors form lasting friendships with photographers. So as you can guess, I spent a bunch of time playing over the holiday weekend. I found some old negs, but it sparked me to get out and shoot some new work or dig deeper for my stash of negatives. After just a short time breathing the chemicals, I felt like I had come home again.

New Photography-Kyla Witherspoon

As many of you know, one of my favorite photographers is my 16 year old daughter Kyla. This is some of her latest work.

HOTPOINT!