Poem & Hybrid Work in 2 Alaskan Journals: Cirque & Permafrost

There’s currently new work

(a poem and some hybrid work)

in two Alaskan Journals.

 

Anchorage, home of Cirque

A poem from the manuscript

The Next World

is in the current issue of

Cirque

Volume 13,  No. 1

 

The poem centers around something that I’ve been trying to write about for decades and can’t seem to get quite right: Being swarmed by bees when I was five. I’ve written it as a short essay, I’ve written it as a prose-poem, but I always felt that something was missing.

 

Though I think there’s still something missing to this new attempt, it’s getting closer:

 

Bees, Faeries, Souls of the Dead, Maitake Mushrooms:

how the world was made

 

When I was five I was swarmed by bees; a blanket of bee bodies

covered my head, torso; bee bodies searched up my nose, circled

 

the roof of my mouth, spoke to each other inside my ears. I am

perpetually caught between the terror of anticipating a thousand

 

stings and relief from feeling such closeness, the weight of all

those bodies who had chosen me, chosen to touch me, cover me,

 

in a way that human beings, up to that time, had not. I still feel

the brush of wings and leg-tines against my skin on the edge  

 

sleep….

 

The rest of the poem can be found  

here (pg 84).

 

 

Art by Sage Cruser

The two hybrid works in 

Permafrost

Issue 44.1,

are from the original manuscript of

Another Apocalypse.

 

The manuscript started out as a strange little prose-poem work, but over the last two years has morphed into something I can probably call “fiction.” Sure, let's call it fiction. There’s an actual story now and it looks very different from the original.

 

 

Another Apocalypse, Take 22

The new angels arrived yesterday. They arrived in clouds of phthalates-boiled dust. The old phone wires screamed their praise. Everything bowed down to the sound. I woke from a dream of bats circling flare-stacks on a vast plain, then kneeled beside the bed, whispered the secret and holy names of fear…

 

The rest of the original works can be found

here (Another Apocalypse, Take 22)

 

and here (Another Apocalypse, Take 28)

 

 

 

Northern Lights in Fairbanks (home of Permafrost)

Another Apocalypse: New Work in Gone Lawn

 

 

This is coming a little late

because I was in the process of moving

from New Mexico to Oregon

during the summer months

and didn’t have much time for

the blog...

 

Fall of the Rebel Angels - Breughel the Elder

So, back during the summer solstice,

Gone Lawn

published a couple of sections from a new manuscript called 

ANOTHER APOCALYPSE

 

drought

The two sections can be found here.

 

  ************************************

I started the manuscript back in February (2021). 

I thought I was writing a solo poem, responding to the constant feelings of overwhelm from the state of emergency across the earth – the changes that are here or are developing from climate change, the chaos created by media disinformation, the fear and sadness generated by the continuing pandemic, systemic police racism and brutality, class war built into the structure of the economic system, the horror and pain caused by so many US generated endless wars, along with experiencing the seemingly perpetual swing between anxiety and sadness among so many others - while at the same time experiencing 'business as usual' all around me and in my own life.

 

fire in the west

 

The contradiction between the news and present-moment experience coming in from all sides and still conducting 'business as usual' was maddening, exasperating, and I thought if I started another book that explored all of this with some (very dark) humor in it, it might bring some kind of momentary release (to both writer and reader). 

Acknowledgement of the facts is one of the phases of grief.

Although the manuscript did not end up developing with a lot of humor (no surprise there), it is not simply a walk through grimness, darkness and doom either. It has taken shape in unexpected ways (that I'll eventually speak about in later blogs).

By the time I reached take 40 I realized that the book was somewhat of a hybrid of fiction and prose-poetry, with continuing and connected characters appearing and disappearing.

 

glacier melting

 

Writing this manuscript sometimes helps keep me focused and more calm. 

May you find your own creative ways to regulate (find some calm and sanity), that may lead to taking action in your own way. 

********************************

 

 

I include the first Another Apocalypse below. It is a prayer, an invocation, that begins the manuscript:

 

Another Apocalypse, Invocation

 

Is there a prayer that will bring anything back? It probably begins with these words Oh the black birds spin in and out of existence oh the black birds they spin… And ends like this: …flare stack fire against my skin, burning bright as stars. No one knows the words in between. 

Yet. 

It’s too late for a prayer that asks for something. The spirit world has nothing left to give. We’ve been asking and asking for far too long. They’ve run out of shiny tokens. Remember how those greedy little prayers crisscrossed the sky like starling-clouds?

We need a prayer that’s more forceful now. One that can break into the spirit world, rummage around in spirit rubbish, pick spirit pockets, grab some broken shards of hope, rub two spirit stones together: flint-sparks that will light a path through catastrophe.

Screw prayer. Try sacrifice: a finger on the road’s shoulder. Try sacrifice: 24/7 videos of children in cages. Try sacrifice: the air that catches fire beneath a burning tree canopy. Fire merges with fire, melts the invisible barrier between worlds. Dead and living mingle, finally equal.

Ash particles drift in a clear sky. Perfect weather. Ash particles drift over a vortex of flame rising from a wall of water. Perfect weather. A glacier breaks away from my mind, floats into the Indian Ocean. I wake, my bed floats on dark water.

There are flare-stacks in the distance: beacons. They beckon.

 

 **************************

You can find the two sections in Gone Lawn 
here.

 

Mose Allison - I don't worry 'bout a thing, 'cause I know nothing's going to be alright