I've scanned in a few poems from this anthology, just out from Three Squares Press, edited by Mark Higgins, Stephen Pender and Darren Wershler-Henry. I tried to keep the selection very small since I don't want to traipse on their copyrights, but there's a lot of good stuff in there. As a teaser, I've only taken an excerpt from one of the longer poems, by Marion Quednau -- never heard of her before, but she's in B.C. Here's a full list of authors. Darren has already posted his contribution, a collaboration with Bill Kennedy, elsewhere on Circulars.
Daphne Marlatt
NOT IN OUR NAME
thirty-five thousand hearts
mob the streets here
throbbing
STOP
MAD COWBOY
DISEASE
two million feet beat
NO NO in London
streets/
STOP
mad love for
ammunitions this
dis-
ease unease high moral
wartalk (on our
behalf) BLU bomb DU anti-
tank weapons talk
hi-tech attack talk
no
heart for a river of refugees’
thirst hunger tiny organs
born with holes malformed
irradiated earth Iraq
a human dump
centuries from now
Wakefield Brewster
NORTH/SOUTH 49
Manifest Manifesto
My chest gets blessed yo
When I pull a test blow
Of some new herbals like verbals mix with verbalistics fix lyrical empirical intrinsic forensic ballistics
Call da P0-lice
I rob rhymed your mind blind
Brung da tongue
Twist out ya tongue now it's mine
Like nothing is belonging to one or even many does anybody have?
A second question about the mental suggestion causing social indigestion
There is something that moves us
Proves and improves us
Containing prophecy and philosophy
Silence and cacophony
You will know the sleep of soma when comes to coffin thee
There's da rippin fabric trippin find da spot commence da slippin
I took a deep dive into a shallow black whole
I carried pain like a residential school soul
And then found the key to da secret of time
Between midnight and 11:59:59
'Tis in here we bear witness to da bedlam of mad, mad dimensions
Where justice beats down truth with a gavel into gravel
And the futile defense of a true mastermind is foiled
I leave contractor's condo developments despoiled
As my own designs are tin
Foiled
In
Their
In
Timate
In
Fancy
Da matriarch
Da matriarch
Why is it dat she doan run tings?
When my goddamned fool-stupid bleeding heart sings?
For out of da blue rains sheets of murder
Death wets de earth and paints it red
And up springs a sadness both mean and green
I scorch the land wit a fiery hue
Eat da blackest seeds of a white-hot fruit
Then crouch and slouch as I sleep on da couch-again
There has to be more than this
Living in paradoxical dualities and trialities
Looking for salvation in someone
Not da one
Myself
I'm a failure as a millionaire
And a well-accomplished human
I picked out den kicked out my mental slavery shackles
I built my blast shield outta thirty snake rattles
Sticks and stones encased my bones
I became hard like a lover's face
Saw four rooms become four walls
Felt da lack of cleanliness like public bathroom stalls
I'm gonna jack-in den black-in da box
Leave it splintered and splintering
This denizen pigpen
And it's so true I so do know who
Da swine really be
Tellin us all dat we can't be free
Enslavement by pavement
They talk it
We walk it
I travel on a surface of gears and cogs
May I warp and bend the threads and spokes until they all look like hideous starfish
I'll make dem all know who I be
By fucking up their technology
I'm a flow em den show em
Dat no tech tree can wreck me
Doan try to inspec me
Goan never disec me
Stop shining your demon beacon light into my soul
Doan study me like I be in a Petrie dish fish
Bowl em down and split em like pins
Dis here is where da revolution begins
And where we start clockin wins
Like Megatron
Rejuvenate
And mediate the ones who claim to openly debate
For their language is straight ahead complicated and confusing
So they can simultaneously have your brain and pocketbook losing
The only means to make you count in this world
But on my first test blow
The truth was unfurled
To me the friendly stranger
Is like their baby in a manger
Blessed I see is da chest in me
I-
Am walking, talking danger
Cause while dey feel dey got me on my belly snake slinking
I'm hidin back in da black like my namesake-
Thinking
Steve Venright
BORDER DISSOLUTION
The guy at the customs booth on the American side of the bridge asked us where we lived.
"Turrawna," we chimed proudly
"What is the purpose of your visit?" he inquired.
"We're just comm' over to shoot a few people then going right back," I replied.
'Are you bringing over any citrus fruit or pornographic literature?"
"No sir, we just have some raw beets and a copy of the Surrealist Manifesto."
He jutted his crocodiian head a little closer and I halted my reflex to close the window using the automatic button.
"Is that the First or Second manifesto?" he demanded.
"The First," I lied, remembering the ideological rescissions Aragon and Sadoul were forced to make when Communist Parry officials objected to aspects of the Second Manifesto during their visit to Moscow
This seemed to satisfy our sombre interrogator, but it was evident he had at least one more good question for us.
"Do either of you have any narcotic substances in your possession?"
"No, indeed," asserted my companion.
"Thanks anyway-feeling kinda shitty today" he confided. "Okay you folks have a nice visit."
"Don't you want to check our trunk?" I offered.
"No, not right now"
At last we were on our way again to the symposium on consciousness and the brain. We weren't really going to shoot anyone, of course, but felt it best to conceal the true nature of our visit. Even a former president and his wife thought it was okay to have a brain-in fact they dedicated a whole decade to the thing. But the subject of consciousness, we knew, was another matter entirely
RM Vaughan
DESERT STORM II: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK
1. God Bless America
Celine Dion with The Boys Choir of Harlem. Arranged by David Foster
2. Boom! There it iz! Stealthy Style
LL Cool J and Lil' Kim and Lil Bow Wow
3. 1991 (we gonna party like it's)
Prince and the New Power Generation
4. Savin' Da World Bitch at a Time
Tony Bennett and 50 Cent. Recorded live at the Aspen Music Festival
5. The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Boston Pops Orchestra. Narrated by Kevin Costner
6. Ahab The Arab (Bag-da-dad remix)
Ray Stevens. Remixed by Moby
7. Putting Out Fires With Gasoline
Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson
8. Axes To Axis
Nickleback with James Brown
9. Sultans of Schwing! (Love Theme from Desert Storm II)
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
10. That's What Friends Are For (USA-UK mix)
Oprab Winfrey and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.
Arranged by Quincy Jones.
11. 'Round Midnight At The Oasis
Mariah Carey and Winton Marsalis
12. Over There/I'll Be Seeing You/New York, New York Medley
Liza Minnelli (featuring The New York City Fire Fighters Choir)
13. God Bless America Muthaf**kah!
Celine Dion and Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott
nasser hussain
MERICA
A merica,
BEmerica.
And whamerica,
bamerica,
thankyouma'america.
C.I.A.merica
videocamericas
Chegueveramerica.
For shamerica,
playmerica
gaymerica!
O say can you seemerica
the eternal flamerica:
for J.F.Kmerica
the kkkmerica
blamericas
saddamerica.
Such monomaniamerica-
no cure for amnesiamerica,
forevermerica and evermerica, amen.
Margaret Atwood
BACKDROP ADDRESSES COWBOY
Starspangled cowboy
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face
a porcelain grin,
tugging a papier-mache cactus
on wheels behind you with a string,
you are innocent as a bathtub
full of bullets.
Your righteous eyes, your laconic
trigger-fingers
people the streets with villains:
as you move, the air in front of you
blossoms with targets
and you leave behind you a heroic
trail of desolation:
beer bottles
slaughtered by the side
of the road, bird-
skulls bleaching in the sunset.
I ought to be watching
from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront
when the shooting starts, hands clasped
in admiration,
but I am elsewhere.
Then what about me
what about the I
confronting you on that border
you are always trying to cross?
I am the horizon
you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso
I am also what surrounds you:
my brain
scattered with your
tincans, bones, empty shells,
the litter of your invasions.
I am the space you desecrate
as you pass through.
Marion Quednau
from THE RED HORSE MEETS THE NELSON MASS
This September just passed
a clutch of old friends dropped by, unannounced,
masquerading as limpid newscasters
out of sync with raucous foreign voices,
and I fell prey to equally moribund
habits: saw pale, pleading omens-comets' tails
and plummeted birds with red wings-
heard a slavish sound like the long-promised
gnashing of lions' teeth, woke up nights
weeping like an old woman,
lacrimosa.
Now it is Thanksgiving;
there are plainly no pilgrims
on our high plateau, and I have greater presence
of mind. The devout
are mostly on roads leading to and from
Macedonia, Uzbekistan
and that clever, shifting place
called Hell, that even the Pope
won't confess to being more likely a threat
these days than a mood already arrived.
Yes, some actually died, their paper planes
and mothers, brothers, fathers, gone to ashes,
but many more
have been frightened to death
and are still among the living,
now bombing
all manner of ancient metaphor
on the Afghan desert, where people thin
as rakes are hiding in slant tents
and honeycombed caves, the proverbial
bushes still burning as brightly
on the charred horizon as in arch parables
sworn by lean-mouthed prophets.
Great New To Me Margaret Atwood poem. Must find a book of hers on Amazon!
Posted by: Terence Cuthbert. on January 2, 2004 03:15 PMSeth Roby graduated in May of 2003 with a double major in English and Computer Science, the Macintosh part of a three-person Macintosh, Linux, and Windows graduating triumvirate.
Posted by: Bellingham on January 18, 2004 09:04 PMThe rest of our conversion follows a similar vein. Instead of going through line by line, let's just compare end results: when the transition is complete, the code that used to read:
Posted by: Warham on January 18, 2004 09:04 PMNote first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.
Posted by: Emery on January 18, 2004 09:04 PMLet's take a moment to reexamine that. What we've done here is create two variables. The first variable is in the Heap, and we're storing data in it. That's the obvious one. But the second variable is a pointer to the first one, and it exists on the Stack. This variable is the one that's really called favoriteNumber, and it's the one we're working with. It is important to remember that there are now two parts to our simple variable, one of which exists in each world. This kind of division is common is C, but omnipresent in Cocoa. When you start making objects, Cocoa makes them all in the Heap because the Stack isn't big enough to hold them. In Cocoa, you deal with objects through pointers everywhere and are actually forbidden from dealing with them directly.
Posted by: Francis on January 18, 2004 09:04 PMThis is another function provided for dealing with the heap. After you've created some space in the Heap, it's yours until you let go of it. When your program is done using it, you have to explicitly tell the computer that you don't need it anymore or the computer will save it for your future use (or until your program quits, when it knows you won't be needing the memory anymore). The call to simply tells the computer that you had this space, but you're done and the memory can be freed for use by something else later on.
Posted by: Sybil on January 18, 2004 09:05 PM