%-------CUT HERE--------------------------------------------------- %------------------------------------------------------------------ % % This is the TeXfile for Sand River Journal. While you can read % the poems easily enough in this file, the formatted journal can % be obtained by (1) saving it % s srj.tex % (2) removing the header, (3) compiling it: % tex srj % and (4) viewing or printing it: % preview srj % dvips srj % % These are commands on my unix-based system, but the process is % similarly easy on PC's and Macs which support TeX. The PostScript % (compiled) version of this document is also posted and can be % printed directly. % \raggedbottom \baselineskip=12pt \font\journal=punksl20 scaled 2000 \font\byline=ccmi10 \font\lsl=cmsl8 \font\smtit=cmr9 \font\tit=cmdunh10 scaled \magstep2 \font\ref=cmitt10 scaled 1200 \font\astro=astrosym \font\editorial=cmr6 \moveright -1.8in \vbox{% \centerline{\journal Sand River Journal} \vskip 0.9truein {\editorial \baselineskip=0pt \narrower\narrower\narrower\narrower\narrower Sand River Journal is a collection of poems gathered from the newsgroup rec.arts.poems; it is posted monthly in \TeX\ and PostScript formats. Poems appear by authors' permission and constitute copyrighted material. Free transmission of this document (electronic or otherwise) is permitted only in its entire and unaltered form; to inquire about individual poems contact the authors by their email addresses. The editor takes no responsibility for the fate of this document, nor does he claim ownership to any of the contents herein. Many of these poems were forwarded to me by zita marie evensen while I was away. Takk skal du ha! I encourage the of this \TeX\ file as a template for other journals or chapbooks; eventually we should establish a public ftp library for such material. Send comments and contributions (please reference SRJ) to asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu. Enjoy! \medskip \hskip 1.7in Erik Asphaug, Editor \baselineskip=12pt} \vskip 0.5truein \centerline{\ref Issue 4, July 10 1993} \bigskip \centerline{\astro f \hskip 0.2in n \hskip 0.2in h } \medskip} \def\title#1{\vskip 0.8in\bigskip\bigbreak\centerline{\hskip -3.5in {\tit #1}}\bigskip\nobreak} \def\smtitle#1{\vskip -0.15in\centerline{\hskip -3.5in {\smtit #1}}\bigskip\nobreak} \def\author#1#2{\nobreak\medskip\line{\hskip 1.5truein\hbox{\sl #1\/}\hfill}% \line{\hskip 1.5truein\hbox{\lsl #2}\hfill}\goodbreak} \hoffset=1.6in \obeylines \title{rice bird} wading under jasmine-rice stalks small tawny bird pecks at young green grain watch out for slender traps of bamboo slivers aimed at your heart \author{grazia athena cruz}{dd959@hela.ins.cwru.edu} \title{Sky Catcher} In flawed analogy to fishermen I sweep my seine across the sky And vainly drag the empty air For angels \author{James Conrad Shea}{jcs@zycor.lgc.com} \title{summertime} it is my turn to play and i will do nothing just \qquad sleep in the sun like a cat \qquad\qquad purring softly \qquad swim at the beach like a fish \qquad\qquad gently parting warm blue waters \qquad ride the warm \quad updrafts \qquad\qquad lazily as the red-wing \qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad after all it is \qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad summertime. \author{zita marie evensen}{bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu} \title{thirteen} small bits of wind get caught crazily in my hair. \medskip the lights are out and the white dog from next door brings me a green beetle. \medskip over the hill moonless and glum the slum prepares its maize meal to pump out to the sky. \medskip sometimes i think the winds are so strong they will blow the roof off. \medskip sometimes i lie, upturned cleanliness, and imagine that i am still \medskip thirteen. \medskip this is a feeling of right now. i am a thirteen year old boy, who skateboards and learns dirty words, owns golden spaniels, swings from trees. \medskip i tell my boyfriend and he thinks i'm nuts. \medskip so when he is not looking, i price secondhand skateboards in town pawnshops, \medskip i take time to swing from these amazing monkey ropes discovered in the forests near my home. \author{Helen Walne / Marek Lugowski}{marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu} \title{The Lies We Tell Ourselves} I am most in love with you when you are not there, when you are asleep when you are away \medskip I am most in love with you when I create you you are all I desire you are perfection \medskip I am most in love with Galatea claiming that she is herself claiming that she is real \medskip I am most in love before she awakes please stay asleep please let me dream \author{M.A. Mohanraj}{moh2@quads.uchicago.edu} \title{tropic market} gold red green bananas in palm-frond baskets carved santol woods for love caskets mangoes star-fruits ginger-roots amethyst yams pale bamboo shoots white palm hearts in green ti-leaf conch-shell icons in bas-relief wriggling eels snapping lobsters caged cackling hens crowing roosters black vine baskets amber guava jams jasmine leis gold pollen balms tobacco rosemary sharp wild thyme crunchy seaweeds celadon limes fragile cloths of pineapple leaves embroidered silks with butterfly sleeves market under the tropic sun wild flavors wild thoughts all in one \author{grazia athena cruz}{dd959@hela.ins.cwru.edu} \title{your room, mine} 1. \medskip each room has a mirror opposite the door so as i walk down the hall i appear in one reflection after another. \medskip my window has a great view of the parking lot where nearly every day someone backs carefully into the retaining wall. \medskip we all have the same curtains. \medskip 2. \medskip glow, glow, the golden glow of the city sky at night --- we live in a perpetual false dawn, chickens laying eggs under lamps. \medskip but the planes land so straight i could lie on your bed open to your night and watch them come down until ten when they all settle down to sleep. \medskip it was a good thing it was if only you had stopped \medskip to sigh. \author{Marie Coffin}{mcoffin@iastate.edu} \title{Valley of the Dry Bones} {\editorial \baselineskip=0pt \narrower\narrower\narrower\narrower\narrower\narrower\narrower Thus said the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live again. \qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad --- Ezekiel, 37:5 \baselineskip=12pt} \medskip This merciless manifest of names reports across memory, echoes through air, evokes God's mockery of the dry bones: {\it Can they live?} Oh, they can live, rise up, cry out, even breed: for turned by the sun to blackened stone, they find their host in us, then multiply, metastasize in soil prepared for memory. \medskip It is not the soul but the living body--- the Medieval dirt of permeable flesh--- that absorbs the names: like a forcefeeding tube, they are driven down our throats, jammed into us to keep not us but {\it them} alive: bypass the bleeding heart, and plunge into the stomach with the weight of the black granite itself and with its sharpness: cut so we cannot see the blood, but only feel the hurt, the inward wounding, the gut filled with something indigestible, savagely inert, that will not nourish but cannot be expelled: \medskip the single endless tragedy retold not as a monody but as a chorus, 58,000 voices, each singing a different song, rising from the granite slabs in this temple of remembrance that plunges downward, rises upward, mocks its own ascent with our knowledge that the only true ascent is the climb not to heaven but to the knowledge itself: that when we have read the names, witnessed the crying and the prayers, then it is over, then we can go home: and that it stops but never ends, that its weight is unpurged, unpurgeable. \medskip \qquad\qquad\qquad --- Vietnam Memorial Wall, April 1993 \author{Kenneth Wolman}{ktw@mhwpa.att.com} \title{Caliban} Here you come, Listing just a little to the lee, Panther-slinking, baggy pants. Anyone could see you could be dangerous To me, a sinuous intrusion On my solitary style. My cairn is slipping, scattering; I can see you see your chance. A trickling slide of little stones, And you come sniffing 'round the bones, Pink tongue ticking softly At the corner of a smile. \author{Jennifer Merri Parker}{jmparker@isis.msstate.edu} \title{ms.} you are such an impossible woman. just reading your writing sets my blood racing. ms. narcotic, are you aware of your, er, effect? \medskip your zooming suggestions and bouncing objections and zestful reflections i should like to gather in a fist and kiss all over, especially hair. \medskip yes'm. \author{Marek Lugowski}{marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu} \title{No Juliet} Moths on concrete, you kissed a frightened fifteen, tried to touch a chilly child with salt-soft air and sandy skies 'til curfew. \medskip I fled, moon-like, shoon intact, extracted word. \medskip But mother bade me mind the baby, a good excuse. \medskip You lost. \author{Karen Tellefsen}{kt1@cc.bellcore.com} \title{gardenia} full moon is made for love why one white gardenia blossom in the passionate cold \author{zita marie evensen}{bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu} \title{Animal} She lay naked on the plate, gutted, gaping, eagle-spread, garnished with desire to be consumed in every way. And he pauses in his gait, sniffs and judges her too dead, and lumbers off to look for quicker prey. \author{Jennifer Merri Parker}{jmparker@isis.msstate.edu} \title{if i am yours} if I am yours so are my eyes, and the blackberries they spy dim in twilight thickets and that apostrophe: your restless subtle undissolving wink. \medskip if I am yours so are my dreams which lead me into river canyons, over boulder beds and over ache; and in them you might stand and sleep while distant highways wind the night. \medskip if I am yours so is my heart, so you may rest upon another's breath and breast away from seasons' harsh travail and the tears can come, as inevitably they do.... \author{Ronald Bloom}{rbloom@netcom.com} \title{oaths and vaccine} do not understand. do not dial anything to get out of here do not drive me crazy. \medskip do not feel guilt. do not throw up. do not play in the oval. \medskip do not speak. do not speak to me. do not ever speak tenderly to me. \medskip do not caress. do not address. do not remain cautiously optimistic. \medskip do not dare to have a peach do not treasure memories do not remember forever. \medskip do not know any peace. \author{Marek Lugowski}{marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu} \title{judy in the rain} officer judy was a trip. i'd just returned from one, met you again and we went to see her, ruby-throated sparrow. \medskip it was threatening rain, bad time to be out, like in her song 'the blizzard', and we didn't know how long we'd last. \medskip rain came. we huddled under umbrellas, slant-wise glances at the poor woman without one, toughing it out. she came on early, \medskip pink satin, voice clear as ever. when she sang of how 'clouds ...rain and snow on everyone', rain came again, umbrellas, a kiss. \author{Barbara Taylor}{bit00@cas.org} \title{there} love, if you forgot where you left me look for moonlight through cloud gaps petals at the foot of roses the last note of a song even in a raindrop i am there \author{zita marie evensen}{bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu} \title{not a question of being in love} it's not a question of being in love the motion's what was already there attention fills itself a stubborn sail it's not a question of being in love you see what has to see and hardly ask for what's to ask but, how can this be? it's not a question of being in love we take upon ourselves these unmade plans not blindly but with faith of blind it's not a question of being in love \medskip it's not a question \author{Ronald Bloom}{rbloom@netcom.com} \title{Couplet Citations} I was fashioned, I believe, To be with you --- Adam and Eve --- So nothing need keep us apart (Bathsheba, queen of David's heart). Ambition makes desire keen: Napoleon and Josephine. The gravest faults should matter least, As with the Beauty and the Beast. Come, be with me, complete the whole, Psyche and Cupid, Love and Soul. Our passion will embolden us, Like Thisbe and her Pyramus, Till we can take on all life's fear Like Lancelot and Guinevere. It would be heavenly, not hard; Think Heloise and Abelard. This is my heart's sincerest want (Leander swimming Hellespont), As serious as one can get, Romeo and Juliet. \author{Jennifer Merri Parker}{jmparker@isis.msstate.edu} \title{Breathless} How I long for an oasis named Hades \medskip a sweet mouthful from the river Lethe \medskip for I met death and licked her thighs \medskip until she flowed wet and embraced me \medskip with handfuls of hair greying \medskip then brittle, ripped out in clumps I came \medskip into the earth roots \medskip and buds gasping \medskip under the paved black \medskip like the echo of a sea \medskip lion tap \qquad\qquad ping \medskip beneath an ice \medskip floe \author{Sean E. Ward}{sward@lonestar.utsa.edu} \title{At Grandma's House} The orchards of my childhood, threatened Continually, were finally uprooted today--ruined-- And left in rows like piles of picked turnips Left in the damp furrows of a summer garden. Where once we picked cherries and ran after quail, They are now running sewers and sprouting condos. The horizon blotched on every side with pine fences And tin-sided houses...the encroachment Of yellow, steel insects and a spreading Economy Writ in bold type: Pull up the roots. Pull up the roots. \author{daniel newell}{dgn1717@u.cc.utah.edu} \title{Uninvited} you came to my house uninvited i chose to let you in i listened to your inane chatter as always only about yourself nothing was any different than hundreds of times before at least on the surface underneath i was calm no more the turbulence of frustration i have felt in the past i have learned to be outwardly courteous inwardly nothing i let you into my house but not into my heart \author{Marguerite Petersen}{petersm@kira.csos.orst.edu} \title{Predictions} I'll live all alone in a little white house At the bottom of the valley, And you shall live at the top of a hill, Or down some quiet alley. \medskip We'll call each other up, every now and then, (Miss our suppers if we tarry) And you shall live as you've always lived, And I shall never marry. \author{Sharon Hopkins}{sharon@netlabs.com}