Unshod Quills

Joseph Taylor Golding is an American video artist. His recorded images and words, composed of found and original footage and sound, sometimes are like messages from an imagined future long gone cold, but they glimmer lightly with something that smells subtly of hope or perfect summer blackberries.  Joseph’s work is a thing of great discovery, beauty and endurance.

Joseph, in his own words:

We will let Joseph’s work, video poetry on the themes of fire, America, somewhere never traveled, gladly beyond and rapture, speak now. We can’t hold it back any longer. Seldom do I comment on work published by our journal, as I like to allow the art and literature to speak for itself, but I comment now.

Thank you, Joseph. Please continue to do this work.

Anyone who might see this and be interested in learning more about Joseph, or in hearing from him, will please email me at dena @ haliterature dot com.

Dena Rash Guzman
Editor
Unshod Quills

“My Name is Joseph”

on the theme of “Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWWKJqaGTnM]

Drunk On Empty Words

on the theme of Fire

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4a-7k-cBh8]

Visual Sculpture – The Sky Was Full of Snakes (part one)

on the theme of Rapture

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38zioorHgVg]

Visual Sculpture – The Sky Was Full of Clockwork Crows (part two)

on the theme of Rapture

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zyK_pcXJrI]

More of Joseph’s work can be found here:

Sacrificial Totem

Look for some great work utilizing the poetry of Richard Brautigan.

Satellite American

Satellite American
Part I

I was early but he was ready for me so I went in right away. The shadows had grown long by then. Golden light came in through the window and softened the deep lines of his face. Consoler. Counselor. Same roots maybe? The room was dim and yellow. Of care, of wisdom. Much nicer now than when I’d seen him before. Three forty-two when I turned off my phone.

He asked me a bunch of expected particulars but I didn’t mind. With each question came a space. He waited well and I was unusually honest. Even my hands were somehow truer. I suddenly wanted to tell him everything. Much more than what he was asking. Never felt quite like that before, a kid lost, lucky to be found this way and not another.

So I did. I told him everything. For the moment. All that could be true. All of the things that he wanted to hear and I wanted to say. Seemed like he’d stopped listening right away, right after the information part but dunno for sure. I wasn’t even listening to my self. I was watching him. His eyes, his hands, his pen, and then his eyes again when it stopped, the pen. After each uh-uh, my arm fell into my lap like a do-over. My voice seemed to be the only thing moving in the room, and then it was an hour later.

We scheduled for the same next week. I’ll look forward to it, I said, and I meant it.

Each day before it, something I had said that first day would roll back onto me. Especially the things that made him laugh or move his eyebrows, especially the ones that made him stop, look right into my eyes and part his lips.

Next week, not wanting to come off too eager, I went in right on time. I even faked being rushed. I fell fast into the big brown chair and his smile was warm. Call me Parker, he said, so I did.

The room was darker. The blinds mostly closed this time. He started in quickly about something I’d said the time before. All unexpected — nothing that had echoed during the week, nothing I wanted to talk about. He pressed a little and I looked away, at the floor, at the slices of light behind him and then, finally at my hands.

–Are you ok?

–Yeah I’m fine.

The first lie.

–You’re quiet today.

–I don’t want to talk about that stuff.

–Is there something you do want to talk about?

–Not really.

The second lie.

–Would you prefer to re-schedule?

I might have won with a ‘yes’ here but it’d be the third lie and I didn’t want that. Wasn’t sure what yet, but not that. I think I let go right then cuz the stream started. I’m just talking. There was that space again and I was filling it. It was not just emptiness, it was also safe and inviting, a room full of ok-ness.

I must have gone on this way and that about all kinds of things and I could see eventually that he was not getting me. I liked that he showed me that. That he was perplexed. A liar, if he was one, good at seeming genuine. But I couldn’t tell just yet, that’s how good he was. I like this in a person. Not cutthroat-honest and not totally cool as a cucumber all the time but somewhere in between. I figured that he was above me. I was beyond nervous and I could not. stop. talking. The space he was making was too big for me. I’d never fill it. Like running across a desert you know is going to dry you up. My sarcasm, my deflection, none of it would fly here.

–I want to study rhetoric, I said suddenly, surprising myself too.

He smiled as though proud of me. I’d pleased him with that, and that pleased me, but I didn’t know how to follow that act. It wasn’t an act to follow, it wasn’t an act, it was realizing about the desert.

A long pause and then I looked at my phone – four-twenty-five only. A thought whispered across my brain like a tiny crab … terrible to want so much and not know what it is. I could read him after all. No way could I tell him that so I said:

–Can we do something else?

–What do you suggest?

–You play má jiàng?

–You’re funny, he said, not laughing.

I started telling him all about Pan Pan, a neighbor friend. She lives in the building but she’s actually Moms’ friend. I barely know the woman. Its weird though because my Chinese is way better than Moms’, naturally, but Pan Pan doesn’t seem to know or care. Once, in our kitchen, she was on her mobile while Moms was making tea explaining about her husband, that they’d met at the fake-marriage market, he’s loaded, and totally tongzhi, gay. Just needs a tongqi, a homowife, and she gets a big apartment, a nicer car and a monthly allowance, and don’t worry, the laowai lady is married with kids, always busy. And, she can’t wait to see the person when the person comes to town.

I don’t always know why I’m such an ass to my parents, so jaded, in front of their friends and when it’s really inconvenient, I told Parker then, but that this might have something to do with it.

His pen stopped. I’d lost him again. His face told me that he didn’t even know what to do. Was it a mirage or was this desert smaller all of a sudden? Now I was on top and he was struggling so I threw him bone:

–Sorry, I thought perhaps Moms had told you about the outburst.

–Which one was that?

–You’re funny too.

I’d finally made him laugh. Of course she’d told him! And then I spelled it out.

–I get it most of the time. I understand what’s going on all around us and they don’t. Not because I’m so smart but because I’m from here and they’re not. Its not just a language thing either, its even when no one says anything. They look at me like, what does that mean? What now? And I explain to their blank faces what has gone unsaid. I’m American but only sort of. Satellite American.

–I see, he said but he didn’t, and he wouldn’t.

–Where are you from?

–Ohio, he said, shifting in his chair and moving his eyes to just above my head.

He reached for his desk drawer the way gangsters get their guns in the movies and a book popped out like pez. The cover had a person from behind, sitting on a cliff overlooking an ocean. The person was very alone and very high up. I was going to make a crack. I was going to say, O goodie, a guide to suicide! But I saved it. The real title was “Recalibrating Dynamics”. His name was in puffy gold at the bottom and the biggest thing on there: Parker J. White, Psy.D.

No more talking about anything else today. The hour was up. He didn’t have to say it, only look there again, where he’d hung his wall clock, for good reason.

Satellite American
Part II

–Where truth is a balancing act, said aunt Genie, she’s a tightrope walker — shards of a person but not from falls, from never coming down.

I’ve personally met a string of accomplices, all guilty of her slow self-murder. Meet Gwen, aka, Moms. Easy to play as long as the instrument she’s handed you can be recognized. Her trick is to switch them out when you’re not looking. Imagine, you are playing the saxophone, you pause for a breath and then it’s a tambourine, an accordion, the triangle. Few non-family ever register this about her. I’m better at it than Dad but only since this year.

Through the swamp of a family dining experience I’ll see Dad’s jelly-eyes quivering, a rescue plea. Use to be that protocol was to send aid right away but I’m a big girl now.

The day Dad discovered our new arrangement went something like this:

It was already an odd morning cuz us three were actually in the same service apartment, at the same time, sharing a space called the kitchen, and then Dad goes, Mrs. Chen says your attendance has been sporadic—

–I’ve been writing poetry instead!

I screamed it before the pepper hit their Bloody Marys.

–Wanna hear?

–Of course honey, said moms, a bit startled in her hangover.

I stood up, cleared my throat and faked a nervous but my eyes stayed on Dad’s cuz this was not to be missed:

–She was so Chinese, that she was Mexican.

Ice jiggled. It had hit him.

–What could that possibly mean?

He took a big, long, pissed-off pull from his cold tomato soup.

–It’s too lateral for you
–So is your taste in women

His face. From impatient to total meltdown in like a millisecond. I went interrogation beatnik for the last lines.

–Tonight, we hunt.
–You Skeez You!

This was no poem I’d penned. This was texting with Clubbing Dave he’d neglected to delete. Oops!

Moms was great. She gave me the obligatory support – you’re a poet, what a surprise, let’s develop that. I played into this crap and Dad shut the fuck up that’s what. And then he bolted in some kinda bullshit hurry of course.

When I told the story in session, Parker cracked up. I was laughing too and he went, Haha, what a fool! I was like, Yeah totally! But then the room turned horrible. I didn’t see it coming, a clamp on the back of my throat. Worst feeling ever and by my own hand.

The last laugh would not stay in the family. Parker went back to America, and then Moms and Dad, Ayi and even Fei Yue, our driver, were all gonna be out of town for six days. I’d spend the end of the semester, final exam week, alone.

–I’m sorry, said Ayi to my super sad face.

Moms was nodding yes behind her and saying, can’t be helped hun…

By the next day I didn’t care anymore. Smoothed over by the old bilateral kitchen table note and cash-pile:

“Morning Honey, fridge is stocked and this is your taxi money. Do well on those exams and there will be a BIG hong bao for you when we get back. Good Luck! Love, Mom & Dad

P.S. Emergency numbers on Dad’s desk!”

I would not be leaving these pajamas today and I’ll be turning the taxi money into entertainment. Oh Yes. And if Moms had something to say about it later I’d go, couldn’t be helped. You know how that is right?

In Dad’s robe and Moms’ slippers I mixed up a nice big stiff one and shuffled down to the lobby DVD cart. My stack was getting high when I spied it. A box of TV with the Shanghai skyline on it.

“SATeLLitE AmERIkA.” It said.

I put down the stack and paid for the box.

I was like, whatthefuck? Had this wriggled into my brain long ago all stealthy and I’m thinking that I had coined the term but not really? That was creepy but the truth was creepier.

In the elevator I read the back: “Meet Jax, an American teenager in Shanghai…Growing up in… SATeLLitE AmERIkA.”

The pilot went in and I pushed play.

Once, I was home alone after school and hungry. A can of pears I wanted but didn’t know how to use the electric can opener. So I started to use a steak knife and BLAM! Right through my hand, right through the fleshy web between my thumb and index. It was stunning. I mean, I was stunned. I yanked it out RAMBO-style and tossed it, throwing my blood like paint across the white bathroom. I left this world for a shocked place on the floor. That’s the only time that compares to this day.

One disc after the other was watched without pause. My breathing changed the rate of all life. It all blurred together. A blink later it was dusk. With each scene Parker’s use for me played out right in front of me on our humongous flat screen. There they were, my lies, uncoiling and slithering into fiction.

There was a Pan Pan but her named was Ming Ming. She was the friend of the Moms character and my secret best friend in the building. There was a drunk Moms and a derelict Derek the Dad. There was some crazy CGI one for my falling-off face dream. And then there was an episode called ‘Recalibration’ where Moms visits the Counselor, Patrick, to talk about her troubled Jax. One commercial-break later and they’re doing it right on his desk, with the blinds closed, below the clock, heaving. Next scene, they’re naked and glistening in a well-lit, gym-sculpted, post-coitus embrace where they jeer about the hour being up, about how his four-o-clock is Jax and due to show any minute and its not what he meant by ‘recalibrate your dynamic with your daughter’. I mean, holyfuckingshit, right? Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Seriously, who the fuck?

Low and behold, he indeed had more than one Omnipedia page — one as Dr. Parker J. White, Psychologist (the one I knew) and one as Parker White, Writer/Director. I wanted to find him and slap him. More than that though, to find him, shake his hand and say, Mr. White, Congratulations, damn good show.

The me was the truest to life there was. When her face filled the screen and her hands moved to the music to tell the stories I was literally beside myself. I gripped the belt of Dad’s robe with the nerves of my kin. There was no emergency number for this. When it was over I was nowhere.

Author Biography:

Renée Reynolds grew up in Chicago and Los Angeles. She currently works as a freelance writer in Shanghai, where she has lived since 2007. Contact: renrey2010@gmail.com

Jaimie Gusman on the theme of “Villanelle.”

A Substance

In any kind of place a little calm is so ordinary,
as if it is one piece that uses the whole as the cover.
There is sweetness and some of that calamity.

Sugar is not a vegetable; table and chair is not three.
When dirt is clean there is a volume of color
in any kind of place. A little calm is so ordinary,

it is (extreme) and (very likely ) little things could be
callous. Hardening and callous is something that together
there is sweetness and some of that calamity.

Suppose that a very little difference is prepared change:
Change gratitude, change mistake, rate of feather?
In any kind of place a little calm is so ordinary

blue light, purple preparation, a thing likely
a costume; is it any worse for the case of an oyster?
There is sweetness and some of that calamity

supposing a violent place, a place that thing be
as red as a fancy girl—a bargain and dearer!
In any kind of place a little calm is so ordinary,
there is sweetness and (some of) that calamity.

Author Biography

Jaimie Gusman lives in Honolulu where she is a PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii, teaches creative writing and composition, and runs the M.I.A. Art & Literary Series. Her work has been published nationally and internationally by Hearing Voices, Hawaii Women’s Journal, Tinfish Press, Spork Press, Shampoo, Anderbo, Juked, Barnwood, DIAGRAM, Dark Sky Magazine, 2 River Review, The Dirty Napkin Review, and others. She has a chapbook coming out from Tinfish Press, as well as a chapbook coming out from Highway 101 press this year.

America the Beautiful - original painting, Jillian Brall

Out Of This World

Stop whatever you’re doing and come inside.
Skeletal structure has no use in a weightless environment.
There are some writers who don’t seem to have any necessity to travel at all.
It’s all inside.

Postcards saying Greetings from the U.S. of A! never feature photographs of winkled faces.
I pointed this out to you and then said something about plastic surgery.
Then a couple minutes later inside a bookstore
a girl walked in and said something about plastic surgery.
I pointed this out to you and you sang Synnchronicccityyyy.

Over someone’s shoulder I read, “Should have been the happiest”.
A couple minutes later over the same shoulder I read, “Democracy”.
But I knew the real ending to the sentence was “girl”.

Someone added a Hitler mustache to the graffiti monster on my block.
The character in the violent game said, “I’ve never seen it so quiet”.
The kid said, “Yo yo yo turn it up.
This is the best part.”
This is the part you recognized from a world away.

Author Biography:

Jillian Brall is a writer, musician and visual artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She co-edits the journal Lyre Lyre. 

A sonnet on the theme of America and a translation of Rilke on the theme of “Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond.”

Eclogue

I heard a soldier on NPR speak
of an Afghan widow who, in a field
of blooming poppies, stooped low in the mud;
she’d been at her work for hours: “Crazy,”
he thought, watching the white dress go blood red
with flower stains of decollated bulbs
with a curious amount of leisure.

As in a gallery patron’s treasure
hunt, where each find is found, say, like the daubs
of Hofmann’s blasted and fragmented bed
of sanguinary chunks, lit by hazy
afternoon, she’d toss with a horrible thud—
he realized only later—the gross yield
of a land mine, which made the basket leak.

The Death of the Poet

There he lay. His pale face, propped up, then fell
to balk at the steepness of the pillow
as the world and what of it one can know
were being ripped from his senses ever so,
relapsing through a year of listless hell.

Those who saw him then did not know the grace
with which he was at one with all of this—
these thises: This depth, this meadow, and this
water that was being put upon his face.

On his face, there came indeed a vast tide
wanting him and looking for him with care;
his mask is, with the fear no longer there,
as tender and open as the inside
of a fruit spoiling in the outside air.

Sonnet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Mark Olival-Bartley

Der Tod des Dichters

Er lag. Sein aufgestelltes Antlitz war
bleich und verweigernd in den steilen Kissen,
seitdem die Welt und dieses von-ihr-Wissen,
von seinen Sinnen abgerissen,
zurückfiel an das teilnahmslose Jahr.

Die, so ihn leben sahen, wußten nicht,
wie sehr er Eines war mit allem diesen;
denn Dieses: diese Tiefen, diese Wiesen
und diese Wasser waren sein Gesicht.

O sein Gesicht war diese ganze Weite,
die jetzt noch zu ihm will und um ihn wirbt;
und seine Maske, die nun bang verstirbt,
ist zart und offen wie die Innenseite
von einer Frucht, die an der Luft verdirbt.

Rainer Maria Rilke
1875-1926

Author Biography

Mexican artist Raudiel Sañudo’s artwork is featured on the cover of this issue of Unshod Quills. Image descriptions denote the topic to which each image was dedicated.

Please click each image once, and then again, to see in full resolution. 

"Tarot Readings" - Raudiel Sañudo - America

"Her Name Was Pearl and She Dreamt of Keeping Bees" - Raudiel Sañudo - Red Shoes

"Calavera Diablito (2)" - Raudiel Sañudo - Fire

"Forgive Me Mother" - Raudiel Sañudo - Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond

"Desarmada" - Raudiel Sañudo - on Rapture

Artist Biography

Raudiel  Sañudo was born in 1980 in Guamuchil Sinaloa Mexico. At the age of 14 I moved to Baja California, Tecate and Tijuana Mexico.

He studied graphic design at the University of Las Californias in Tijuana, graduating in 2001. Aside from graphic design, he also has worked as an illustrator and painter since 2003.

Raudiel’s luminous, comfortingly familiar and yet unearthly work has been shown in galleries in the US and Mexico, has been printed in various publications and was featured by Juxtapose and by Thumbtack Press.

See more at his website, www.raudiel.com. 

salt box house

I’m wood-clad, weathered
gray by snow and sun. The lights
inside my stories flicker as the moon
calls and departs, full or waning –
phases little matter, matter little
to hours creeping through
the rooms which define and redefine
by fashion and function my trusses,
my mortise-and-tenon joints.

The architecture of nothing nailed,
of metal shanks not present, solid
and creaking all at once; simple
and stoic, I populate
my space in time as only something
purely necessary will. Leaning near
a copse of trees, I cover and nurture
my humans, my spanning generations.
They creep from cradle to rocking chair
here beneath my hand hewn beams,
crafted to last beyond the end of a
hammer’s ring,  until after
the end of fleshly
pleasures, of love, or loss. I decay
over decades but hold.

Author Biography

Dena Rash Guzman is a writer. She edits Unshod Quills.

On “Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond.”

The River-Merchant’s Lover

After Ezra Pound’s The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,
Which was based on a translation of Li Bai’s poem “A Song of Chang Gan.”

The plum-blossom boughs hang heavy with doubt
That spring could come and go so quickly.
They sway and dip and light disperses,
Scattering shadows across your face.
The dim line of hills recedes to the west,
The swift rush of river hastens to the east.
Already you are distant, your thoughts lighting
Towards Chang Gan, the courtyard gate.

This is not a time for promises
Even if it were in your nature to give them,
Nor will I offer to wait or write
Or even watch for your return.
Just as I cannot say if I am more undone
By your presence or your absence,
By your look that is a caress
Or your hollow glance that passes me over.

If I step away from you as the blossom lifts
I will see skiffs tethered, boatmen
Making ready to depart, ropes cast loose,
The sudden motion of a slim craft
Assured, skipping out of sight
Around the first bend of the river,
Away towards Chang Feng Sha.

Author Biography

Catherine Platt arrived in Beijing from England as a language student in 1985, and her life and work have intersected with China ever since. She has degrees in East Asian Studies and Anthropology of Development. Based in Chengdu with her family since 2004, she is a freelance writer, translator, editor and consultant to non-governmental organizations.

On the theme of Fire.

Arsonist’s Dream

Burnt offerings
seldom appease
incendiary rage
kindled in madness
constantly smoldering,
only diverted,
temporarily,
by conflagration.

Author Biography –

In May, Unshod Quills put forth a special call for submissions of video poetry. Here are our favorites. For more video poems, see also the work of this month’s featured artist – Joseph Taylor Golding, an autistic American filmmaker.

Zachary Schomburg
Your Limbs Will Be Torn Off In a Farm Accident –

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4349536]

Cold

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/2969605]

Portland poet Zachary Schomburg illustrates Portland poet Emily Kendal Frey’s “Cold.”
Cello by Elinor Frey.

…

Mary Ann Sullivan
This Magisters Know –
A digital poem

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zghiPJxE8l0&feature=youtu.be]

…

Jillian Brall and Viv G
A Woman

 [vimeo  http://vimeo.com/27021986]

…

Viv G and Dena Rash Guzman
The Sky in Five Seasons –
(some field notes from a year in rural northwestern America)

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27647394]

…

Artist Biographies

Zachary Schomburg

Zachary Schomburg is the author of The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007), Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean 2009), a dvd of poem films, Little Blind Thing (Poor Claudia 2010), two forthcoming books, Fjords and The Book of Joshua, and several small press chapbooks. He co-edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. He lives in Portland, Ore, where he co-curates the Bad Blood Reading Series.

Emily Kendal Frey

Emily Kendal Frey is the author of AIRPORT (Blue Hour 2009), FRANCES (Poor Claudia 2010), and THE NEW PLANET (Mindmade Books 2010) as well as four chapbook collaborations. Her first full-length collection, THE GRIEF PERFORMANCE, was published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2011. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Mary Ann Sullivan

The New York Times called Mary Ann Sullivan first novel, Child of War, set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, “an earnest first novel,” and that book was named a Notable Book in Social Studies by the National Council of Social Studies and Children’s Book Council. Her poetry has been published online at the BBC Arts Online and BlazeVox, her literary interviews and commentaries at places such as Jacket and The Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, London.   Her digital poetry has been recently featured at Mezzo Cammin online. She edits The Tower Journal.

Jillian Brall

Jillian Brall is a poet, visual artist and musician, living in Brooklyn, NY. She co-edits the online journal, Lyre Lyre.

Viv G

Find out more about Viv at www.vivg.com. 

Dena Rash Guzman

Author and poet Dena Rash Guzman lives on a farm outside Portland, Oregon. She is the editor of Unshod Quills.