Unshod Quills

Writer Wayne Miller writes on the theme of transportation using only two letter words.

GO

my TV is in NJ
my RV is in PA
im in DC
we go to my RV?
he go to?
ya or no?
he is my EX
is he bi?
he is.
he is so bi
an,
he ax my ma
my ma go to ER
an, pa?
he in, HI
so, no
so, do WE go, or no?
ya.
to my RV!
do we go in?
if we do
we go at it
be in up in
ew
so, do, OM…
up go IQ
ya…
ha ha.

Author Biography

Wayne Miller works as a private chef for a family of five. He currently resides in Easton, Pennsylvania. When not producing art, taking photographs, cooking, or interwebbing for new discoveries, he can be found at work on his first novels, or on Facebook, his equivalent of sitting around the bar all day. His email is waynemodern@gmail.com.

Poems from Seattle’s Jason Quiggle.

An Expanding Universe

– Transportation

This is going to lock the doors
keeping the showers out
to let us spray each other
It is not all about our broken hearts.

I am Harvey Keitel
and you are Tim Roth
you’re gonna be okay
you’re gonna be okay
sing
song

this is a little steel and glass heaven
crossing over hell fine
features cut our lips

psychopomps  go before us carrying tiny pieces of steel.

Whiskey is our whore paid not to come,
I stage scenes.

the water is clear that I am the thief,

sympathetic strings
seat
belt and gravity cannot keep us from flying apart.

JQ

I have always been here

– When We Two Parted

You were never here
I have always been touching myself
I still am
over what i have almost forgot from last night
a woman pretending to be a poem
in my hand becoming  a ghost
a ghost
a ghost
ghost ghost
a ghost weeping semen for a sunken mistress

you were never here
i am always touching myself
looking into an empty eye
mistaking the glint of the sun for a hint of  love

JQ

Author Biography

Jason Quiggle was born somewhere in New York, during the blizzard of ’76. He has lived in many places including California, Germany, Texas and Nevada. Folks have put things Jason has written into their publications. The city of Las Vegas etched his words in the cement of a public works project along with other notable Vegas writers. Jason now lives in Seattle, Washington. Contact: jason.quiggle@gmail.com

Francesca Castaño and Carmen Castaño Mendez of Spain on the themes of transportation and beasts. 

Carmen Castaño Mendez, "A Little Beast," photograph on the theme of beasts

Wheel of Fortune

Thus,
returning home
the last embers of the working week
fade in the hand
that holds
tightly
to the subway strap.
Panting—
but finally free
of the everyday armour
that binds
this life
we live
curling up
in continuous
repetitions—

I come up from
the subterranean swarm
dazzled by the street
clatter of people coming
and going
when a fortune teller
takes my hand
and begins to read
it:
There, you see—
she chatters
as I get lost
in the lines of my palm —
I see you
spinning
circling,
stirring….

Author and Artist Biography

Francesca Castaño lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. She is a Spaniard who writes in English. She loves her man and her son,  poetry and cooking. Her master’s thesis,  “The Limitless Self: Desire and Transgression in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Written on the Body,” was published by the University of Barcelona, in February 2010. Her poems have appeared in The Bruised Peach Press, and The Internationalwordbank.

Carmen Castaño Mendez, was born in Spain and currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand. She was featured as a finalist in the Auckland Festival of Photography Photo Day for the last 3 years. Her photos have also appeared in The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, February 2011.

From the People’s Republic of China: Josh Stenberg offers two poems

untitled

-on When We Two Parted

susana takes

her leave. there is a grim moment

of notice; storage, apartments,

celebratory wines. nothing stops,

nothing knows how, even memorials

stand cringing at their own pretence.

we are people without gravity, cannot

fill occasion with words have no

place to stand in no ceremony

to summon things happen

merely

the contented spend

whorls of surfeited sorrow

on her; the peripatetic pounce on

new plans, ogle itineraries,

bring themselves this once more to

believe in the meaning of

travel of place of shifting

to frantically revisit reacquire exchange

gossip and tidbits of misheard

trivia, the debris of history

of unreal empires in places

undone

the maudlin recount

every parting to themselves

every ungrasping every

fearfulness of finality since the first

tang poet was dispatched to

barbarian posts, they are of

those who miserously exult

whose climaxes are in welters

and washes of sorrow

and for all: it is, it must be

patterned on foibles of

attachments imagined

and built on the assumption

of a present protracted

eternal and lost

but moments

mercifully pass : we are

overgrown

the present

JS

Untitled

-on transportation

of course even just passing
through or on is travel,
and the drift as criminal as the drive;
meanwhile the constant
disjunctions of culture and
nonsense of race and tantalus
of language and faint pines
or palms make remnants
of shadows on plates of
impression; all this is mere
constitution. so ooze or
exude or bind it. live in departing
getting there harbours
piers airports station. the baroque
detritus of mind is always preparing
universal perpetual motion; no one
and nothing stays put. even the lives of
the never-changing are set
against the rolling eye, glimpsed
as we went past, seeming
to move in the abrasive drag the
gasping rush the sick list and tip the engines of
lucre and fear and wonder and
hope. and in attempting
the observation of difference,
risible in our commonality and our commonness,
desire to provoke that
greedy self-mockery which
demands redemptive the
ability to see in our cruelties
and magnanimities always
like a deep flat drone our
sweet and brutal and mutual dumbness.
yes we talk but not with
yes we move but not on
so that every step pas-de-deux
or circling sally seems to occur
at the pole, where all directions
are meaningless, and the primary
concern is where to get warmth.
write me if you discover
where to get warmth.

JS

Author Biography

Josh Stenberg’s fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in Asia Literary Review (HK), Kartika Review (USA), Pograniczcza(Poland), Tissages/Weavings (Canada) and Corrego (Brazil). His translations of Chinese fiction and theatre have appeared in Kyoto Journal, Copper Nickel, Renditions and in two volumes, Madwoman on the Bridge (2008, Black Swan) and Tattoo (2010, MerwinAsia). Born in Canada, he teaches at Nanjing Normal University and conducts research at the Jiangsu Kun Opera Company.

Six Poems by David  Curtis

Ambiguity of numbered events

– On When We Two Parted

It was never two
it was three and/or more
three rotate two, shift
three rotate, two

before that the left over numbers
the dead carried
propped up on shelves
and in card board shoe box

the big D

then yes, then no
repeats five times
now break
30 days of sulking
silence
maybe one more unopened letter

DSC

adapted from Peter S Lucking

–  On Lipstick

Background
prevalent among the Sumerians, Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks.
Later, Elizabeth I with red mercuric sulfide.
For years, rouge
only promiscuous women
true societal acceptance
By 1915 push up tubes were available, and the first claims of “indelibility” were made.

Raw Materials
wax, oil, alcohol, and pigment.
beeswax, candelilla wax, or the more expensive camauba. Wax enables the mixture to be formed into the easily recognized shape of the cosmetic. Fragrance and pigment are also added, as are preservatives and antioxidants, which prevent lipstick from becoming rancid.

DSC

none of this looks

– on Transportation

clean shiny version
inhabits invisible places
wears filthy socks
walks anonymous

dead and dying
take me
to racist old folks Denny’s

for a Grand Slam bees wax
Florida all the sudden

DSC

that place seems better than this place

– on Mirror

same people arguing
justifying their habits

my life stopped at such and such date
whatever this is it isn’t life
eventually I hope to have a life

maybe I will take yours

DSC

To indifference then

– (a toast to Sonnets)

to fear of losing
to mock interest
to violating policy

to religious indoctrination
and Nation in general

to the giving up one vice for two others

to missing the boat(s)
to throwing lines

DSC

third name (getting closer in shape)

– on Sonnet

Decisions at early ages
Volunteering ‘else to remain
Anonymous  brown masses of
Angels. I won’t say thank you or
Lift mock trials nor will I pretend
To know if “no” in 2007
Matters when compared to the quest-
ions of 2011
I’ll occupy my time until
The appointed hours whether they
Come or not I’ll follow you ’round
(Place holder line)
( )
( )

DSC

Author Biography

David Scott Curtis, born 21 August 1964, is from Las Vegas, Nevada. He practices architectural design while being a father. Sometimes he writes. David is a member of the Unshod Quills Writers Collective.

A Sampling of Literary Collage From Portland Writer Kevin Sampsell

– excerpts from a larger project

Kevin Sampsell on transportation

Kevin Sampsell on "When We Two Parted"

Kevin Sampsell on sonnets

Kevin Sampsell on mirrors

Kevin Sampsell on beasts

Author Biography

A Collaboration between Curtis and Dena

Two poets, both members of the Unshod Quills Writers Collective, with one having been Nevada’s last Green Party gubernatorial candidate, and the other being the chick who bailed on the sinking state, attempt to hold an electronic conversation and create something like a poem, instead.

1972 Volkswagen Bus – needs work

– Transportation

Dena – that’s my year and so do I

Dena – also I am part German

Curtis – which part(s)?

Curtis – I’ve owned two of them

Dena – Two of my parts? You have not!

Curtis – Yep, back in Columbus, I have pictures

Dena –I have never been to Columbus!

Curtis – Buses, silly

Dena – HAHA I love VW buses. I’ve never owned one but every time I get into one it breaks down.

Curtis – that’s the best part, the breaking down

Dena – that’s my German part – the part that keeps breaking down.

Curtis – my German parts are the literalism and the dictatorial part

Curtis – and I have a strange craving to ravage Poland

Curtis – but just the supermodel parts

Author Biographies are here and here.

Gregory Crosby, formerly of Las Vegas and presently of New York, on beasts, lipstick and transportation.

B.

– on beasts

Beauty still kills me; what can I say?
You die from a fall only the once.
They say I have no concept of time,
but I can count the lengths I’ve gone to:
five fingers, twenty-thousand fathoms.
I’m the one God forgot to invent,
so you had to do the dirty work.
I am heavier than any chain,
& I’m still slouching, but not toward
anyplace except the hollow heart
of grief, the original House of Pain.
They say she was sorry, that she loved
me, in her way. You could hear it in her
scream, I guess. Love can make a Beast of a man.
Of a beast, love can only make sense:
a mind, clear, above a wounded yowl.

GC

Lipstick Traces

-on lipstick

Whenever I think of lipstick, I think
of Marlene Dietrich, shot in the back,
at the end of Destry Rides Again,
& falling forward into Jimmy’s Stewart’s
embrace, she wipes the red from her mouth
with the back of her hand & dies into
one, pure, unpainted kiss. I always wish
he would grab her wrist, & fasten his
mouth against her scarlet (even in black
& white, Marlene’s lips burn redder
than all the memories of roses)
& smear her all over his decency,
his cheeks, flushed with it, kissing her as if
her blood soaked his sleeves, the bullet hole
black beneath her heart; not just the powder,
the echo, of a blank from a prop pistol,
somewhere in Hollywood, 1939.

GC

The Greatest Journey Begins With the Smallest Misstep

– on transportation

The iceberg just couldn’t wait to meet us.
Oh the humanity, that quavering voice
as hydrogen blossomed bouquets of ash.
The guardrail, twisted, a toothless grin
in a flash. Cartoon plume of smoke, midair,
as the engine sang tra la, the bridge is out.
Wings afire, like a little prayer
to Icarus. Head over handlebars
for your love, we barely cleared the fountain.
Soon we’ll writhe as our atoms scatter:
yet another transporter malfunction.
Somewhere in time, someone still stands above
a dying horse, gun out. It’s true, you know:
getting there is half the fun. So start walking.

GC

Author Biography

Gregory Crosby’s work has previously appeared in Court Green, Epiphany, Copper Nickel, Paradigm, Rattle, Ophelia Street, Poem, Jacket, Pearl,  and The South Carolina Review, among others. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. Prior to that, he was an art critic in Las Vegas, Nevada (which still works as an icebreaker at parties).

A quartet of poems by  an emerging poet to watch: UQ’s first featured writer is Pennsylvania poet Wendy Ellis.

Pin-ups

– on transportation

it was the worst and weirdest kind of trip
and I do mean trip
tripping
we were tripping
and we were
just a little bit too young
and a little bit too leggy & eager

but we were trying so hard

so we were tripping
and we were in a suburban shopping mall
behind it was a terrible woods
filled with litter and struggling trees

they had this desperate look
helpless and scraggly

our pupils were huge & we were drinking in this
weird landscape

oh to be so young
that young
that huge and so thirsty for everything

I was trying not to hate the woods
but I hated the woods
they were trying too hard
and it was too vulnerable
it made me ache
like the apocalypse

like fire might clean up that damn mess
like I would have to run from the woods
which would be so scary and weird

instead, we went inside this awful little mall
and tried to make sense of
being inside and being so wild inside

my god, we ended up in a movie theater
but only for a few minutes
it was too big
and so loud the sound was pinning us to our seats
we had to run from the noise

we ran laughing, leggy and breathless
into a record store where I bought the first album
I looked at
because I couldn’t stop staring at it

I was trying to hear David Bowie’s
crazy voice through the wrapper
but I kept falling into his uneven eyes
his crazy, painted face

he was from somewhere so far from
this weird mall
the noise
the struggling trees
and the leggy, tripping girl

who had to borrow five dollars
to take David Bowie home with her.

WE

Like A Plum

-on Beasts

My House Mother asked,
‘Do you eat the…will you eat the…’
and she sat there with the word in her mouth.

‘What? What is it?  Is it an animal?’
‘I don’t know. It lives in the mud.’
‘Is it a plant?’
She laughed, the word still inside her like a small plum.

‘I will show you.  Come, it is under the house.
It is in a bucket under the house.’
We bent under the stilts the house stood on.
A white plastic bucket stood in the shade.

And in it, something moving, many things moving.
She reached in & said the word.
It was a dry word, like a cough.
But the thing was wet & slippery,
long & knobbed at one end.
‘Do you eat THIS?’ laughed my House Mother.

She swung it hard against the lip of the bucket,
smashing it so it no longer moved.
‘No.  No, I don’t eat …’ and I said the word.

WE

Here is the Poem

-on lipstick

Here is the poem that has been staggering around in me all week.
I left weird, useless things in my old bag.
Change, crumbs, threads & wrappers.
An earring. A pewter charm.
Three wheat pennies taped to a receipt.

A cheap piece of candy melted through a corner
leaving a greasy smear with a red and chocolate center.

Zippered into a pocket, two lipsticks. Tobacco sticks to old lipstick like
lipstick sticks to the cigarettes I’m chain smoking.

Lipstick leaves a greasy smear on my sleeve as I swear away
tears & snot–swearing & grimacing.

If I were Sarah Bernhardt, I’d have to lie down just about now.
The text would suggest a subtext of such ennui, such sorrow.
The organist would weep with the telling. Her lipstick smeared
on the back of her hand hastily wiping tears so she can follow the notes.
Pipe out the story, larger than life.

WE

She Said

-transportation

She said, “I’ll be late.”
She said, “I’m sorry, my car
is a piece of shit.”

WE

Author Biography

Wendy Giles Ellis
Lancaster County, PA
Reader, writer, backyard muse & eccentric knitter.

Portland poet John Sibley Williams on the themes of mirrors and transportation.

      Photo by John Sibley Williams, on transportation. Vienna, Austria

Portrait(s)

– on Mirrors

I’ve spent so long validating in cloud-shapes
a more intimate portrait of myself

that in the bathroom mirror I now see
an elephant passing into a giraffe
passing into my father.

-JSB

Invitation(s)

– on Mirrors

Slipped beneath my wiper
an invitation to festivities
held in the empty factory
I just left
where once mirrors were assembled.

-JSB

Learning to Swim

– on Mirrors

Consider the sea a skewed mirror
and churning your uncertain limbs through it’s waves
an attempt to untangle light.

The comforting density of bone and future
mean little here.
The world is too light
to trouble with tomorrow,
too buoyant to sink with you.

So bring the background forward.
Kick up ripples and silt through that secret face.
Distort it into accuracy.

Where your faces finally meet
you will float without need for movement,
as in the Dead Sea
but without the need for salt.
Water can be your single taut thread—
reflecting.

Later there will be plenty of time
to learn to walk.

– JSB

Author Biography

John Sibley Williams is a poet and literary publicist residing in Portland, OR. He has a previous MA in Writing and presently studies Book Publishing at Portland State University, where he serves as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and publicist for Three Muses Press. His poetry was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize and won the 2011 Heart Poetry Award. His chapbooks include A Pure River (The Last Automat Press, 2010), Door, Door (Red Ochre Press, 2011), Autobiography of Fever (Bedouin Books, 2011), From Colder Climates (Folded Word, forthcoming), The Longest Compass (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming), and The Art of Raining (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, forthcoming). Some of his over 200 previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, RHINO, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, and Poetry Quarterly.