(Watch Marie Craven’s video of “Security” on Vimeo)
Editor’s note: the text of the Laura M. Kaminski poem “Security” and her bio can be read at The Poetry Storehouse.
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Marie Craven is a media maker and musician from the Gold Coast, Australia. She has been engaged in online collaboration since 2007 and has contributed to works with artists in many different parts of the world. Website: pixieguts.com
Stars do not say goodnight
They are born in the dark
like new eyes of roses,
they come softly and madly
into the sky
We know their light
turned to eyes on the river
We found them one night,
and howled to the void
We see,
for they have given eyes to faces
And through eons they have torn
across light years of shadow
to find us,
to raise this planet out of night
The stars are dancing
In them we have witnessed
that same fire
that sings through bones,
that whispers eyes open
They do not say goodnight—
when they are old
they tear outward in every direction
claiming every object,
every atom,
and after all screams
there comes a reconvening—
eons of beauty
into inches of beautiful dust—
the stars do not say goodnight
to us.
—
Luis Neer is an alumnus of the creative writing program at the 2014 West Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts, and his poems have appeared in Maudlin House; Literary Orphans; Squawk Back; The Rain, Party & Disaster Society and elsewhere. He tweets @LuisNeer.
I confess
my love to
the wind
hawthorn blossoms
falling at your feet
—
Caroline Skanne is obsessed with anything wild and free. She is the editor of hedgerow: a journal of small poems. Her book a hundred poems by caroline skanne is available from Amazon.
[she is] morning-glory trailing twining
colony of veins
[she is] old fields
deep roots
[she is never] for another
::
note: this is an erasure/cut-up hybrid from a series-in-progress, working title: “[she is]: wildflowers of texas”. Source text: Geyata Ajilvsgi’s Wildflowers of Texas.
—
Robin Turner brings poem-making to schools, museums, and youth shelters, and serves as an online writing guide to homeschooled teens. Her work has most recently appeared in Anima Poetry, Red River Review, Referential Magazine, and the Porkbelly Press Emily anthology. She lives with her husband and a sweet old yellow cat along a wooded creek in East Dallas.
high
erratic
[this girl is] lemon-yellow absent
sometimes narrow
and entire
a parachute in the wind
::
note: this is an erasure/cut-up hybrid from a series-in-progress, working title: “[she is]: wildflowers of texas”. Source text: Geyata Ajilvsgi’s Wildflowers of Texas.
—
Robin Turner brings poem-making to schools, museums, and youth shelters, and serves as an online writing guide to homeschooled teens. Her work has most recently appeared in Anima Poetry, Red River Review, Referential Magazine, and the Porkbelly Press Emily anthology. She lives with her husband and a sweet old yellow cat along a wooded creek in East Dallas.
solitary
rough
conspicuous at margins
[she is] empty stream banks and railroad tracks
a disturbed wild bird
a cultivated form
::
note: this is an erasure/cut-up hybrid from a series-in-progress, working title: “[she is]: wildflowers of texas”. Source text: Geyata Ajilvsgi’s Wildflowers of Texas.
—
Robin Turner brings poem-making to schools, museums, and youth shelters, and serves as an online writing guide to homeschooled teens. Her work has most recently appeared in Anima Poetry, Red River Review, Referential Magazine, and the Porkbelly Press Emily anthology. She lives with her husband and a sweet old yellow cat along a wooded creek in East Dallas.
A mailbox with numbers. A silver mailbox with firm-red numbers painted on its side. One. Eight. Two. This was Peggy’s house. We sat next to each other in Mrs. Soldavini’s class—third grade.
It was five-thirty in the morning and I had never been outside so early. Except for once when the whole family left in the middle of the night for the 400-mile drive to Grandma’s, I had never even been awake this early. But somehow I woke up in time.
As I watched in all directions, my left hand pulled open the little door and then my right hand placed the card and the box of candy hearts deep inside.
A dog barked and I ran away as fast as I could. I’m still running.
—
Tony Press tries to pay attention. His stories (many) and poems (not as many) appear in a remarkable (to him) number of fine publications. Please seek them out.
Editor’s Note: While Issue 3 was running, Marie Craven made this wonderful video remix of Michele S. Cornelius’s poem “Solar Therapy.” Check it out, and stay tuned for Issue 4, which will be starting soon.
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Marie Craven is a media maker and musician from the Gold Coast, Australia. She has been engaged in online collaboration since 2007 and has contributed to works with artists in many different parts of the world. Website: pixieguts.com
Michele S. Cornelius lives in Southeast Alaska where she works on photographic art and fills notebooks with poems.
This is the Official Call for Submissions for Issue 4 of Gnarled Oak, which will start in July and be an unthemed issue.
Gnarled Oak accepts poetry, prose, videos and artwork. I don’t like to impose rules on what is and isn’t acceptable (other than the no hate speech, no pornography one), but as a general guideline, I tend to favor shorter works, which for our purposes means poems of less than 20 lines, prose less than 1000 words, and videos less than 7 minutes long. Regarding form and style, I’m open to almost anything. Check out previous issues to get a sense of things.
I’ll be reading for Issue 4 through June 26 and plan on starting the issue the week of July 6 July 13. Please visit the Submissions page for more in-depth guidelines. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes this way, and I hope you’ll send something and help spread the word. Thank you.
SummaryIssue 3: Blue Vegetarian Lions (Apr-May 2015) is an unthemed issue featuring poetry, prose, videos, and artwork from writers and artists around the world.
Read online | Read the PDF (click to read online, right-click & save-as to download)
Love Is in the Air — Neil Ellman
crescent moon — Laurie Kolp
Column — Janet & Cheryl Snell
& in the dream — Marcia Arrieta
Everything but the Sky — Swoon
That Sinking Feeling — Joseph Farley
Solar Therapy — Michele S. Cornelius
To: That Bird So Small I Mistook You for a Floater — Barbara Young
The Trees in Buena — Seth Jani
He Realized the City Was the Abstraction — W. Jack Savage
Rendered — Richard King Perkins II
Mary at 30 Thinks about 60 — Kenneth Pobo
Mary at 60 Remembers 30 — Kenneth Pobo
Sisters — Shloka Shankar
Penelopiad — Jade Anouka
These Hands — Debbie Strange
Buddha & Co. — Howie Good
Wastage — Bill Waters
Poem Without Words — Dick Jones
Camberwell Old Cemetery — Jean Morris
waxing moon — Eric Burke
Omen — Sonja Johanson
The Episodic West — W. Jack Savage
Errant — Lawrence Elliott
Sakura Yama — Bobie (Yves Bommenel)
microwords — Herb Kauderer
Ode to a Writing Prompt — Yoni Hammer-Kossoy
Fish in Bowls Are Like Bears in a Circus — Trish Saunders
Holding the Moon — Laura M. Kaminski
On the Beauty of Nature — Dane Cervine
Ode to a Bee — Michele S. Cornelius
Hidden Flowers — Laura M. Kaminski
pick-your-own — Julie Bloss Kelsey
The Red Drum — Marie Craven
It was probably early November, back in ‘96, one of the best times of year here in Austin when the summer heat has broken and the first cold fronts start rolling in. I was in grad school at UT Austin at the time and one especially nice day my fellow students and I filed into the bare off-white room with the scuffed up walls and mismatched chairs somewhere in the bowels of the Communications Building where our weekly graduate screenwriting seminar met.
Our professor, Robert Foshko—Uncle Bob, after he and my aunt married a few years prior—usually started with some story from his years working as a writer and producer during the golden age of TV that would serve to illuminate and somehow tie together our weekly discussion. Or perhaps he would talk about some obscure film from which we could all learn something about writing, and then we would dive into our pages and the critique of the good, bad and ugly in all our writing. Bob wasn’t afraid to tell us where we’d gone wrong or to tell us what we had done well either, which for some teachers is the harder trick.
He was unyielding in his demand for our best work and always honest in his assessments yet kind at the same time. You always knew he was on your side even when your writing that week was lousy. Though I abandoned screenwriting for poetry and fiction, the lessons I learned in his class have continued to influence my writing and my teaching.
He was forever reminding us not to be afraid to leave things unsaid, to show and not tell. Our audiences are smart people, he’d tell us. They will figure things out and appreciate your letting them do so.
But on that particular November day, he stared at us with his inscrutable expression, took a deep breath as if about to gently tear into some especially egregious writing and then did the seemingly unthinkable. He said, “You know, it’s a beautiful day out there. And you people are young. Go outside and enjoy yourselves today.”
I didn’t go to the library to read for my other classes. I didn’t study or write. I hopped on my bike and rode all over Austin that sunny autumn afternoon. We made up for that day of course, nothing is free after all, but years later, I still think it was one of the best things I learned in grad school.
Bob died unexpectedly earlier this month. It’s a painful blow to the whole family and to the many of us who loved him, but I found some measure of solace in this issue of Gnarled Oak.
All of the amazing work contained in this issue was selected and the order (mostly) set before he died, but somehow the work that came in the weeks after Bob’s passing helped me. It’s a strange serendipity, I know, but it makes me all the more grateful to have the honor and privilege to publish this journal and be able to fill it with such fine work. So, as always, my sincerest thanks to all who submitted and contributed work, all those who read Gnarled Oak, comment and share it with friends and networks. I can’t thank you enough.
Now, go outside and enjoy yourselves today. See you in July.
With gratitude and thanks,
James Brush, editor
May 2015
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Gnarled Oak — Issue 3: Blue Vegetarian Lions: Read online | Read the PDF (right-click/save-as to download)
