The New Formalist

Poetry Editor
Lamon Cull

Managing Editor
David Castleman

Contributing Editors
Jerry H. Jenkins

The New Formalist appears in January and July as a Web publication and once a year as a conventional print journal. A two issue subscription to the latter is $20. Please make all checks payable to:

David Castleman
Box 792
Larkspur, CA 94977-0792

Please submit no more than 6 poems at a time. Kindly paste your poems (plain text) onto the body of your E-mail message. Our E-mail address is:

thenewformalist@lycos.com

We do not encourage snail-mail submissions, but if you do not have access to a computer, kindly submit your work to the address below:

The Editors,
The New Formalist
Box 792
Larkspur, CA 94977-0792

© by respective authors.


XHTML & CSS design by Leo Yankevich

Edward L. Wier

DIAGNOSIS

It’s official. I’m diagnosed depressed.
There’s no sense denying my condition,
he says. I’ve taken and failed every test
and he won’t let me call it contrition.
I have the classic symptoms and the mood;
I’m pessimistic, cynical, and dim.
I ruminate negatively and brood;
Did I mention guilt? My forecast is grim;
I’m dejected. My self-image is shot,
but not to fear. Drugs can override it.
He says lots of people have what I’ve got
and, like me, they smile to hide it.
I shook his hand, walked out and paid the fee,
convinced there’s no one else I’d rather be.

QUILTING

I remember those summers, you and I
on the bare balconies of our own worlds
with nothing but the calm clack of needles
knitting the rims of our souls together.

How there was no time and the air fizzled
with tiny wings, distant birds, and then rain;
Our thinking paced by the slow-flowing sap
and the drowsy clutching of earthy roots.

How calmness came, the uninvited guest,
smiling through the sun’s cool shifting shadows;
The comfortable silence confirming joy
with no words to foster misconceptions.

In quiet defiance we took no aim,
and the less we tried, the more we became.

ROLLING STONE

Been years since I had seen the magazine,
That rose from velvet underground to fame.
New images were nothing like I’d seen,
When there was something in me of the same.
A tattooed demon jumped from every page;
And band members looked desperate and mad.
Old faces of abuse were showing age;
Most all of them, it seemed, were not so glad.
I saw no music in the angry eyes,
And innocence? A joke on sultry lips;
Outdoing one another for the prize,
While beating newer life into old scripts.
The death wish of proud youth had changed its tune,
And sadly, now become its own cartoon.

Leo Yankevich

ULTIMA THULE

It is a day like any other day.
Bullfinches bathe in dust along the path.
Two hedgehogs mate. A crow attempts to sing.
The cherries bloom until you see an orchard
and in a puddle snowdrops touch the sky.
Then, when you least expect, you reach your goal.
Your heart stops, and you fall towards your shadow.

EASTERTIDE, GLIWICE, POLAND

A sudden brightness. Call it day.
Rooks above the cathedral, and clouds
a thousand shades of morning grey,
while underneath: the coiling crowds
bear their pastries and precious fruit.
The cobble-stones shimmer in the rain
as ‘glory, glory’ the bells bruit
past the sinners along the lane.

NO FLOWERS, NO DOVES

When we entered the burning city
charred corpses greeted us.
A child’s hand dangled from a scorched tree
and the twisted wreckage of a bus
mocked the stillness of the sky.
Gunner gagged, Ski scratched his head,
neither understanding why
he had to liberate the dead.

AT A SUICIDE’S GRAVE (1869-1897)

Here where this graveyard comes to a sudden end
you lie forgotten beside a crumbling wall,
yet sometimes at night a nova calls you friend,
and the moon itself recalls your rise and fall.

Tom Riley

AUSTRALIA

The strangeness and familiarity
are twined as tight as lovers who can speak
no common language, helpless to agree
on anything but feeling strong and weak
at the same time, each idol, friend, and freak
to the unknowable and so unknown—
ah, to the universal and unique!—
in the poor other, clasped hard as one’s own.
A skeleton, or maybe just a bone,
I sense beneath the flesh I see displayed
where recent mud finds rest on ancient stone,
where expectation starts and flees, betrayed.
If a doe wanders halfway into view,
I shall mistake her for a kangaroo.

MADAME DINGO VERSUS MRS. THYLACINE

For the same ecological niche
they competed, uncertain then which
                    would be top dog at last.
                    But that’s all in the past:
the placental won out. What a bitch!

Randall Peaslee

GOTH-GIRL IN THE PARK

So raven black, she walks in broad daylight!
Jet-black long hair, black lips and long black dress;
She’s long and thin and bent—a witch’s claw.
She follows, dumb, the ground beneath the song-
Laden trees, a passive bride of death;
Past mothers, baby strollers, wagging dogs,
Around the splashing fountain, up my path;
She’s coming, bearing down on me my doom
And then, I smell her lavender perfume.

Lee Passarella

BELLEROPHON IN THE OUTBACK

Poseidon knows, he isn’t half
The man he was before the gaffe
That made his nemesis, old Zeus,
Spook Pegasus, and turn him loose:

His hair and beard, both bird-nest wild,
His right arm hangs limp at his side,
As worthless as a Gorgon’s tear.
The left arm hugs his warrior's spear,

Old habits dying slow (his brains
And legs both lame). Sightless, he canes
The way to where he’s going.... Where
Is there to go? But should he care?

He’s seen the Summit, after all—
Last sight, in fact, he can recall—
Vast courts gold-topped, like cumuli,
Sweet Siren rocks, where dreamers die.

KITE FLYING AT BRIGANTINE

We loft our red box kite in sky so clear,
Sun bleached, it’s livid, like a hurt—rope burn,
A knee skinned down to dermis.... (Now I spurn
The “great outdoors,” though once I didn’t fear
De rigueur summer ills....) Kite’s paid out near
A thousand feet seaward, only to yearn
For more. You race down to the store, return
With one last spool. It’s harder yet to steer.

In fresh-gale winds, ardor unsatisfied,
The thing breaks loose, and learns that freedom’s good.
We’ve lost our kite! Still, that’s all right with us.
We stare till our eyes burn, until kite’s plied
Its higher course above the sea, red dust
Speck where bold swaths, broad as a flag, once stood.

Peter Norman

AWAKE

That summer nightly she dreamed of machines
Divorced from function. Trains in brambles, derailed.
Schooners caught on crags, rotting sails
The colour of gangrene.

In the neighbour’s yard drowsed an abandoned car,
Hood up, motor pillaged, old oil staining
Yellow grass. Nights she heard it draining,
The gurgle of a flea drowned in a samovar.

In the dim moments at sleep’s cusp
She’d enter the engine, explore its tanks
And tubing, creep amid the ranks
Of pistons. She was intimate with rust

And uselessness, the grief of motion lost
And irreplaceable.  As for her, she got worse.
The day came she required a full-time nurse,
A steep but necessary cost.

Outside, a rare wind outmoans the oil's seeping
And agitates the grass. She rises from her bed
And finds the door and slips on to the porch. Ahead,
The car shudders on its blocks. She can't be sleeping:

Her toes gouge earth more palpable than a dream’s.
She slides behind the wheel. The doors close
Gently with a click. The dashboard glows
And the hood is down; inside, the engine thrums.

Slip into gear. Lurch forward. The neighbour rushes
From his house, shouting, as his old Trans Am
Lifts off.  The town recedes. She slams
The accelerator, roars into fifth and flashes

With meteor velocity through dusk.
Below, tide surges, lifting a boat
From its clutch of rocks.  A train streaks out
Of brambly shrub, grips rail and thrusts

Its carapace down a path set by engineers.
It reaches a tunnel.
It screeches, smoke belching from the funnel,
But cannot stop in time, and disappears.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Perfect in glory, winged & rare & bright,
Ebullient angels skate across the sky
Triumphant in their fortitude. I,
Earthbound and mortal, cower at their flight.
Reaching for sanctity I touch the white
Excited air.
                   My fingers curl.
                                             I cry,
Not knowing or expecting to know why.
On pale cheeks my tears imprism light.

Redemption flickers in the field of wings:
   My blinking eyes cannot quite hold her gaze
      And every churning wing obscures her face.
      Nestled amid the flock, certain of grace,
   Mellifluous and fearsome in the haze,
Elusive, barely heard, Redemption sings.

PILOT

I will carve
My signature into mountains.  It’s too bad
For those down there.  Almost sad.
Who aren't blown up will starve
Or go mad with grief.  You serve
The enemy, you gag on the enemy's feast.
Some chant, “Shame, Murderer, Beast,”
But I stick to the flight plan, play it safe.

Once, on a low pass, I could see detail.
That’s a day I’d rather blot out.
A building spilled children like shelled peas;
My issue flung them to their knees—
The siren had come too late.
Almost sad.  I turned back to base to refuel.

Susan McLean

EURYCLEIA

I am familiar with scars—the kind you see
and the kind you don’t. The day Laertes bought me
for twenty oxen, he didn’t think to ask
what had happened to my family, why a girl
as pretty as his new wife was up for sale.
I heard him swear to her he’d never touch me—
and he never did. He knew the price
of everything, even peace.  So no man touched me—
only Odysseus as a child, and later
his son. When they would cling to me for comfort
or kiss my cheek to wheedle a treat, a wave
of sweetness pulled me under, and I felt
my mother’s arms around me, the arms of the child
that I would never have. And yet they knew
the way to pinch me, too, so that the bruises
wouldn’t show, the way to get me beatings
they had earned. Still, I cried when I bathed
the gash in Odysseus’ thigh after his first
boar hunt.  And when Telemachus set off
to look for his father, with the same fierce will
that never sees how thin the golden skin is
that holds the blood in, sorrow grabbed my throat
and squeezed—almost as hard as Odysseus later,
when I recognized him in rags. But what hurt most
was when he swore he’d kill me if I talked.
As if I ever would! I knew his scars,
but he did not know mine, that even a slave
has to have something to love with all her heart.

ARACHNE

Irony will be the death of me.
If wisdom’s knowing when to shut your mouth,
then I’m a fool. I don’t remember what
I said, exactly. Someone praised my weaving.
I think I snapped back, “Yes, Athena’s sick
with envy.” Some remark like that. I never
could take compliments with grace. But gods
are literalists.  She suddenly appeared,
demanding a competition, keen to teach me
the lesson I deserved. It was too late
for penitence or hope. I strung my loom
slowly, dreading to see where this would end.

But when I saw her starting to portray
her contest with Poseidon for the city
of Athens, stifled giggles bubbled up
in me despite myself. She meant to show
the contests she had won, the gifts the gods
had given us. What mad perversity
drove me to show the story’s other side?
All those rapes—her father, uncles, brothers
rutting like animals, shaped like them too,
and the women left to sorrow, shame, and death.
Did I mean to make her blush, or merely think?
Foolish either way.  The gods do neither.

When she started hitting me, I knew
of only one way out.  I tied a noose
to my loom and hung there.  Even that was not
enough for her.  She changed me to a spider,
so that I would always hang and always
spin and weave, but every web would tear
at the lightest touch, just like the one she’d torn
from my loom.  She shriveled up my smooth young body
into a hairy face and pouchy belly
on stick legs, like a crone.  But I don’t mind.           

Nothing lasts.  These gods don’t understand,    
not even this so-called wise one.  Time itself
would have turned me into a hag without her help
and torn my tapestries to shreds as surely.
She left me the work, and that is all I need.

Barney F. McClelland

REBUILT TITLE

Before we bought “pre-owned” parts
or salvaged, or recycled,
we went to junkyards.
With their boiled out radiators,
glistening like tar,  
lined up in neat little rows
like a military graveyard.
The dried bones and relics
of Chevys, Fords, and Olds
all laid out on shelves,
in an auto parts catacomb.
Its caretakers attired
in industrial laundry uniforms
anointed with grease by noon,
with their oily pompadours,
sideburns and ink pen tattoos
and talons highly skilled
in the scavengers’ art
would turn and wheel
crushing the butts of Chesterfields
beneath their heels
while plucking out the beating heart
from the metal carrion
of Buicks and Dodge Darts.

Now I rummage through
foxed and forgotten quarterlies,
and musty, dog-eared anthologies
scouring for a “like-new” metaphor,
straight and neat as the day
she left the showroom floor—
(a little bondo, a little primer
and she’ll be good to go,)
or an AM/FM tape deck that plays
“The Fiddler of Dooney” and
“Requiem” on the radio.
Maybe a clever enjambment
that’s not too badly bent
Or an old familiar simile
that still might have some tread.
I look up at the soldered sky,
and not without some dread,
and pray Thanksgiving break
will be warm and clear this year.
For soon it will be far too cold
to weld this rusty rhyme scheme
on this old doghouse villanelle.
Or maybe I can arrange the use
of my neighbor’s heated garage—
which shouldn’t be too dear—
no more than a case of beer.
And with luck, I’ll have this baby
on the road by Christmas,
or, at the latest, by New Year’s.

J. Patrick Lewis

MINI-BOOK REVIEWS

Moby Dick

Man’s obsessed,
Whale is gored—
Man goes a little
Overboard.

The Scarlet Letter

Pastor pesters
Hester Prynne
With an un-
Original sin,
Now remembered
By an A-
Bominable red
Letter day.

Madame Bovary

Dilemma
For Emma:
Paree 
Or ennui?

War and Peace

Panorama
Russian drama,
Names all end
In -ov and -ski.
Man for man,
It’s longer than
The Moscow phone
Directory.

Ulysses

Dublin, June 16, ought four,
Cuckold figures out the score.
What?  In Blazes…?!  Molly… yes.
Life's a scream (of consciousness).

A Christmas Carol

Bizarrely, dead Marley,
His spirits appear.  It
Seems miser gets wiser,
Gives turkey to perky
Bob Cratchit.  And natch, it
Ends happy and sappy.

Crime and Punishment

Student, mad,
Runs amok—
Murders two,
Worse luck.
What then?
Long discussion—
Guilt, more guilt
(It’s Russian.)

The Great Gatsby  

Tom and Daisy,
Tom and Myrtle,
Jay and Daisy—
There’s the hurdle.
Ah, the West Egg
Upper class is
Old vine
In new grasses.

David D. Horowitz

POWER

The hurricane, with whipping torque,
      Destroys the coastal village
But cannot sink a chip of cork
      Or make the people pillage.

FOR YOU TO SEE

Betrayal might grin and call itself advice
And claim to cheer yet hope to undermine.
Recall:  philosophers distinguish nice
From good.  In life evil shows no underline.

GULL

Feathered boomerang afloat above
Piers, skyline, traffic, boats, and bay,
Your overcast wings slant openings in gray
Breeze, hinting albatross and dove.

EACH WING ALIVE

Gulls roost in downdraft float
      And updraft boomerang
      And coast, wheel, and hang
Above the harbor, circling over boat
And passersby.  They loop
      Back through skyline, and glide
      Thermal, each wing alive
To wind’s inflections, in swoop
And swoon.  They seem to race
      Yet scamper and careen
      Above the day’s routine
That craves unscheduled grace.

Mary Ellis Gibson

A BALANCE

Apples and acorns, yellow fruit and white,
litter the ground to feed quick squirrels and bees.
Human feet crush them, bare soles feel the bite
of cider made in sun-baked skins. The sweet
rankness of the untended orchard rises
and a stray heifer sniffs a winy breeze.
A man and woman pick their way together
knee deep in yarrow, goldenrod and aster.

Shy fingers search the windfalls. Deer have taken
their share and drifted to the wood. Bruised skins
turned to the air give up a warm decay
where yellow jackets, too drunk to zero in
on human flesh, sink satiate in the shade.
The man, taller by a head, shakes a limb
and small apples rain past his outstretched arm,
bounce through the grass, raising a soft alarm.

Pelted with apples they have filled their hands
and pockets with the fruits and headed home
over the ridge, then down to bottom land
where the creek widens and the water comes
thin over stones. They will fall into plans
and forget the high pasture. Left alone,
the twilight orchard entertains raccoons.
Wily tongues explore delicious moons.

David Castleman

The rainbow is our symbol of the resurrection.

So wetly & so utterly wetly the wet rain
wanders in a crevice & colors it wet.
Nowhere’s a dry device can stop the wet
from going wetly anywhere it wants.

One butterfly flutters insanely & founders
& plummets to the vast unholy mass below,
by chance a wet beast on this wet earth,
by chance elsewhere, otherly.

Beyond the struggles that drag forth centuries
the beast is bitten by the hungry dark,
drowns in the stone sea pregnant with silence
& in blisslessly oblivious imbecility.

Wet are the rocks of this earth,
wet the stark ribs of windmills
not camouflaged in foliage as if trees,
& wet that mortal fellow our mad sun.

Wetly the soil is wet & wetly it wettens yet wetter.
The fabric of the butterfly's sails lays
tattered wetly on these waters,
by chance elsewhere, otherly.

Nancy Callahan

ON STARS

They call each star a sun,
yet half a cosmos worth
can’t yield the warmth of one,
or shine a brighter light.
What lies they spread on earth
about the pinpricked night.

E. Louise Beach

LATE SUMMER

Wives sit on swings, wiping sweat.
Storms scold corn and wheat.
Today we cut clover in the heat,
Tamping hay on wagons.
Tractors graze the land,
And I wish a lazy wind.
Apricots are in.
Plums and cherries, too.
Canning’s almost over for the year.
Children wait forever for the fair,
And dusty poppies languish near the road.
You sit awhile beside me on the porch.
We rock a little in the tender light
And feel a train go rattling slowly by.

CHERRY-PICKING

We pick cherries
in early light—
tight clusters
nestling under leaves,
under boughs.
I keep the ladder
steady
while, headless
in a forest
of branches,
you fill our wicker
hold.

Later, I make a pie
from pig’s fat,
flour, and sour
cherries.
When the pie is open,
it spills out to sand-
box and swing,
to fields of wheat,
to wind-off-the-lake,
and to the garden
where birds begin
to sing.

IN ABSENTIA

A tree fell
    in the forest,
but I wasn't there
    to hear it fall.
Ice melted from
    the eaves,
but I didn’t
hear it clatter
    to the ground.
I'm not around,
    it seems,
when real things happen.
Like last night,
while I was indoors
frittering,
    the sun
        disappeared
beneath the earth
    and
        sea.

David Castleman

BRAZIL

It was toward the end of the rainy season of 1949 that my employers sent me to investigate some business in southern Brazil. I was commissioned by Hills Brothers, Folgers, and MJB, to search out some new coffees that might suit their individual blends, and I was to arrange to have those coffees shipped to them. I was seeking many millions of dollars in beans.

A new coffee producing area was coming into the world market from the Brazilian state of Parana, and according to all of our sources these new beans were of inexplicably fine quality. Clearly the trees had been planted and tended properly, and the beans had been harvested in a manner superior to that which we had come to expect from the Portuguese Brazilians.

I flew out of Sao Paulo to Curitiba, in the state of Parana, and ventured by horse and by jeep to the town of Londrina, and thence by horse and by mule and, sometimes, by jeep, to a new and wild town called Arapongas. This town of Arapongas was far from civilization and from law. Arapongas was a town of men, and the men carried guns and knives, except for the blacks and half-breeds, who carried machetes.

Arapongas had dirt streets lined with tents. One stone building housed the bank. Several shacks were constructed of small logs and canvas, and a few rooms were available in these shacks. Each room had a hole in the corner of the floor, and chickens and pigs fought for whatever dropped through that hole. A small board and a stone covered the hole most of the time.

Sometimes a mule train arrived from Londrina, bearing supplies. Some of the local farms sold food in an outdoor market. Near the town was what was billed as the biggest tree in the world, and I went there and it was big, very big, and the mules rode around it slowly.

Farther from the town, nazis had constructed a formidable coffee plantation with large houses of logs and canvas, with stables and outbuildings for the storage of beans and the quartering of servants. These nazis were they I had been seeking, they who had done such a fine job of the beans.

Their current project was the cutting and the piling and the burning of miles and miles of heavy forest. They had large crews of peasants in camps, guarded as slaves must be guarded. The peasant workers were, I noticed, very heavily fed, for the labor was indeed arduous.

From the big houses to the nearest unsullied woods was about 500 yards. In these immediately adjacent woods was a great canyon that made it impractical to cut and to burn those woods, and numerous were the Indians who lived beyond the verge of that wooded canyon.

Commanded by the Germans, servants during the day would deploy baubles along the verge of the woods, baubles such as beads and the links of broken chains, shards of pottery and glass, shell casings. And in the early dusk the nazis would toss back their schnapps as they sat on their huge porches and used the incoming Indians for a target practice. The Indians didn?t ever quite understand what was occurring, for they wandered childlike and enchantedly among the precious baubles in the clearing.

There were several such forward camps of Germans, and the same sport was enjoyed in each camp I attended.

Once when I returned to our office in Londrina I was informed that one of these outposts had been discovered with its inhabitants brutally murdered, and that small arrows had been found fledging the unclean bodies, and spears. Those Europeans who told me of this atrocity were in deep sorrow among themselves, mournfully pondering the subhuman savagery among which our honorable white races must serve.

As I gazed from face to face in our offices, and as I realized the bitter outrage which was struggling to the surface in each personality, I must confess that I very nearly giggled. I was very young.

Contributors’ Notes

Edward Weir’s poetry has appeared in The Formalist, Orbis, SPSM&H, Whiskey Island, The Atlanta Review, The Lyric, Troubadour, The Ledge, The Door, Windhover, Acoustic Musician and Guitar Review.

Leo Yankevich lives with his wife and three sons in Gliwice, Poland, where he works as a translator. His poems are known throughout the world.

Tom Riley teaches English literature and Classical languages in Napa, California, where he lives with his wife, Mary, a stepdaughter, three small children, his in-laws, and a timid Belgian shepherd. He exercises way too much for a man his age and enjoys the potation of whiskey, cursing his enemies, and shooting the bow. He is not well practiced in the art of smiling.

Lee Passarella is senior literary editor for Atlanta Review. His poetry has appeared in The Formalist, Antietam Review, The Literary Review, Slant, and many other periodicals.

Randall Peaslee lives with his wife in Katowice, Poland, where he teaches English. He has contributed poems to The Villager and Mandrake Poetry Review.

Peter Norman was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1973. His work has appeared in magazines and journals throughout Canada and the U.S., including The New Formalist, Edge City Review and The Malahat Review.

Barney F. McClelland’s work has appeared in The Best of Acorn 2001 (Dublin), The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Aura Literary Arts Review and The New Formalist. In 2001 he was awarded the KotaPress Anthology Award for Poetry.

Susan McLean is a Professor of English at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota. She began writing poetry in 1990 and has been published in Kalliope, Atlanta Review, Blue Unicorn, The Formalist, and elsewhere .

J. Patrick Lewis’s poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Dalhousie Review, Kansas Quarterly, Light Quarterly and many other journals. He has published thirty-seven children's picture and poetry books to date.

David D. Horowitz is the author of Streetlamp, Treetop, Star (1999) and Resin From the Rain (2002), both published by Rose Alley Press. His poems and essays have been published in diverse journals, including The Lyric, Candelabrum, ArtWord Quarterly, Tucumcari Literary Review, and The Sporting News.

Mary Ellis Gibson is Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and editor of Separate Journeys, stories by contemporary Indian women writers, forthcoming from University of South Carolina Press in 2004.

David Castleman lives in a shanty in a redwood grove with two improbably conceited cats, listening by evening to John McCormack and Billie Holiday. His poems, tales and imaginatively critical essays have appeared in hundreds of small magazines on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nancy Callahan is from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her poetry and short stories have most recently appeared in Tampa Review and New Millennium Writings.

E. Louise Beach’s most recent credits include the song cycle Death of the Virgins in collaboration with composer Bryan Page; a National League of American Pen Women Award; and publication in numerous journals.

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