TOM JONES MEETS JOHN LEE HOOKER ~

Can a 70 year old one-time Welsh pop star

Sing the Blues —

have a listen.

The two twins in the band

drive the train

(2010 )

THE TARBOX RAMBLERS ~

A Boston four-piece band
(or three)

that plays right out of the

railroad cinders

(Rounder, 2000)

REBECCA WOLFF ~

R E B E C C A     W O L F F

Man Tits




Look at that pair,



on the one over there.

He's young, skinny, low

muscle tone, poor, white, under-

educated . . . gazing

down

on a

path



in the little patch

of yard in front of his

unfavorably situated

rental where he stands, hands

on hips, mutable, conceivable

speculation on the next weekend

chore.



But his tits are the good

kind: fat, conical, pale against

the brown of his wife-beater tan,

nipples slightly shiny,

areolate. Bouncy, native tits



like the ones you came to see.






Admit No Impediment




I'm going to get up from the table

and go to the bathroom



When I get back,

if your napkin has moved

from the left side of your plate

to the right, I'll

know you want to.



There will be no need to speak.

Or, wait a minute,

maybe it should be if your napkin

hasn't moved.



I want to make this

as easy for you

as I can.






Parkeresque




I'd like a

lidless



Vicodin.

Oblivion.



Countless

sensation of him



leaving the room.

Come back soon.



It occurred to me

fait accompli.



Clinamen.

Phantom limb.



Black cat sleeping

(you used to be

next to me)

next to me



dreams our lost

telepathy.


____________________



Rebecca Wolff
One Morning —.
Wave Books, 2015

NUMBERS (15.60.75) ~

A seven-piece, three-sax band from Kent Ohio

led by lead singer-guitarist Robert Kidney

This was often the band's closing number

"Up the road I'm going," Jimmy Bell wails

("what road?")

PERE UBU ~

( Fire 2014 )


 

DARLING COMPANION ~

Darling Companion

by Bob Arnold

New and available now from Longhouse ~

136 pages
 Perfect bound softcover

____________________________________

$15


Shipping $3.95 ~ U.S. orders with Paypal

Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal

International orders ~ complete $30 with Paypal payment

all orders may be made by Paypal, credit card or check ~
 

mail order here:

LONGHOUSE
 PO Box 2454
 West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303

WOODCUTTER, Part 1 ~

-->

Night Table

Here is part of you

While you sleep —

The small shine

Of silver earrings

Dogs In Snow

I bring them out water

They drink around the ice

Chains rap on the bucket

Shivering I wait

Looking up into the stars

What I see in their eyes

Plowing back to the house

After shaking their coats goodnight

Strength in my hands

The Pleasures of Love

 

The last of my noon hour

Black tin lunch pail

Sitting on a sap soaked maple stump

Woodchips nettled on my woolen socks

Finding the fruit cup she made for me

Clear cold glass in my oiled hand

Neat slices of strawberry and pear

 

December

She’s supposed to be land clearing

Heaping brush to burn in first snow

But the pale yellow ghost of tall

Summer grasses she sweeps down

Is instead caught in her hand

And placed that way in a kitchen vase

Showing a warmth to last us through winter

_________________ 

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET
(Mad River Press) 


photo ~ a young farm worker smiles for the camera


 












 

SHERRY ~

It’s been seven years today since my older sister Sherry died. In Florida. Unexpectedly. Alone. I think of her as a friend from my hometown on Crandall Street works to put together a Facebook page of all the kids that once lived on the street and my sister was one of those kids, one of the prettiest ones, as all the girls were pretty in that long ago. The street was our world. I could walk out my parents house and see Mount Greylock loom large right above the house tops of the neighbors across the street. The street was our world. The hospital where many of us were born was midway of the street and we played all our football games there in its field. Tackle, not touch. Most driveways were tar and almost every driveway had a basketball hoop, at least where the kids lived. There were great old ladies on the street. I had a pair of them either side of our house and we were friendly with all of them, especially two right next door to our basketball court (the driveway) where I’d wander over after supper and sit on their front porch with the rocking chairs and rock with my old lady friends. I can’t remember their names and remember everything about their faces, the walk into the inner sanctum of the beautiful home inside, the polished oak woodwork, the darkness, the cuckoo clock, the back door kitchen light where I found again sunlight and I moved through the darkness of the rooms to get to that sunlit door, into the backyard, the terraced gardens, a small built garage for one car. Everything in its place. My sister Sherry dressed me up in girl’s clothing since she didn’t have a little sister. My two younger brothers weren’t born yet. I was trans-gender before there was trans-gender. She played music by The Shirelles that still booms in my head off her on the floor 45-only turntable. Huge and sassy and blossoming women voices. Out of the girl’s clothes and into my clothes, older, she brought me Dylan. I already had the Beatles and the Stones but on The Byrds first album there was this insect looking spectacle called Bob Dylan. He looked different, darker, wiser, more dangerous than the troubadour on the first Dylan album I bought “Another Side.” My sister had a boyfriend who played Byrds songs. He had a guitar like Roger (Jim) McGuinn’s, long slack hair, my parents one night kicked him out of the house. He stayed lurking, slept on the driveway that night. My great sister. Right out of a Shirelles song. Where we buried her one late morning you can really see Mount Greylock. The tallest point in Massachusetts was in the clouds when we arrived early for the burial. How many times did I scramble up the Thunderbolt Trail with my pals off Crandall Street! Insisted on taking every member of my family up that mountain with me; the guitar player boyfriend of my sister (now married to him) I grabbed one winter day and we scaled up through snow. Scared him half to death. Laughed our heads off for years afterwards remembering that day, all those days. By the time Sherry’s ashes were set into the ground, the mountain, obedient to its friends, came out of the clouds. And the sun did shine.

 [ BA ]

My Sweetest Friend at Longhouse

CLASSIC ~

READ ABOUT BOZ SCAGGS

SSHHHH~

sweetheart

GENEALOGY ~

Camille Rankine

 Genealogy



I was born in a forest.

I don't know my name.

I was born on a mountain but changed

my mind. I was born

in the desert. All my people died

in the fire and left me

with the gods. They called me dust.

How it burned me. I come from the sea,

I believe. I come from beryl,

aquamarine. All my people

rode their horses off

the edge of the world and left me

on your doorstep. They called me

sorrow. I don't know my name.

I come from wartime. How it burned me.

I was born aflame, I believe. A sun

so intentional. A sun in repose, a sun

in continuous sunset, sinking into the ground.




____________________

Camille Rankine
Incorrect Merciful Impulses
Copper Canyon Press 2016



 

THE CUCKOO ~

More than one pretty bird

JAMES SALTER, THE ART OF FICTION ~

University of Virginia Press

2016

Only months before James Salter passed away,

at the age of eighty-nine,

he agreed to serve as the first

Kapnick Foundation Distinguished 

Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia

where he delivered the three lectures presented

in this nifty little book, with maybe a

too long introduction by Salter's friend

and fellow novelist John Casey.

Something smaller, intimate and

comfortable with the size of the book

may have been a better choice.

No problem with the Salter.

We would love a fourth lecture,

a fifth.

I N    M E M O R I A M

TOM HENNEN ~

Home Place



The old house went down the basement stairs
And didn't come back up.

The people
The cows
The sheep
The pigs and the chickens
Have disappeared through a great hole
In the landscape.






Cold in the Trees



The hoot
Of the owl
Is large enough
To carry off a whole sheep.






Knowing Nothing



The hole in the landscape is real.
I can walk through it and back again.
Every time I do
My clothes look baggier.
My hair sticks out.
My boots become untied.
My coat unbuttoned.
My education gone.
I don't care anymore how the world thinks.

I only know that the snow
Has reached my knees.






After a Long Trip



The river is going to the Gulf of Mexico.
The moon on top the water
Doesn't move.
It's not interested in a
Trip to New Orleans.
Its light is already tired from traveling
250,000 miles
To shine on some trees.






Love for Other Things



It's easy to love a deer
But try to care about bugs and scrawny trees
Love the puddle of lukewarm water
From last week's rain.
Leave the mountains alone for now.
Also the clear lakes surrounded by pines.
People are lining up to admire them.
Get close to the things that slide away in the dark.
Be grateful even for the boredom
That sometimes seems to involve the whole world.
Think of the frost
That will crack our bones eventually.






Found on the Earth



The simple words no longer work.
Neither do the grand ones.
Something about
The hanging bits of dark
Mixed with your hair.
The everlasting quietness
Attached to the deserted barn
Made me think I'd discovered you
But you already knew all about yourself
As we stood on the edge of a forest
With your dress as languid as the air,
The day made of spring wind and daffodils.
Then the sky appeared in blue patches
Among slow clouds,
Oak leaves came out on the trees,
Grass suddenly became green,
Filled with small animals that sing.
All the parts of spring were gathering.
The earth was being created all over again
One piece at a time
Just for you.






Late March



A dark day raining
A bright flash
Of blue jay disappearing
Into black folds
Of a dripping spruce tree.
Bark of ash and apple tree shine
In the dim drizzle.
The woodpecker's
song this afternoon
Is a chipping noise,
A sound that puts little dents
In the wet air.




__________________

TOM HENNEN
Darkness Sticks to Everything
Copper Canyon Press, 2013 


 

DANIEL AARON ~

D A N I E L     A A R O N

b. Chicago, Aug. 4, 1912 ~ 2016

Daniel Aaron holding one of 155 volumes of the diary of Arthur Crew Inman, a failed poet and scion of Southern wealth, which he condensed to 1,661 pages.

photo ~ Steve Liss/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images

EDWARD ABBEY ~

E D W A R D     A B B E Y

B A C K R O A D     C H A L K I E S

S P R I N G    2016

Photo: © bob arnold

CLAUDE LANZMANN ~

FARAWAY, LIKE THE DEER'S EYE ~

V I C T O R     J A R A

-->

It's So

After love, you lift your dress

Wash in cold running water.

I’ve to work in the morning,

Drive through the field, frighten

A flicker from wet grass

To the stone wall, birch, white oak.

It all started with you hugging my neck

Pulling back and laughing.

We’d open a large window upstairs

Lie down in the river sound.

The mason’s young helper unloads stone

Then breaks for a cigarette,

All day guns cement mixer blades.

Long handle shovel stuck in sand

Lime dust blowing

Whitewash peeling from ripped out

Barn ceiling boards.

Two weeks ago this was a new job —

Rotten sills weren’t jacked

Bolts cut —

A buzzard flew up from the valley

Cockeyed in stiff wind

Beating rough edged wings,

Very black on melting snow.

Now 4-wheel drives burn tread

On the hillside, tool boxes slam

Workers pitch vision to the ground,

Black flies sting our skin.

By the end of day a red fox

Hops out of that sunny part of the field.

I hear a school bus downshift miles away.

Two guys clean out a wheelbarrow

Drink from the hose

Talk of bear hunting.

-->

Faraway, Like the Deer's Eye

                      for Victor Jara, Chilean folksinger

Ah yes, now I believe I know —

A cool breeze and very early morning

A wood thrush breaks from the pasture,

Fences have all been mended,

Here and there animal hair.

I think of Jara; Victor,

By jesus as they busted your fingers

And you kept to the last moment

Something loving, say your sister, far in your belly.

Then they beat you like the backside of a horse

And it all fell — my chore bucket spilled

Suddenly in Vermont.

I may still have the gathering of birds,

The pull of this long river

Where I wade to my waist, undo my hair and wash slowly

Strong sweat and black flies,

A quiet day with the saw

Now near its end.

But Chile stays — forever.

How in the hell can you ask me to forget

A father dragged down from an attic

And pumped into a scream

In front of his huddled family?

The blood goes everywhere

And they live with it

And the killers — shit,

Something the raccoon wouldn’t even wash.

Daylight goes.

Evening is soon.

My friends, we are to become

The last light in the pond.

________________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET

Walter Lowenfels took "Faraway. . ." for his seminal anthology

For Neruda, For Chile (Beacon Press)