Happy New Year 2016

photo by Stephen Poleskie
www.stephenpoleskie.com


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Ode To Tommy

Sasha Thurmond

Tommy, my timeless love

You left me up North

A split second to oblivion

Black blanket, a starless night

Rain daggers stabbing my heart

An iron beast dragged your body

Down the highway to no where

A figurehead  on a ship lost at sea

You whispered in my ear

"Go South with our menagerie

Start a new life

I'll be beside you

Trust me, You must be brave."


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Sasha Thurmond is a graduate of the Cornell University MFA program where she majored in printmaking. She lives on a farm in South Carolina with her horse and other animals, and sometimes finds time to make art or write poems or stories.

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photo by Sasha Thurmond

                          

Violent Outbursts, Thaddeus Rutkowski

READING THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI’S latest book “Violent Outbursts” is addictive. You pick it up planning to read one or two short stories, or are they flash fiction, or poetry, and then you find yourself unable to put the book down until you have finished the whole thing. So what exactly are these compelling short pieces, most only one page long?

           Alan Catlin, writing in MisFit Magazine states that “Rutkowski’s pieces are to prose poems what Russell Edson’s are to fiction. Thad’s work has many of the same elements of Edson’s best work: absurd, outrageous situations and resolutions, deft biting satirical humor, and a mock, generally self-effacing narrator.  So go with flash fictions. It works as well as any other designation does. This is good, highly charged, terrific, distinctive writing no matter what you call it.”

          The book has gotten numerous favorable comments. Author Ed Lin calls Rutkowski; “the original language gangster (who) tips over words and lets them fall on you.” And Max Blagg states that Rutkowski’s collection: “skirts the edge of psychological revelation, with hints of darker meaning coursing below the surface.”

          Emerson has said that a writer, in order to write well, must give oneself wholly to their feelings as one has them, and not to thesauri or dictionaries. In “Violent Outbursts” it appears that Thaddeus Rutkowski has taken this direction to a good end.

SG

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Violent Outbursts

Thaddeus Rutkowski

ISBN 978-1-941550-58-8

124 pages 16.00 USD

Spuyten Duyvil

Brooklyn, New York

Spuytenduyvil.net

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From the Finger Lakes, A Prose Anthology

From the Finger Lakes: A Prose Anthology contains the work of 44 highly-talented local authors of fiction, memoir, and reportage writing both about the Ithaca area and parts of the world less "centrally isolated."  Cayuga Lake Books launched the book at two readings.  The first took place on Sunday, November 8, to a large crowd in the Borg Warner Room of the Tompkins Country Public Library between 2:00 and 5:00.  The second was held on Sunday, November 15 at Buffalo Street Books.  The following authors participated:

NOVEMBER 8,   TOMPKINS COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY

Rhian Ellis, Guest Editor, Mary Gilliland, Ann Gold, Daniel Gold, Stephen Poleskie, Jeanne Mackin, David Guaspari, Amber Donosio, Barbara Adams, Gene Endres, and Nino Lama

NOVEMBER 15 AT BUFFALO STREET BOOKS

Rhian Ellis, Guest Editor, Carol Kammen, Brad Edmondson, Gerard A. Cox, Katharyn Howd Machan, Douglas Green, James McConkey, Lamar Herrin, Fred Wilcox, Ira Rabois, and Alison Lurie

The book is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Finger-Lakes-Prose-Anthology/dp/1681110601/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447209988&sr=1-1&keywords=from+the+finger+lakes+a+prose+anthology

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In Memory of Paul West

Paul West  1930 - 2015

Paul West, noted novelist, essayist, and poet, passed away peacefully on October 18, 2015 at his home in Ithaca, New York after a long illness. Paul was born in Eckington, Derbyshire in England to Alfred and Mildred (Noden) West. He was a graduate of Oxford University and served in the Royal Air Force. He taught at Penn State University for many years, and was a literary critic for the Washington Post. Paul is survived by his wife Diane Ackerman, a writer, poet, and naturalist. 

In his lifetime Paul was the author of 54 books. The last four of which were published by Onager Editions. He has received awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Lannan Prize for Fiction and the Halperin-Kaminsky Prize. He was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library and a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government. He has also been a runner-up for the National Book Circle Award and the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

We are reprinting here one of Paul's poems from his book Tea With Osiris, which was previously published in in this journal in August 2006: 

One summer's day in winter
      when the snow was raining fast, 
      a barefooted boy with clogs on
      stood sitting on the grass.
      He went to the movies that night
      and bought two front seats at the back, 
      ate a big plain cake with currents in, 
      and when he'd eaten it he gave it back.

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blondes, mike foldes

Oops Blonde, painting, Mike Foldes, 1997

i always liked blonde girls. they smelled different. tasted different, too. for some reason blondes and i never hooked up for long. i’m not sure why. maybe it was me. maybe it was their long term goal to cohabit with aristocrats or jocks. or that i was too eager and too shy at once. today i cannot see myself sitting at a kitchen table with a blonde woman next to or across from me, or at the stove making scrambled eggs, though i can and do see a dark-haired, brown-eyed mediterranean doing the same thing, and it feels natural as the day is long. i can also see her in a lot of other rooms, so it’s not like playing patty-cake, patty-cake on the living room floor in front of the zenith tv. it’s neither norman rockwell nor roman polanski. not dick and jane, but a blend of beardsley and parrish, if you know what i mean.

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Mike Foldes is the founder and managing editor of Ragazine, an online literary magazine. He is also the author of "Sleeping Dogs, A true story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping," and "Sandy: Chronicles of a Superstorm," with artist Christine Devereaux." 
Download at www.Smashwords.Com and www.Amazon.Com

Mike Foldes' 1997 painting "Oops Blonde" is in the collection of Gabriel Navar, Oakland, Ca.

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Daphne Sola, Two Poems

LUCK IS NOT A THING . . .

Luck is Somebody.

You can hear his bony toes clicking

as he rushes past

and when he decides

to hold still

merging himself into the landscape

he can still be discerned

by a febrile shimmer in the air.

You may think yourself well set

clinging to the sturdiest limb

of the tallest tree

but when Luck suddenly appears

below you

calling out, “Jump!”,

you scramble to your feet

let go of all the familiar branches

and with all the words

of all the books you have ever read

swirling about your head,

Molly Bloom’s are the only ones

you remember,

“Yes, oh yes!” on your lips

swelling your throat

and you leap out

not knowing if Luck is ready

to catch you in his arms

or only hold you for a moment

before he lets you

tumble to the ground,

takes an instant leap away,

his eyes on another,

leaving behind him only an echo of . . .

click

click

click

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THE POINT OF A KNIFE

Do you feel a pricking,

the point of a knife

under your chin?

Listen, Cock-of-the Walk,

you may take it

for an empty threat

but the hand that holds the knife

relishes fierceness

and will make you howl with pain and love

before sundown.

The hand that holds the knife

can also pluck a string

and oh, bonnie man,

you will dance to her tune

you will stamp the ground

until plumes of dust rise

and though you brim with denial,

welcome the dust

that clouds your eyes.

Grasp hands, then, and

move in blinding circles

glued together from waist to knee,

but, oh, rash and cherished boy . . . ,

no longer boy,

the prick of the knife is in the dance

that fires you

and shivers her,

a spark in an uncaring universe,

for all its brilliance

it is a briefness

that can only flame and die.

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Daphne Sola is a poet, an artist, a musician, and a retired gallery owner. She lives in upstate New York

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