it was so & not so
It was so and not so. Big owls hoot and little owls toot. What are the levers we can pull? The buttons we can push? All of Poland gone in just 10 minutes said Konstantin Sivkov, a retired Russian naval officer. With only 30 to 40 nuclear missiles, targeting major cities, ‘The Polish state would disappear. The Polish people would disappear. The Polish language would disappear’. I think of my Polish friends, and I think of my friends deep down in the ocean. A net a mile long is being dragged towards them. Old patterns repeat themselves. Or with a difference. It was so and not so. And in the blind forest there are colours that only a tree can imagine. And the blind man who bumps his head against a trunk imagines himself to be one of those trees. Closer to the sky and unfolding his now elastic bones with a fluttering as when the wind moves through his branches, or when a mouse runs through the long grass. It was so and not so. I sit at my raven-black writing desk and gaze at the midnight window. Its square of blackness reminds me of that famous artwork by Kazmir Malevich, ‘Ukrainian painter of Polish origin’. How many years have disappeared into that blackness? Big owls hoot and little owls toot. We turn a corner and there is another corner. We turn that corner and there is yet another corner. And so it goes on… We never catch up with ourselves. At best a shoe, a man’s shoe, disappearing behind a brick wall. Then someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn around. After all those years, I only had to turn around. Waves break on a moonlit beach. After all those years. The sun hauls itself over the horizon. The craters of the sun. The blinding heat of the moon. Big owls hoot and little owls toot. Step back. Pick up the discarded shoe and step back. There was a march down Queen Street yesterday. Thousands of people turned up. Children were holding placards painted with green frogs. And one frog held up a placard of a child. Perhaps that was my imagination; all these creatures surfacing from the seas and erupting from the earth. Horn and paw and fin and talon. Are these my last thoughts? Cigar ash a mile deep. You can’t feed people with a golf club. Does it have to be like that? Perhaps. Down the long road with many twists and turns. It was so and not so.
richard von sturmer
o
1. I do not come from a literary family. My father was a military man, very blunt, very direct. I am the middle boy of three sons. Early on I discovered reading got me out of unpleasant chores.
‘Mum, where is that useless yob’.
‘Leave him alone Erroll, he’s in his books. He’s in his head’.
‘In his head, in his head. Well, no other bugger would be silly
enough to be there’.
2. My paternal grandfather, an English man who’d come out here at the beginning of the 20th century to die but lived to a ripe old age, had a good knowledge of words. I would go to Pop Fairley and ask him what this particular word meant and he’d give me its etymology, its meaning, and the Shakespearean play it was used it. Pop Fairley remained an English gentleman all his life. In the heat of the Northland summer, he’d wear a three-piece serge suit and, when
strolling down the road with a grandson on either hand, would bow and take off his hat to a lady – ‘doff a smile’, as I put it in a poem.
3. Words have always been fundamentally important to me. As a criminal lawyer, my tools of trade are words. As with poetry. They complement one another. In August next, I will be 74. Words have been with me for as long as I can remember. Only two types of poets exist. Those who love words. And those who don’t.
4. Beyond the last full stop
No longer
does the alphabet start with A
no longer
does the alphabet end with Z
we each have our own alphabet
private to ourselves
deep in the flesh of thought
you take your voice with you
that’s how
an end ends
5. Words are social beings. That’s why they like to be together in sentences.
6. A good poem is a time-out from eternity.
7. Form does not matter. Subject does not matter. The distinguishing feature of a poem should be linguistic imagination.
8. A poem has as many meanings as are needed.
9. A poem explains what it is like to be alive.
10. Poetry happens when the impulse carries beyond words.
11. Some people call them poems. I call them word arrangements.
12. Time to diversify
I want you to know
this
the true reticence
of an innocent is untouched by
any omission of sin,
today
is stray at the edges
and
some parts
might be
missing,
a sun shower
drifts off to the left-hand side,
two little girls
take cover
under two trees and wait,
something shivers
elsewhere
but probably has nothing to do with what’s
going on here
the poets don’t lie
no, that’s not so
they
just see
the truth through different
words than you do.
I want to describe
winter blossoms
white (I don’t know why)
and
it seems something has to be missing
from parts of the sky.
arthur fairley
o
‘D’
o
Chiasmata
Due to the crossing-over process in cell meiosis we do not contain dna from all of our ancestors, only from some of them. And so descent is also not descent. Before I learned this, I had imagined some kind of even-handed partitioning.
We are many and many. We are a small mammal from the cretacious era; a nation, a great explorer, a river god. Some leaves eaten by your pregnant mother. The stars or the moon, after all those years. Clay. A frog.
In the 1870s they left a country that did not exist & had not existed since the partitions of the previous century. It was so, and it was not. By the time Poland reappeared on maps of Europe their eldest grandchild was about eleven, and they had become used to hearing only our small owls.
What are we but what is not? We are indivisible, an uncountable noun. The moon on water. It is not so, yet it is. We: a small mammal, eukaryotes, a pile of ash a mile deep, clay, an owl, a frog.
olivia macassey
o
Talking Electricity
Once it wasn’t and now it isn’t, hold it – it is. Name’s Tennessee. When it’s not Kentucky. And that’s more than a miracle. A Journeyman I was born into Electricity. As a boy tall as any cornstalk, I knew how to catch that electric stuff, coil it in and collar it by the scruff of you-know-what. Its catastrophes I follow in my gypsy van. Its name you know is Metaphorikos. My Pitt Bull for company. He’s my best friend. Never lonesome when Pooch is on board. Let me tell you he is also cer-tif-icated. Tennessee Pitt Bulls is the best kind. Pooch was also born in Kentucky. A second time with me. He can lick the paint off the side of any house. And he can raise his leg with style. And he’s a talker.
Floods is best I say and he says the same. What a nose for news buddy. We gets to work together in those big factory places that have taken a big hit. And I’m not talking a baseball nope. And the bigger the hit the more wire we gets to pull, the more electricity we can bring back from that dead place it goes to. Wasn’t always like that but now it is. Motors and transformers? Fixing the lot of them that have gone to the cemetery for dead ends. There’s also twisters and typhoon keeping us busy, ain’t that so Pooch? In this life not the other one, well it’s never pretty when those disasters hits anywhere. And one moonshine day when I find me a wife travelling one who loves Electricity gone to the dog, no offence Pooh honey. When I find one of those who’s head over heels in love with the Big E, and we have a kid, he’s already got his name. Little Tennessee. That’s it buddy.
Lookie here, there be no end to this kind of going on. Sometimes I just forget to remember now and then. When I woke up from my second life, here he comes through the door of remembering, my twin brother. We were born together, ain’t that so Joe? Tuscaloosa, Alabama is my home town now. Baptised here in the Holy Water, and given my name, Joseph in by Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Present and accounted for and I present you a snappy salute. It’s in the family now. My calling is catastrophe they is always going to be. Just call me Joe from Alabama. Or Tuscaloosa for short.
I learned Electricity the hard way. Transformers is my ticket. When they shut down and die as they do. It’s them twisters that does it. Lightning don’t strike twice? Well, I got news for everybody. There I was in my workshop, sharpening my knives, polishing my pipe-bender. By Holy Jesus Son of God, that lightning just comes
leaping through the coal-chute window. And fair knocked me entirely over and out for the count. There I be dead as a stone. When they woke me it came on all day and stayed that way. Blind as fence post. But I got hands to see with see? Well, you knows the Lord works in mysterious ways. Always that way. Sometimes. Just wish he’d give me a little advance notice in time for you know what.
michael harlow
o
It was so and not so
after Richard von Sturmer
As we approached the square
I said to Bronwyn
I bet we’ll see Farrell there
he always comes to these sorts of things
sure enough there he was
I didn't go over to say hello
we had a nice spot in the shade
and he looked okay with his friends
it took a long time to get going
there were lots of speeches
they ranged from impassioned
to business-like
they taught us some chants
which I promptly forgot
but once we started
they mostly came back
we felt very virtuous walking along
some ladies with parcels
came out of a dress-shop
we shouted
WHILE YOU'RE SHOPPING
BOMBS ARE DROPPING
but they didn't look too
abashed
it was hard to keep pace
with the people in front
I'd bought a big flag
and it flapped in the faces
of the people behind
unless I held it up high
which I found very tiring
Bronwyn wore her flag
draped round her shoulders
which was handy when it came on to rain
the loudspeakers were a trial
a chant would start up next to my head
which is bad for my hearing aids
they can't handle quick changes
in ambient noise
we had to stop every time
we came to an intersection
which caused the procession
to contract like a snake
most of the chants I agreed with
but not all of them
I went silent for those
eventually we decided to go home
when we reached downtown
and a new set of speeches began
the buses weren't running
because of the demonstration
so we had to walk quite a way
it was coming down pretty hard by then
but such a relief
to run in the rain (19-6-24)
jack ross