Editors' Notes

Maria Damon and Michelle Greenblatt
Jim Leftwich and Michelle Greenblatt
Sheila E. Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt

A Visual Conversation on Michelle Greenblatt's ASHES AND SEEDS with Stephen Harrison, Monika Mori | MOO, Jonathan Penton and Michelle Greenblatt

Letters for Michelle: with work by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Jeffrey Side, Larry Goodell, mark hartenbach, Charles J. Butler, Alexandria Bryan and Brian Kovich

Visual Poetry by Reed Altemus
Poetry by Glen Armstrong
Poetry by Lana Bella
A Eulogic Poem by John M. Bennett
Elegic Poetry by John M. Bennett
Poetry by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
A Eulogy by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Joel Chace
A Spoken Word Poem and Visual Art by K.R. Copeland
A Eulogy by Alan Fyfe
Poetry by Win Harms
Poetry by Carolyn Hembree
Poetry by Cindy Hochman
A Eulogy by Steffen Horstmann
A Eulogic Poem by Dylan Krieger
An Elegic Poem by Dylan Krieger
Visual Art by Donna Kuhn
Poetry by Louise Landes Levi
Poetry by Jim Lineberger
Poetry by Dennis Mahagin
Poetry by Peter Marra
A Eulogy by Frankie Metro
A Song by Alexis Moon and Jonathan Penton
Poetry by Jay Passer
A Eulogy by Jonathan Penton
Visual Poetry by Anne Elezabeth Pluto and Bryson Dean-Gauthier
Visual Art by Marthe Reed
A Eulogy by Gabriel Ricard
Poetry by Alison Ross
A Short Movie by Bernd Sauermann
Poetry by Christopher Shipman
A Spoken Word Poem by Larissa Shmailo
A Eulogic Poem by Jay Sizemore
Elegic Poetry by Jay Sizemore
Poetry by Felino A. Soriano
Visual Art by Jamie Stoneman
Poetry by Ray Succre
Poetry by Yuriy Tarnawsky
A Song by Marc Vincenz


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Three Poems by Sheila E. Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt

A Tone Endures

You know the reputation of the lifeline: pure, uncurious state
of plainsong. Listen to it glide through twisting vacuum tubes, immune
to flinching outside with the commiserating
sunlight. The psyche seems

no mistake today: every place imagination
occurs can be replaced with uninterrupted language-
flow; the only question

is that of scale
a tone endures its invocation
made whole on impulse
to revoke the quiet
that masks the thrum of fear's habits, obscuring the path
of the vulture's shadow as it eclipses
the dreamlit landscape

below, lifeline running through the grids of grass and trees, sky
and earth in perpetual motion: instinctual pattern
of growth, a snippet of God's geometry. On the edge

of memory, gridlines morph into petals,
runes, and straits. Dusting of light where
furniture assembled marks the place
where lives fall into proxy roles.
Tact blurs the architecture of integrity.
One washes young trees
as though a blossom would be truer
than root structures, thinking

how not to admire the violent craft
of spiderwebs
thinking, work is a series of self
interruptions and perverse
turnings, yet here is another new year, earth tipsy with
the pointblank light of the raw sun.

The beginnings of our being
hurtled across the spherical indulgence
that is our rhizome. If there is a precedent for us,
perhaps it is to turn away from the labyrinthine, this boreal
timbre that levels the mind lawlessly
conjuring shadows and memories.

But here is a door,
and beyond that, the privilege of chance
entrances inviting us to cast aside the refuse
from the dredged ravine of memory and to begin
again.




Tracery

Flutter tones from branches
plush with summer
induce long breaths let go
into a lavish relaxation
warming the perception of
this photograph's whole finish
upon depths of feeling
the sure thing. Time splits

like a ripe fruit
between darkness
and light over the vast acreage
of undeveloped land
tracts—their names kept
secret, still and always—far from weapons well-
honed for disseverment of stem
and trunk. Bright-wired with quivering

life, electric
songs sculpt heliocentric
paths through flesh and earth into veins flush
with nutrients and the deep-
reaching roots of strengthening
trees. Suddenly instead of art we're eyeing
organism-forms as
masterpiece, all re(de)fined
as tracery and stained
as cathedral
transparencies held up
to buttery

sunlight occur to
a remove preceptor in actuality
one of
the stark buildings
pieced together
eyesight at first
undeveloped, gaunt, and timid
in the form of
moon with-
held from an original
sunrise draped across

its derivations
multiple levels
deep when night transforms
the lake into a mirror of murmuring
mysteries; it pulls
water, unhooking its
seams beneath the embalming
moon, spilling milklight
across the restless lake
as seen
through the sieve
of foliage. Branches define
sky; leaves rubbing against stars bleed
across transdimensional
boundaries until density returns
to pull them apart
irrevocably.




Cresting

Here under the milklight of the tumid
mood, conveyance begins again: the aphotic afterdamp
collides with the intangible
electric

and comes
alive, transforming
the nebulous
night-

currents into the shifting
cobalt tides, unstill
and ever-turning with the waves cresting
cesious and the strong
pull of the constant
undertow. The rapids
carrying the roiling river-
water continue to rise. In every forming
vortex, a different oratorio

is lifted to breeze-
light as though dust
wings have tapped out
threads
woven to silken film, gossamer-wrought
palpable line-drawn
prints,
one at a time
intact. Each hovering

moth a forget-me-
not. In
principio,
lunacy repairs
to deftly silver ratiocination,
quilled, prompt, Xing
out common

tautological burdens. Evocative,
the hammock
of desire, swinging between heavenly
bodies. Given latitude
the plump flanks
of snowflesh
divide

into lines that lead
from here to far-
away; drawn taut
and thin, they sing
with the magnetic

electricity borne to the white
oscillating stars caught
in the black
velvet

throat of the sky. Spindrift
and windfall guide

the eye away
from woodrot and leaf-reach
flinching or drawn

freehand on a thrift
plane that corresponds
to tangible lockdown.

Every majesty retrieves
woodwind from delay
of gamelon. The ricercar
delineates motif
and ignorance
of classicism, tradition dating
back decades that span
almost a century. One sorts through
choice apart from
ascertainment.

Nighttime: whittled intonation chances
subdivided punctuation
in a moment of concession.

The clockwork
train runs
on a circular track, between
nowhere and nowhere else.

Doors with no apparent connection
between rooms dominate
the homes in the city perched
on a cliff
overlooking the sea.

Blown
inland, cold air-
currents spread the ice-
fringed coastal
winds, threading the night
with frigidity.

Oceanic solitude appears
as reflection
of humanity's

inherent isolation, dictated
in no small
part by the colossus, vanity.

What is the spun
circumstance of hypothetical
world view,

if not you and your
beatitude made quiet,
so thin one must

retrieve what pre
ceded plaudits
on the cusp of

windsong splintered
into amoebic
trawl along

the plain foundation
of the planted
thistles. Deep
rooted, purple-petalled
flowerheads conceal the prick
of clustered thorns. Watching
this

through a soot
smeared window, the thick
lines of dirt
are as confining as the steel

bars of a prison cell. Early
morning, slant of light
against the dust lit bars
cast shadowed
shafts

of opaque grey across
a silver-veined white
marble floor, though little
warmth

reaches to heat its surface.
At midday, sky shifts
to slate,

casting crosswise
sheets
of stinging rain. Late
afternoon, the neighbor's children dash.
laughing, through the run-off from the dripping
curtains of wrung-out
clouds. Here there

is a girl who can't decide
whether to join in
play. Out on the lake the two
homes share, the ducks blink their
lids; shellacked-black
eyes regard the day, calm,

vacuous, oblivious
or apathetic, they are inattentive
to the changing
weather, and appear
to be

as indifferent as she

is: rain, no rain, it's all the same

quotient trellising the plaits
of confiscation: whelm or
trickle through terrain

when / if is form
to mull through and revere
the central nervous play-through
viaduct repairing
transubstantiation.

Northerly wind song
pares the downside of
inevitable tension
as one argues the other
into swift arrangement
of detail

as granular, recessive
inklings. The color
wheeled through town
inflames kernels
of receptive gene sculpting
as though

formaldehyde were merely
breath.



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