Brendan Constantine
maybon@usinter.net Bio (auto) | Brendan Constantine was born in 1967 and raised in Los Angeles The second child of two working actors, his parents named him for Irish playwright Brendan Behan He has become a fixture of Southern California’s poetry communities and one of its most respected poets He was a nominees for Poet Laureate of the state (2002), served for seven years as co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets series, moderated the renowned Wednesday Workshop at Beyond Baroque, & traveled extensively, presenting his poetry to audiences throughout the United States & Europe His work has appeared in numerous journals, most notably Ploughshares, The Los Angeles Review, The Cortland Review, RUNES, and LA Times Bestseller The Underground Guide to Los Angeles Mr Constantine is also the creator of Industrial Poetry, a workshop for adults and teens struggling with writer’s block, and is currently poet in residence at the Windward School in West Los Angeles and the Idyllwild Arts Summer Youth Writing Program in Idyllwild, California He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Hollywood at Bela Lugosi’s last address His collection Letters To Guns is now available and new work can be found in the Spring edition of the journal Ninth Letter
Visit Brendan Constantine on the web here: www.brendanconstantine.com | | |
The following work is Copyright © 2009, and owned by Brendan Constantine and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
One Million Years BC The oceans were hot
and spat toothy fish into the air
like olive pits Mountains
drooled fluorescent paint,
valleys filled with loose change
and lost sunglasses In the jungles
great lizards walked on two feet,
carried flasks of warm lava,
and lied and lied and lied
The trees had crude tattoos,
and dropped suitcases full
of money on the ground Cats
with knives for teeth stalked
themselves under skies crowded
with sharp birds calling “Oh,
baby!” At night nothing walked,
the moon hissed at the ocean,
and the stars held each other
at gunpoint.
Letter IV .To an 1830 Henry Yellowboy 45
.from a standard issue army boot –
.Sharpsberg, Maryland, 1862
Dear Sir, I embrace with pleasure this opportunity
to write to you, fitly as I can, of the last
day’s events Would that I could add
the observations of my twin, alas he is
no longer with me, but somewhere
on the bloody brow of South Mountain
I know a prayer for him is leaving you
even as you read this I have been brought to the Antietam
Ironworks as yesterday our pickets
advanced this far to find the enemy
run off I do not expect to be among those
in pursuit on account of my diminished state
Neither do I wish to give in to hope
but if I understand what I have witnessed
of others similarly afflicted, I will soon be
worn to hospital or returned home I should note that as I write, it is evening
and the camp is besieged by a noise
as I have never before heard There is a manner
of frog abundant in these parts given
to plighting its troth well unto dawn
Some of the men complain of poor sleep
and palsied concentration Indeed, I must
struggle to steady my pen as it tends to vibrate
with their withering songs My heart, though halved, hungers for news
of you, but I cannot say with certainty where
I will be in the time it takes for your response
to find me It seems the essence of war
has become the burning of maps
Perhaps it is best that you send word
home Perhaps it will draw me there.
When We Lived With The Bomb
We had a room in Queens with a couch that opened
into a second bed I baby-sat odd nights, your father
worked from home, proof-reading phonebooks, some
days leaving only for cigarettes One night I found
the two of them playing cards Look who I met
in line at the Larry’s Liquor And get this, it knows
my hometown Later it said the same thing to me
and I was from somewhere else Did you ever go
to the light house? it asked Ever take a boat
on Misery Bay and wonder at the dead of 1812?
We knew it wouldn’t pay its way, clean house,
or make its bed Maybe we needed the noise to hide
our silences Maybe we needed a louder silence
Anyway, we kept itbought extra food, extra tickets
If we went to the movies it sat between us, on the train
it stood and swung, if we fought it took no side but
stayed in the room I recall thinking we should hide it
from the landlord, then watching with your father
when the landlord met it on the stairs, the way
it nodded confidently Do you know the old Belgrade
station? Do you remember the woman who sold
fortunes there? She told mine, too Eventually
we got better jobs, moved to the village We said
it could stay on the couch, but it begged off, made
excuses about pride It knew you were coming,
that you would cry, and how long.
The Need to Leave
a dog is barking
a woman is sleeping
a man is old the world of this world
is what it is doing
everything else is night a candle is finding a road
a long coat is wearing
a boy is worn one shoe is untied
two buttons are missing
five coins are a bowl of soup but a village is ferocious
the hours of this hour
will not intervene a cow is eating
a barn is sulking
a window is burning out someone is coming
an open door is an open door
a mouse is gone a knife, a bag of clothes,
a photograph of a horse
the need of this need travels with us
Letter II .To a ‘hand gonne’ (first known handgun),
.from a double handed broad sword-
.London 1450-1490 ?
To hys worchepful master be thys delyvered in hayst Black lamb, black bleat, thunder of the bullocks foete!
You are borne makeless ynd makeless you growe
Cease you never now you are comme
Cease you ever, No I am callyd Great Swerd, Great Swerd
I Flourysh I smyte I stryke downryght
with a dragonys tayle Double rownde
ynd double rownde then I stroke home Gaynward the sunne climeth ynd longe nightes
coureges dark, I sett my poynte
sofftley before you on the grownde
I stoppe the morne you are comme White horse, wyde chase, melodye of the moony fayse!
I singe smalle werds fore you comme slowe
But stoppe you never now you are comme
ynd I, Great Swerd, Great Swerd am go.
Short Cut
.You go down here
for a little way until you come to
a sign, something red and quick
Then you turn and go straight
for a spell .When you get to the ducks
keep going You’ll see a bunch
of houses with people standing
out in front Some of them will
have sad faces .or will be crying
Don’t stop It’s nothing you did
Just head for the cemetery Five
or six graves in there’s a statue
of Clio, the muse of history .Look where she’s pointing.
|
Christopher Barnes
hfulton32@btinternet.com Bio (auto) In 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award In July 2000 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology ‘Titles Are Bitches’ Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle’s famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems Each year I read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and I partake in workshops 2005 saw the publication of my collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh
On Saturday 16th Aughst 2003 I read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St
I also have a BBC webpage www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/gay.2004/05/section_28.shtml and http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/videonation/stories/gay_history.shtml (if first site does not work click on SECTION 28 on second site
Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored me to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North I made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about my writing group October-November 2005, I entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty’s Newcastle This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne I made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords, it contains my poem The Old Heave-Ho I worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bioscience Centre at Newcastle’s Centre for Life I was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children’s literature building In May I had 2006 a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People’s Theatre why not take a look at their website http://ptag.org.uk/whats_on/gulbenkian/gulbenkian.htm The South Bank Centre in London recorded my poem “The Holiday I Never Had”, I can be heard reading it on www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=18456 REVIEWS: I have written poetry reviews for Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine and in August 2007 I made a film called ‘A Blank Screen, 60 seconds, 1 shot’ for Queerbeats Festival at The Star & Shadow Cinema Newcastle, reviewing a poem .see www.myspace.com/queerbeatsfestival | | |
The following work is Copyright © 2009, and owned by Christopher Barnes and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author. The Disappearing Trick And
Miss Rilke From The Typing Pool Transports of delight, the turn of sand
between her toes,
cosy connections, rippling sea,
blistering sun paring the strain
from stiff shoulders. * Be wide awake when Howard Hughes is baffling
over stop-press scrawl A ruse he decides
is an overmanning of punctuation A trembling emission of heat
crackling from a comma
through Las Vegas. .“Houston(,) Texas”
the guillotine for that interruption,
despite the level best
of the Sun’s recorder to deliver it,
the copy desk’s appeal for tender mercies,
the proofreader’s blot-free style. * Secured, a tour to Miami beach,
swirls to cool her thighs
in ever-flowing foam, swimming out
to drifting light
a black-as-ink head,
a lost comma
on the waves. From the Howard Hughes poems By Christopher Barnes, UK The Draft In the singleton subbasement
they spool ‘The Mysteries Of The Organism’
on super 8 In a proximate cube
a TV flaunts ‘Get Smart’
but the hippest happening is in the language lab
.Ches quibbling Saigon,
the congressional panel, tailskid prangs… and Muhammed Ali was bang-on when he speechified
‘I ain’t got nothing against them Viet Congs’. The inrush of the Fuzz is seditious Go head on cut and run full tilt
in the fin end of a purple haze Chevy
down Main St Through shades Astroturf rimshots wobble
by the Mom and Pop store
and we peak a red and black flag for ex-slaves
into a shimmering bristle of ladybugs.
The Game-Animator
This is a binary code garble I fizzle out, and dream… a baldric’s slung, set agoing Knocked down by an asteroid
Xavier’s a balaclava of flies,
a lightning-graph
flares past his temples.
The Ground-Breaker
A mole on the circumference
of middle earth, you’re turned turtle
with steaming breath
like the ignition of tarmac,
you’re a nuzzler of crumbly substance,
a sifter of dubious compounds,
toppler of black beetly bits
and the slow worm’s guillotine. Seepage, fadeouts, fustiness and rot
for you are a pick-me-up,
an inky glimmer in the eyes. But you’re a psych up for extinction The wife you go home to
at the come-off of a day’s spade turning
will gag on asthma
in a fall of spun out months. Concede the benevolence
in the depths of a hole. And that cam-shot
of you both
at one of your gravesides,
a moss-green wreath
seething on her lap.
The Hard Bitten Orchestra In sync jaws swing;
woodworm in the baton. |
|
