October 15-21, 2001: Philip Vassallo and Jessy Randall

Bio (auto)

I am New Jerseyan by way of The Bronx, New York, and of Maltese ancestry I live in Parlin, New Jersey, and work as a corporate a communication consultant primarily developing and deliveringwriting and presentation skills programs I was a professor of writing inseveral colleges I hold a B.A in English from Baruch College, an M.S inreading education from Lehman College, and a doctorate in educational theoryfrom Rutgers University
I have published over 75 poems in websites including Red Booth Review, Cyber Oasis, Decathlon2000, Open Sewer, Snakeskin, Wilmington Blues, Twelfth Planet, Electric Acorn, Poetry Webring, Lucid Moon, Artistic Wasteland, Librium Implant, Some Words, and as well as in various print journals I have also published over 100 articles as a freelance journalist and essayist My column on education issues, The Learning Class, has been published in various newspapers and magazines across the nation and on EducationNews.org In addition, I write a column on writing issues, Words on the Line, which appears in etc , the journal of the International Society for General Semantics Seven of my plays have been produced Off-Off Broadway I was a recipient of a New Jersey State Council on the Arts playwriting fellowship, and a finalist in three national playwriting competitions My play The Spelling Bee&Mac226; was published by Samuel French My wife Georgia and I recently celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and we are the parents of two daughters, Elizabeth and Helen, both fine poets in their own right Visit Phil on the web here: www.PhilVassallo.com

The following work is Copyright © 2001, and owned by Philip Vassallo and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsover without written permission from the author.

Photo of My Father Working, or, The Work a Butcher Does (For My Father) Racks of beef hang from ceiling hook in a sterile room at zero Celsius The butcher’s block stacked with fat tied by cord in slumping rows The butcher’s torso tenses from clutching a cleaver and a ten-pound brisket He tenders his trade to the wholesale market, slicing the carcass to the bone, his apron smeared with gristle and blood, huffing the rawness of freshly slaughtered meat He stands in two of his three dimensions in the cold controls of the room, the smoking bulb suspended overhead like a feeble, wheezing sun His Timex is frozen He keeps time by the flanks he trims and the weight of his knife, legs numb, mind wondering how the circulation stops in a working man’s body He sees the offal scattered on the concrete floor, and his bare forearms take the shape of choice cut legs of lamb The taste of nicotine and caffeine have long deserted his lips, for he has licked the salty frost dripping from his nostrils all morning How does the blood stop flowing? He laughs And laughs Till he coughs And coughs And the coughing doesn’t stop as easy as the laughter Must be time for lunch when breathing is a job He flexes his fists, inhales the steam seeping from his nostrils as he slogs from the room His Timex thaws: eighteen years to an early retirement. Mortality: a Microscopic View It happened: the swash of man and woman striction, their hydrology gushing denser than rain, apogee of flesh astounding the blood! Then you were there It was life you felt but the waiting had just begun Darkness was light incarnate You could see from the uterus: a mucus glossed over the shadows of circumspection You measured the distance between yourself and the filtered light through f-stop 64 You could hear from the uterus: the heart pulsated in a sound-proof chamber, magnified by the ceaseless echo of a hemidemisemiquaver You could feel from the uterus: the capillaries ignorantly working till the day you were born Now you say there is a chance for feeling this again, this which happens only once in an unaccounted millisecond The moment moves, always, but not for you to relive it For you it came and went, dripped, puddled, burst, and streamed beyond your life span So you remain fixed, suspended in the midst of a dive, perpetually framed in a potential purpose feeling through the membranes for the current. Weekend Gardeners He roughed his flesh against the garden path, smearing flat the earth with the blood he sapped, drop by precious clot, from its root system as she tailored the hedges to a buzzsaw conformance, the trimmings ricocheting off the sod on which she once lay with him through nightfall When the dust of their labors settles in sheets on the matted blades of grass and the fibers of squashed insects, this man and woman shall embody human development by ascending to the bedroom ten feet above earth under the fury of electric lights to discuss the fine points of gardening. Late Night City Poem And now the floodlights of your room can’t illuminate the darkness outside At your window only your reflection and you on stage for any passerby caring to look up thirty-one floors to where you stand At this moment millions of lonely men and women lie in beds across the city staring through slats of blinds and locked windows, themselves a dominion of sleeping buoys never fully stopping, bobbing behind steel doors, concrete walls each gasping for the same air blinded by lampposts, straining their eyes to see the same stars waiting for the same morning For the millions it’s always night always almost with their millions of feet pushing madly against tightly tucked bedsheets and what passes for passing time. Technological Abortions Most things are made to die fast, start sputtering down the advertised path, then stop without a spark or a screech before the first connection, like this digital watch, noiselessly spitting liquid crystals and wasted surges of passing time in a temporary, push-button efficiency, or this pocket calculator, beeping disjointed neon lights to the echoic tune of the touch tone for a perfunctory convenience, or even this rechargeable pacemaker, pumping people past their fragile limits like quasi-exceptions to the law of nature, bypassing practical, erstwhile innovations. The Recording of Experience The past is printed on negatives blotched with blood congealed to twice the length of hair strands pulled from eyebrows as we slept in different cities, as the present repeats like faded snapshots taken by strangers on separate vacations, smudged by fingerprints and reeking of smoke, filed at random in bargain scrapbooks, as the future is projected on shop windows where my camera focuses on the reflection between the stare of indifferent mannequins and the image of you posing behind me.

Jessy Randall
jessyrandall@yahoo.com

Bio (auto)

Jessy Randall is Curator of Special Collections at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO Her poems have appeared in Pif, The Blue Moon Review, and Mudfish, and the 2River View has published an illustrated collection of her work at http://www.2river.org/chapbooks

The following work is Copyright © 2001, and owned by Jessy Randall and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsover without written permission from the author.

Telephone Solicitation Haikus it’s your lucky day a very special offer and it’s just for you it’s your lucky day — of ninety million people you’ve been selected! a blizzard of snow a catastrophic fire are you protected? little drops of rain splatter against the window where’s your umbrella? I have a quota, Mr or Mrs Randall — can’t you please help me?