Victoria Williams: 0080

Ladies and Gentlemen, there has been a small and minor rupture between past and present. The key to both of them has disappeared this morning, leaving only pineapple leaves on my floor and one small piece of blue card pasted to my mirror (angry handwriting):

“I am sorry if my nudity offends you.
Farewell.”

Alas alas, I was insensitive to a stranger who appeared at my door. I laughed at his dancing, I demanded to know who’d hired him, and I refused to tip. And now he’s probably out there alone, estranged from his clothing, running carelessly through dangerous plant life – basically living the dream we’d discussed so intently... and me still here, when am I going to wake up from all this?

Column In The Mail&Guardian

We hit the jackpot with Durban, what more is there to celebrate?

Coming Soon From Graffiti Kolkata: Sky Dreaming by Gary Cummiskey

Sky Dreaming, a new chapbook of poetry by Gary Cummiskey, to be published by Graffiti Kolkata in January 2011.

Dylan in NYC - 22 November 2010

Courtesy of Niren Tolsi.

Max Moodley: 0035

Queasy Guacamole

Victoria Williams: 0079

Opinion

I just got your note.
This might be too late but:
I didn’t think your poem was
Worth shooting yourself over.

New Dye Hard Press Publication: pushing from the riverbank by alan finlay

Dye Hard Press is proud to announce the publication of pushing from the riverbank by alan finlay.


ISBN: 978-0-620-48421-3


A new collection of 20 poems by one of South Africa's most innovative poets. 46 pages, perfect bound.


One of the poems from the collection is:




Shadows

i am explaining to my son
you see, crocodiles eat people
“but why?” because they’re meat eaters

because they’re hungry, i don’t know
i begin to build the food chain in my mind.
so that’s why, i finish off

us people watch everywhere we go
and we’re always alert for snakes
and crocodiles (and i could add other things)

i’m telling my three-year-old child
that the world is not so safe
but he knows already: he’s fighting

dragons with his sword, shooting
down dinosaurs, closing the door so
strangers don’t come in. he’s picked up

on the shadows -- they’re real enough
for him. He sits on the edge of the bed,
waiting, watching me get dressed.


Previous titles by alan finlay include Burning Aloes (Dye Hard Press, 1994) No Free Sleeping (with Vonani Bila and Donald Parenzee) (Botsotso, 1998) and The Red Laughter of Guns in Green Summer Rain (with Philip Zhuwao), published by Dye Hard Press in 2002. In 2003, he co-edited with Arja Salafranca glass jars among trees, an alternative anthology of poetry and prose, published by Jacana.

He founded and edited the literary publications Bleksem (1994) donga, with Paul Wessels (2000) and was editor of New Coin poetry journal from 2003 to 2007.

pushing from the riverbank will be available at bookstores countrywide at an estimated retail price of R90. You can also order directly from Dye Hard Press for R65 (including postage).

Miranda 2 by Jenny Kellerman Pillay

Victoria Williams: 0078

Valentine

Eventually when I got over the fear of it,
I came to love that strange thing that sprang up in your trousers now and then,
That I could feel in the small of my back,
As I sat on your lap in the driver’s seat.
What a nice thing to come between us.

Snipes by Joan McNerney

Dear Editor: Unfortunately, I can not accept your rejection. Best of luck placing it elsewhere.

Dye Hard Press Titles

1994
The Secret Hour Gary Cummiskey
Structured Space JDU Geldenhuys
Conspiracies of the Interior Gary Cummiskey
Lost in a World Gary Cummiskey
Burning Aloes Alan Finlay

1995
Icarus Rising Gus Ferguson
Visitations Gary Cummiskey
Verbal Dance Michael Anderson
River of Dreams Gary Cummiskey
Atio (poetry journal 1-2) Various

1996
Inside my Pocket Robert Homem
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano Val Sing
Brutal Syrup Roy Blumenthal
Atio (poetry journal 3-4)

1998
Mad Rains: an anthology
Head Gary Cummiskey & Roy Blumenthal

2000
Electric Juice: an anthology
The fire in which we burn Arja Salafranca
Reigning Gloves Gary Cummiskey

2002
Green Dragon 1
The Red Laughter of Guns in Green Summer Rain Alan Finlay & Philip Zhuwao

2003
Green Dragon 2

2005
Green Dragon 3
Bog Docks Gary Cummiskey

2006
April in the Moon-Sun Gary Cummiskey
Green Dragon 4

2007
Green Dragon 5
Full Circle Kobus Moolman

2008
Today is their Creator * Gary Cummiskey

2009
Who was Sinclair Beiles?* Gary Cummiskey & Eva Kowalska
Green Dragon 6*

2010
pushing from the riverbank* Alan Finlay


* In print

Miranda 1 by Jenny Kellerman Pillay

Max Moodley: 0033

Victoria Williams: 0077

Alright I’m trying to write a story about someone who works in a morgue by day, and sells off the bodies to mysterious clients who all have research purposes and alibis and things, and by night, returns home and serves up cold beans to her family who are the real cadavers in all of this: and btw this is a good time to mention that I only learned the correct meaning of the word cadaver because Mrs. Winters kept referring to her husband’s cadaver, especially with repeated reference to its head – so what was I supposed to think?

Anyway, here in the present I answer the phones at work and say, “City morgue.” And whoever’s at the end of the line tells me he’s looking for a body – but a body with shining hair, and slightly imperfect skin, and an almost aquiline nose, and maybe a tattoo – look, if you want to be specific, a body that looks like the moon and the heavens have been thrown into a blender with some rose-hips and a little molasses and beaten together into a fine paste, then poured into a mould and left to freeze in the snow. (But not one of the slightly green and stinky ones like last time.) And I say, “Speaking.” Ha! But no, seriously, I get a sum of money out of them, and I always make sure we can come to an agreement. I take it on faith that most people have scientific purposes.

Snipes by Joan McNerney

Although quite young, he has already lived past his intelligence quotient.

September 11 (8) by Gary Cummiskey

Weepies by Jenny Kellerman Pillay

Victoria Williams: 0076

What is a tendril?

Oh.

Ok… So I am caught in the tendrils of domesticity: Apron strings. Spaghetti.

I must leave the kitchen.

Or put my head in the oven,
And stay very still,
While I read in secret.