From the current issue: Aubrey Barnes. "Black Like Me"

Let me tell you a fact about myself
That almost everyone I meet feels the need to remind me
I am black
I’m so black that I make Micheal Blackson not seem so
Black, son
I’m so black that in a game of laser tag
I should be permitted to keep my
Eyes open and and teeth showing
Otherwise i’d be cheating
I’m so black that you would swear that i’m a vampire
Because when i’m in photos with no flash
All you see floating clothes
I’m so black that when i’m out for a run
People look at me in jaw dropping awe
Speechless that I’m moving so fast
They mistaken me for the Flash
But, he’s a white superhero
So that’d never happen
Instead they look at me in grandiose curiosity
Asking
“Sir, are you from Africa?”
I’m so black that when I mention that I like to watch basketball
People roll their eyes
To a point that i’d swear their brain rolled right along with them
But when I go to games in cities such as Geneseo
You would swear that I walked into the Gymnasium in my underwear
The way people silently over stare
At
The odd black man at a basketball game
He must be here for a girl
Or to cause some trouble
Maybe we should make eye contact
When he doesn’t make eye contact
But if he makes eye contact
When we make eye contact
He’ll knock our eye contacts
Out
Let’s just not make any contact
I am so black
That my teammate in college was stricken with fear at my appearance
But when he heard that my speech was “politically correct”
And my posture stood erect
He breathed out in great calm
Because it was evident that I was
White
So white that I make Carleton look like Tupac
So white that I mistaken Malcolm X’s name
For Malcolm the Tenth
I am so white that my all white friend, from an all white college
In an all white city told me
“You aren’t like the black people on TV”
When I go to the gym to play basketball
People run to me for a challenge
And leave victor
With an easy scored 21
To my hard toiled 16
Saying “you must not have inherited the genes”
But when it comes to these sixteens
I'm sweet like i'm sixteen
Addictive like nicotine
Spittin fire like kerosene
And you know what friends say to me?
“Oh my gosh, you actually are black!”
So I am black
But I am White
Or maybe people are just color blind
Shutter blinds closed to any sunny possibility of a no label society
Globular organs shrouded with stereotypical presumptions
Assumptions derived from contrived corruptions
Making these ideas of “acting black” and “acting white” alright
But it’s not alright if you’re white acting black
Or black acting white
Well it is okay
Just know we’re going to give you a hard time
When you forgot your belt at home\
And your pants a little
We’re going to say you’re dressing black
But when its around your waist and nicely fit
We’re going to then say you’re dressing ‘white’
Kind of like how Pharisees
Those religious leaders you hate
Judged good and evil by what they perceived with their eyes
Instead of looking into the heart that lies
When Eloheim said there is no Jew nor Gentile
Nor male or female
I believe if he stood in the midst of our color coded community
He would say there is no black nor white
I’m exactly what I was destined to be
An oddity and comedy
Laughable because giggling only makes sense of something that doesn’t make sense
A black acting white
A white acting black
An oxymoron prone to give minds
Prone to labels panic attacks
I mean when was the last time
You went to an ice cream parlor
Anticipating all flavors to be same?
That’d be lame
Just like a world full of agents
Trapped in a Matrix
The Neos bring change
Something out the norm
So i’ll forever say i’m
The paint splashes in a padded room
That can’t be cleaned by swiffer, rag or a broom
I am what I am because I Am said I am
So you see
It's not that I am whiter than you
Or you're blacker than me
But we're the same
Human beings bearing the same beautiful image
So in the end
I’m white like you
And you’re black like me


Watch Aubrey perform this poem.

Exquisite Corpses

I posted something a few days ago about why I am so attached to doing exquisite corpses. Please check that post out if you haven't already!


At Coin-Op open mic

I was frightened by the truth
As it hit me in the face
Like a mackerel fresh from the marketplace.
The detective knew the case would go bad soon.
Bad, bad. Like sour milk. Like milk gone solid.
Bad, bad. Like the night with no lights
that glimmer and sputter, no good to see,
because things are never as they seem.
They refract as in a mirror or a prism,
not wanting to see the shadows following each of us to the final light
and on that street was what we were looking for.

At theWine and Art event at the Figge Museum

In retrospect, at the museum
I found a purple fish in a glass.
It's a bass in that glass. A bass, bass, bass, bass.
Spring is here with flowers, bugs, and sunshine
with many raindrops to make the flowers grow.
The sunshine burst through the rain-drenched leaves,
casting a dappled pattern of shadow on the fresh-mowed grass,
She twirled defiantly
in her glitter high-heels.
She is unstoppable.
But then she stops.
She wonders why she has never thought to quit before.
A voice in her head made her drive on.

Exquisite corpses and the politics of Surrealism

Helena Lewis wrote an excellent book called Dada Turns Red: The Politics of Surrealism, in which she goes into a thorough analysis of the history of Surrealism's politics. Towards the end of the book, on page 173, she makes an excellent case for Surrealism, writing that:

"The Surrealists, in their collective and anonymous art forms, succeeded in creating an anti-elitist art that acquired a new social meaning. Their belief that talent is irrelevant and that everyone has creative potential in his [sic] unconscious, could be a perfect vehicle for a truly revolutionary art. That the official art of a Party dedicated to revolution should be merely an adaptation of a nineteenth century bourgeois aesthetic is an irony that has become increasingly apparent."

I love this quote an in fact, I am thinking of making it into postcards or t-shirts or something that I can give out at readings and at classes. This is the impetus behind the exquisite corpse, which is a group-created poem, and the reason that I use them so much whenever I can.

I am publishing some in Karawane and I am going to publish some on the blog as well, both that are in the journal and some that are not. This is one that is not, that we created on June 19th. Someone was reading poems by Gerard de Nerval, Baudelaire, Poe, etc., and so I included some words and lines in my part when it came my turn, just using parts of the line I was hearing at the time. (That is also Surrealist and avant-garde inspired!)


Escape west to find yourself
and young men to lose themselves
never to be forgotten always to be remembered
the cries of the children lost in the night.
O' sacred moonlight scatter not fearful of the noise
that arose out of the stars, monsters roaring on their hind legs
soaring above their hideous selves reaching eyes outward
reaching, touching the sun, burning his fingers
he nearly died from the heat
desperate salvation and horizon mirages.

New Issue Cover, Featured Authors, and Samplers

NEW ISSUE COMING SOON!

We are finalizing ads for the magazine and sending out writer's contracts soon and will have a new issue out hopefully within a month. Featured in this issue will be poetry, fiction, and nonfiction/academic work by:

X. H. Collins
Cody Sanderson
Sal Marici
Aubrey Barnes
Melanie Hanson
Farah Marklevits
Margie Mejia Caraballo 
Thomas McKay
Laura Winton
Misty Urban
Kenneth Darland
Michael Thomas Kelly
Megan Lee




We will also feature photos from our participation in 100,000 Poets for Change from 2014 and 2016, from our Coin-Op semi-monthly open mic, and some Exquisite Corpses written around town.

We want to thank our advertisers so far, The Artery, Theo's Java Club, Spellbound, and the Midwest Writing Center for their contributions. We want to thank Quad City Arts for their ArtsDollars grant, Neighborhood Laundromat for letting us use their space for the Coin-Op Readings, and Western Illinois University for their participation in 100,000 Poets for Change as well as copying and posting our color flyers for Coin-Op.

Anti-Gravity by Danielle Billington

Anti Gravity

To live and be loved by shooting stars and by gravity.
Pleading, violent and full repressed, please, feel noctuary
manipulations, silvery wet wantings and dreamings, ambiguity.

Ideas, images of sound become your hush lullaby actuality.
Silent silvery white…such beautiful and temporary…
To live and be loved by shooting stars and by gravity.

Thrashing in the dark underneath covers, reaching for affinity
out and falling, reaching out and ending, binary
manipulations, silvery wet wantings and dreamings, ambiguity.

You are my dying dream falling and floating-anti gravity
the hundredth story, hitting the hard concrete of your leaving.
To live and be loved by shooting stars and by gravity.

Deep and abiding dying dream falling and floating-anti gravity.
Heart spiraling echoes decrease my hearts murmur,
to live and be loved by shooting stars and by gravity.

Growing thinner, tiny loops of repeating energy, atomicity
blowing words, hush …
To live and be loved by shooting stars and by gravity.
Manipulations, silvery wet wantings and dreamings, ambiguity.

YOUR NAME HERE

Want to be on the Karawane blog, and conseqently on our FB page too? Then you need to submit some work to us! Quad City Writers, the deadline is December 31st and we need to see some more work from you all! Send us the most experimental writing you have. The work itself needn't have been performed in pubic yet, just so long as you have stood up the mic and read somewhere (or everywhere) before. If you haven't -- it is supposed to be warm this weekend. Grab some relatives after holiday dinner and go out to the park and DECLAIM your poetry to the world!

Keep looking to the Facebook page as well. Karawane, Garage 3, the Figge Art Museum, and the Midwest Writing Center all will have more opportunities for you to read your work publicly! Contact Rozz Toxx or Theo's and set up a reading and then let us know. We will be there! With bells on to accompany you! =8-)

For those of you outside the Quad Cities, we will be accepting submissions soon as well from you!

Up, Down, Sideways, Across by Ann Chandler

This is a piece I particularly liked. We published it in a previous issue (#6 or #7?) Check out the back issues on the website at http://karawane.homestead.com to see the whole piece.



Up, Down, Sideways, and Across

Ann Chandler, Wayne, NJ

I.

Needless to say, I think we all need less to say, since mind takes over voice, takes over Length, that stretches and circles, what goes around comes around to the last sound set for beginning, for ending, into nothing, rushing in and out of mouth to lower regions, to lower meanings of self, of body, and I’m not listening to his philosophy, his curiosity on a meaningless subject merging into lessons and sayings, so I’m near the end, nearing water, bordering the edge to test my acts, so let me uncover my underneath, my underside, where we’ll all being kept here to die, but I’m alive, prime, so I’m going to stop repeating . . .

You know where to find me if you need me. Up close, close, personal, hiding behind the first line.

II. Breast

I could never brush up against the wind and transcend many things of the above and the beyond, and wave this magic wand to hope for the best, and pretend I never knew this mess, this breast that hangs over my shoulder, and some men call if my four leaf clover, the luck, the life it brings to this world, and feeds the soul in order to grow to full potential, a special body a human, not a zombie, that heart beats 190 times a minute and stop in a second and signal the gods to touch the stripping of something inside of me, when she said it’s probably something you ate, or faked, I don’t believe so. This bra holds them together to make them look better, but no one appreciates their true form, their scorn, the precious milk they deliver to the child, the lover, the pillar. The production of a machine that switched on and off when carrying a son or a daughter, how true, a miracle, although some may use it against her, a weakness, a taunt, but the breast never talks.

III.

They e-mailed me and said my opinion wasn’t worth anything, and I should tone it down. So they kept me from getting inside the question. Where is my freedom? Where am I living so honestly conformed to their thinking, and I’m not beginning to settle my reasons for their happiness, their seriousness, and I’m weightless of all that is calm. Like mother earth, I don’t watch what I say so I’m put away, in the back of rooms. What makes us so important? The fact we mock our homeland, our home, the land we were born on, and I’m stepping outside the question, I’m stepping outside the question beside my thin short body that was once somebody, that was once one body and they tell me I should hide my mind . . .

They told me my opinion wasn’t worth anything, wasn’t worth any thing . . .

I am not a thing.

IV. The Night Before

Falling to the sound of a rhythm
Like a movement is a liquid
I am one two motions crumbling to the beat of a woman
To the drums pounding to the sound of a call
To a scream
The light a simple beam
Word, have you heard
The jokes, the smell of smoke
Treating my like a toy
The boy a symbol of survival
The woman a test to his ability to walk to talk
To wash out the connection to the belly of the dog who does tricks for his master
I am not his or his weapon to use against the outside world
Do I have a name?
People walking around me
My contractions closer and closer together
Can I hold his hand without people saying I am his?
Like my body was a thing
I am, she, real, trying to scream can he wonder why I love him?
Can he wonder where I’ve been the night before?


V.

When there’s no source of knowledge or this garbage which I produce from top to bottom over emotion down into cellars where dwellers dwell, on things, stupid things, over some things that I can only hope to trace to embrace many of what stand and pick colors and perfect lovers that hold up to expectation, and we can reason like we can tell our favorite season, like spring, like winter, something colder, something better than sitting, than staying in a town where nobody loves you or those who cover your eyes from these bruises from these choices that have been made by ducks and geese, that kill and ask where is peace, and I ride and spray these sayings to the next working man where there is no lawyer to guide you through this unwanted land.

VI.

They wonder why we hate certain things when rings are forced onto fingers, where dinners serve to congratulate our ties, our lives together, joined by a letter which expresses our love and honor for one person, and we place them in white dresses and black tuxes over the alter, waiting, expecting them to say I do to the rest of their life just to fill a place in society where normal is viewed as the American Dream, and our mothers and fathers water color our fate with that one special mate, and then we fly out in spite of our wings . . .

They wonder why we hate certain things.

How I Came to Live in a Hut - Neil Levy, Issue 6

HOW I CAME TO LIVE IN A HUT


IT'S FUCKING COLD IN HERE. I better go chop some wood and carry water. Sometimes living way out in the boondocks is a hassle. I got to walk a quarter mile through foot high snow and down the slippery hill to the spring. Then I have to chop a hole in the thick slab of ice and scoop up two gallons of water filling these here buckets. Takes over and hour. Then back up the slippery slope, I'll probably fall to my knees at least once. I'm, pretty good though since I recently bought super deluxe snowshoes. Then the quarter mile back, passing some incredibly ancient trees. When its warmer out I sometimes sit down and meditate beneath these friends of mine. They are so strong and peaceful. Today though I will hurry this water in the house and then go split some logs. Heat the hut the old fashioned way. I'm an expert on lighting lingering and warm fires. It's a skill I've developed over the last three years I've shacked up in this here hut. Yep, three long years. And here I am still here chopping wood and carrying water. Like the old wind mill in the valley brought over piece by piece from Ireland in the 1880's. It just keeps on turning. Sometimes with a slow almost imperceptible rotation. At other times when the season of the high winds arrive the arms spin so rapidly that it looks as if its solid. Getting used to the pitch dark out in the wilderness was extremely trying for me. Oh, for about the first three months I hardly slept a wink all night. I was jumpy. I had the sense that I wasn't alone. That there were crazy people wondering through the hills and valleys. A murderer limping, dragging an axe along the dirt road to my house. Homicidal maniacs dancing around my hut. I'd hear a noise and pull the covers over my head and remain motionless till the next episode., Let me tell you there are many such noises that come out during the dark phase. You know people, mostly men, who are aggressive and violet are another bread altogether. I met some of these specimens while in prison. Oh man, that's a whole other story.

Anyway these guys are freaky. Often they've got screwed up teeth and a smile that sends shivers down my spine.They have this look, maniacal is the only way to describe it but you get this sense that they are not held back and that they can, like a wolf, just attack you if it so strikes them and just for the fun of it. The ones that went so far beyond their boundaries and snuffed another life out gives me the sense that I'm on a cliff just at the point of falling for these seretonin deficient individuals have no sense of boundaries.

Boundaries. I'm losing my sense of boundaries. It's been happening slowly over the years and is one of the main reasons I moved way out here, away from the rabble. The rabble, oh what a waste! There is some bitterness in my voice, its true. But, alas, it has become part of my experience. I am what I is. Got some cool, clear, fresh water. Cold water on a frigid day homeopathically warms me. I still hear those pipes, gliding their sweet melodies through the air. I used to play the Uilleann pipes. I miss those days. Out here in the thick of it I carved a few crude instruments. They play pretty good but there was nothing like those pipes and all those beautiful lasses that thar danced for me. I was in bliss, in heaven, I danced, composed music,and choreographed my pieces for all the world to see. I was the man. The Lord of the Dance. And then like the great Nijinsky my mind collapsed.....< like a house of cards.

When I was a wee lad I used to spend hours constructing all kinds of architectural wonders with decks of playing cards. I even won a number of art contests and it got me scholarships to architectural school. I learned the secret of balance and form in those days; guided by a kind of intuition and focus. I knew that these structures, so beautiful and grand, were extremely unstable. Often during the new and full moons I hear the fullness of the pipes filling my soul. I don the leopard costume I wore at my last performance and dance throughout the night, giddy with joy .

Oh Salome.....Dionysus, pan, the satyrs, old Bacchus arrive.....No longer do I think of marketing it,of yakking about, concerned what the rabble think or feel toward it. It is liberating out here in the world of HUT! Oh, when I had the narcissus sickness life was so constricting; I felt as if a cobra were choking me. Now don't get me wrong I had my share of fun. And it is vital that I had those wild experiences. So I also feel deep gratitude for the rabble. I am part of the rabble for you.. Hidden away here for three years is the culmination of "all of it." Sometimes tears fall down my at the intense feelings I have for your world. You are out there interacting with the populace. What a wide variety of human beings and their life conditions. Tomorrow I am going to bake the weeks bread. Lots of kneading. When I was back in LA,having immigrated from Ireland, to pursue my dreams, or should I say my illusions, I was amazed to see a TV show on Life's meaning or some such thing and all throughout the show were these corny references to baking bread and now I baked bread and find it spiritualizing. I often let my conscious mind hang in a rocking chair most of the time. I've trained it and given it its freedom to lounge around. A permanent vacation. When I compose it comes forth to some degree but I keep the door wide open. I'm not perfect, not by any means a serene hermit sage. Not in a long shot. But, hey, who wants to be a sage? I'm not interested in money anymore. Just enough to last till the breathing stops. Spare change is all I need. Got any? IT'S FUCKING COLD OUT HERE IN THIS HUT OF

MINE!!!!!!

—Neil Levy, Minneapolis

When a River Floods -- J. Otis Powell!

This was originally published in Issue 9. To read the whole thing, check out our website at http://karawane.homestead.com.

I will be publishing more things that we have previously featured in the magazine to lead up to our deadline and hopefully inspire you all!

__________________________________________________

It began as a trickle; like the headwaters of the Mississippi from Lake Itasca in the Minnesota North Woods, it swells, it deepens and it varies in width like the river running south to the Gulf of Mexico. A Being in Motion was flowing much like a river and subject to, as a river is, changes in weather like the fury of hurricanes, the deluge of thunder storms and the imminent danger of water overflowing its banks. When rivers flood it’s considered a natural disaster and Adamas was realizing that this production held the potential for a cataclysmic destiny as well. As a director Adamas had spent his career managing disasters and he knew what he needed to do to keep this one from becoming a sight in shambles. He needed to reign everything in from where it was to a more controlled level of chaos and wrap it inside time units like television segments.

The production featured improvised music, dance, spoken word and projected images happening simultaneously, but this was not the flat surface of television, this was live multidimensional space. A video could be projected behind live performers and prerecorded audio could fill another part of the soundscape. Adamas talked with Keita and Jamila who were the directors of the house band about punctuating the show instead of filling it with music and they could see the benefits of abbreviations rather than blowing full out all the time. “Only fill the space if its empty” Adamas told them. “And there will be plenty of empty space, you dig?”

Aquanetta’s words kept passing through his brain, ”it’s the same story, everybody is telling the same story.” He could let go of his need to follow the story line or to employ a literal interpretation of the impressions expressed in the performance. He could let go of his need to understand how everything fit together and simply fit everything together. He remembered an event he produced in Birmingham, Alabama in recognition of the life of Malcolm X; nothing was working like he planned, everybody had a different concept, a different message, and a different truth to convey. For some the story was about Malcolm X: a minister for the Nation of Islam, for others it was a story about the prison education of Detroit Red and for still others it was the spiritual transformation of
El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. It was a grassroots people powered production and grassroots productions have the precariousness of passion and prevarication; no one knows what’s going to happen because no one is in control and the story changes constantly because stories are organisms.

Realizing that he was not in control was liberating and it allowed him to relax and go with the flow of an eclectic montage of independent happenings that Aquanetta called a show. From the first scene, which was an ensemble of dancers moving in front of a projection of a waving body of water to primal sounds of the waves lapping, slapping then human sounds of moaning and sighing and grunting with live instrumental music and poetry. It was too much and now he understood that was the point of it. Layers of meaning braided together was like his life, like the Mississippi, like the story, like the
show itself; everything happened simultaneously and without hard separations in-between.

Keita wouldn’t stop playing his instruments. He and Jamila set up camp downstage left and were working on something all through rehearsals. “Ya’ll just go on now, don’t mind us. We gon’ be playing all through this thang.” Then he put a horn in his mouth, looked at his wife, nodded and went on. This obsessive behavior inspired the dancers to move constantly as well: on the stage, in the rows between the seats, in the dressing rooms, in the hallways… A BEING IN MOTION was taking shape as a subconscious idea that became a foundation for every aspect of the production. Constant motion and perpetual sound was the primary metaphor and everything else was expressed through that reality. Occasionally Adamas would need to gesture to the band to hush or to hold up a minute while he made something perfectly clear to other artists in the production, but of course nothing was perfectly clear. Everything was a different shade of blues.

Jamila integrated Aquanetta’s words with her own as a foundation for abstract vocal impressions. She invented music according to emotional expressions that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her. Her expressions were from somewhere deeper than she could articulate but shallow enough to release and move on. Adamas decided to loop the phrase “stories are ever after” and play it back at particular moments in the production to remind everybody that it’s all about the story. Once the story began to flow it went to places no one expected it to go and it stayed there until it felt like moving on again.

In This House by Charles Campbell

This post is from part of Charles Campbell's performance text In This House, originally published in Issue 9. To read the whole thing, check out our website at http://karawane.homestead.com.

I will be publishing more things that we have previously featured in the magazine to lead up to our deadline and hopefully inspire you all!

As is frequently the case, the formatting is somewhat different on our blog than in the magazine. Yet another reason to check out our website and look at past editions there!


IN THIS HOUSE

There is no family, but these relations are present and taught.
There is no familiarity, the rooms continually change their functions.
Rooms are gaping holes into which people disappear, and out of which their shadows emerge.
There are walls that serve as conduits for secret communication between strangers.
There are stairs from which people throw themselves in a bid for suicide, or in surprise attacks.
There are light fixtures that serve as gallows and signposts.
There is no welcome mat, the threshold is a barrier and a border.
The doors are barricades, weapons, boundaries and escape hatches.
The people do not live here, they perform a series of shifting occupations.
There are no battle lines, no armies, no command posts, no bullets or bombs.
A human presence is a tactical maneuver in a struggle for space.
It is placid. The newspaper has been read. Sounds of cooking from over there. Television on upstairs. The table has been cleared. Bags are on the floor. Soft footsteps on the stairs. The bed sheets turned. Voices in the street, arguing over a piece of furniture.
Chairs, food, matches, newspaper, a rug, a table, a light bulb, toilet paper, the mail.
Movement across the floor, sounds from the other room, light under the door, tapping at the window, knocking at the door, sitting across the table, hands on a coffee cup, coming in, going out, sitting alone in bed, eating together on the way out the door, looking out the window, peering in the window, watching the walls, talking to the television, cooking for one, sleeping on the couch.
The boundaries between outdoors and inside are unclear, bits of each appear in the other.
The everyday gestures of the home are repeated, but emptied. Their mundane utility replaced with the strategies of the greater world.
Sounds and language float against a heavy silence. The meeting of two individuals is rare, strained, dangerous, and weighted with tactical considerations.
******************

These two poems are by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, of Oakland, California at the time we published them, several years ago. They are not formatted exactly as they were in the mag when we originally published them. Go to the website at http://karawane.homestead.com to view the original publication they were in and to see them in their full glory!

I really really liked this poetry very much.



lessons in excavation



for Sandra Maria Calvo & Maria Mazziotti Gillan


although it is true i have been "american" for six and four and three generations

i have been irish and german jewish and arab spanish and african far longer

my roots there in europe the middle east nord afrika and the mediterranean



(across an ocean twice traveled and even more removed)



are much deeper stronger thicker

than these mere branches thin and weak shallow

and overshadowing the ground upon which i was born

check the soil below they run for miles

those above their distance measured

in only feet and inches



(perhaps it is best this way)



in winter the leaves fall

the thin branches grow thinner gnarled and grey

matching the sky above indistinguishable



(to some the tree would appear dead)



luckily

there are still those of us

who know the truth of things

who know the benefits beyond shade

who know other ways of living beyond the grey

who know what lies beneath the surface and

who still dare



to dig


(previously published in The Hammer)






la lengua of love



for JV



my love for u es multilingue many-tongued washing

over u with each wave of appreciation this gift of

sharing u n yr body with me wetness n warmth

heat hot springs from the ocean floor always

returning wave upon wave of undulation

always finding ourselves on each

other's shores with no course

back nor wanting any

nor wanting any


(previously published in Mizna)

Karawane Call for Artists - Quad Cities

I have been very neglectful of this page! Here is Karawane's call for submissions to the Quad Cities edition. If you have trouble reading it, you can also download it from our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/karawanemagazine/ or write us at karawane@earthlink.net.

Coin-Op Poetry

So, we have started a poetry reading at a local laundromat in the Quad Cities. We have been going for a couple of months and we had our best turnout the Monday before Thanksgiving. We are going to have another reading this week, Monday December 5th, then we will break for the holidays and start back up on Martin Luther King day, the third Monday in January.

Here is a flyer for the event and also some pictures from two of our previous Coin-Op Readings.

The Temp Job: A Performance Piece from Issue 10 - 2007

The Temp Job: A Performance Piece

The Set Up

This is the original documentation of three out of five days spent on a temp assignment in a major corporation wherein I had virtually no work to do whatsoever. After I had done two books of crossword puzzles and attempted to read a few books, which proved difficult to stay with after 8 hours of sitting in one place under fluorescent lights, I began to write down every time I looked at the clock and how much time was left in my day. On Friday, I began writing down some things about what I was doing at the time.

Documentation

Director and theorist Richard Schechner describes performance as “twice behaved behavior.” What follows here is the “documentation” of the original impetus for this performance—the transcription of my time logs from my temp job. These logs can serve as the basis for a performance, reading, etc. as well as serving as the blueprint or instructions for a newly generated piece.

Theorizing

As Andy Warhol once said, "we figured out how much we thought the audience could take and went about 10 minutes beyond that. Leave them wanting less was always our motto."

The point, of course, of an installation piece such as this is to highlight the passing, often slow, of time and to emphasize both temporality and space. In this case, it is the confining of space and time into a cubicle and a workday.

The Performance

In the performance, a desk should be placed in some public place and the performer should go there eight hours a day, preferably for at least a week.  Every time the performer looks at the clock he or she will say the time out loud and make some kind of repetitive action. Whenever anyone comes near the performance piece, they will be asked "are you the new temp?" When some smart ass says yes, he or she should be "trained" on how to do the performance and then the original performer can take a break.

Thursday

8:20
8:09
7:59
7:40
7:20
6:37
6:10
6:01
4:55
4:39
4:38
4:01
3:43
3;33
3:24
3:22
3:17
3:10
3:09
3:08
3:01
2:44
2:20
2:19
2:15
2:10
2:02
1:57
1:51
1:46
1:40
1:20
1:14
1:11
1:06
1:04
1:00
:55
:39
:37
:36
:33
:24
:21
:19
:15
:14
:10
:07


Friday variation

I left early today, so starting with 8:00 rather than 8:30.

8:04
7:56
7:45
7:44
7:39
7:33 Called to check my bank balance
7:20
7:04
6:54
6:37
6:34
6:33
6:26 Took a bathroom break
6:18 Made a phone call
6:13
6:08 Distributed mail
6:03
5:49 Went to the store to get money and buy a chocolate milk
5:23 Read Skyway News
4:58 Went to the 4th floor to visit old co-workers
4:52
4:43 Talked on the phone
4:35 Spilled water on the message book. Copied over 1 page of phone messages
4:29
4:01 Did the daily crossword puzzles. Could not finish New York Times Puzzle in the Strib. Finished LA Times Puzzle.
3:32
3:30
3:03 Lunch
2:53 Talked to Cheryl on the phone
2:48 Called Aramark about the beeping vending machine
2:43
2:41 Personal phone call
2:29
2:00 Read the Star Tribune Front section
1:44
1:40
1:32
1:02 Hung out with Ryan, former co-worker, in the breakroom. I ate popcorn. He spilled ice on the table and on me.
:51
:39 Copied over my notes from a seminar in December
:38
:21 Had a coughing attack. Had to run to the bathroom. Hacked and spit up a little. Hurt my throat for the rest of the day.
Ish.
:18
:15
:09
:08 Boss told me to go ahead and leave and thanks for covering this week.

Poems by Ric Royer - Issue 10 2007

Here are a few poems that we published in our last issue, which was almost 10 years ago now. These are Yoko Ono-ish in that they are small instruction pieces.

Poems by Ric Royer


Atmospheric Poetry

Speak into a paper bag.

When the paper bag is full of air,
hold it up and pop it. Watch the
words float around.


Sleep Action

Piles, piles, piles.
Goodnight, sleep tight
under piles.

Website update

Hey all. We have a website update including information on the grant we received in the Quad Cities, an update on submission guidelines, and an update on our merchandise.

We also have an increasingly active Facebook presence as well. Check it out and like us on Facebook.

I will be posting more updates and samples on this page in the weeks and months to come!

David Christopher LaTerre from Issue 7, 2002

This one is also from Issue 7 of Karawane. David informs us that it has been revised several times and asked if he could send an update, but I really wanted to include the one we had originally published.

This one did not have formatting problems. If you have ever heard David read--in Minneapolis, in Seattle, or anywhere on the road--then you know that he reads as he writes: in one huge breath/block of text.

So here is David Christopher LaTerre's Dogme 2000.



DOGME 2000


Interesting people are loners. you can’t meet them. get out! can’t break up their marriages or usurp their secret fire escape lovers. there are none; the walk alone. who produced these individuals? not Madison Avenue or Milan. tattoos, interesting? piercings, interesting? very long hair, very short hair, interesting? vintage clothing; high fashion? interested? interested yet? bisexual? interracial? boho? like on T.V.! not weird enough. who paved the way for identity (not these people). consider the intelligentsia of time: bit thinkers in smoky backrooms. all in ugly suits & ties. members of the Bauhaus, of Dada, private salons & think tanks. outside the university(often); outside the court. creators of the thinking-edge. can’t even read their writing! they looked like narcs! they were uncool. they were very uncool. so square, they’d level the world beyond its shrunken-head tattoos & all its affect. they freaked out. & it freaked people out. like Ulysses & The Rite of Spring. when we rant that ‘it’s just looks’ or ‘all is vanity’, we imply that there is
something else. there may NOT be! What do people care about? look at the pyramid of THINGS, PEOPLE; IDEAS(materialism, Jerry Springer, & original thought) interesting? why did the punk cross the road? he was stapled to a chicken. what do you think skinheads talk about? punk rock? they talk about their families & their jobs. WHAT is interesting? WHO is? what is radical? who made the PROTOTYPE? why copy it? my moral: why copy anything? you want to be unique but first you have to be a true individual: that means no more cliques. no more TEAMS. no more GIRLFRIENDS. no more BOYfriends.
NO MORE PROPS. but see how eventually the underground goes middleground...’Liberal’ sees expensive copper pan at Williams-Sonoma. want-to-buy. forget about grassroots & Marxism. artists& cultural neighborhoods strews with 100lb boys (crystal meth bulimia) entire city of boys & that prop: either a girl, a dog, a cellphone, or snarling or spitting on the street with that ridiculous SWAGGER. where have I seen
that before? oh yeah. EVERYWHERE!(or male couples)...the world is full of E.M. Forster women & Anne Tyler men. the barback is a D.J. Star! your girlfriend’s in a review about temping for Amazon.com. the real horror of the modern city — the unreal city — today is its hypocritical MINDSET: young, hip, plugged into the web & can’t think for itself! wait for it to be DECIDED! so we have corporate-endorsed ravewear
& syndicated prison-issue Hip Hop. all you you won’t be BEAT UP(fashion isn’t as brave as it is fearful). loners are never cool. James Dean was an interpretation. I’m lonely in this place of people only LOOKING or acting weird. they can’t access weirdness, they can only GUESS! they never had it repackaged and run up the flagpole like a trend. they only borrowed it! they just paint it on like ARMOR! I finally REBELLED against cool. they said that I ‘lost’ my cool, that I freaked out (which is VERY uncool & apparently undesirable); I must have felt PASSIONATE about something. cool isn’t dynamic in any way. how did it ever catch on? how could anyone in any century look around & be BORED, or subsequently adopt this as an identity. NOTHING WAS EVER ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH BEING COOL, BUT EVERYTHING WAS ACHIEVED BY FREAKING OUT. INTERESTING PEOPLE ARE LONERS. YOU CAN'T MEET THEM. GET OUT. —not weird enough. it’s not weird enough! when we were out there changing the tide...wanna be lonely? wanna give it a shot? oh, I don’t know; I’m not saying this right. I should ARTICULATE this better...simplify: maybe something...GET OUT!

Art Durkee, Issue 7

reading a life by Art Durkee


by a single lamp
the man standing naked
his skin wrapped in words
swirling in seven languages
rapt in the book he reads
writing himself into lists, one thousand
years old, somehow still new:
"everything indigo is exquisite"
does the flower, the paper, the ink
know he worships them: their vibrancy?
it matters only to the ribs
inflating releasing the words
"lovers" and "hijau" and "spice"
and "arigato"
and "sleep" written in the thighs
the word "golden" in Greek letters
spread across his breast
his arms spiraled with poems
to hymns to mirrors to trains, dark
terrors he had as a boy
now read in books he treasures
a library of intentions, inscriptions,

Two poems by Jim DeWitt ca 1999

These are two poems by Jim DeWitt in Issue 5, 1999, back when we were still Voices From The Well.


Middle Night Courage Needed

Know that there's only one low-watt bulb
crouching up inside my pullchain lamp. How it strains to
chew away some smidgen of surrounding roomdark.

Listening close, you might hear its valiantness-for-its-
size penetrating out into sections of the blackest
speckles swarming in to surround it.

Pressuring shadow morphs that do seem snarly
stubborn. Ever angrily swirling back, determined to
overwhelm my little dim-glo bulb, break its spirit.

And right from the veryinstant of my switching it
on, Bad-Old-Blackness has flexed its long shadowed
other self. Seeming much more than just-somewhat
disturbed out there . . .

After Six Hours Suspension

Something stirs you awake. You rise out of cozy
comforters but sight tells you you are too soon for the
coming sun. Curious, you peek out the blind's chink as if
bent on catching night with one of its secrets.

None are seen moving, so stealth helps to place
your body back in. Sinking beautyrest, it calls on that
same something which woke you to reverse-gear you into
more of that temporary suspension soft . . .

Slamming Poets by Liam Kinbrae

This was published in 1998 in issue 4 of Voices from the Well when we were young as so were the slams in Minneapolis. There was a lot of animosity between the slams and the open mics and this was towards the beginning of that animosity.



Slamming Poets - Post Kerouac


People who don't know each other shuffle scared, proud or crippled into some room...some thinking that

Laureate status is long overdue...some are curious...some bored, some are simply mistaken...and maybe there is even a poet in the midst...or the real potential for one to surface--a delicate heart in the non-participating audience that becomes calm, honest, and insightful once the Slam is done...

But the Event will happen as scheduled...poetic presence or not.

"Judges are selected at random"...the spokesman announces as he selectively scatters smiles around the room...and it really doesn't seem to matterw ho will hold up the point cards:

It's about the mood of the judge...which more often than not is stimulated by something somewhere between superficial humor or sex...with a touch of the bizarre...and the narcissistic rush of power they get when it's time to grab a 5 or a 1...to dangle over someone's vulnerability.

Some gulp beer before it starts...some sip coffee...water--each contestant has a personal preference for liquid courage...and there is more shuffling--and often it feels like Ed McMahon might materialize at any second to claim his status as patron saint of poetry slams.

And the first reader rises to read...and a false hush covers the shallow banter...and someone who wants to be overheard whispers...THIS MIGHT BE ANOTHER YEATS...YA NEVER KNOW...

And the initial reader on stage adjusts the microphone...fumbles through his hastily accrued stack of papers...lets out a frustrated grunt...closes his eyes...picks a crumpled yellow sheet...smiles...and mutters into the microphone with ferocious intensity:

UNTITLED

and reads something like this:

MOON ME, MY MOON!
I WAS WOUNDED BY THE
MOONS MOONING...AND
IT FELT SO CLOSE TO ME
THAT I NEARLY CALLED 911.

(then he tilts his head and says a sweet) Thank you.

And in the semi-circle of once hopeful faces surrounded the reader, one notices the non-verbal reactions:

*an old man lowers his head onto the table--no one knows if he is meditating,
nauseous, or just resting until it's his turn

*someone else clenches a fist

*someone's mouth hangs open

*someone moves quickly through the area--going to pee