HAMMERED OUT

HAMILTON POETRY CENTRE 2008/2009 SEASON

2008-07-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

WELCOME TO OUR 25TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON!

READINGS
Thursdays 7:30 - 9:00 PM
Bryan Prince Bookseller
1060 King Street W.
Hamilton

BRIAN BARTLETT
30 October 2008

GEORGE AMABILE
27 November 2008

TANIS MACDONALD
15 January 2009

JOANNE ARNOTT
12 February 2009

PATRICK FRIESEN
2 April 2009 (co-sponsored by gritLIT)

WORKSHOPS
Thursdays 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Hamilton Central Library
Dundas Room

18 September
16 October
23 November
22 January
19 February
19 March
16 April (Workshop & AGM)
7 May (Open Reading)

With thanks to:
Hamilton Public Library
Bryan Prince Bookseller
Canada Council for the Arts
Gaspereau Press, Printers & Publishers

e-mail hpc1@cogeco.ca

HAMMERED OUT RESTS

2008-04-01T04:50:00.000-07:00

HAMMERED OUT is currently taking a break from its regular publishing schedule. In the meantime, Hammered Out #13 (the surreal issue) is available for $10 per copy (includes postage) payable to "Hammered Out" c/o Box 89027, Westdale PO, Hamilton, ON L8S 4R5. Copies of most back issues are also still available.

BUNNY ISKOV

2008-02-03T06:17:00.000-08:00

I.B. (Bunny) Iskov is the Founder of The Ontario Poetry Society. She is the author of 9 chapbooks (some a joint effort) and one full collection. Her work has appeared in several literary journals and anthologies, including Quills Canadian, Poetry Magazine, Ascent Aspirations Anthology One, and in several issues of Hammered Out. She listens to Hamilton's oldies radio station, A.M. 1150, every day.

I'M COMPOSED

I have made my hutch a haven
for abandoned years of sorrow.
I fill one crystal bowl with tears.

Sunlight falls on dusty shelves.
One silver plated koisa begs for a shine.

I open my cabinet doors,
Rearrange cluttered chachkas,
Wipe away stains of the past,
Hope for a clearer tomorrow.

I bake challah for Shabbat,
Candlesticks decorate my table like two sentries
guarding a precious paradigm.
I’m composed.

AFTER I WAS BORN

the bread flesh came away
body hairs gold as challah
ephemeral like a fling

impossible contradictions
paint my skin
between existence and enchantment

sweep the years
coagulate into colours

these colours change
I almost forget
they’re framed in stained glass

white only lives for the winter
among dead roses, scrawny trees
poems, too
shed their meanings like leaves
on sallow parchment

in the family of loud summer
red bursts into watery flames
stains the walls of the heart
turns grass to blood
turns sky to blood

as I grow old the
seasons elude
reluctantly
fog and fire co-mingle

every time I shed skin
I am caught off-guard
there are always shades
of indifference

BEFORE THE FLOOD

Once, when the earth was young
and Eden just a garden,
the names of clouds
were only a sigh.

Once, when the smallest shiver
wafted through autumn,
a fashion statement resonated
in basic green.

Once, when no shame
and life were contained in a breath
each moment ignited in a glimpse
between mouths full of fruit.

Once, while everything still
fresh and naïve,
the twilight brimmed a rainbow
of benevolence and gold.

Once, when my man was just a boy
and terror a horror movie
each peace protest from a flower child
sang a new era.

Once, when buildings were giants among men
and the telephone a dynamic lifeline
gentle shadows hushed a tableaux of fury
between flightless flora and fauna.

Once, when beasts were confined to zoo cages
and communism the perfect enemy
rain-soaked and dramatic
iron fear curtained a new born question.

Once, when snakes could walk the earth
and apples promised wisdom in a bite
the air harnessed
a rhapsody of fire.

CANDLE LIGHTING

I am self-taught in the art
of memorized magic
ancient incantations
ignite in a moment
bloom at once
bright yellow flickering petals
spike halos
run off into the air

my grandmother would be proud
again and again
lighting her candle sticks
praying respectfully
with mellowed hands
weighted with worries
beneath salt water and scars

my Hebrew is a pretense
I have created myself
wrapped in a Canadian shawl
on a dead end street
moving lips in moral denial

a thick fabric of warmth
shades precious
still

Published in the Passover Literary Supplement,
The Canadian Jewish News, 2005

KATERINA FRETWELL

2007-12-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

Katerina Fretwell's fifth poetry collection, "Samsara: Canadian in Asia," is forthcoming from Pendas Productions run by Gavin Stairs and Penn Kemp. It will include a CD of her reading and music as well as reproductions of her art. Her fourth book, "Shaking Hands witht he Night," was also published by Pendas. Fretwell edited two anthologies for the League of Canadian Poets and chaired the Lowther Jury Prize. She sings choral tenor, paints, and plays piano. Here are a few examples of her work:

FOLEY FALL FAIR REQUIEM

Each year the hand-stitched booties,
"My Summer Holiday" snaps and crayoned
cartoons cover one less picnic table.
More prizes compensate the loss.

Fewer stalls sell neon T's, cheap tools,
day-glo necklaces, licorice whips,
pogo sticks and cob-corn.
Even the midway boasts less

chance to toss your money
or darts to burst your balloon,
only one ring toss game,
no bumper cars or tilt-a-whirl.

The sole Ferris glitters in the rain
like a downside Catherine Wheel.
A lone neon-cowgirl belts the blues
to fans clumped under dark

umbrellas on a muddy slope, huge
as the Forces Recruitment trailer-
incongruous as Canada's
non-peacekeeping combat.

FOLEY TOWNSHIP, LABOUR DAY

My Love is Seven Years Older than I Am
California redwoods tower, heartstrong
as you did before your blocked osmosis.
And their ground-rich loam
needs no soil correction, energy
evident in grove upon grove-

in the rear-view mirror, these
giants fading, their moss & mist
a cobweb mirage. I stare forward,
this new vista-bare
but for the odd stand

of eucalyptus-expands,
resigned to squat, brow bent
to the horizon, cropped of trees.
Next bend, presto, surf foams
white as your hair. I alone

get out, inhale the winds
that weather and beautify
a well lived face
and discover such a visage
on the beach-

two glinting shells,
blue like your eyes,
are aligned above
a driftwood splinter
and I grin back.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, NOVEMBER 2002

Final Foray in Gethsemane
Mary, walled inside your mother's garden,
on the carved bench beneath the lunar-
dappled myrtle and olive trees,
you & Yeshu snuggle against your last
night as One on earth. The moon
weeps silver, silver as the thirty pieces
paid to betray Yeshu to Pilate,
come the cold clear morn.

Your hands flow through Yeshu's
carmine beard and locks, he fondles
your flaming tresses highlit silver.
Lips find lips, tongues trace the years
among the desert of men who convert
beliefs to money at Temple,
the years imprinted on you both-
each curve, cleavage, declivity.

As One in love, longing and loneliness,
your thoughts, voiced by Spirit, not lips,
flit back and forth this dying hour,
resting on your mother Hokhmah's tomb
in a cave sealed with a boulder.
Your lids flutter, then shut tight as sealed wax,
Yeshu's limbs shiver cold as the Styx
in Hades. And Nyx, your raven, casts

a shadow over your huddled heads.

JERUSALEM INCLUSIVE

On gazing at the Milky Way,
its gaseous clouds of hydrogen, helium, nitrogen...
I'm amazed we carry
the same elements
spread across the sky
within us.
This unity bends my knees,

similar to stepping
over the wooden bar
at an Asian temple's entrance,
watching my footfall,
head bowed before mystery.

See
an unmapped crystal city
refracting all climes, skins, tribes.
Mosque, shul, wat, coven, kirk,
sweatlodge-
one holy house.

Gold-leafed sacred writ
or oral epic tales-
each inspired verse shapeshifts
into Koranic, Talmudic, Wiccan,
Biblical, Algonkian or Upanishad
according to the celebrant's tongue.

All traditions slide through us
as if our soul translates each
into a glowing cosmic dome.

MAMMON

"Only, let not our haters brag,
Thy seamless coat is grown a rag
Or that thy truth was not here known
Because we forced thy judgements down."
Henry Vaughan, "L'Envoy"

Henry, Consume is the Word
Flashed in malls before Christmas.
Clothiers ignore the voiceless,
Plump teens not mirrored
In Barbie-mannequins,
Garbed in designer rags
& platinum wigs. Salesgirls tease
these hairdos for hours, waving
A don't-mess-with-me flag.
"Only, let not our haters brag"

That we seniors are frumps
In pearls and pumps. Magenta
Bras raise a chuckle-"Get a lift,
Our cleavage defies gravity."
A pre-teen dress-up store
(Short shelf-life?) speeds the drag
From wallets of six c-notes
For a Grade 8 prom gown. Forced
Into catwalk mindsets, tweens wag-
"(My) seamless coat is grown a rag."

At Playtimes R Us, girls' boardgames
Focus on shopping & stealing
Best-friend's-beau.
Boys' games reward climbing
Up the company
And shortcuts to own
Their destiny. Is this what
Our culture admires in us-
Greed & grab-get these cloned?
"Or that thy truth was not here known"

That Jesus hangs at the Sally Ann
Shunning brands & mockups
Sweatshopped offshore.
Paid pennies for work so consuming
That pregnancies abort,
Makers faint, injuries abound.
In the Desire Cult, we pout neon.
Caveat to admen & suppliers-
faking demand, you're only renowned
"Because we forced thy judgements down."

DAVID HILLEN, 1941 - 2005

2007-11-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

THE MEMORY BOX
-by Heather Hillen, daughter of David Hillen

This intricately crafted coffin
seals tightly when closed;
on top - a slot for your picture
a thoughtful gift from a friend.

Each deposit seems a betrayal of you –
losing more of you
each time I open it
only to shut it again.

This beautiful pine box
encourages these thoughts,
enables me to write these words,
and my memories to escape from the box.

David James Hillen, 1941 - 2005, was born in Toronto where he attended Parkdale Public School, Parkdale Collegiate and graduated with a Master degree in History from the University of Toronto in 1965. David and his wife Janet soon traveled to Bolivia with the Baptist Mission Corps, where David taught English until returning to Ontario in 1969. David also taught English passionately, in Kitchener, Stoney Creek, and Mississauga until retiring in 1997.

David taught his students to believe in themselves and their ability to think creatively. A former student, musician Garnet Rogers spoke at his memorial service and said “David did nothing short of change my life”.

In addition to teaching, David wrote voraciously and his articles, poems, short stories and reviews have been published in numerous newspapers and anthologies. Living Downtown … familiarity breeds content which David co-wrote with his wife Janet was published in 2000. David’s book of poetry Even Our Shadows Dance was published in 2003.

Finally, David was a cherished family man who left his wife Janet and 4 children Heather, Andrew, Amanda and Stephen with teachings that are fundamental to who we are as people. He taught us to enjoy every moment as if it were our last, to love and respect all people all the time. He encouraged us to be fragile yet strong, courageous yet scared and that this is the essence of being human and it is ok. We miss him. Here are some poems by David.

A LIFE-STYLE DECISION

When I watch television
time flits
quick and shadowy
like a midnight spectre.

When I read books time
deepens, becomes
slow and full
like the air after rain.

I plan to read lots and lots of books
live a long, luscious life
before getting off
this Gutenberg Galaxy.

POETS MUST BE

Almost sorta’ mean
lean

know haste is waste
learn to tease out some truth in a form of words
get the feelings right
remain, sometimes, steadfastly unsure

clear, clear, pure, wise
capable of surprise
never merely witty, one of the guys

bold, serious fun
record life on the run
witness to events before the first coffee and the night cap
and the night cap and the first coffee
expose themselves in public
sigh over dandelions
point to the still centre that does hold

persons among people
sharing being
creating unregretted reading

sociable
almost sorta’ nice.

THEN FROST STRIKES

Flowers of the fall
we weather into winter
death, nothing
at all.

the few
that knew us
mourn briefly if
at all.

Then they too
dry, blacken, fall
and there is nothing
at all.

Only inside is can we be
-the frost strikes
and was makes us nothing
at all.

FINITE IS FINE WITH ME

Finite I am
inside time and space
god’s electric fence around the human race.

Finite is fine with me
allows me infinite possibility
a universe of places to go
whole nations of people to see
always changing – never the same
always becoming- never became.

Born I am
to be born again and again and again.

PENN KEMP

2007-10-28T05:22:00.001-07:00

Since 1966, sound poet Penn Kemp has taught creative writing and sounding in Canadian schools. Raised in London, she received her Honours BA in English from UWO and her M.Ed from OISE/U. of Toronto. Penn has published twenty-five books of poetry and drama, had six plays and ten CDs produced as well as Canada's first poetry CD-ROM. Sample pieces on pennkemp.ca, playingthegallery.ca, http://www.mytown.ca/pennkemp/ and http://www.myspace.com/pennkemp. Penn is Series Editor for Pendas Poets, http://mytown.ca/twelfth/ and host of Gathering Voices on CHRW FM, lit.-on-air archived on chrwradio.com/talk/gatheringvoices. The League of Poets has proclaimed Penn one of the foremothers of Canadian poetry.

SMOG ALERT

Throughout our listening area
light pollution. Evening haze

drifts down from some secret smelter
depending on which wind blows. Small

particulate matter fills the air, fills our lungs
with tiny lumps that hang there undetected
except we can no longer fully breathe.

Cosmic clouds descend upon us. Below
breath. Below thought. Below bellow.

Probability of precipitation. Mixed rain
and thunder showers. Severe weather

warning. War in heaven, warming
torrents into twisters. Forecast unforeseen.

The radio calls for showers. Fog patches.
Clouds clog the mind, crowding thought.

Now calm come... clear of cloud...
I'm thinking stars. Or stars are thinking me.

Where are they? Beyond the veil, still
twinkling, emitting their own dust trails.

HYMN TO HORMONE

I eat nut chocolate instead of carrots. I drink
caffeine straight from the bean. I don't care
if my senses rot, cavities root in my mouth,
gnaw at my brain. I nod a refrain to be
wicked, to be wild at the expense of ordinary

sanity. The expanse of external wisdom
mounts as paper wrappers, candy wrappers,
oh sweet sweet the caress of chocolate.

While I don't care if the sun turns
my uncoloured skin ultra-violet, the long
and the short of it is the spectrum
unannounced of the daily. In living we
are realized, we are being flushed out

of hiding our response by this reddening
cheek, the drenching of the brow in sudden
cartoon frenzies of sweat, the character is
worried. She is fretting she is sunk.

RECALL

Purple spikes rampant now. Cliché bounds
garden gnomes. We drink somewhat musty

ginger tea. Second cups await, red roobos
with mint and lemon balm I've just plucked.

Magdalene might know this tonic, or others
similar. Her purple turban that paintings so

proudly display as her nearly royal emblem
might bob through the fields as she gathers.

Though she would have servants harvesting,
that fine curved hand not browned by sun.

Her name day conjures presence on waves
of prayer, an iconography of purple and red.

Similars, signature. Like calls to like out
of time. Speaking harmonies. Chords lift.

A decorum wealth bestows, lush richness
suggesting florid abundance, jars of unguent.

She is always depicted wrapped, self-contained

and rapt. Cups of tea cool by her side, steam
rising like plumage, like the coils of her turban.

Twenty-two is the master number in Hebrew,
a vibration that opens time with broad strokes

beyond the moment to more universal scope.
But butterfly bush flowers in her honour now.

Echinacea flourishes, blossom and root, for her
medicinal. Wise woman of herbs, of mystery.

Sing your secret through us, Lady. We are
listening. Then and now. Now and then when

we remember. When your name day reminds.

ROLE CALL

Our daughters push beyond us,
when the power is strong,
unrolling the future to
certainty.

We can no longer stand
behind our rules. We have
only our word and theirs
to be free. All we can do
is learn without

obligation. To. From.
I free you free me.

Liberation intertwined
with a difference.

The cycle of generation
spirals once more.

We return to our mothers,
offering them the gift
our daughters offer us.

WELL

For those mothers who remain
ashore and shoring, mending
the holes, cutting the cords,
gathering stray strands.

Weave the common thread
wide and strong. Make it hold.

Make it glow like that
first cord we almost
remember, the one they
cut off too soon.

For the mothers
who spot the pattern
and laugh

laughter
digs wells in
the dried clay
our tears made moist.

We are jars that love
has filled emptied
and fills again.

2007 SILVER HAMMER SHORT FICTION

2007-10-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

HOLE IN ONE
-Jean Rae Baxter

I don’t remember the summer I was born, but as I grew up I sure heard plenty about it. That was the summer my cousin Annabelle vanished while hunting golf balls in the rough at Hidden Valley Golf Club. She was ten years old.

The kids who had gone with Annabelle returned to Kilbride without her. They weren’t worried—not at first. Annabelle must have been hiding on them, they thought, because she did things like that to get attention. Once she pretended her ankle was broken, so two boys had to make a chair with their hands linked to carry her home. That was a half-mile walk. They were pissed off when it turned out her ankle was fine. So when Annabelle disappeared, they thought it would serve her right if they left for home without her.

Annabelle’s parents, my Uncle Hugh and Aunt Rita, didn’t know anything was wrong until Annabelle didn’t show up for supper. They supposed she was at one of the other kids’ houses. Why not?

But after they phoned around and nobody had seen her since four in the afternoon, Uncle Hugh and Aunt Rita started to fret. By eight o’clock, when it began to get dark, they were frantic. Uncle Hugh rounded up my dad and the dads of the kids who had been with Annabelle. Uncle Hugh brought along Susie, his yellow Labrador retriever—not good at following a scent, he always said, but eager as they come.

It wasn’t a big area to search. A couple of acres. When they had looked for an hour without finding Annabelle, Uncle Hugh called the police. Then there was a real search, with trained dogs and tracking experts and dozens of volunteers.

Annabelle’s picture and description were in the newspapers and on TV. Missing-person posters all over the province asked if anybody had seen Annabelle Jenking. Age ten. Four-foot, six-inches tall. Copper-red curls, blue eyes, freckles. Last seen wearing a white T-shirt, blue shorts, blue ankle socks and white sneakers.

For three days, the searchers were out from dawn to dusk. Then the search was called off. Mom told me that when Dad got home, he sank into his chair in the living room, muddy boots on the carpet, and sat for a long time without saying anything. He just stared at one-month-old me, Nora Jenking, wrapped in my pink blanket, snug in Mom’s arms, and finally said, “No daughter of mine is ever going to earn pocket money looking for golf balls.”

“Never,” my mother had agreed, visualizing the shadowy form of a tramp slipping through the trees, a dirty hand clamped over Annabelle’s mouth, strong arms dragging her through the bushes. The act that followed was more than she could bear to imagine. The terror. The blood. The limp body borne away.

Mom said that Aunt Rita and Uncle Hugh never got over it. They had three other kids, but Annabelle had been the youngest. Whenever I went over to their house, Aunt Rita brought out her big scrapbook and made me look at Annabelle’s Baptismal Certificate, and her report cards, and all the Valentines her friends ever sent her. Sometimes I caught Aunt Rita staring at me, and then turning her face away. Once I asked Mom why my aunt looked at me funny.

“Because you’re just like Annabelle,” my mother said.

I overheard my parents talking with my aunt and uncle about Annabelle. Aunt Rita said the only thing they looked forward to was closure. Closure? It turned out they wanted somebody to find Annabelle’s body. This sounded weird. I always hoped that Annabelle would show up alive some day. I pictured her driving into Kilbride, stopping in front of her parents’ house, getting out of her car. She’d be about twenty years old. Tall and gorgeous, with copper...

NEARLY EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS
-J. J. Steinfeld

“I have no more tears to shed, no more words to utter ever… I have no more tears to shed, no more words to utter ever…” the person standing in front of the Toronto Reference Library was saying over and over. More like chanting, really. Persistently, without a hint of cessation. A mantra, or maybe an incantation. I was just ready to enter the library, to escape the city and my own inactivity, and I stopped to listen to the strange-looking person. There were about a dozen people standing there already, listening to the chanting: “I have no more tears to shed, no more words to utter ever… I have no more tears to shed, no more words to utter ever…”

The voice was quite lovely but I didn’t know if it was female or male. The person was in a colourful, loose-fitting costume and wearing a mask, not that it was anywhere near Halloween. I mean, some of the characters you can see downtown. At first I thought it was a busker or a performance artist. Someone seeking publicity for— For what? People were leaving and others were joining the afternoon crowd, which was getting larger. The sun was just starting to shine after a morning of light rain.

Sometimes, more so lately, I would like not to speak, to make a public pronouncement that for a month or two I would not say another word. I could imagine myself yelling out “I have no more words to utter for a while” but that would be it, a single sentence, no chanting, no interminable repetitiveness. This person was being repetitious with a declaration of wordlessness. Talk about big-time absurdity and a contradiction in terms. Despite how fascinating I found the utterance of the words, if I were still a teacher, I would give her or him, this strange person, a failing grade. Unless I was missing something in what was going on or being said. I have been missing a great deal these days and I can’t blame it all on moodiness or depression or a little too much imbibing. Talking with my parents last night seemed to make everything worse, and I even used that silly word imbibing with both my parents when they accused me of drinking too much. Just a little harmless imbibing, I had said, the same words to my father and to my mother. I had called first my father, and then my mother, and told them I had quit my latest job, and both, in their usual way questioned whether I had quit or been fired, and both of them wanted to know how many jobs this was and what I was planning on doing next. Even though they are divorced, have been for a decade, they can still ask me the same questions, as if they had been comparing parental notes before talking to their disappointing son. My mother never fails to remind me of when I was a high-school teacher. Of when I did something. Not doing anything is a form of doing something, I told her the other day. My father said I always spoke without thinking. That’s not a crime, I told him. So tell me what’s happening in your life, let me hear a happy story, my father said after that, and I told him that I have no more stories, confessed in a pathetic way. Isn’t that sad? Horribly sad, I said, but I wasn’t feeling sad. I had pretty much said the same thing to my mother, admitting my lack of a new personal story to convey to her or anyone else. What are you going to do tomorrow? my father asked. I’m going to catch up on my reading at the library, newspapers and magazines, I explained, starting to make childish faces at the phone, to the past, to nothing in particular, really—a silly habit of mine when phone conversations aren’t going particularly well for me. You can’t read at home, after coming home from a day’s work, if you still had a job? he said, as I was doing my meaningless and I would guess grotesque face-making. The Reference Library downtown is my retreat, my recovery room, so to speak. Each of my parents reminded me—accused me—of being forty, forty without a career.

I started to look at the gathering as free entertainment, more free entertainment. That’s why I go downtown in the first place. But the sight of two city police officers arriving...

COMING TO TERMS
-Chris Laing

Good Grief! This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. The payment had disappeared again, nothing left in its place. Second time this week. My job was to leave it in its usual spot and, in the morning, retrieve what the driver had left. What could be easier?

Jeez, if I couldn’t perform this simple task, what hope did I have to be trusted for bigger jobs? And just the thought of the old man’s disappointment withered my insides. I felt desperate, down to my last chance.

No choice now but to hire the detective.

Office hours were apparently irregular but I’d been told after school was best. From Hess Street Public, I crossed to Peter Street, stopping in front of a neat brick bungalow. Mountains of curling leaves heaped against a whitewashed fence, a concrete walk led to the rear. As instructed, I knocked twice, paused, then twice more. I entered onto an enclosed landing and next to the light switch; a sign read E T AGENCY, an arrow pointing down.

Cold as a cave down here and an earthy odor, perhaps from a root-cellar. I followed a narrow hallway to a closed door at the end of the hall and tapped out the same code before entering.

Emma Thomas stood staring at me as though I were a cockroach on her lunch plate. The ceiling light was turned off; two candles on floor-stands flanked her makeshift desk, their shimmering light giving her the appearance of an evil sorceress in the Saturday serial at the Tivoli Theatre.

She was taller than her candles, and her blond Medusa-hair writhed all over her head. And skinnier than Popeye’s girlfriend: long legs, long arms, the hands of a basketball player. She wore an oversized fisherman’s sweater, against this underground chill I supposed.

Emma gave me the once-over, twirled her hand and I turned in a circle. I guessed she saw no need to frisk me because she pointed a bony finger at a three-legged stool and I sat, keeping my lip buttoned.

“You know what I charge?” A low throaty voice.

I bobbed my head, gazing into her wolf-slit eyes which she hadn’t taken off me since I’d entered her lair, thinking that her daily fee was more than I could earn in a week. Maybe she’d be interested in bartering; I’d explore that later.

Brow furrowed, she said, “Do I know you?”

“Sure.” Why wouldn’t she know me? We attended the same school for cryin’ out loud.

She continued to study me, tugging back the blond strands flopping over one eye, before making up her mind. “OK … So what’s your problem, bub?”

I explained my dilemma: the missing payments, no product left by the delivery guy, the possible loss of the old man’s trust. Simply telling her made me realize just how tight a spot I was in.

She jotted in a small black book until I ran out of steam, then aimed the eraser end of her Dixon HB at me. “So what d’you want me to do?”

I’d thought of nothing else since deciding to see the detective. “One, find out who took the payments. Two, get them back. And three, stop it from happening again.” Sounding like a late-for-lunch radio announcer.

“That’s all?”

“Yep.”

“You don’t want me to beat the shit outta the thief?”...

CONRAD DIDIODATO

2007-10-07T05:21:00.000-07:00

Conrad Didiodato teaches high school English in the Halton region of Ontario, Canada. He has been writing poetry for past few years with publications in World Haiku Review: The Magazine of the World Haiku Club (e-zine); LYNX: A Journal for Linking Poets (e-zine); Tower Poetry; Ancient Heart Magazine; Serengeti Press; Voices Israel 2007; and Poemata.

The Alpheus

—Prelude—

The home is wherever the silver
workspats are,
crumpled under the sink; a stiff holly print
with brocaded lily-
border, too,hanging on the wall; and, of course, the newell ban ister
tenants like to rub
like the Apostle's big toe—

all of which they
call not just pretty squat living space but in Hamilton even
more smartly,
the Alpheus, building and grounds, a mile
down Main St.
near the core. For after Victoria, tall as the grey-

hemmed draped mom
of us all, who herself icily stands moss-grown, hiding
syringa under her
skirts; and a musty St. Pat's, always certain with damnation,
squinning through the long lancet eyes—

after these it's quite possibly the most endearing
thing about life here.
Can't match it with roses either, purple-stemmed outside the
courthouse, under stone pioneers,
and those coying sweet smells of bread from some mill outtake
(but picking up a stray rainy scent, too)

Or even with the skyway rising elongate over the bay,
visible from the foyer,
not that you'd try to look for it
cooped up as you are in that narrowing adamantine
cityblock,
(& with the mountain being too high & hard-faced to live on).

Wilcox St., too, is a frontier
with no more huckleberry numberless between beach and marshes;
the way's direct from there
to the glowing conveyors, a quick shuttlebus in, & where trying to stay
alert is half the job; and just as

the city's rust-tipped bells of church ring,
it's great to get home,
shift ending at dawn, and before the downtown crowd gears up,
and dream in the Alpheus
but not a pretty welkin dream blushing overhead. A real heaving aurora,
wide-flaming & hot,
always releases into the hollow of the city's oxidesky.

-Shawn's first week-

To the bayfront
eagerly transferred, on a garish & stinging day,
he's in with quick steps,
'mornin'-saying through the gates in a lumberjacket, a shaggy-
coated smoke hung&nb sp;on his lip;

for it's a contest of spite between work and sleep;
he's brought there steadydays
by bus-transfer, to company grounds—
the same grind between the comfy hassock of home
and Jockey Club, beer and terrycloths,

even with a nervy child
and a wife warming in her morningdress. Work's where he sees
pigingots need scarfing
and how they seem to go mouldy & pat, on his shift,
& tagged straight for transport to docks

somewhere in Hull. Along the shoreline everywhere
the smell & look of slagponds!
A cinch to transfer back to the Alpheus! And during this time,
Shawn being barely twenty,
a foreman named Brewster, in his general's asbestos coat, always was
and will be,
a second dad to him,

for it's right (salmon-eyed kid just married, just landing
on his feet!) needing work and God;
and told what a good thing not to have read the Playboys
in the lunchroom,
& after long discussions, said he didn't do it,

staying pure for his Tracy, at home
where he'd always meet her and the kid. And home now,
seeing how little sun's left,
like all the feisty stodgy sons he sleeps for the next day,
good 'n square-browed,
Shawny boy who's very happily husband-eager now to impress,

and by going straight into
the openhearth hell every time, to try make the world
happy & safe for his kid.
But it's always a fight between wife's satchels & rags,
bridegroom's toilet-cologne
and the pondscum of work. With his smokes lying where
he always dropped 'em,
in the car, crumpled beside the silver spats.

A Dirty Hymn

"Flowers will caper today," I hear a one god say,
dancing over the ashes,
& pod-heavy;

and a Sun awe-struck, way up there,
scalloped sides heaving,
will tear wide open to let the rain-heavy winds

come fumbling after.
For somewhere between the dance & soggy ashes,

—and forget the
stupid Dieu mon chevalier crap!—

& not a more sun-charged thing than any dreamy Tree,
yellow- tasselled,

is the hymn,

and never called by me the Writ of the 'holy mud' for nothing, either,

a hymn of baby sages,

and always culled from the prickliest shrubbery, always worm-pecked
& dry,

hymn to its dirty core.

JOHN B. LEE

2007-09-30T05:15:00.000-07:00

In 2005 John B. Lee was inducted as Poet Laureate of Brantford in perpetuity. The same year he received the distinction of being named Honourary Life Member of The Canadian Poetry Association. In 2007 he was made a member of the Chancellor’s Circle of the President’s Club of McMaster University. A recipient of over sixty prestigious international awards for his writing he is winner of the $10,000 CBC Literary Award for Poetry, the only two time recipient of the People’s Poetry Award, and 2006 winner of the inaugural Souwesto Orison Writing Award (University of Windsor/Black Moss Press). In 2007 he was named winner of the Winston Collins Award for Best Canadian Poem. He has well-over forty-five books published to date and is the editor of six anthologies including two best-selling works: That Sign of Perfection: poems and stories on the game of hockey; and Smaller Than God: words of spiritual longing.

What am I doing in a bookstore, I don’t read...

“...See the mind of beastly man
That hath so soon forgot the excellence
O his creation...”
Edmund Spenser, from “The Faerie Queen,” Book II, canto 87

These early adolescents
two boys and a girl
were estopelled
by the poetry shelves
lingering on those volumes
their fingertips tracing the spines
and I, being a poet
was flattered to think
how the young might admire
the secret interiors of verse
for there was a copy of Byron
and three remaindered Croziers
whose open Eros might wake in them
some prurient giggles
from the never-quite innocent
esurience of youth
to feel something slight as a peeled grape
or a thumb bruised peach
but they simply went
flashing on to the dryer regions
of history, hackling those big textbook pages
like the excitable feather ruffs of show birds
and then, the girl who seemed
the leader of this pack said
“What am I doing in a book store
I don’t read books, I don’t even like books!”
and the three
went suddenly tumbling and laughing out the door
like blood hounds on fox scent
hoiks! hoiks! I might have shouted following
shanks mare cantering or cock broom brushing the floor...
And I thought back for a moment
to an otherwise good dog I once owned
who in my absence
chewed the binding from my copy of Spenser’s Faerie Queen
I came home from school
to find her on the kitchen tile
gnawing the text to the gutter
holding the book in her fore paws like a red soup bone
and I am strangely consoled
by the knowledge of ink in her gut
as her teeth went ‘pricking on the plain’
salivating the binding as she swallowed poetry
backside first
the dog-ruined rump of that book still on my shelf at home
an endless monument
to dog thought and what a stupid life might make
of mortal meaning
when the wise are dead.

The Shadow Thief

The Shadow Thief

my neighbour is
stealing the shade from his house
where he climbs through dark health
to hurry a ruinous wind
and he smiles a strange smile
as limbs fall
to the winge of his wife
with her rope to the sky under gloom

then he runs the swirl of his thumb
on the set of his saw
to feel the sharp prune
in the ghost
of a quivering leaf

huge autumn
arrives on Octobering earth
like the wreck of a ship
against stone

and so he descends
from a vacancy absently red
like fire aging in ash
and he walks
to the size of his work
where it measures
its death on the earth
and he grips it
like faggots of fuel
barely feeling the tremulous leaf
where close heaven
lies losing its hush in the grass
like the bones of a grave
heaved to ground

The Last Photograph of My Father

in the haunted bedroom
where Laura will not sleep
for fear of ghosts
the midnight windows were shining
like antique shop mirrors
and I was wide awake
and ruffling through photographs
fluttering like startled hens
when I came across
the last image of my father

I was holding his thin hand
and he was plaster pale, pillow white
in the bleach-blue ruck of his hospital gown
almost ancient
like the casts of a bust an artist might make
and then set on a shelf in the dust

such a failure of studies
we are
to never quite look like ourselves
the multiple approximations
of gesture and pose all wrong
my father's hand in mine like low fruit
is breaking the stem
the form of my grip let slip
and shaping itself
to fecklessly buoyant refusals of life
as it is with the weakness of sleep
and the strength of a smouldering sleeve.

BECKY ALEXANDER

2007-09-23T05:08:00.000-07:00

Becky Alexander is a Cambridge, Ontario poet. Her work has been widely published and has won awards. She has five poetry collections and is the publisher of Craigleigh Press. Becky is a member of four
writers associations in Canada and the U.S.A., including the Cambridge Writers Collective. She won the 2007 Waterloo Regional Arts Council Award for Best Poetry.

BLACK MANTLE MOON

It was one of those nights
when the moon ran the sky
like a fullblown madam.

You were hot with a throb
that set your teeth, singed skin,
opened doors you¹d never pushed before.

Black clouds slid over red light and darkness
was deep enough to slice with a blade.
Wind off the harbour scorched ears, reddened eyes.

Laughter rang with unholy glee,
catcalls blended into the unclean heart of night,
and we swayed snakelike, a deep pulsing throng.

One of those nights when the moon bled the sky,
when no friend stood with any other,
and shuffling angels fanned the earth with black wings.

published in Ascent Aspirations anthology Dec. 2005.
,
(Accepted for publication in STREET, March 22, 2007.)

AFTER THE LEGEND

when the wind
recalls the hollow

of its
October voice

there is
that backlash bite

to
night air;

in the
pumpkin patch

round
sleepy heads

whisper into
the wind

crinkled ears
listen

for those
ghostly hoofbeats

just over
the hill

(Won HM in BYLINE MAGAZINE FALL CONTEST,January 6, 2005;
previously published by Tower, Hamilton, On, Canada, Nov. 22, 2005.)
(Won 1st H.M. Missouri State Poetry Society Summer Contest 2006,
category 5. Poet¹s Choice, Aug. 2006.)

A POEM TO QUESTION FREE WILL

Why do we write
our gluts
of love, war,
moon, sea
and a red wheelbarrow?

What of earthworms,
boils and rashes,
dandelions, potatoes . . .
the slaughterhouse of bolts and hammers,
. . . carcasses of cars
grassgrown in rusty meadows?

What surges, pounds our pulse
to consonant blends of
blood and triumph
cloud brightness
breeze blow
and the bloom of flowers?

What trigger pulls
our pens along ink-splotched treks?
'the thing to do'...
freed will ...
genes?

Or muses:
those scribes who punch our keys
with phantom fingers?

(published in Ascent Aspirations Premier Print edition 2005.)

MIKE FREEMAN

2007-09-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

Mike Freeman was raised in Dundas, Ontario. He writes poetry, short fiction and screenplays. His first full-length book of poems, Cigarette Salad, was published in the fall of 2006. His work has appeared in many literary magazines like Contemporary Verse 2 and Carousel and is currently featured in the latest issues of Kiss Machine, Misunderstandings, Rampike and The New Chief Tongue. He has appeared in his own segments of TVO’s book show Imprint and Bravo! News and can be seen on CityTV’s Speaker’s Corner performing his poems, He also hosts a weekly poetry reading series, Bibliopunk Poetry Podcast, on iTunes and at

www.bibliopunk.com

THE FOUR SAY-SO’S

I. SPRUNG!

The blue’s all sparrowed up.
The peaceful natters riverly.
Cedarish, the swaying
Cattish, the fence.
The garden? Pure tulipian.
Everything is sundayful.

II. SIMMER,

You skip across the water’s surface like a stone
suddenly freed from its own heavy thoughts.
Me plodding along the beach beside you,
a city still strapped to my back.
Seagulls burrow tunnels in air.
Your hair is a dirty-blonde breeze.
Mist encircles the rock
as your lips encircle my name.
Water rushes up to kiss you,
sun, embrace you
and you linger there to let them do so.
Sands beneath your feet
spilt from a broken hourglass.

III. FELL.

Fly away, Scarecrow! Let the crows roost.
Fall back! Fall back! You Army of Hours.
Heaven’s closed up shop with shutters of steel.
Leaves hemorrhage spectrums and trees explode.

These are the months that rhyme with “remember”.
Crumbling mementos of girls named April or May.
Time flicks his finger and nights fall like dominos.
Who will save us from the cold, dark harvest?

IV. WITHER?

The slumbering Earth abandons the fight
and buries her face in a pillow of snow.
She will not wake up
though clouds, tubercular, cough up blizzards
and fanatical winds holler angry rants.
Here life turns inward, exists as pure potential.
A dream of what this world could be—
a world where hope is green
and birds convert St. Francis.
April-starved habitué of frost-spangled windows,
quit your snow-blind gazing—look within.
The thing you seek is a seed inside you.
Springtime is already here.

COPING WITH THE WAR ON TERROR

Today they took away the tiny man
who lives inside my refrigerator.
(You know, the little guy who
turns the fridge light off and on.)
My neighbour tells me he’s
been called an Enemy Combatant.
And though we never met face-to-face
I’m gonna miss that shy little guy.
Now the fridge is always dark.
I can’t find my low-fat mayo.

THE GLASS HOUSE

I stand inside The Glass House, shaking hands with its owner. His hand is delicate and cold. I scan the room. I can’t understand how the house got its name; it looks just like a typical family home. The man senses my confusion and says, “It is difficult living in The Glass House—the walls, floors and ceilings all look normal but are actually made entirely of glass and the rooms are filled with furniture that is made of glass as well. Even so much as a loud noise could cause the whole thing to come crashing down, killing me and my family instantly.” He motions to me to sit down on the couch, cautioning me to be gentle. I slowly sink down into it and am surprised at how soft and pliable it is despite being made of glass. And so natural looking. All the while he shuffles around in padded slippers and barely talks above a whisper. He tells me he never leaves the house for fear that harm may come to his family and home if he is not there to stand guard over their fragile dwelling. A beautiful woman enters the room. The man introduces her as his wife. He hears a low groaning noise coming from deep within the house and excuses himself to investigate. I say to the woman, “It must be quite stressful living in The Glass House.” She leans in and whispers: “This house isn’t really made of glass. It is my husband who is made of glass. We had to lie to him. He could never handle the truth. This way he feels that he is protecting us and because he is so careful trying not to destroy the house, he never harms himself.” The man returns and I notice the red colour of his dress shirt is actually blood flowing beneath a paper-thin layer of glass skin. “False alarm,” he says and grins. I imagine what he would look like shattered: a jagged heap of shards and blood.

GRAVITY ZERO

She rose up into the air and the jilted earth let out a sigh.
She rose up and the almond scent of her skin filled the breeze, then faded like a song.
She rose up past telephone poles and rooftops of houses where the earth-bound hid.
She rose up sleeker than the sparrows that swirled around her like a jubilant cyclone.
She rose up, confounding Air Traffic Control with her unidentified, tiny, red blip.
She rose up and scrunched her toes as though the sky beneath were a fresh-mown lawn.
She rose up and with a swish of her fingers parted storm clouds like a plastic bead curtain.
She rose up, shooting through the ozone with a tangerine shower of sparks.
She rose up, past satellites and every cell phone down on earth rang out at once.
She rose up but remembered to politely wave goodbye...
The tide went out for half the world when she gently bumped her head against the moon.
Stars got caught in her weightless, dirty-blonde hair.

MY THREADBARE BLACK ARMBAND
“Never that which is shall die.”—Euripides

is is
& always will be is
is will never be was
even when is is was

when is is was
is is is!
& always will be will be
when will be is is
& is was

JOANNA M. WESTON

2007-09-02T05:56:00.004-07:00

Joanna M. Weston, M.A. has had poetry, reviews, and short stories published in anthologies and journals for twenty years. She has two middle-readers, ‘The Willow Tree Girl’ and ‘Those Blue Shoes’, in print; also ‘A Summer Father’, poetry, published
by Frontenac House of Calgary. Please read on for samples of her poetry. For more go to her website: http://www.islandnet.com/~weston/

FLIGHT DELAY

ponytail bald hands in pockets
they saunter run
drag luggage backpack
coat-slung weary

on night-dark window
their reflections pass
like unclaimed baggage
endlessly going nowhere

I watch a blank sky
waiting for one plane
not to Toronto Seattle
Fort McMurray Winnipeg
but over the mountain
to Victoria
five hours late

I eat nuts
drink water read
spectator to procession
of height weight
dress intent

the promenade
continues hour
by hour
cell-phoned jeaned
dyed hair bearded
short sleeved paunched
pacing the clock
into flight

REMEMBER WHO

voices bang
back and round the building
faces catch in crevices
names swing like cobwebs
I fumble to catch
a phrase from the past
while a smile
rises and fades
hands wave
and a memory slides
into my vocabulary
of forgotten people

THE DOMESTIC ZOO

each animal clamors
to be fed, stroked, heard

as I try to remember
whether they are snake, fox …

I write notes, stop to touch fur
notice thorned paw, fierce eye

run between vacuum cleaner
plums to be canned

and wonder which task
to complete first

BIRD-LIFE

I am tempted to lay my bones down
for starlings to read

to let my story become more than
a space between sparrows

but rather a patchwork
embroidered with blue jays

a cloud-space shot through
with a scavenge of gulls

a rising air-current
with an up-surge of eagles

and the swift fall
of a hawk’s dive

LOSING THE THREAD

our conversation moves
from stool to rocking chair
picks up trailing fingers

curls over one son’s head
and weaves arabesques of laughter
over the coffee table

until it drops into a cove
under the chesterfield
to be eaten by cats

NEW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

2007-07-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

POETRY SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Poems must be good. Other than that they can be long (within reason) or short, previously unpublished preferred but not strictly enforced. Simultaneous submissions ok (with acknowledgement). The guidelines have been relaxed to include submissions from those other than the dedicated inhabitants of these “mean streets”.

Payment for inclusion is one copy of the journal mailed to the destination of your choice. E-mail submissions preferred. ALWAYS include a brief bio AND mailing address. Please do not send more than 5 poems per submission.

SHORT FICTION SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Short fiction must be a maximum of 3,000 words and have a beginning, middle and end though not necessarily in that order. Please do not send more than 3 stories per submission.

ARTICLES/REVIEWS:

We accept submissions of poetry related for poetry issues and short fiction related for short fiction issue up to a maximum of 400 words.

**Submission does not guarantee publication.

SUBMISSION DEADLINES:

HAMMERED OUT #13:
deadline for poetry (surreal/abstract poetry) is OCTOBER 31/07
(for January 2008 release.)

HAMMERED OUT #14:
deadline for short fiction is MARCH 31/08
(for June 2008 release.)

THE ANNUAL SILVER HAMMER AWARDS/ANTHOLOGY:
deadline for poetry and short fiction is JUNE 30/08
(for September 2008 release.)

SUBSCRIBE:
$20/year for 3 issues - $8 for sample copy.

SUPPORT:

DONATIONS:
gratefully accepted, anytime (inquire about charitable receipts)

ADS:
reasonable rates…$25 for biz card size space, $60 for ½ page, other sizes and options (ie inserts) negotiable…

Back issues: some still available

**All prices include shipping.

Where can you get Hammered Out?

ARTS HAMILTON, BRYAN PRINCE,BOOKSELLER (Westdale), GREEN HERON BOOKS (Paris), GRIMSBY PUBLIC ART GALLERY, MCMASTER UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE (TITLES) OR BY MAIL OR E-MAIL ORDER:

Hammered Out,
C/O Box 89027, Westdale PO,
Hamilton, ON Canada L8S 4R5
hammeredout@cogeco.ca, www.hammeredoutlitzine.blogspot.com

ELLEN S. JAFFE

2007-07-15T04:26:00.000-07:00

Ellen S. Jaffe is a writer and poet living in Hamilton. She has published "Writing Your Way: Creating a Personal Journal"(Sumach Press, 2001), "Water Children,"a collection of poetry (Mini-Mocho Press, 2002), and "Feast of Lights," a young-adult novel (Sumach Press, 2006). Her poetry and short fiction have also been published in various journals, including, Hammered Out, CV2, Capilano Review, Kairos, and Fireweed. She has been a judge for Power of the Pen Literary Competition for young people, the League of Canadian Poets youth poetry prize, the Cambridge Writers Collective, and the Hart House (U. of Toronto) poetry competition. She won Second Prize in the 2006 Silver Hammer Awards and is twice winner of the Arts Hamilton Literary Awards. She has also received awards from the Cambridge Writers Collective, and the Tidepool Prize (2000).

Here are a couple of sports poems by Ellen:

OVERTIME

There has to be a poem somewhere in this hockey game,
especially since it’s the Maple Leafs,
and tickets won in a charity draw,
pink ribbons to fight breast cancer.
The incongruity of it all! I picture a face-off
between battle-scarred centres and wingers,
and battle-scarred mastectomy survivors,
fighting for their lives, laying their fate on the blue line.
But now it’s just me, the lady poet,
lost in the crowd at the Air Canada Centre in February.
I’m more of a baseball fan myself,
grew up with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the boys of summer,
loping leisurely compared to these men of mid-winter
speeding across the ice. They shoot, they score,
while halfway across the world,
people dodge bullets, not balls,
and gunshots sound louder than slapshots.
Even in downtown Toronto, blocks from the arena,
children are dying, not playing,
shooting up, not shooting goals.
We all pay penalties these days,
facing off against the unknown
as the game goes into overtime.
Suddenly it’s spring again in Ontario.
Late snow falls like lacy blossoms, and it’s time
once again for my mammogram, each breast
tried and tested. I win this round, but I’m never
home free. The clock’s ticking, our cells are time bombs,
even a casual plan can end in disaster, or sudden death.
There has to be a poem here somewhere, tied up in pink ribbon,
sweetened with maple syrup tapped
fresh this spring among the fallen leaves.

(published in “Water Children”, Mini Mocho Press, Hamilton, 2002).

FATHER’S DAY, 2005:
Watching the Blue Jays, at the Stadium formerly known as Sky Dome
(a sonnet of sorts).

My father never went to a ball game,
At least, not when I knew him.
We listened on radio, watched on TV, safe in
the comfort of home; we cheered for different home-teams –
New York Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers, rarely the Giants.
Only child, a girl, I didn’t play, but learned all the rules,
enjoyed the slow, loping rhythms, the cool
jazz of strikes, hits, balls, curving around those diamonds –

“Ya gotta have heart!”

We measured time in innings, not in hours.
The long and short of it is, the last
time I saw him, he counted the score

on his fingers; numbers dead on, though language was past.
Now I sit watching the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre,
nine years and more later,
look up at the dome of the sky, hold him fast.

(Published in Parchment magazine, # 14, 2005-06)

CHRIS PANNELL

2007-07-07T06:53:00.000-07:00

Chris Pannell has two poetry books in print: Under Old Stars and Sorry I Spent Your Poem, published by Seraphim Editions and Watershed Books, respectively. He won the HARAC poetry book award for his collection Three Poetry Broadsheets in 1997. He ran the New Writing Workshop at Hamilton Artists Inc. from 1994 to 2006. He serves on the board of Hamilton Artists Inc., the organizing committee for the Hamilton reading series Lit Live, and the board of the annual gritLiT Literary Festival. His most recent poetry manuscript is entitled Driven.

FOUR VIGNETTES FROM DEVONSHIRE
I’m eighty-two now. It’s a badge of honour.
— Doris

1.
Aunt Doris parts her
regency-style striped curtains,
with urns, crests of ferns,
to show me the Devon hills,
but when I turn from the glass, the room is full of
lace sheers, crucifixes, medieval Christs.

I see the hairdresser every week
Jane’s done it for donkey’s years
I can’t raise my hands to set it in curlers
My hair’s almost all white and limp, you see.

Her tremulous voice belies her steel spine,
because I’m here, she sips her wine,
to keep me, the visitor from Canada, from running off
on my own, these evenings, though I have nowhere
to go.
She’s learning again to socialise,
to turn the TV off, or at least to not doze off
during The Weakest Link.

When I’m gone she’ll keep the half-bottle another week,
out of curiosity perhaps, the idea of drinking by herself,
too much like being sinful in this narrow flat.

She continues with the quiz shows, soaps,
and snooker championships —

Christopher is repeating
himself. Does he think I’m deaf?
He’s always turning down the TV volume.

She wakes, startled.

He’s still here. He’s saying something about
his broken camera, about buying another
with which to take my picture.

His accent twangs like a guitar, like it was 1958
and he had just been born. Then my brother John went
away to Canada.

2.
Doris gives me a wink and a furtive smile,
then rails at the television commentator for jinxing
her favourite player —

Oh Gerry, last year’s champion has a particularly difficult
approach to the yellow ball.
I don’t think he’ll be able to sink it with this shot.
she calls this
“Putting the mockers on him.”

Daily worries soon intrude.
The new toaster tends to burn bread on one side
no matter how low the setting.

If I show Christopher’s new book of poems to Father Pat
what will he think? Even Christopher has said it contains
some bad words. And will Christopher be all right in church,
does he take communion in Canada, I wonder? I dare not ask.
Will it rain tomorrow? I should have reserved a car for him to rent.
We could have driven everywhere, no matter the weather.
Is he enjoying himself?

3.
A plane tree blooms on the boulevard
and at night, the sky seems grey and
leaves of ruddy-red
hang like a thousand smudges
under street lamps,
to light the avenue of a stranger’s dream.

I go to Mass, in the role of an atheist singing
his gratitude to God, with
this community of the pretty comfortable,
the rarely tempted, the fully diversified.

Outside, Doris introduces me
to Father Pat and when I speak of poetry
his eyes light up; he asks Doris to bring my book next time.
I know she won’t; she’ll say I forgot to give her a copy.
She’ll hide the books I leave behind, when he visits her.
He blesses me.

4.
After the Second World War,
my mother’s and father’s families dispersed
and uncles and aunts vanished into the world —
before I had a chance to meet them, they had turned
to settlement, the habits of new lands.
Birthday cards ceased and Season’s Greetings came
late or not at all. Doris sent cards for years without reply.

At five to nine, back in my guest flat, loneliness shows me
the ticking clock, a spider in the window.

Dear Janice,
I want to accompany this postcard,
be there when you open your mailbox,
to have you find me inside. Or at least this five-star photograph
of what Devon would look like if it was not October
and raining every day.

Dark pools under parked cars,
the oil of this age,
everything resting on a rusted
minor key.

STAN WHITE

2007-07-01T04:51:00.000-07:00

"self portrait"
by Stan White

Images & poetry copyright Stan White.

Stan White is a photographer who has had a lifelong interest in three-dimensional imaging. His images are derived from original stereographs. He has written non-fiction all his life and more recently poetry and short stories. He has published two books of poetry, has been published in anthologies and in the literary press. He is retired with his wife in Brantford. Stan is one of the three judges for The 2007 Silver Hammer Award/Anthology.

SONNET TO ADOLESCENCE

The age that wakes the woman in the girl
Turns his spring’s fancy leaves to golden
Summers fall and winter’s time, beholden
To that sweet stammer, dance and whirl
Of youth, of awkward puberty, with talk
Of all the sonnets’ provenance to prove.
Shy talk before the ease of later love,
Boy bewitched by comma-curves and curl,
Girl boy-bedevilled by un-girlishness.
Each to each inclined before they knew
The wolf that drives the ram and tames the ewe,
Yet nothing gave except the time of day.
Fumble, all he can remember, fumble.
She, his lame attempts, propensity to mumble.

"country walk"
by Stan White

IN A TRAMP'S TIME

Rain, rain and on the rain’s
sad-sodden moor
he breathes the breath of clouds.
and in the weathers’ raw

and watered mouth
sighed bacon-sizzle sound
of day-drool day,
wringing its metaphor

in tears from summer
writing winter’s rain.
As this Northumberland’s
December draws

unsheltered miles;
not ditch nor even hedge
not hint of time
of any century, for sure,

from out the drizzle day’s
mist-mizzle night,
he falters on the oddments
of the Roman wall

turns west for Banna,
makes for Birdoswald
- warmth, the hostel line
and sweet furmety.

THE BLUE NIGHT LEAVING

Five is the hour
for the want of silence;

where the baritone bullfrog,
at the hint of light,
lows, “no… no… no.”

and over the wood, in scissor’d song,
a hundred birds in a frenzy guess
at the prodigal sun’s return

and the indeterminate sounds
of the preyed and the preying
have left in the play of night

and undisturbed,
in customary themes,
the poet dreams,
wasting another dawn
for the want of words.

BLACK CAT

The spinning coin’s temptation
- tail or head,
impotent upon a preference left unsaid.
Wanting, is prerequisite to chance;
Need, the primal mover of its dance.
Man’s friend, foe or familiar.
Yet he deems
an awesome power
upon this arbiter of dreams.

WORDS OF TREES

Out of the intricacies of seed,
as laughter, convolutions rive
through rough bark bruise and scrape
the god of oak, the first noel of yew,
the swing and easy bend
of wind-wave willows
sip the nectarine of dreams
and so the hands of fingers walk the sky
a parody of downfall trial and ring of year
a rising nature from the soft earth to the sun
all in the patience of a stand-still time.

"Hummer at Gloxinia"
by Stan White

Gregory Monteith

2007-06-24T05:15:00.000-07:00

Gregory Monteith is a writer of poems, stories, travel articles, a play, and a novel. His first collection of poetry, Haeretica, was published in China in 2006. His poems have been published in Hammered Out, Street, and online at www.ttrn.com. His poem, "These Words", was nominated for a Hamilton Literary Award in 2006. Born in Hamilton, having graduated from McMaster University in 2003, Gregory has spent the last three years writing,teaching, and traveling in Europe, North Africa, and Asia. He recently completed Teachers College at Brock's Hamilton campus and is currently teaching summer school outside of Hong Kong. Haeretica is available at Bryan Prince Bookseller, Mixed Media, Shady Grove, Barone Books, and The Book Cellar in Hamilton, Chapman Books in Dundas, the Green Room in Cambridge, and Fanfare Books in Stratford, Ontario. Gregory may be contacted by email at gregorymonteith@hotmail.com

WILD FLOWER

From the woods I pulled you,
Wild bud amid the weeds,
To the garden in my yard
I brought you,
Offered new soil
Black and moist,
Fertile for the faithful,
A sunny place in the corner,
Where I could watch you
From my morning window,
Write poems of you on sunless days,
Draw pictures of you under clearer skies,
Metaphors to elevate,
Colours brighter than human eyes.

Your bloom came as a curtain reveals,
Showed me inside your fresh-coloured core,
Your fragrance enlightening,
And the soft skin of your petals,
Sun and dew-filled pores.

Wildflower,
You flowered in my garden.

When the rains came
And the winter froze,
The soil tired and hardened,
Soon to fill with snow,
I pulled you from my garden,
Trying to save your roots,
Having thought them stronger,
Mislead the time through.

I emptied a shelf,
Found a place for you,
Until the spring could come,
When I would open the window
And watch you bring the light through.
But I was too late,
The season had changed
We'd left too much
Back in those wilder plains.
I'd expected more than you could give,
And when left wanting,
Still asked for more, too much,
For this was not your home,
Your garden,
Where you could thrive untouched.

Flower, born wild,
I gave you a home,
I gave you a hell,
Reach now beyond my window's witness,
And may these roots hold you well.

II

I plot to replace my garden
With oceans perhaps
Or sculptures of stone,
One place for the seasonless,
Filled with my own.
No graves to dig,
Or petals to unfold,
Without blossoms to regret,
Mourning their momentary hold,
Sapping my attention
With their dependent tendrils.
A place where I wouldn't have to free them,
From the walls they needed me to build,
Leave the gardens of beauty to the wild,
Where the flowers belong to themselves,
Where I but pass among them,
Return to my yard,
And my own deeper well.

Hades,
Seek not your redemption
In a Proserpine,
You are the king of these emboldened depths,
Not a slave to dependent kind.
Release your once sweet Eurydice
It's not for you to leave her behind.
The myths that enlighten and drive
Are not subject to season or time,
So I learn from them,
And keep my throne in the fore,
Home to the persecuted outcasts,
Where my edicts aren't ignored.
And I look to my many faces for advisors,
Rather than lost loves of yore.

In my garden I bend the seasons at will,
No place for you to grow,
The seeds of my shaping time,
Are but for me to sow.

DIASPORA

At what point
Do fingerprints disappear
From all the objects
Collected over a lifetime.

Do the prints age,
Do they erode,
With our bodies.

All the things
No longer thinging,
He left behind
For us to mix together
In boxes,
Hidden along back walls
Of garages,
Sheds and attics,
Making random
What he had placed
Carefully on shelves,
Telling stories of where and when
He'd accrued them.

Forgotten some stories,
Know others too well,
Making junk of his treasures.

Left behind,
For our dust,
And our rust,
For the more hospitable insects,
The great collectors
of our forgottens
and waste.

Garage sales,
Auctions,
Sold cheaply,
Prices like giving it away,
Only cheaper.

You've given away his fingerprints,
You've washed your own hands.
Pristine,
Printless,
Crystal waters,
Without fish.

He gave these objects life,
Fingerprints of their own,
Identity,
Movement,
Purpose,
Care.
Now they are thingless
Without him.

Now we have buried him,
Object
of our affection.

THE RATIONALIST

Before the history is written,
Before nostalgic monuments
Of ideal youth days,
A raw mosaic
Of hurt moments and memories,
Shared years lost amid the emergency.
And now,
There is hurt no longer,
Nothing hurts as it should.

Beyond the pain
The idea remains clear,
The purpose feels not,
Survive by moving on,
Passing those who cry
For what is lost.

Examining the specimen
In a clean white coat,
The package labeled "loved".
Her pain immeasurable
Has left her upturned,
Slighted.
Turning her gently once more,
Laying her down on each side,
A mound of flesh,
Flavoured with blood and salt tears.

Circling the table,
The altar of sacrifice,
To gain all perspectives.
She breathes in and out,
She curves lusciously,
But the purpose remains clear,
The ideal breathes not,
Her time is served.

To understand what makes people feel,
The insecurities,
Doubts,
Regrets,
Reddening eyes,
Reddening the chart,
A rush to hypothesize,
Impatient to move ahead
With the verdict.

These people are images
That age and disappear,
The ideals are ageless altars,
Unanswerable,
Drawing the sacrifices
Of the hollow.

Call him empty,
Call him robotic,
Call him emotionless,
Call him cold and monstrous
And whatever makes sense to you,
But don't call out to him,
For he's in a meeting
With Adolf Schicklgruber of the avant-garde.

Add your findings to the report
For analysis and debunking,
But flowers will remain food,
The river's flow harnessable energy,
The faithful, having a reason.
The ideals inhuman and eternal.

The ideal reaching beyond the needy grasp,
Verdict of the self,
Beyond the trial,
Self-imposed exile.

Sylvia Barta

2007-06-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

Sylvia Barta lives in Fonthill, Ontario. She belongs to the Niagara branch of the Canadian Authors' Association. Her poetry has appeared in The Saving Bannister, (she won their contest in 2001) Grey Borders, Hammered Out, and Synapse Magazine. This month she won the Sault. Ste. Marie Poetry Contest. In December 2006, she and five Niagara writers launched a collection of poems about women’s lives entitled The Price of Eggs. The book is available for $15.00 plus postage at sylviabarta@cogeco.ca

PAJAMAS

She is cozy in her cot
in the kitchen of the shack eight
jam the second room. Glare

of bare bulb dangling
from stained ceiling wakes
her; covers slipped; naked
chest exposed; she squints.

Dad straddles chair placed
near bed; chin supported
on one hand; stares at
budding breasts.

Dark eyes—same look as
neighbour’s cat watching
baby birds
in apple tree. But
astonishment too
—a kind of awe.

Thinks she understands
—been bushwhacked also by
these guerilla growths.

Feigning sleep—wishing she had
pajamas—she turns her back to him.

The chair scrapes; he groans as
he rises to continue his journey

to the outhouse.

PALADINS

The truck wheels snarl
as she leaps out my hands snatch
her skirt and she is
safe.
Glaring at the ripped ruf-
fle of her birthday dress
draped round her
knee,
my sister is not pleased,
(she's only three).

Serotonin spills flood her
brain at twenty with Voices and Vill-
ains and Halidol is Mr.
Clean at no extra cost a
costume of slack-
ened lip and rigid gait gaz-
ing into her mirror
my sister is not pleased Mr.
Clean drowns in the toilet she
goes on the lam
lies low in a cave miles and years deep
till fire devours the tasty building
next door lions licking two-by-fours and crunch-
ing walls she listens to their hungry tongues
YOUR BIG SISTER IS IN DAN-
GER YOUR BIG SISTER - DANGER
thumbs to a nearby town phones me at dawn.

My Paladin, bleached by time
remains at her post as
precisely-placed coins glare
from furniture faces,
and T.V. growls low,
in her one-room-drug-free realm.
She removes the dimes,
disarms one chair for company.
Tempered by rules of refinement,
I make my humble offerings,
non-violent videos, Gregorian chants.

Sometimes she's gracious,
sometimes the bridge is up.

SATIRIC DANCER, 1926

.. Andre Kertesz, 1894 - 1985.

That’s my mother-in-law on the wall.
A Catherine wheel of limbs spins
around a dazzling grin perched
above the collar of a costume
which sleeks her saucy torso black.
Satin shoes tap the air,
point out the headless naked man
who twists away from the love seat
where she’s flopped to pose for Andre
in the style of Beothy (the sculptor)
whose Parisian floor,
her carefree fingers flick.
She saved her tears for us
at the cottage in Canada
where duvets and pillows
smothered the arms and legs,
suffering head averted
from sunshine and family,
focused on the torment
of the tic douloureux,
spawned by the butcher
who extracted her grin.
Her life spun out on couches, beds, pills,
till she cut the thread.
When Kertesz died, her picture soared
to market aerie and hatched college for grandchildren
she never knew.
My son displays her poster in his condo.

THE CELLO

That autumn the girl went crazy
her mother urged her to take up cello.
An angel practised in the lamplight;
golden hair and anorexic limbs
embraced the humming wood.

The mother ignored the heavy make-up
and the costumes the girl wore
to do homework at the table
in front of the window because
she didn’t know about the boys outside.

The cello crooned till Christmas,
lulling Mother, soothing Mother,
until the boys came inside
through the heating ducts,
taunting the girl as she sobbed
and crawled across the floor.

A saviour from Eli Lilly
arrived in white
—bearing silence.

The cello slouches in a corner
draped in black.
“An unforgiving instrument,”
the daughter says.
“Unless you’re perfect it sounds ugly.”

Daniel Rajala

2007-06-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

Daniel Rajala was born in Port Arthur, Ontario (now Thunder Bay) and grew up in Campbell River, B.C. where he graduated from High School. He attended the Vancouver School of Art from 1973 to 1978; graduated with a Diploma in Painting and did a Post Graduate year with Don Jarvis. The first poem he had published was 'Last Dance with Cocaine' in the Minus Tides magazine out of Courtenay, B.C. in 1996. He did volunteer work at the Carnegie Centre in downtown Vancouver for a number of years; had many poems published in their newsletter and his poem "Diamonds' in an anthology by Paul Taylor, 'Heart of the Community.' He started writing books of poetry when he was living up on Grouse Mountain from 1998 to 2002. A member of the 'West End Writers Club' he has written 23 self-published books of poetry since then and has had three books of poetry published by Joe Ruggier and Multicultural Books, the most recent being 'Ferry Crossings.' He currently lives in Nanaimo, B.C. where he is a naturalist and nudist; one who sees streaking as the dancing of the spirit and inspiration for much of his poetry.

ANNABELLE

Annabelle clothes herself in
the finest leather and lace
and never wants to show you
what colour underwear she wears.
Annabelle has a big heart that
goes out to the jugglers and clowns
and helps the children of the street.
Annabelle hides a cruel side from people;
a Raggedy Anne doll with pins in it.
A broken China Doll with pieces saved
in the pockets of her illustrious grace.
Annabelle dances for the old men in
the hallways of a haunted hotel
wearing the twelve days of Christmas
on her beautiful and artful feet.
Annabelle is a light that shines in the city
as she makes her way home past
all the shadows that jump out in the night.

2,000 FEET ABOVE

Two thousand feet above the earth and
The hot, sweaty hotel room where I'm
On a raging bull doing all the cocaine.
All the crashed cars on the expressway;
The crazy entanglement of human lives
And all of the battered dreams we have.
Two Thousand feet above the earth and
Those acres of Hell I had to go to again;
Summer heat rising from the sidewalks,
The hi-rises turning to huge pillars of salt,
The fireworks above English Bay to watch
And the worlds of colour in the black skies.
Two thousand feet above the earth there
Are the wild huckleberries to pick and eat,
Gravity to hold hands with as a friend.
I'm starting to get a little taste of paradise
With a big orange moon smiling at me
And it was the best damn cup of coffee yet.

DIAMONDS

When there is no love
It can break your heart,
Makes you go completely
OUT OF YOUR MIND.
It makes you walk for miles
And miles and wears you out.
Sometimes in life you can
lose your family and home
And even your best friend.
Love can take all of that pain
Buried deep within the soul
Like big lumps of coal
And turn them into diamonds
THAT SPARKLE AND SHINE.

THE BLACK HOLE

That old refrigerator is
making so much noise at
night it is running my life.
A motor that just won't stop
going along with its routine,
with rumbling and rattling
every five minutes or more.

A modern convenience that is
rude and it's ruining my sleep.
It took me a while to figure it out
sometimes all I have to do
is turn it off and disconnect.
That is when I have peace and
freedom to travel with my dreams.

I got a phone call one night
coming from some place like Hell
with all kinds of alarming noises;
the kind Fax machines make.
I could hear someone shouting in
the background trying to get some
message from there, out to me.

There's a big hole in the parking
lot that they never seem to be
able to get rid of and there's
always water in it and I tell them,
"It's a black hole and that's where
all life comes from and people have
gathered since the beginning of time."

Bernice Lever

2007-06-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

Bernice Lever, a techno idiot of the first rank stumbling about the e-world and searching for a reader, asks "Are you here today?" She has been infected with writing poems since Grade 9 when her 2 poems appeared in Rossland High annual. Now writing on Bowen Island, BC, after a long exile to Ontario and other countries, she is still reading, editing and writing as she "gets high" on words. She has read poems on 5 continents and is an active member of writing organizations. Her main prose book is "The Colour of Words," and her 8th book of poems, "Never a Straight Line" is by Black Moss, 2007. More info at

http://www.colour of words.com/

LARKS

Little things aren't important;
they hardly create any G.N.P.;
some don't eat / some don't sleep
yet their effects are catastrophic
more than tropical, even volcanic.

red lipstick on his collar
used condoms in her purse
red numbers on bank balances
red buttons for bomb crater curse

Little things aren't important;
they rarely create works of art
none can smile / none can sing
yet their uses foil truces
evaporate, vaporize life's juices.

Bacteria in flasks
viruses in canisters
personal land mines in parks
atomic warheads land on their marks

Yeah, hit the babies' eyes!

Little things aren't important.

SIGNATURE MOVES

She in black stockings,
snug fitting, tan sweater dress,
reads her paperback silently
and slides her left foot softly,
slowly in and out
of her dark leather clog,
stroking one ebony knee
and thigh against its mate,

sending shivers up
to moist mouths - hers
and others , furtively watching
from plastic patio chairs
in this cool fall air,
this small area warmed
by this simple female friction
responding to her book's plot or pacing
as she nods black bangs
at each carefully turned page
unaware of what riotous
emotions she is unleashing

(published -- QUILLS, Lust issue, 2004)

TOUCH

Somehow you live on your surfaces:
textures are all;
sensations everywhere heightened:
a fine cross hair;
colours sharpen:
a kaleidoscope tunnel, then blur
blending one into each other;
footsteps and waterfalls
echo your heartbeats
as you breathe
in one another.

SOL

Our two-faced friend is
cancer searing
our blond northern sisters,
while scorching crops
of southern brothers.

We raise our faces towards
your glowing hopeful dawns;
we bow in praise
to your blazing sunsets,
thankful for another
of your days.

O perpetual radiation,
we cannot control you;
O terrible necessity
with earth, air and water
for our bodies;
Outliving us all, yet

not feeding our soul,
you cannot control
our spirit.

OmahaRisinG

2007-05-26T06:07:00.000-07:00

OmahaRisinG

Previous incarnations have included painter,
firefighter, amateur kickboxer, gardener,
postal worker and superintendent.

OmahaRisinG last featured in Hamilton in 2003.
He will refeature at LiT LiVe, this time on June 3rd.

In 2001, Omaha ran the weekly series POETICA
in Toronto, where he lives and plays poetry.

He plans to be fully published by the end of
this decade, after which he intends to get
out of poetry. In the meantime, he has
produced an interim book that will be
revealed at his upcoming feature.

omaha@axxent.ca

CATWALK

statue entranced
statue entrancing
parts the reception
teflons innuendo eyes
your job: be beautiful

he sees superplatinum
aggressive feminine
drag-queen female
parading hips
small enough to be male
come-fuck-me hipswing
flashes wrap-around skirt
hints its nothing
gush of long legs
creams his open face
see-through blouse hides
the revelation: perfect breasts
champagne glass, no droop
nipples desperately erect

androgyny short hair
he doesn’t care
wants it all
blows words
over his cocktail
you catch the drift
with a vulva-red pout
drop it at your feet
make it beg for attention

he will never know
that slomo shun
sliding sunworth
as you tupperware
those loose feelings
taking them out
only when it suits you
whenever there's need
of some alien heat

DAS KAPITAL

uppity proletariat strikes
the heart of a reason
wrests rightful nests
from fist intransigence
shoved into pockets
of despoiling history

sweatback pride rides
despair destroys grope
grip slips the tenuous
holds to hope
familiar necessity
devolves as urgency

other-side shit
moray-eel mouth
chattering ass holed
with the fox with its ilk
selfrighteous entitlement
slicked its legitted premise

words are mind, given a life
time to unmake the old con
flicked in the face of those
who buy it, eat it, suffer it

FLUTTERBY

déjà you defines view
bottle hair crowns pyrite personality
you play your flower across the bar
drop nectar in ears
of needs too-long sublimated
insinuate the possibility of pollination

attention starved
you probe for nourishment
in a gathering of eagerness
yet recoil with leper civility
dismissive of a subtle touch
hand innocently gestured

you hunger on
drift to another field
dream of something edible

MONEY SHOT

god-damn insane
now a certainty
if not before
knowable
not: climax
jacked elation
you went down
to kiss the ground
arm still outstretched
no longer to jerusalem
hand quarter turned
away from the nazi
paradise squared
birthday gifted
never again
in [y]our mind
execution hood
bushed citizenry
stars and stripes
military machine
chained justice
worth proven
videotapes
behead
you

POETICA

style is what words wear
when words worth attentive eyes
present themselves to the world
where importance looks good
but more important: potent
good looks better only
when voice sounds, sends
linguism beyond tried and trite

the bespoke maker bespeaks
a fly standard flown with edge
stitched laborious in syllables
fit and respective of breaks
legitimating lines, stanzas
signifying an art yearning
to habit an ear burning
for just the right stroke

custom-made poetics engage
to marry art to expectation
delivering transcendence
to users zonked on sonics
an addiction of consequence
beyond mere paginal fluffery
as it powers past its past
rocketing its keepers

Michael Lee Johnson

2007-05-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago, IL. after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Viet Nam era. He is a freelance writer and poet heavily influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, & Leonard Cohen. Currently self-employed, with a previous background in social service areas, he has a B.A. degree in sociology, worked on a Masters Program in Correctional Administration, started a pre-Phd program & quit. He took a creative writing course in university on a pass/fail basis...he failed. A prolific writer, he has had many poems published and has many more pending publication. He is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc; Directory of American Poets & Fictions Writers. For more information go to:

http://www.pw.org/directory/

You can contact the poet by e-mailing poetryman@walla.com.

CARICATURE OF AN EARLY PLANTER
(Edmonton, Alberta Canada)

He is a gardener
with a spyglass.
With an ice pick
cavities are chopped
out of the earths torpid
mouth, dry seeds are packed
in with frostbitten fingertips.
He rakes his yard clear
of all snow in winter
so green blades of grass
will pop through frozen
earth.

He will weed, thin his garden early.
He is a realist; he writes poetry also.

EDMONTON STREETS

Dec. 23rd,
alone,
40 below zero,
he died a cold
winter death
on 105th St.
near North
Saskatchewan River.
In his steel casket
buried beneath
rooted, frozen earth,
squirms the
lifeless breathing
of winter.

UNKNOWN POET FROM RUE MONTPELIER

I warned you darts with advise
strong words tripping over emotions
like an imbecile -
so you think you’re Leonard Cohen
loving some naked Nancy in a cluttered
matchbox apartment overlooking
European culture simulated,
above some obscure, narrow
Montreal street?
For your information,
straight poetics from insanities Almanac,
Leonard Cohen died years ago
in a twisted pickle poem he
entitled “Narcissism.”
Do you & your welfare lover
desire to be the 2nd generation,
deceased , unnoticed, unheard of,
unwarranted for failure artists
inside this thin, onion skinned wall
dingy with your dreams?
I warned you darts with advise,
tapering off with your impotence.

REVOLUTIONARY SNOW

Poem dancer,
Russian yellow in revolutionary white snow.
Am I really Yuri Zhivago
Hidden in this funeral procession
Held high by paw bearers, looking at my dead father?
Lifting him up stairs into the Russian Orthodox Church?
Only for the sake of snowflakes & the pouring
of aged Vodka on the casket?
Only for the growth of rebellious youth,
the sweet aging of wrath?
Does a somber poet lose his flavor
Of word and dance & turn to medicine-
like children finding meaning
in racing around rooms and mazes
holding hands and losing direction
before their breath stops, the punctuation dies?

Poem dancer Russian yellow in white snow-
50/50 the poet dies alone.

BIPOLAR

Awake
night
light
jungle
twisted branches of thought.
One character linked to the
insane personality of the other.
Bipolar in a universe of singles.
The fear of aloneness hearing
cracks in your walls; the joy
jumbling into the municipal pool
in Hillside, Illinois at 3 am.
Bipolar, witched, and alone.
Late to work staring at your
employer dart split eyes.
Tattered with memories dancing
on the tablecloth with glee
slapped on the face with a teaspoon
just to feel the sadness leave.
Bipolar, witched, and alone.
Seldom ever hear happiness
that doesn’t sound like a fire
siren camping in your eardrums.
Meds crank up & crank down;
moods follow the meds
or do meds follow the moods?
Personal wars echo words in my ears.
Even during silent times the night
roars like street jungles.
Bipolar, witched, and alone.

f.ward

2007-05-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

portrait of f.ward by Martin Verrall

f.ward's poetry has been included in many journals and anthologies over the years and she has won several awards, most notably second place in the national People‘s Poetry Award (1999)and most recently the award for best single poem at the 2006 Art Hamilton Literary Awards. She is the author of three solo collections of poetry; "side effects", "Life & Ledger" and "The Writer Seems Unaware…" and editor/publisher of Hammered Out, a literary journal based in Hamilton. She is also a visual artist and you can view some of her work at

www.theward.ca

In honour of Mother's Day...

RATS

as soon as she wakes up
she asks me
"is it tomorrow, today?"
because last night i told her
i could fix Spiderman’s hand
"tomorrow, when i get the right glue"
(i'd already forgotten)

then on the way to
daycare & work
we hear Smashing Pumpkins
on the car radio

"in spite of my rage
i’m still just a rat in a cage"

she likes it, sings along
but gets it wrong

"in spite of my age"

at the daycare
i wave good-bye
through wired glass
watch her turn away
to join the waiting group
of four year old
rats

STICK LIFE

she was telling me
about her day
at school
& how at recess
in the playground
the little boy
with the green jacket
who is mean
stomped
on the special stick
she had planted
in the ground
& laughed

"life is cruel"
i said

distracted as usual
the poet/mother
that i am

"life is broken"
she replied

daughter
of the poet/mother
that she is

A PINK GUN FOR GIRLS

my four year old daughter
begged
for this galaxy pistol
hanging in the toy section
of the dollar store

there she was
snow white butt end
curving sensuously
up to a candy floss shade
of trigger
attached
to a hot pink 8 shooting
translucent barrel
(all the better to see that
pumping action)

she came
with an extension
a silencer sort of thing
lace patterned in white
with red tip

all this
for a buck

she was
made in china
packaged in france
& easily sold
to us north americans
except for the fact that:

i am
a politically correct
conscientious citizen/mother
who is supposed to be disgusted
by such merchandise
& therefore dragged
my sceaming child
away from the offending item
& over to the candy isle
where we bought
a big sucker

for pacification

i snuck back later
& bought it
for myself
(for educational
& research purposes only
of course)

i had to know
if the silencer
really worked

NAKED & THUMBLESS

every time we'd go
to the variety store
around the corner
she'd ask me to buy her
the camouflage
combat outfit
complete with
little black machine gun
made for 12” dolls
(like Barbie)
& i'd say
“no guns…no way!”
but she kept on asking
until this past
saturday morning
when her stepfather
took her over there
to give me a break
& i forgot to warn him
so now Barbie’s
tiny plastic thumb
has snapped off
from being jammed
against the trigger
once too often
by four year old fingers
& my daughter’s
all upset
blaming her stepfather
(in some convoluted way)
& whining at me
while Barbie lies
naked & thumbless
with all the others
in a cold plastic heap
including a
handless Spiderman
& a
headless Harry Potter
all silently waiting
for Crazy Glue

JEFFREY GRIFFITHS

2007-05-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

THE SUBURBS OF BURLINGTON 1971

5:30 A.M.

The kitchen light shone
through my bedroom door
a yellow stripe across my bed
my father at the table
a cigarette burning in the ashtray
his hands, tattooed
wrapped around a cup of coffee

not the middle of the night
like it seemed
the hum of the electric clock
the faint whistle
of my father breathing through his nose
he looked at me
I shut my eyes

he worked at the auto plant
hoisting motors with a crane
repetitive hell

VANDAL

He told me once
while drinking
and I believed him
that he was going to sail
around the bottom of South America
like Magellan
I knew Magellan
from my “Breastplates and Buckskins” history book
I pictured him on a schooner
sails bloated by wind
pelted by rain
I worried until my stomach burned

that night
I smashed a neighbour’s picture window
they came out with flashlights
I was four feet away
stretched out in their garden
dark and still
to hear their rage
the woman cried
her husband held her
he searched the yard over her shoulder
I stayed in the soil
listened to them sweep glass
bang in a piece of plywood
I was happy not to move
no one knew where I was
vandal
that’s what I did
I would have gotten “A”
my effort

VERIFICATION

The impala
parked at a distorted angle
like he pulled in and kept on going
to turn in circles until he ran out of gas
reaction time
numbed by booze
half cut, half in the bag, looped
smashed, fall down drunk
the crooked car is my clue
and his mirrored sunglasses
like a bad sheriff

DOWNSTAIRS

I beat him at snooker
in our dark-paneled rec-room
a fish tank on a bench by the dryer
one side shows behind the bar
like a surf and turf restaurant
his own game
he told me to practice
always practice
never spotted me points
played his best
(he practically grew up in god-damn pool hall)
until I won
I got cocky, I suppose
I bowed in my stomach as he swung the cue
like a bat
“you’re crazy,” I yelled
backed against his collection of beautiful empty liquor bottles
“Beefeaters”
“5-star”
the tall “Black Velvet” cylinders
all over the house
storing children’s prized possessions
a “Crown Royal” leaned against me
if I moved it would crash on the floor
he racked up a new game
the guinea pig squealed in the workroom
safe in the dark
“you wanna play?” he said.

HOLIDAYS

“Joe the Bearcat”
“The Dutchman”
“Big Jerry”
and the inevitable “Red”
the only names that I knew for my father’s friends
our annual camping trip
they drank whisky from different coloured metallic cups that my mother had brought for the kids
tents sat in a giant puddle of water after a thunderstorm.
the men discussed the mess
the women took us to the pavilion
when we came back
the tents were still in the water
our station wagon gone
so were my father and his pals
my mother cried while she hung wet sleeping bags over a rope

Jeffrey Griffiths lives in Hamilton Ontario. His wife, 2 kids, dog, four birds and tropical fish all support his creative side by allowing him ten minutes a week to write. His short fiction and poetry have been published in Hammered Out, Front and Centre, The Nashwaak Review, The Puritan, Saucyvox, Litbits, and Nuvein.

THE 2007 SILVER HAMMER AWARDS

2006-10-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

The Silver Hammer will now become an annual full arts issue accepting visual art, poetry and short fiction. Entry fees will apply but all those who submit (successful or not) will receive a copy of The Silver Hammer Anthology. Entry fees are $10 per poem, story or image or THREE submissions for $25 (payable to Hammered Out). Prize money will be awarded (amounts yet to be determined) and the best of the submissions will be included in the journal with the top prize winning image appearing on the front cover of the issue (in full colour). Other chosen images will appear within the journal (black & white).

Poems are limited to whatever will fit on a two page spread (2 columns on landscape/legal in georgia 9 pt) and short fiction should not exceed 3,000 words. Images should be high enough resolution to be sharp when expanded to a max of 7 X 8.5 inches.

All entries will be blind judged by our team of top notch judges:
Chris Pannell, Ellen Jaffe & Stan White.

Your Silver Hammer Package should include:

-your brief bio
-your e-mail and regular mailing addresses
-your entry fee (payable to Hammered Out)
-your hard copy poem(s) and/or short fiction and/or your image(s)on CD

Deadline for THE SILVER HAMMER 2007 is June 30/07.
Should your work be chosen you will be notified and asked to e-mail it to us.
The Silver Hammer 2007 issue will appear in early fall 2007 and there will be a public launch/reading (details to be announced.)

Please mail your Silver Hammer Entries and fee to:

The Silver Hammer
c/o Box 89027, Westdale PO,
Hamilton, ON Canada L8S 4R5