Backbone > Poetica
edited by phil levine

This month, we say goodbye to our outgoing poetry editor Franci Levine Grater. Franci was with us for two years, ably highlighting the poetic output of area’s poets. Franci, a native Californian, is moving back to her sunny home state with her family. We wish her the best in her future endeavors, which will undoubtedly include chasing after her twins, who will surely sprout up like mighty redwoods in the healthy California air. Thanks for all your hard work, Franci, and may the muses smile upon you.

We are also happy to welcome Phil Levine as our new poetry editor. Many of you probably know Phil from his role as poetry impresario at Woodstock’s Colony Cafe. Building on Franci’s improvements, Phil will be bringing some new wrinkles to Poetica. Stay tuned. —BKM

It is a privilege to be the new Chronogram poetry editor.
Do the good work, bring the good stuff. I look forward to receiving your writing. Inviting submissions for the July issue. Deadline June 10th. —Phil Levine

I think your sign language food is funny (like Berlin)

This computer has self-destructed
My writing offended the Eisenhower administration
though I was not yet born I think
the spittle words the food lines the moon cakes

I think your sign language food is funny
Sometimes I remember the jogging days
of Central Park
the ballroom dancer on roller blades
scared the new communist underground

pendulum boys rocking
pendulum boys rocking
pendulum boys rocking

I think your sign language food is funny
the aroma of pine trees growing
was there incentive?

I waited for your brilliance in-crowds
I waited for your brilliance in-crowds
The silence the silence the silence last beauty pose
Sometimes I watch them eat pine trees growing
As if in a copper tinted bottle age

In a copper tinted bottle age
Return the copper tinted bottle age
For a nickel and an Indian head
Covet which?
In time I ate your sign language food
I ate your sign language food in real tears
Impaloured

As he gave me a gigantic kernel of rice
and sculpted her Pagoda rainbow
like an ice wet sculpture dripping
my New York
in pieces on the ground
sold for paper on the streets
in a little copper tinted bottle.

—E. Pinter

A Spring Night

I open my front door,
and smell the fresh night air
Its essence lures me outside
warm breezes flowing everywhere.

And so I take a nighttime walk
through the fields and though it’s night
I faintly make out a flower,
and it holds a bit of light.

Frogs are croaking, crickets chirping
Winds rustle the leaves of trees
One owl makes a declarative hoot
and begins the spring night symphony.

—Anna Brown age 14

The Air Brushed Poets

The air-brushed poets
Must be bored with their vacant lives,
They invent intellect out of Lust;
Freeze-dry Passion and package it
For sale!
Next to the chapbooks
and the loose tease...

The air-brushed poets
Don’t drink coffee at the Reading.
They are the only ones
Who can afford
The Espresso; the Cappuccino;
The compact disc; the book...

The air-brushed poets
Are welcomed!
Embalmed and embraced—
Considered vox populi
For an entire Scene
And geographic destination...

But avoid! The Hillside bonfires;
The midnight Howl
Through frosted air;
The Squalls of sound—raging!
In Snow swept Coffee houses,
Where shamans of Verse,
Who reek like Thoreau at the Pond
Midwife pregnant landscapes
Of leaf-cluttered Minds...

—Robert Milby

To submit your poem to Chronogram, send it via snail or e-mail. Include an SASE if you'd like it returned. Poetica. PO Box 459. New Paltz. NY. 12561. info@chronogram.com. Subject: Poetica.