Absence of Moon by Angela Janda
To create you must first destroy. And then there is room
for the creating. There is only so much space
though also space is infinite in another way of thinking.
Today at 7:04pm Mountain Time was the new moon.
Was the moon new or I suppose we could say: absent.
Was the absence of the moon. Mountain Standard Time,
7:04.
This is what I will destroy first: mountains
of old photographs, notebook albums, my need to be admired.
By the light of no moon I will drink down to nothing
a bottle of tea.
The whole fruit destroyed becomes the cobbler. The perfect eggshell
cracked open– The fabric cut, the trousers, the pleats.
The marriage destroyed–
I don’t know.
I am a little sick of destruction, to be honest,
though heartened to hear of its probable use.
Maybe the other side of the coin–
the infinity of space,
that nothing
is lost, the moon comes around full again–
that nothing is lost.
Then I just wrote the word purple.
Even after my death, the lilacs.
–Angela Janda
How to Survive by Angela Janda
Keep your friends close and your silence closer.
Head like a white sheet
or a sailcloth, hung garments
blown sideways in a bluesky wind.
Live in pictures and pictures only.
A bowl of blueberries, a standing pear,
birds
as a symbol for weightlessness.
The anemone
as a symbol for grief.
A swan-drawn chariot as a symbol for:
your secret is your power.
The object of your search is within.
Go and look for it;
leave no notes.
A table
bare where the note should be
but for
an empty dish and the sheen of sun.
Where the fork should be, a spoon.
No one to ask, or to answer.
– Angela Janda
There was a time
when one may need to ask
for shelter
To please take off
your shoes
To have a king
for a son
to fix a heel
Drink some water
To put the ticket
in a subway machine
To find a cup of stew
a hole in the wall
a room behind the
Fire place or the floor boards
Sometimes we all just need
a place to stay
To spit on your windshield
Fix your rainbow
Sushi, clean your pool
Sometimes someone
Has to die
Because of their name
Because we look like
Someone else
There is fine
for being a productive person
a pound of lard
that must be delivered
a pizza that is just a prank
Anchovies and all
Sometimes we must die
at the foot
of a wall
there is no other way
– Aide Rodriguez Zamudio
Aide Rodriguez Zamudio
Partials Form a Spatial Whole
Begin with sounds, music, voices,
One on top of the other, abundance
of echoes, whispers, noises.
A multiplicity of reverberations
in my ears, head, brain, mind,
followed by visual images
Geometric shapes come alive.
All so real, vivid and intense.
Multiple dimensions, worlds, planes
This back and forth,
confounds my sense of time, of space
feels foreign, yet familiar.
I try to control it, and return to reality
Then it passes seeming like eternity.
-Leticia Cortez, 2010
A FOREIGN COUNTRY
Sleep is an unfenced country,
but the roads to it are closed.
The train was also late, and full of garlic eaters
and children yelling into cell phones,
and the man in the next seat, snoring loudly.
Sleep requires no passport,
but you must be
near dead
to get there.
Animals, on the other hand, sleep when they want to.
In the middle of the day.
On the rug,
in their wings,
on their feet.
Why must we have fences and trains,
and still fail to reach the natural state?
Are we demented?
To take sleeping pills, when God never had any plan about this.
By Alice Van Buren
SCOTTISH RITES
The year’s last light spilling in before dark. A flood of gold on the floor.
Winter, on its haunches, panting.
This is when we slaughtered meat, tasted the beer and the new wine.
A fortnight of feasting, and then we chased trolls.
Our fore fathers had a ritual for this, but we just swatted at stains
messy little monsters
as they multiplied before our eyes.
How to spot a troll? After two weeks of drink?
“When men make a road, trolls disappear.”
Does this mean, we should build more roads?
By Alice Van Buren
The Italian
By Megan Rodgers
“Are you Italian?“ she asked. He seemed surprised. That was the best part about being right. His accent wasn‘t that strong — just the lilt up, the over pronounced final consonant, the short “i“ that slid into a long “e“. She knew it though. She had tried to mimic its every variation.
“How did you know?“ he asked. She had ambushed him. She had had time to listen, to check all the clues so as not to be wrong: the shoes, the glasses, the jeans, the backpack. For Italians, the backpack is always the easy clincher. If it says INVICTA, they‘re Italian. His mustard messenger bag didn‘t say INVICTA, but it didn‘t scream Midwestern America either. His jeans had loopy yellow designs stitched on the back pockets. They seemed homemade. The shoes were very American, too American, in fact, the kind of American that Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans, covet. She checked him for Balkan signs: the hair, longish with a little gel; the glasses, heavy, square, maybe Armani. No, the glasses ruled out the Balkans. Nothing screamed out Argentinean or Colombian and there was a curve to the lilt that was not Spanish.
“Where are you from?“
“Cecina,“ he said as almost a question.
“I think I know it,“ she said and then immediately regretted it. She wanted to know it and there was something familiar. But she was thinking of Chechnya — in Russia. Was he kidding? It‘s true, she had forgotten about Russian. The mouth placement is the same in a Russian accent, only the closure is different. But then why would he say he was Italian?
“Not to be confused with Chechnya.“
He pronounced Chechnya and Cecina almost exactly the same, though the Russian name had a stronger accent on the “y“. She had no idea where Cecina was and considered switching the conversation to Italian to, at least, show him how good hers was, especially “for an American.“ But then she thought he might take it as flirting (he was awfully good-looking). He didn‘t want to draw attention to himself, or his Italianness. He had been trying to blend in. She had hated the strangers in Italy who came up to her to practice their English, adding “a“s to the end of all their words and invariably saying “fuck you“ a few times. That‘s what they know. He, too, had surely heard his share of New York-ized, “Grease“-ified versions of “Va fa un culo“ in his time in America. She left him feeling an unearned sense of connection and unwarranted sense of rectitude. It was a parlor trick afterall.
Megan Rodgers is a Chicago artist now living in Basel, Switzerland.
I am the fosse of living limestone:
The surreal goddess Izpapálotl in “Obsidian butterfly” by Octavio Paz
By Olivia Maciel
It is interesting to note that the lyrical voice in the prose poem “Obsidian butterfly” by the now deceased and prominent Mexican poet Octavio Paz appears to be that of the pre-hispanic Chichimecan goddess Izpapálotl. This goddess, which to the ancient Mexicans embodied qualities equivalent of their own Coatlicue, was represented with both human and animal features, including eagle’s wings and sharp jaguar paws which took the place of human hands and feet. In his Historia de la literature Náhuatl, (1956) Angel María Garibay already stated that this warrior and mother goddess was also associated to mother earth in its mortuary and sacrificial aspects, as well as to women who died during childbearing, being their sacrifice a manner of nurturing the birth of new lives.
A fragment of the poem “Obsidian butterfly” by Octavio Paz, published in his book ¿Aguila o sol? (1951) captures this voice:
Siémbrame entre los fusilados. Naceré del ojo del capitán. Lluéveme, asoléame. Mi cuerpo arado por el tuyo ha de volverse un campo donde se siembra uno y se cosecha ciento. Espérame al otro lado del año: me encontrarás como un relámpago tendido a la orilla del otoño. Toca mis pechos de hierba. Besa mi vientre, piedra de sacrificios. En mi ombligo el remolino se aquieta: yo soy el centro fijo que mueve la danza. Arde, cae en mí: soy la fosa de cal viva que cura los huesos de su pesadumbre . . . Toma mi collar de lágrimas. Te espero en ese lado del tiempo en donde la luz inaugura un reinado dichoso: el pacto de los gemelos enemigos, el agua que escapa entre los dedos y el hielo, petrificado como un rey es us orgullo. Allí abrirás mi cuerpo en dos, para leer las letras de tu destino.
Seed me among the executed ones. I will be born from the captain’s eye. Rain me, sunshine me. My body plowed by your body will become a field where one plants one and harvests a hundred. Wait for me on the other side of the year: You will find me as a thunder laying on Autumn’s shore. Touch my breasts of grass. Kiss my womb, altar of sacrifice. In my navel vertigo quiets downs: I am the motionless center that animates dancing. Burn, fall upon me: I am fosse of living limestone that heals the bones of sorrow . . . Take my necklace of tears. I wait for you on that side of time where light unveils a joyous reign: the pact between the enemy twins, water that escapes between the fingers and ice petrified as a king in his arrogance. There you will pry my body in two parts, to read the letters of your destiny. [My translation]
In an exhortative tone, the warrior goddess encourages amorous coupling as well as speaking of her desire to be fruitful. This suggests that from the fierce force unleashed on the ‘executed’ and from their sacrifice, it may be very well possible to transcend toward a fertile era in which joy and harmony reign. Characteristic of surrealist aesthetics, Paz personifies parts of the human body, ‘in my navel the vertigo quiets down’, and juxtaposes images of distant semantic realms ‘breasts of grass’. It is clear however, that the ancient Mexicans, in the conjured visions of their dualistic gods such as the “Obsidian butterfly” goddess Izpapálotl, had already entered into the surrealistic realms to be pondered upon, many years later by the French poet Andre Breton. Through this poem, Octavio Paz unveils what could be called the Pre-hispanic Surrealism of the ancient Mexicans.
© Olivia Maciel, August 31,2005
The Corporate History Of Slavery in Louisiana, 1700-2004
Parody by Patrick Lichty, 2004
America’s compulsory service sector has had an impressive history, starting in the early 1700’s. The first to serve the labor market in Louisiana were Indians. That was because, in all the vast territory claimed by the French, there was no one who could fill customer service positions except the natives. Many of the more challenging administrative positions were being filled by the French settlers, and unskilled manual labor was in high demand. So the French tried to offer the Indian population the exciting possibilities of working in this rapidly expanding field. In 1704, eleven young Indians were involved in this new growth industry. Four years later, the total had risen to eighty. However, Indians frequently had human resource issues, such as the desire to secretly relocate without prior employer notification, and efforts to correct these challenges resulted in inefficiencies such as workforce attrition and occupational health concerns. If a steady, dependable supply of labor was desired, it would have to be sought elsewhere.
However, early efforts to appeal to African workers presented similar challenges. In 1708, Bienville suggested that through African-Indian worker transrelocation between Africa, the Caribbean, and Louisiana, these inefficiencies could be lessened. This would be achieved through the inability of the Indians to spontaneously relocate, and through the intercultural challenges presented to the African worker by the Indians outside the workplace through the potential of early retirement. Innovation in the Louisiana workforce were not achieved until John Law’s landmark contract with the French that quickly offered 6000 unskilled French and 3000 African workers the exciting opportunities of labor in the burgeoning New World Economy. Further advances in the service sector were also achieved by the Spanish, who codified compulsory customer service not only to Africans, but to any person ‘of color.’
Much has changed since the 1700’s, but advances in America’s service sector continue to flourish. Labor expenditures continue to be streamlined as cities bid for the opportunity to offer tax incentives for the rapidly expanding consumer service market. The greater efficiencies of privatization offer excellent possibilities for educational reform through voucher systems and advances in entry-level labor expenditure streamlining between 25 to 46 percent, thus creating the potential for greater profitability. Such forward strides have created an environment in which work is abundant; service employees have the opportunity to engage in several simultaneous career paths to support their families.
And we’re all working together; that’s the secret. We’ll lower the standard of living for everyone, not just in America, but we’ll give the world an opportunity to see what it’s like to have a better lifestyle, a better life for all. America is proud of what it’s accomplished; but we’ve just begun. Today, consumer product distributors and manufacturers employ millions of associates
worldwide. The American service sector has thousands of stores, offices and factories throughout the world, and continues to offer the promise of being part of the global labor market. In addition, the Internet has allowed us to promote our founders’ dreams of fulfilling the exciting possibilities of service throughout the world. And today, those dreams are the American Dream.
polvo magazine 