 Arlington Literary Journal an ejournal also known as ArLiJo, is located in Arlington, Virginia and is sponsored by Gival Press. The intent of ArLiJo is to feature a variety of authors/poets/artists from around the globe whose work provokes readers to contemplate issues, etc. The work chosen promotes understanding and sensitivity across borders, even if initially the work may cause one to take a double-take. Staff: Editor-in-Chief, Robert L. Giron Associate Editor, Sarah Fannon ArLiJo has reverted to a publication by invitation only. Any work published shall remain the property of the author/poet/artist and for any previously published work to appear the author/poet/artist must still retain the copyright of the work. Please note that ArLiJo is an ejournal. Payment for publication is a book from a selection of books published by Gival Press. |
Clifford Browder Featured on ArLiJo.com Genesis Secrets of wheat Wrens nesting And a small boy Friendly with stars report Theology dissolved In a faint whisper Of wind on water Brooding a ripple or a world. First appeared in Galley Sail Review. Copyright © 1961 by Clifford Browder. Combustible Don’t bury me In a hardwood casket Or one of those metallic jobs Polished, cushiony, expensive Guaranteed to last a hundred years That morticians con you into buying. Soft pine should do the trick Bugs and worms are my friends Let them take what they want They’ll just pass it on. Yes, bury me In a crumbly coffin I want to be roots I want to be leaves. Better still, cremate me Quicker and cleaner Less fuss Ought to make A good crackle. Burn me I want to be light. First appeared in Heliotrope. Copyright © 2002 by Clifford Browder. The Language of Light The language of light Props up space Spits forth time. It makes coherent the rumpus of forms Sustaining spiral nebulae The tonnage of continents Smoke Sticky eggs. The language of light Is curvilinear and rectilinear, dry As the odor of sawn wood Fantastical yet true Like green herons with orange legs. It sweeps away the opinions of the wise: Desanctified droppings. How it teases the accumulators Trips up the adjusted Mocks the competent. How it unhinges The technicians of greed and expedience Murderers Of the soft luna moths of our dreams. I would learn this shining idiom But who would teach it to me? I have written eminent linguists: They know nothing of it. Physicists perplex me with their formulae Gurus would enroll me In expensive seminars Opticians are no help, mystics Those ruminants of glory Have unlisted telephones. Therefore Beyond data, beyond symposia I shall wear sneakers and tread softly. Determined Not to think But to be aware I shall sniff out Its subatomic mysteries Caress its paradoxes. Through mazes of the mind I will scuttle downward Into worlds of small things Musculature of eels White snakeroot Dancing bees And coax from them The word of life. First appeared in Pivot. Copyright © 1992 by Clifford Browder. Dark Mother Don’t say life, say wiggle Don’t say worm, say communicant Don’t say grass Say green dream Don’t say tree Say thick-barked water-pumping Deep-rooted fixity Ramified That eats the sun Don’t say mind, say Mystical telephone Don’t say matter Say multiple interactional Space-time mass-energy Curved helter-skelter particle jig Don’t say me Say dancer Don’t say sperm Say pathfinder, big shot, golden motorcycle Don’t say God, say tease Don’t say death Say dark mother Black hole Star-sucking Light-eating Time- and space-disintegrating Deep throat of the universe becoming At its other end Dawn Spitter of worlds. First appeared in California State Poetry Quarterly. Copyright © 1992 by Clifford Browder. Biography: Clifford Browder is a writer and retired freelance editor living in New York City. His poetry has appeared in Heliotrope, The Main Street Rag, Runes, Snake Nation Review, The Bitter Oleander, nycBigCityLit.com, and elsewhere. Excerpts from his long novel Metropolis have been published in New York Stories, Quarter After Eight, and Third Coast. He is also author of two published biographies and a critical study of the French Surrealist poet André Breton. Lolette Kuby Featured on ArLiJo.com Your Soup But where are the carrots? Bright phalluses forged in the netherworld sun? You must not draw too soon Or wait too long And where is the salt? The flavorful gold, the licking stone? Beware unbandaged cuts Pinched or poured it cannot be undone And where the onion? Solidified tears? Embracing itself. Unfold it you find Nothing, a socket sans eye And water? There must be water. Secretly tubed from the top of the mountain? Mine it like diamonds Wrest it from daybreak And where is the meat? On its way to you? The meat is dozing in the sun Swatting flies with its tail The meat is grazing in the field Running in its own wool It must be blindfolded and gagged It must be silenced and tamed. The meat is still eating. Copyright © 2008 by Lolette Kuby. Your Soup first appeared in The New Laurel Review. Just Watching Imagine a bird flying a flower up to decorate its nest. Or Giraffes ignoring laden fig trees to gawk at a sunset. Imagine a whole tribe of chimpanzees on a Saturday night, wheeling their old, hoisting their children, and thronging in feathers and shiny shoes, halooing and touching hands along the way, to a dedicated spot where they all will sit very still, doing nothing, just sitting, like the surrounding trees and the rocks they sit on and the convexed air watching one of them whistle. That we can may save us. Copyright © 2003 by Lolette Kuby. Just Watching is from Inwit, published by Pearl's Book'Em Publisher, 2003. Chair Here it stands as Luther would have his Articles stand— an incontrovertible conclusion. Let a child clamber on its singular upholstery with gloves of jam; let pornographers perform in its lap; shroud it a hundred years and it will wait to be unshrouded until time deposits new warm bodies and appraising eyes. Let a madman rage it to splinters, it will coruscate in infinity, dancing toward zero like any other star, utterly obedient, utterly passive. Copyright © 2008 by Lolette Kuby. Floor Meditation Nothing, no skin of water Without mosquito wake On most windless of days So quiet as untrodden floors, So patient as girders in dusky basements Bearing the whole house over them Except in their seasonless dockage The dead, Between floor and ceiling Crossing their hands Over their heart. Copyright © 2008 by Lolette Kuby. Craftsmen The carpenter bees, hairy, thick across the thorax as my thumb, quick as electric, drill perfectly round holes for homes, perfectly sized to their bodies. I stand my ground, paint hurriedly, drip red on daffodils until they come within inches, then leap and run, spill red on my jeans. I calm myself with the wasps that lined the walls of Thoreau's cabin, return to where my ladder leans against my house, and speak to these: if we can't muster love, I say, let us keep harmless and respectful distance— you keep your distance and I'll keep mine. But come night, I sent a hit-man with a long-nozzled spray, where they live, while they sleep. Copyright © 2008 by Lolette Kuby. A different version of this poem first appeared in Hiram Review. Our Gift Make small cuts in male viaducts, nips and tucks in oviducts and it is over. Little pain, little blood. Everything done for estate will stop. Everything done for monument will stop. All reasons but the reasons of grass will stop. After a brief yesterday, all will be mosses, feathers, claws, clouds. Rain will be rain, wind, wind. Absented of us all will be a holy rolling, a whirling, a quaking. After our compassionate abandonment trackless as a flight of birds. Copyright © 2003 by Lolette Kuby. Our Gift is from Inwit, published by Pearl's Book'Em Publisher, 2003. Biography: Lolette Kuby, an expat from Cleveland, Ohio, now living in Toronto, holds a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University and taught at the Cleveland State University. She now does freelance editing. Her book publications include In Enormous Water; Set Down Here; Inwit (poetry collections); An Uncommon Poet for the Common Man: A Study of Philip Larkin's Poetry; and last year a short story collection, Out of Cleveland. Bryan Roscoe Featured on ArLiJo.com City of Strangers In the service they gave me a new set of clothes. A new set of values…a new set of goals. They trained us well all morning, noon and night. God love them, send me off, and can’t wait for my first firefight. We were bound together by the thousands as a city of strangers, Some brothers and sisters served as Navy Seals and Army Rangers, We come to you in the deserts, jungles, mountains or beaches. Tell me son; tell your grandpa what do our past wars finally teach us? Veterans lay waiting as if they were on guard duty for eternity in fields of green pastures, strategy in formation with their concrete namesakes and a monument unto its own. I speak to those we have lost on the fields of battle. And the military hospitals fully occupied of amputees—the sick and disabled. Mothers weeping—children sleeping co-existing, yes barely surviving if they are able. The horrors of war are no place for idealistic impractical desires. Tell me, son. Now does this quench your youthful fire? Copyright 2008 by Bryan Roscoe. City of Strangers first appeared in Veterans' Voices Fall 2008, Vol. 56. No. 3, sponsored by Hospitalized Veterans Writing Project, Inc. The War Within No medals were given- No heroes were made. All rules were broken. Only victims- still victims, remain. To the War that wasn’t won. To the War that wasn’t lost. To the War that didn’t end, only begun. Beware-of the War Within. Copyright 2008 by Bryan Roscoe. Biography: Bryan Roscoe was born in an ambulance on route to the hospital in Neptune, New Jersey and was raised in New York City. In his own words: "I volunteered to go to the Army in 1974. I studied as a Radio Teletype Operator. I was stationed at Signal Training School Fort Gordon, GA. I met a lot of high-quality people in the service and some I keep in touch with like my good friend Ken from California. I wrote a book it’s called Majestic Restoration. It’s about my two near-death experiences. I take immense pleasure and benefit greatly from writing poetry and short stories. It helps me to communicate in abstract ways other than using the five senses." Roscoe retired from the Atlantic City Police Department Traffic Division some years ago. |
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