Traveling

without
Compass EMEP
o1
or

Michael L. Newell
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2023 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/travelingwithoutO0O0Ounse
d2e7 ,
 ce
eeee CT dy :

¥ 4) eons
‘
ged

be~
za
mn
Ng eae
ay ee
eee

; nae
 %
i
-

7
PeCP PTC
fET¥aS
f
Ps
g d ‘Aa
pet 1/7

ane
rs
oh’!7 ;
mJ
ict
— :
8 CATGLE. WW aSition: THN.
- : 7 <a =f
a - ae Zz. st a :
= :
Traveling
without
Compass or Map

Michael L. Newell

BELLOWING ARK PRESS KA SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Copyright 2006 by BELLowING ARK Press
All rights reserved

ISBN 978-0-944920-55-8

BELLOWING ARK PRESS

PO Box 55564
Shoreline, Washington 98155

X
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
I would like to acknowledge the following people: Robert R.
Ward for guiding this project through to completion; for their
constant support of my work, Anna and Michael Citrino; my
late mentor Benjamin Saltman for his wisdom and generosity;
and Joseph Glaser, Lawrence Noel, and Don Salper for their
unwavering friendship over decades.
Acknowledgements

Most of these poems (sometimes in a different form) have previously

appeared in the following periodicals, to whose editors grateful
acknowledgement is made: Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature;
Bellowing Ark, The Blind Man’ Rainbow, First Class, The Iconoclast,
KSOR Guide to the Arts; Links; Luctd Moon; Mandrake Poetry Review,
Mobius; Poetry/LA, Potpourri; Psychopoetica, Ship Of Fools; Sisters Today,
Tucumcari Literary Review.

“Golden” first appeared in English Journal, Vol. 85, No.8 (Dec., 1996),
p. 65, copyright 1996 by the National Council of Teachers of English.
Reprinted by permission of the National Council of Teachers of
English.

Several of these poems (sometimes in a different form) have previously

appeared in the following books and chapbooks:

A Stranger to the Land (Garden Street Press 1997)

Collision Course (Four Sep Publications 1999)
Mules ofHighways
and Empty Roads (Four Sep Publications 1999)
The Long Gores Suite (Lockout Press 2002)
Seeking Shelter (Four Sep Publications 2004)
A Long Time Traveling (Four Sep Publications 2004)

Cover Drawing: Without Compass or Map, by Clark Sarbaugh

Table ofContents

I. Home and Away (1971-2003)

Gravity
Leaving Yokohama
The Character of Hats
Homemade Music
Spring at St. Edward’s Seminary
The Boy in the Man
5:45 A.M.
“Late July in Simi
Once at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Reverie
Seeds
Perchance to Dream
A Path Within
A Few Loose Ends
Traveling Without Compass or Map

II. Long Gores, Norfolk England (summer 1998)

The Gardens at Long Gores
To Praise in English
Long Gores
Bt Ten A.M.
Dominic Vlasto, Lord of the Marsh
Midnight on the Marsh
The Theatre of Plant Life
The Reed Fields of Long Gores
Storm on the Marsh
Blood on the Moon, Thunder at the Door

III. Jordan/Abu Dhabi/Kuwait (1991-1997)

Sacremental
Worth the Price of Admission
Evening Stroll
A Memory of Water
Kyrie
Mending
Golden
After the Storm Passes
Table ofContents, continued

Rhapsody
Spring Again
Seen Through an Office Window
Dividing Line
The Mothers of Kuwait
Farmers

IV. Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1997-1999)

Getting Home
Just Outside Ulitsa Chekhova
Turning onto Ulitsa Chekhova
Midnight Lovers Walking in Tashkent
On a Tashkent Winter Night
On a Spring Day in Tashkent
A Typical Moment
Two Take Root
A Dawning
The Corner of Ulitsa Ferghana and Ulitsa Nukus
Things I Learned This Week in Tashkent

V. Tallinn, Estonia (2002-2003)

It Was a Moment of No Particular Significance
There Are Moments
Everything Comes from Nothing
Jakub Wysocki
One for Ben Saltman
Seeking
Who Will Tell Their Tales?
Evening Rainfall
Every Walk is a Journey
Life’s Plainness
Dancing from Memory
A Spring Serenade

Biography
_ This book is dedicated to Nehemiah “Pungo” Newell and Peggy
‘ Newell, loving parents and friends to eight wildly different
children.
= 2 2 i

Oo

om Se ve Tbhinat Atew>
_ bc taldas mls ws ray ad
Pt
I. Home and Away

(1971-2003)
cow, Lutes Sesh tt «
“ CSetae bog
Gravity

A father’s hands, gnarled

leathery clumps,

and a boy
staring at them, how

to put them on,

‘become a man, awed
f
by their weight, their pull
towards soil, roots, bedrock;

amazed by their feathery tufts—

gray storm clouds.
Leaving Yokohama

(for Tetsuo “Ted” Kanamort)

Twelve and frantic, I wanted

to find Tetsuo, tell him goodbye;
but we were already packed
and then we were on the bus

driving through American military housing

on the way to the harbor
and the long trip home.
We were passing a field

filled with boys playing baseball

and the ball floated towards
left field. I could nearly smell
the leather of the glove that nabbed it,

deprived it of air, and suddenly realized

the fielder firing the ball back to shortstop
was Tetsuo. I tried to open a window,
but it was sealed shut; the air

conditioned bus was built with childproof windows;

I felt hot, I couldn't breathe,
I felt squeezed like a ball in leather;
I tasted salt and felt

my father slip an arm

round my shoulders and explain
why we couldn't stop. On the receding field
Tetsuo was trotting to the dugout. His side was up.

Thirty-five years later I still

hate windows that won't open.
And when I see a ball suspended above
an outfielder, I want to yell a warning.

Lad
The Character ofHats

A hat properly aged

releases the fisherman
cast inside a steel worker,

the dancer shimmering

in an accountant’s figures,
the sailor deep
Pvc A
inside a coal miner,
the woodsman wandering
in a priest.

* * *

A hat aged properly,

stiffness mellowed into character,
smells of salt water

brine pickling skin, rain

streaming through Douglas Fir, firewood
kindling friendships, pipes

lit from embers

warming conversation, contains
sun, earth, tree, fire, rain, and moon.

[5]
Homemade Music

My brother David and I, thirteen and fifteen,

long summer ahead, rattling to work
in the owner’s pickup truck to pick
cucumbers, dawn to dusk, payment
a penny a pound for the useable, culls
worth nothing, leather gloves shredded fortnightly,
fed by the owner’s mother—sandwiches
(this is no joke) of peanut butter
and sweet pickle relish made from culls,
rattling home in the truck at night,
dropped by the boss on our doorstep—a better
deal than what the migrant workers who scoured
the fields side-by-side with us got (and, brother,
they did the job a damn sight better than we did).

One night, tired, bored, the ride home seeming

eternal, Dave and I started to sing,
“When A Felon’s Not Engaged In His Employment.”
Our boss, late forties, tall, taciturn, joined in
full throttle, and damned if he didn’t know
more words and notes than we did, incipient
Savoyards that we were. We arrived home
bellowing, “I’ve Got A Little List,” to which
my mother, judging from her expression,
would have cheerfully added our names,
although she graciously thanked our employer
for so generously bringing us home. The rest
of the summer tumbled past, work eased
by comfortable cacophony of our evening rides.
At fifty-two I still am amazed
that an Oregon cucumber farmer
with at most an high school education
would know half a dozen or more Victorian
operettas, word for word, note for note, and find
energy to sing them at workday’s end while driving
two youths he barely knew to their distant home.
I doubt that the words and music
df Gilbert and Sullivan ever meant as much to me
as when shouted by the three of us
bumping along those summer country roads—
not even when I finally saw D’Oly Carte
perform a few years later. That farmer
was more fun to sing with than Martyn Green.

Oregon, 1961/ Uzbekistan, 1998

Spring at St. Edward's Seminary

What I remember is
the light burning on the spring fields,

waves shimmering with a heat

that rocked me at my desk

by the window; my mouth uttered

algebraic equations and solutions,

but my eyes rode the waves,

and my body floated away

leaving an imprint on air

strong enough to hide my absence.

I would not return

until nightfall.

It often seemed,
as I settled back into flesh,

that the whole school awoke, all

having earlier gone missing.

Such evenings radiated

light for hours,

and prayers reverberated

like struck gongs.
The Boyin the Man

Clearly seen in the box camera’s viewer,

two fawns at Deception Pass.

Thirteen, astonished at my luck, I snapped

the picture, looked up to find I was alone.

When the developed pictures returned, no

fawns, only scraggly bushes. I cursed the camera.

At fifty-seven, often I am certain of what I see, what

I hear, am then informed of error, of imaginative

transformation of reality into what is not, was

not, will not ever be. And so I doubt.

Eyes, ears, touch, taste, smell: magicians

luring me into one misstep after another.

Is that the rain I hear? No, it is the wind in eucalyptus.

Is that an old Jewish mentor I see? No, it is an Orthodox

Russian minister. Is that a poem I have finished? No,

it is an array of words seeking form and meaning.

One day soon I will find a new camera and slip

back into the forest looking for fawns. The search goes on.

January 2003, Tallinn, Estonia

5:45 A.M.

Rain has knit three days together.

“What the hell

I'll take a walk.”

Across the valley, fields

throb with green, cows dot
low clouds in the hollows
and ravines on hillsides.

Streets are swarming: slugs, worms, birds breakfasting,

dogs and a jogger — their breath a geyser
of steam, a drunk rummaging
behind The Log Cabin Tavern, a lone police car—
the driver’s glasses steamed from coffee, a Greyhound
headed for Vancouver—window faces
vague as the Siskiyous behind a cloudbank.

I dampen in the slow rain.

My hat comes off, shirt opens,
face tilts up; I could hear
a snail crawl.

My breath flows
with the rhythm of waters.

When I go home into sleep,

I float
on creeks threading farms.

Ashland, Oregon, Spring 1981

Late July in Simi Valley

Dusk. I walk to a field, sit

on a low hill, my dog breathing
on my knee, and settle deep into grass;

two bats veer past; a few small

scattered trees blend into night;
my dog sleeps and the air cools

to a dream: I’m a boy sitting

in Cranberry Lake shallows
amidst a cadence of crickets.

Behind me through the fence, lawn chairs

rust in oil-scarred driveways.
Distant houses submerge, a wavering blue haze

broken by flashes like electric eels.

Soon sprinklers will turn on, driving me back.
For now, I hum along with my dog’s soft snoring.

California, 1982

[11]
Once at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

a duck came crashing onto the stage

mistaking it for Lithia Pond

Launce’s dog gave chase the audience

gave up its willing suspension of disbelief

and the actor sat down to watch

in disbelief and wonder at the world’s strangeness

sometimes walking city streets oddness occurs

a grackle attacks a cat an old woman

leaning on a cane scrambles pell mell through

cars trucks and pedestrians to board

a departing bus a dog wearing a helmet

rides on back of a motorcycle a crow caws

in unison with a car alarm three Russian youths

sing in drunken harmony songs by Kenny Rogers

and once a short Estonian puffed furiously

on a cigarette as he sprinted along streets

bandaged with black ice and snow to catch

an already overloaded street car

crashing ducks excited dogs bemused onlookers are everywhere

who needs Old Bill his tortured syntax and verbal legerdemain

banana peels broken crockery and skilfully hurled

invective need no theatre just spin around gaze be amazed

Ashland, Oregon, 1981/Tallinn, Estonia, 2003

[ 12 ]
Reverte

(for Joseph Glaser)

I remember his slight figure

bent over his guitar

coaxing the strings

to sing of love and loss and hope

(when applause filled the room

he looked up with a shy smile

seemed surprised to find

us in the room

his ending bow was authentic

as a handshake between friends

who have been long separated

and are overjoyed at their reunion

when applause died away

before conversation began

there was a moment when the room

held one remembered note

a struck string summoning the sound

of a bird’s wings in flight toward a forest

[13]
Seeds

white and full

clouds billow
against a blue sky

her hand ascends

brushes his cheek
a welcome

all who witness either

feel a flower
start to grow within
Perchance to Dream

In the living arms

of women and trees,
in the great breathing

which girdles the globe,

in the immense womb
which spawns all life,
é. ,
sink, sink, sink,
towards the drifting
which comes with sleep,

the floating just beneath

the surface where the mind
becomes a leaf loose in the universe,

where tumbling twisting turning,

all yearning (for knowledge, for change,
for stasis) merges,

and the sky holds all prayer

the earth all passion
and the sea rocks and croons,

rocks and croons, and our mouths,

soundless, open and close, open
and close, in dumb amazement.

bo)
A Path Within

(for Darcia Kohuska)

Supple muscle in the sun,

your bare-legged lope
across field, stream,
and stony path;

the golden air parts

to permit passage
into woods whose
thick greenery hints

of nameless pleasures.
What unknown being
will stroke and hold you?
Spiders’ legs whisper

through bush and tree.

A breeze has grasped
branch and leaf.
A voice crescendos

and spills
into silence.
A long night, lit by a shower
of fireflies, settles.

Monterrey, Mexico, Spring 2000

A Few Loose Ends

sometimes a hole will appear in a crowd

it seems an invitation to disappear
step through it and you will never be seen
again by anyone who has known you

you will be able to reinvent your life

you will have the unimaginable freedom
of no obligations no responsibilities
no ties to anyone or anything

all you must do is step through do not

look back forget the people you are with
drop the bags you are carrying (filled with
groceries or gifts or papers to grade

or urgent correspondence to mail)

if you get through the hole no one can follow
you will be on your own at last
you start to move in the direction of freedom

but remember you promised to visit

your parents your wife expects you
to accompany her to the hospital (or church
or school or dinner engagement or cocktail party)

your children are waiting to go to the movies

(or soccer or confirmation class or dance lessons)
and you decide to take a pass (this time)
on your escape route surely it will appear

another time when you can more reasonably

desert the life you are living if you wait
you will be ready to leave without loose ends
surely your chance will come again surely

[17]
Traveling Without Compass or Map

The past stretches back over a shoulder: rolling

hills and abandoned peaks, a terrain the mind revisits
only with careful planning. Oh, but the longing

for the people who once populated that landscape,

the music filling nights, the words charting
paths through a world new and full of possibility.

Now the future rises up through a fog reluctant

to release images of what lies ahead. Each step
is tentative, each utterance crafted to the listener.

Where is the abandon which fueled yesterday?

When (and where) was courage buried? Who have
I become? In the distance I hear an unknowable sea.

The drumming of its waves drowns all sounds

I have known. I know this place only in the deepest
dream. Its embrace may lead to silence, silence,

silence. I glance back but no paths lie that way.

My heartbeat assumes the cadence of the waves ahead.
One slow step at a time, I edge forward.
II. Long Gores, Norfolk, England
(summer 1998)
The Gardens as Lon 1 Gores

A commonwealth of birds, butterflies, bees,

flies, and other insects large and small,
populates the garden, an exuberant preserve

of flowers, bushes, trees, and stony paths

where cats, dogs, sheep, and an occasional person
wander through without having

to display a visitor’s visa.

The industrial life of insects continues
unabated, undisturbed by tourists.

Plants, flowers, bushes, and trees

cycle through beauty, decay,
and rebirth, generation upon generation.

Rain, sun, and wind compel attention

from all living within the boundaries
of this small, bursting at the seams, republic.
To Praise In English

The flowers, red,

orange, were aristocrats
of the garden,

and wanting
to honor them by
using their names,

I asked how
they were called.
The answer was

long and Latinate,

regal but without
connection to the

world where they

gravely lent grace
and elegance. So

I call them
flowers, a simple
word which categorizes

a wildly disparate
family, but a
word which implies,

even in its
humblest instances, some
measure of beauty.

In this example
blood and sun
filled the garden.
Long Gores

Bracken, reed, waterlily, milk-parsley,

field orchid, oak, and birch;

beetle, tick, spider, fly,

mosquito, vole, and adder;

squirrel, fox, red and mountjack deer,

lapwing, titmouse, marsh harrier, and tawny owl,
é
a marsh heavy with life,
always pregnant, always nursing.

[ 23 ]
By Ten.A.M.

The wind’s ragged fingers

had tossed the morning
into disarray; field,
sky, and forest were
adrift, disassembled,
at loose ends.

Ah, but the border collie and I,

not bothered by a little creative chaos,
sprawled in the warm dry grass where
we dozed in the bounty of summer sun
while serenaded by geese flocking high above
and a woodpecker drumming in the distance.

[ 24 ]
Dominic Vlasto, Lord ofthe Marsh

Your hands and feet sprout

bracken, oak, buddleia, reeds,
clematis, and magnolia;

your left eye an alert

red deer, a fox the right
creeping through tall grass;
J
a lapwing nests in your right ear,
in the left a titmouse, on your
crown perches a tawny owl;

your breath mingles with marsh,

mountyack, and heron; your blood
waters wood, ditch, and grassland;

at night you wrap the sky

around you as a comforter, sleep
the sleep of field and fen.

[ 25 ]
Midnight on the Marsh

Miles from city

lights, stars bloom

with an ancient
power. Heads tilt

back. Eyes graze

the sky’s pastures.
The Theatre ofPlant Life

Flowers bloom, an opening

gregarious and optimistic,

peak into an
exuberant exhibitionism,

wither into
a mockery
Z
of past glory,
mutely pleading for attention—

former stars in ragged

dinner dress.

Unremarked, they fall

to earth,

decay into material

which will redress beauty.

[ 27 ]
The Reed Fields ofLong Gores

The wind through the tall grass

swish swoosh yes sift me stir me
swirl me about saturate me with touch
touch touch such soft vigor
sweet sliding up and down my stalk
bend me straighten me swoop upon me
after a tantalizing pause sweep
me into a thousand surrounding arms
flatten me into earth then resurrect me
to full height which bends yet another direction...

[ 28 ]
Storm on the Marsh

A hard shower
blankets the land.

We shelter under
a leafy tarpaulin.

The leaves clatter

in vigorous percussion.
é
Dominic, the dog, and I
stand dry and silent

inside a wood, rapt

in ancient grace,

here where medieval monks

dug peat for their hearth.

[ 29 ]
Blood on the Horizon, Thunder at the Door

A marsh harrier
banks over oak
and birch, disappears

behind tall reeds,

rises to float
on wind currents,

swerves into sunset,

and vanishes behind
an incoming squall,

violent grace concealed

behind violent grace.
Lightning scrawls its

signature across half

the sky. Thunder
growls, snarls, intimidates.

The rain smashes

off artist’s studio
where we shelter.

In the distance,
drenched in sunset, the harrier
reappears, soars.

[ 30 ]
ITI. Jordan/Abu Dhabu/Kuwait

(1991-1997)
Sacramental

Purple wine bruises

the thin lip of a chalice.
Dusk immerses Amman.

Bat in jagged flight

under a blue-steel night sky.
Crickets splash through fields.
* * *

Goats forage rough fields

all night—from next door windows,
bel canto singing.
* * *

Wind envelops street:

branches, curtains, rooms swaying.
Neighbor swirls his son.

Khilda, Amman, Jordan, Fall 1992

[ 33 ]
Worth the Price ofAdmission

My first night. Ambling along

a country road, I crest
a hill, stop—stunned. A valley

sculpts evening air with a flair

reserved for hawk or falcon. Eyes are borne
aloft on currents sweeping the breadth

of the valley. A full moon rises. Fields

echo with sounds of goats, dogs, and children.
I plunge to earth, turn,

and pass horses recklessly racing

through pastures. A dog yawns, stretches.
A goat munches grass cracking a sidewalk.

A stand of eucalyptus murmurs as a distant shepherd

and his flock navigate a stonestrewn hillside trail
flooded with moonlight. Bats thread the skyline.

A Bedouin encampment fills a field

near my apartment. A rooster struts among hens.
Clouds surf the night wind. Half-drunk, I slip inside, dream.

Khilda, Amman, Jordan, 1992

Evening Stroll

I.
Sheer and bend of hill and valley
sculpt the sky, a vast curve of fading light,
half-carved by darkening cumulo-nimbus clouds.

II.
Up a hill Bedouin children chase a goat; a parent
herds a flock across a narrow country road. A taxi
foars past; the driver waves; he barely misses a pair
of stragglers; like me they have lost touch
with the herd and search for a few last rays
of light, freedom to roam, unfettered time.

Ill.
A distant mosque erupts in the evening prayer call.
The name of Allah echoes through the hills.
The loudspeaker suddenly splutters, oscillates, a betrayal
by technology—the prayer call continues unabated; men
and boys straggle up the hill from all directions.

IV.
Small suburban streets have sprouted
in the fields’ midst, shelters for refugees
fleeing the George Bush/Saddam Hussein Fandango.

Children kick soccer balls street to street, an evening

ritual; fathers pack yards in heated political discussions,
passersby join in; wives cluster in living rooms drinking
tea, Arabic and Turkish coffee; they share tales: husbands,
sons, daughters, schools, shopping, who's getting married, whose
marriage is in trouble.

[ 35 ]
 A pet goat narrowly avoids
a speeding, frantically honking truck. The goat resumes
cropping grass which shoots up through newly-laid pavement. Small children
charge at it, poking sticks and emitting goat sounds. It
moseys across the street and continues with dinner.

Wes
An expensive home set back from the road
displays a satellite dish commanding a view
of the world. In a nearby pasture, a horse
runs in circles around a man holding a rope.
A dog lies in shade and watches. A young boy
skips rocks under the feet of the galloping stallion.
A mother hangs out wash while chickens scamper
beneath her feet. The satellite dish continues
to scan the larger world. The dog yawns, scratches
its left ear, and rolls over in grass and weeds.

VI:
My neighbor waves, invites me over. He asks
me to explain George Bush. How can I
shed light on what I don’t understand? He nods,
offers me tea, a chance to sit. We talk: sports,
how soon children grow up, how wives never are fully
appreciated, the quality of light in tonight’s sunset,
the grandeur of stars away from blanketing city lights.

VII.
As I enter my apartment, I recall the colleague
who yesterday informed me how poor Jordan is, how
there is nothing to see or do. My neighbor
waves goodnight and invites my return tomorrow evening.
A golden half-moon spills light in the southwestern sky.

Khilda, Amman, Jordan, Fall 1992

A Memory of Water

Rain rips through the night

in savage gusts, tattoos
the window which sighs, punchdrunk,
a fighter about to topple.

I roll over in bed, deep

contentment, snug, dry,
remembering a hundred other times
I have sprawled like this, listening
to drumming on roof and window.

The shadow filling the room

is bigger than night or memory
and I slide into it, a familiar robe—
warm, worn, comforting.

There is a history here, yours and mine,

a chronicle of cells growing more complex,
moving toward dry land but never
forgetting, always coming back to the shore to dangle
a foot, a toe, a sleepy lolling around

the edge of water—

like tonight as I leave
a window half-opened
and turn my face to the fine spray.

Khilda, Amman, Jordan, Spring 1993

[ 37 ]
Kyrie

Evening’s blood-red embers

flame into memory and desire.

Mute witnesses, we
gaze in two directions—

inward and outward, trying

to resolve life’s dilemmas.

Spreading slowly across

fields and hills, the hymn

of moon and stars

sheds its calming grace.

Khilda, Amman, Jordan, 1992

[ 38 ]
Mending

Crumpled on the rug: scraps of sunlight, ripped

socks, soiled shirt, strewn papers, dog-eared books,
a hope or two.
But wait. Wait. Night

will come, join me. We’ll stroll beneath

a quarter-moon draped in billowing cumulus.
We'll scan the sky, find warmth and grace

rooted in the steady gaze of stars and planets.

Fields will crackle with late November frost.
Our breath will blossom, weightless
as dreams or moonlight.

When a shooting star blazes across

half the sky, we will gasp, stand motionless.

We will shun speech, content

with sounds of breathing, footfalls,
dogs barking across darkened fields.

Our hearts will careen through the dark...

Amman, Jordan, 1992

Golden

Outside Amman, burnished

by the last light of day: fields,
hills, sky, and distant skyline of city buildings
rim the edge of vision. Move your head
quickly and the world flames in a golden dance.

The evening is rich with light, so rich

it could be mined if you could
find tools fine enough to filter
particles immersed in air. A simple breath
is weighted with rare luxury.

Jordan, 1992

[ 40 ]
After the Storm Passes

Patches of snow—soiled
linen—lie crumpled
in ditches, on roadsides, across
fields and hills.

Birds reappear
on window gratings,
rooftops, and power lines.

On the roof across the street,

sparrows bathe in melted snow
atop water tanks; they ruffle
their feathers and send spray
arcing over the building’s edge.

Young boys appear with sticks

and scour muddy fields;
they pause beside a snow patch
to hurl a snowball or two.

Women, with small children in tow, sail

down the wet streets, full
skirts billowing—sheets round a masthead.

Three men stand round a car

sunk in mud; they smoke pipes,
wildly gesticulate; their voices rise
and fall like the wind.
Gusts of laughter
punctuate the discussion.

Blue patches appear

amid the clutter
of dirty, tattered clouds
casually strewn across the sky.

[4 J
The sun presides
and Bedouins reappear
with sheep and goats
to reclaim fields for grazing.

Amman, Jordan, 1992

[ 42 ]
Rhapsody

Winter has at last

come to Abu Dhabi. Overhead
a taut navy blue sheet stretches

across night’s vast

cradle. Layers of gray
and white clouds are crocheted

into its underside. A half-moon’s

steely glint lights paths of families
strolling streets they litter

with laughter and musical

bursts of Arabic.
Pausing to listen

and jot notes, I

feel the night sigh, gusts
of its breath urging me to join

the promenade, breathe deeper, stride

longer, swing more freely
my arms and hips; leave

notes behind to note

the music of feet
crossing pavement textured

by a breeze stirring
fronds of imported palms.
Across a field a father

races a toddler—when the baby wins

the father lifts and whirls him, enfolds
him in folds of flowing robes.

[ 43 ]
And the wind swirls
paper, and someone’s blond hair
floating near my shoulder.

Feet skip from curb

to street
and back again.

Abu Dhabi, UAE, 1992

Spring Again

i
The elegance of brisk wind
strumming old eucalyptus,
a song ofbrooks, rocks, and flowing grass.

Dae
Goats nimbly dance down
one
? rockstrewn hill
up another pursued
by three Bedouin youths
and a large golden barking dog,
tail high and ears up.

3.
The lilting meter of her
rolling stride, wide long steps
spanning fields rockladen, poppyblessed,
windsplashed, green sprouting
shyly under a reborn sun;
her breath would blossom
given soil and space;

and the man watching

would gladly
clear her a garden.

4.
Six, able to race
place to place to place,
arms pumping, knees lifting,
head back, black hair flying,
and a cry trailing behind,
no words, merely pure sound
and the wind in his face.

Khilda, Amman, Jordan, 1993

[ 45 ]
Seen Through an Office Window

Branches, green and leafy, supple,

floating in a breeze
like fingers of Balinese dancers

tracing on air the patterns

of the heart: rise, fall,
yes, no, maybe, would

that it were so; the sway

of branches, the search, the desire
of leaf, bole, and heart for what

is unnameable, felt but invisible

like waves of air lifting,
lowering, tugging, suggesting...

Abu Dhabi, July, 1994

[ 46 ]
Dividing Line

Midnight brings a fifteen minute rainburst

on a desert island beach;

boys strip off their shirts and dance

along the waterfront. In anticipation,

the sea and all its teeming life

(fish, shellfish, eel, manta, shark,

porpoise, whale, sea lion, dugong, vertebrate,

invertebrate, algae, predator, preyed upon) edge closer.

For a quarter of an hour,

the dividing line wavers.

(Abu Dhabi, 1994)

[az
The Mothers ofKuwait

Black veils for sails, they

navigate neighborhood channels, children
in tow, trying to negotiate currents
as they heave to and hail
passing family flotillas to exchange
information as barter for good will,
safe passage, and future harbors
to shelter small craft bobbing in their wake.

[ 48 ]
Farmers

Tilling the sky, a lone bird.

A dhow plows the sea.
Wind cultivates leaves and branches.

You and I cautiously survey

the terrain of new friendship,
removing rocks, testing soil,
reparing fertilizer, moving deeper
into the fields we propose to share.

Medan Hawalh, Kuwait, 1996

IV. Tashkent, Uzbedistan

(1997-1999)
Getting Home

Dodge the trolley car, leap the ditch,

circumnavigate the five men
supervising Sasha on the jackhammer
tearing up the sidewalk, slip into the shady safety
of the path where dogs prowl, flatten
yourself against the wall as three cars,
two trucks, and a motorcycle clunk past
avoiding a roadblock, pretend not to see
the cop with his hand out asking
for donations, smile at the Mafia collector
getting his kickback from your neighborhood kiosk,
exchange handslaps with the three youths
outside your building as they practice their
few words of English, “I’m good how are you
are you good too that’s fine,” survive the world’s slowest
elevator ride, negotiate the five locks on your two doors,
and answer the telephone to hear clicks,
beeps, and a busy signal. You're finally learning
how to be a citizen of Tashkent.

Uzbekistan, Fall 1997

[ 53 ]
Just Outside 23 Ulitsa Chekhova

The short sturdy crone with a limp,

dressed in dusty colorful Uzbek peasant garb, furiously
whisks her morning broom across sidewalks

and gutters—leaves, twigs, and dirt

lifting into the breeze and faces
of pedestrians scooting past. She stops

to exchange laughing shouted pleasantries

with the old man across the street
who has been (somewhat more sedately) sweeping

away the debris of the previous day. She scowls

at people in her path and resumes
her scuffle with existence and all

its shabby frayed dusty manifestations. She is

equipped with grim determination and flailing arms.
She will make this day, and this place, liveable.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 1997

Lay
Turning onto Ulitsa Chekhova

The tiny terrier growled. I turned

the corner into the broom
of the Uzbek crone of Chekhov Street, her lips

pulled back in a snarl or greeting,

and her broom swept me along the sidewalk
with the rest of the day’s debris

past the kiosk where the Korean

who speaks only Russian
sells condoms, cola, and vodka,

and the miniskirted girl from the Ukraine

was trying to choose. As I sailed
past my school, I waved at the little gatekeeper

who promised to tell the office I'd be late again.

Two blocks down I bribed a cop
to show me the way back

and to ignore the fact that my papers

were for another street
due to some ministry mixup.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 1997

[55]
Midnight Lovers Walking in Tashkent

Six floors up, you can

spot them—the lean, the sway,
the touching even when not, the sense
that two are one, and when
an arm finally snakes around
a waist, there is no surprise, only gratitude
that in a city this poor, love exists.

Uzbekistan, Winter 1998

 Ona Tashkent Winter Night

Midnight snow blows

across the street lamp

cool as the bodies

in the morgue

of the military hospital

just across the street
y,
and I hear Concierto De Aranjuez
floating dimly through memory’s walls

and remember a rainy Clark Air Force Base

afternoon in the sixties, getting some rack time,

sweating in the humidity, stripped

to shorts, chilling to Miles one barracks bay over.

Outside the snow grows in volume;

Miles wavers in and out, a radio beacon

from the past, distorted by static

of the years between.

The snow tumbles, floats, falls into memory, blends

with the cool blue river of Miles, Miles, Miles.

Uzbekistan, 1998

[57]
On a Spring Day in Tashkent

What is this magpie-filled wind

which, here in far Tashkent, summons
honeysuckle aromas; the crack of bat

on ball; my mother’s voice warning me

not to eat the steaming hot multigrain bread
fresh from her oven; my best friend’s

sister—her perfume a necklace

ringing me round—as we three
play penny ante poker; the smells

of sweat, a hardwood floor, and leather

basketballs, accompanied by the awkward
drumming of young feet up, down, across,

and around a court; the feel of calves and thighs

pumping a bicycle so hard that liftoff
and flight seemed inevitable?

Forty years or more are bridged by this wind

in my face; and the magpies swirling above
are an electric current startling my arteries,

infusing my aging body with such vigor

that I break into a run filled
with leaps, skips, and laughter.

Teenagers stare and shake their heads; mothers guard

their infants; dogs bark; but one old woman,
leaning on a cane, grins and thrusts a fist upwards.

Uzbekistan, 1998

[ 58 ]
A Typical Moment

A friend writes to inquire

what makes an expat’s life
different from any other.

Try this example: I sit,

as I write this, in a cafe
in Tashkent run by a man from Istanbul
who works for a German pharmaceutical firm.
» His cafe serves Italian and French dishes
to Americans and Brits who speak
little or no Russian or Uzbek.
His waitresses are Russians
who speak no English, his cooks
are multi-lingual Koreans, and his bartender,
a young Russian woman, serves
Irish whiskey to Australians haggling
over a business deal with Uzbeks and Tajiks.
The tape deck plays Elton John,
the Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, and the Beach Boys.
At any one time, at least four
languages are floating among
the eight tables and the bar.
An hour before closing, a Turkish bellydancer, accompanied
by Arabic music, weaves through the cafe. When she
finishes, a tall, lean, elegant, bearded Russian
pianist plays rock and roll standards with jazzy riffs.

I down a Benedictine and leave

to find leaves rustled by a light spring rain.

Uzbekistan, Spring 1998

[59]
Two Take Root

1
A cottonwood seed armada
sails an evening Tashkent wind.

It glides and bobs past sycamore,

white oak, an assembly

of ballet-goers, two shabby

drunks, and a crippled beggar

who uses her one gnarled

hand to touch passersby.

People flick her hand away

almost absent-mindedly,

the way they brush the seeds

out of their eyes and hair.

Le
In Tashkent’s impoverished economic soil,
beggars sprout everywhere—

human weeds in abandoned

asphalt lots.

Every annoyed hand

which flicks the poor aside

clones a dozen more beggars

with the stunned eyes

of clubbed fish
gasping for air.

Grasping for cash, leftover scraps

of bread, discarded slices of pizza,

[ 60 ]
 half-eaten chicken bones, cheap vodka,
staggering in the wake of the well-

dressed, the financially fit, the survivors

of an economic wasteland, these are

the whisperers, the ghost

voices on night’s wind, dead cells
f
society sheds which refuse
to disappear or absolve us.

III.
The cottonwood seeds sink taproots
into Tashkent’s oasis water.

The poor multiply even faster

in Tashkent’s economic desert,

a twentieth century version

of the miracle of loaves and fishes,

a feast featuring the starving elderly,

child beggars, and teenage prostitutes:

Mary Magdalenes whose Christs

are fat European and American businessmen,

and the apostles and disciples are minor

corporate or government functionaries

who busily crunch between their teeth

the seeds carelessly strewn by their leaders.

Nothing can grow where scavengers

pillage every crumb, seed, and dropping.

Uzbekistan, 1998

[ 61 ]
A Dawning

Five a.m. and a generous alarum of birds

(rooks, doves, magpies, grackles, and sparrows)
begins to wheel at high speed
through the canyons between
ten story apartment buildings,
dive, flash upwards, carve
a turn through dawn-lit air
and slice back again, missing
windows and ledges by the barest
of inches, racing like children
in an open field, wind in faces
and arms outflung, yes,
they’re flung through air like ideas
percolating through an exciting conversation,
casual, exuberant, vita vitae gratia,
a roller coaster of air and wing, a flinging
away of all restraint, no taint
of maybe, what if, be careful, only
the brimming over oflife and flight
and the light filling a new day.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Spring 1998

[ 62 ]
 The Corner of Ulitsa Ferghana and Ulitsa Nukus

Let’s say youre not

a visiting dignitary. No
motorcade or rifles,
just an urge

to get to the other side;

but the street is wide—
you can't cross over
‘and neither have you

bribes to fly, no light

industrial oiling of palms.
No outstretched branches
nor hulas on car bonnets.

Neigh. No horsing around.

Either passport and visa
are in order or you file
back where you came. A drawer.

A cabinet. A bluebonnet. Go.

No arguments. This isn’t Texas.
Here you walk where you're told
and salute uniforms with convertible currency.

Buses rumble past crammed with sardines

swimming to factories (or curbs to beg).
Sirens fill the air and sharks
smile by in cavalcades machine gun draped.

This is a manual for revolution. This

is a treatise on Marx and the Kiosk.
This is America’s tax dollars
at work, a Field of Dreams.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 1997-1999

[ 63 |
Things I Learned This Week in Tashkent

(Uzbekistan, 1999)

The Serbs have never harmed anyone, at any time.

They have been victims throughout history.

Television was invented in Tashkent

by a Russian-trained Uzbek.

Americans never landed on the moon. Russia knew this,

but kept quiet—it needed an American grain shipment.

Colonel Yuri Gagarin was the only person to land on the moon.
American news media have conspired to keep this secret.

Drinking cola with ice will cause

a cold and sore throat.

Never whistle in your house or apartment.

If you do, you will be poor all your life.

Jack London was the greatest American writer.

The capitalist intelligentsia try to conceal this fact.

All Americans are racists.

All Russians are realists.

Vodka cures all stomach problems.

More vodka cures all vodka problems.

Do not accept a knife from the hand

of another person. If you do, you will fight.

Russians invented the airplane, the light bulb,

and the telephone. Americans invented racism.

The United States had no reason to bomb Japan in WWII.

Japan was a non-participant who was used as a nuclear guinea pig.

[ 64 |
American colleges are second only to the University of Moscow. However,
the United States has no art, music, literature, or math.

Russian is a language of elegance, beauty, and simplicity.

English is crude, disorganized, and incapable of refined expression.

America has no culture, only slogans.

Russia has only culture, no economy.

Do not wash the clothes of a family member departed

ona trip. If you do, the traveller will never return.

Russians are expert at survival.

Americans are expert at sales and colonialism.

The bar in the Meridien hotel has more American

lawyers than Los Angeles—at least this is true on Friday nights.
 - as a -

—ve "Assi carpi 4;i ealena eines a1

= niisnc’s Sh Ja “<r gata
—- » —e, a
a

i ae ena) 9
— ation oe we ae

A schil satiets alt

(7 = <A
; aa { aw ol uh 91g

_ a -

—
a —s
rst

ai j en ibe a

: a 7
= Fe =erowa
seman ine ihe win ee
ee
V. Estonia

(2002-2003)
 It Was a Moment of No Particular Significance

sitting in a snowy park

musing on ten thousand mistakes
made each and every day

chastising self with words

like a penitent
engaged in self-flagellation

: suddenly a giggling girl no more

than seven or eight races down a path
chased by laughing mother and little brother

thoughts tossed away like confetti on the wind

he strolls off smiling whistling
throws in a little soft shoe be do be do

[ 69 ]
There Are Moments

There are moments so pure

(a stream where every pebble

gleams beneath the rustling water,

a late afternoon ball of gold above

a distant hillside summoning the viewer

to embark on a lifelong journey

after beauty, a five year old student

who hooks both arms around

a teacher’s legs and says—with an

incandescent smile—you are a silly man

make me laugh make me laugh now, silvery

a moon sailing—a ghostly galleon—through

cloud and tree trailing a fragrant radiance

of leaf and rain and summer breeze)

there are, I repeat, moments so pure

that it may seem better to die that second

than to let them drift off into the fading

pages of memory which slowly crumble

into the long night we all must face.

Yet some few find a way to let those moments

go and stay alert for the next and the next

so that even a moonless starless night is not

too dark for them to spot an owl in noiseless

flight, nor is the city so filled with industrial odor

[70 ]
it prevents them from inhaling the scent of honeysuckle
alongside a heavily travelled road, nor are they

too busy with the world’s affairs to stop and sip

a nectar which they have loved since childhood.
Everything Comes from Nothing

Snow slashes streets, white blades

which draw no blood, but startle
pedestrians into awkward sprints for safety.

And I dawdle, and I smile—

people passing frown or grimace
or shake their heads;

three diners in a small Russian restaurant

lift their glasses and laugh, heads
thrown back in warm abandon; I wave.

I lift my face to the stinging snow, open

my mouth, and take pellets onto my tongue,
icy communion hosts which instantly transform to nothing.

Nothing is what I am, a cheerful nothing

draped in white sheets of nothing,
beneath a sky which reveals nothing

among people racing to nothing

along slippery streets where spills
lead to nothing, like this nothing

which presumes to be a poem. I place

this nothing deep inside to give it warmth.
All there is will appear from within this nothing.

Tallinn, Estonia, Autumn 2002

Jakub Wysocki

A quiet lad, no words

wasted on casual conversation,
he could go days without
saying a word in class.

So imagine his concern

when he was required
to recite a speech
from Julius Caesar.

Silent as always he
stood in front of the class.
We all winced at the tension
clenching his features.

Then he spoke, and his voice

was an organ rolling
through a full-throated passage,
a virtuoso performance

pulling out all the stops,

timbres of every hue
filling the room. No one breathed.
When he finished, he rushed

head down for his seat.

The applause startled him.
He lifted his head, stared.
Dawn broke across his face.

[73]
One for Ben Saltman

Even thousands of miles from where

you wrote and we often spoke, your words
resonate along streets I walk. Families strolling
medieval cobblestones are draped with shadows

of love, hidden secrets, confusion, quarrels

less sensible than a diabetic scarfing chocolate.
Or snowy fields suddenly fill with birds
for no apparent reason. I hear your calm

acceptance of mystery, its necessity, its sacred

function in making the world startle us, open
our veins to transfusions of the unexpected.
The wine of friendship can intoxicate. You knew

this, never let it impair your judgement, yet quaffed

its flask without reservation, without fear.
I saw your face today in an old Russian walking
his dog. I remembered how your monastic features

could, with a slow smile, warm an onlooker,

your words correct a careless thought with precision
of a master carpenter—your emendations never
cruel, never designed to hurt. I saw Helen, Jeanmarie,

Lara, and Marjorie hovering in his eyes. I turned

a corner to hide my tears and flee the years that pile
between us, that bury memory, that leave me
only pictures, books, and almost familiar faces

which betray me. (Or is it my memory which betrays?)

The wind, the rain, the snow, the sun, each one
you knew and shared with readers. May you rest easy
in their indifferent arms. May you bloom within old friends.

Tallinn, Estonia, December 2002

Lag
Seeking

the snow floats

in wave after wave

past the street lamp

drawn by its currents

I bundle and go outside
walk for hours no destination

the slow falling flakes cling

to my coat to my hat
to my thoughts

which seek the cool

purity of something which can
fall unhurried for miles

I would know this calm acceptance

of fate of distance of time
of inevitable change in my future

I would join snow planet solar system

galaxy universe in drift and flow
in passive merger with controlling currents

my steps do not know where

they are going when I arrive home
it is a surprise a discovery

that I have a place even though

the world has turned in my absence
I still find home

a light waits in the window

a neighbor holds a door open
the elevator climbs to the right floor

[ 75 ]
looking out my window the snow still falls
people pass shadows in the night seeking
may the earth turn round and guide them

where a room awaits where people say their name

where the wind is just a voice in the distance
where shadows transform into flesh and song

[ 76 ]
 Who Will Tell Their Tales?

Each person walking past

is a repository
of stories, possibilities, lost
opportunities. Each step
taken is a choice
from among many. It opens

,4 door, closes
others, creates
a pathway which won't
be visible for years
until far enough down
the road the walker looks

back to see
the trail traversed.
The air murmurs, at such
a moment, familiar
voices fade in and out,
faces and shapes appear,

glide across the path, look

questioningly at the watcher,
fade without comment.
Were they part of the story,
or what might have been? No
answer. [he traveller

moves on, the cache

of stories deepens, the choices
grow no simpler. A passerby sees
only a person putting
one foot in front of the other, then
repeating the process.

Lge
Evening Rainfall

I amble, stop, look

at children stomping

mud puddles, their mother

huddled in a fur coat next

to a bus stop, her collar

covering ears. A young man,

cigarette dangling from left

corner of mouth, ski cap pulled

low over eyes, a bottle in hand,

swaggers past while eyeing

two long-legged mini-skirted Russian

teenagers who giggle while tugging

their skirts down. Two policeman, tall,

muscular, slow moving, strut past

without expression, eye everyone,

talk in rumbling voices, lips barely moving.

Under an awning, two in their twenties

embrace, kiss, oblivious to pedestrians

streaming to either side. In a nearby

doorway an old woman sits, motionless

except for eyes swinging back and forth

like a cat’s tail before erupting into action.

A car blasts past, young male voices shout

and laugh, and water arcs across the sidewalk,

[ 78
 drenches both trouser legs.
Time to move. Reluctantly,

I go home to dry out. Already I miss

the pleasure of their company,

the stars of the three ring

, circus of Tallinn’s wet streets.

Tallinn, Estonia, November 2002

[79]
Every Walk is a Journey

Feet weary weary, bound in heavy boots,

I trudge through slush, dodge mud thrown
by passing cars, wipe snow-spattered glasses.

A couple, early twenties, mittened hands joined,

leaning into one another, moves swiftly past
through wind and snow, faces inches apart,

laughing, talking, swinging arms—I even hear a bar

or two of song, Estonian song, in two part harmony.
I start to smile and stop, scolded by a drunken scowl

from nearby pub’s doorway. I soberly move past, turn

the corner, and dodge two cats skidding on the ice
in rolling combat. I reach my doorstep. A teenage

Russian girl smokes a cigarette under the overhang,

her skinhead boyfriend sullenly nods as I enter building.
An old cleaning woman smiles when I hold the door for her.

Going up the stairs to my apartment, I pass young Estonian

mother, giggling son on hip, old bearded man with barking poodle,
and electrician stringing wire and shutting off power to elevator.

I open the locks to my dwelling, turn on lights.

The snow and wind seem a long time ago.
The young couple was a dream.

[ 80 ]
Lifes Plainness

a tiny woman with child in arms child in tow

crosses street all three smiling and talking
the youngest waves at no one at everyone

on the corner a tall drunk weaves

through afternoon traffic talking
to himself no one looks

an old woman with hair dyed red

carries two bags of groceries her
furrowed face a road map of life

three young Russians their heads

close-shaved whistle at passing girls
weave swiftly through clots of pedestrians

man and woman not speaking they walk

to bus stop hand in hand she reaches up
tucks a tendril of his hair under hat half-smiles
Dancing from Memory

all afternoon the wind

blew whatever was available
(leaf, hat, gown, scarf, coat,
candy bar wrapper, beer can)
in a fandango of breath and
whirling movement his partners
changing from one minute
to the next a swirl of color
and shape filling his outdoor stage

one old woman speared her flying

hat with her cane and deftly spun it
round and back into her hand
before tying it onto her head
one would have sworn her cane
tapped a flamenco beat as she
strolled off to a nearby bus stop
her stride (perhaps hard to believe)
radiated a sultry insouciance

waiting for her bus she swayed

to some rhythm older than her bones
the wind lightly lifted her gown
then gracefully redraped it round
her swing and sway swing and sway
her eyes were shut her lips seemed
to whisper words only she could hear
who knows what year she was revisiting
who it was her arms reached toward
 A Spring Serenade

Bounty it is, the wind

wrapping all in its arms
on a changeling day, winter to spring;
the sun envelops those who venture
beyond wall and door
in a silvery stream;

quoth the child on the swing,

Ye
the bent woman on a cane easing along
a thawing path, the mother and daughter floating
home from school hand enfolded
in loving hand, and the slow dancers—trees
rippling and floating all of a warming afternoon.

Who knows these things will blossom for months;

foot and hand, branch and root, lengthen and expand.
 a;
Stems Axa iP
i_ jr Sire wn mondial.

a a Garis

it = =e
y wigs . .

i 7 ca alas ben |
islddiiatead aise eal
| melai wre coteLozs'Kasei aa|
ot dice en Me — hae

| Stee getsaeolian
; Te ; hoep sed fuze bine90

2%
 Biography

Michael L. Newell was born in Florida in 1945. In addition to

living in thirteen states, he has lived in Japan,
The Philippine Islands,
Thailand, The United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Kuwait, Uzbekistan,
Mexico, Egypt, and Estonia. He currently resides in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia.

He studied writing with Benjamin Saltman and Ann Stanford. His

poems have appeared in a number of periodicals including Aethlon:
, Lhe Journal ofSport Literature, Bellowing Ark; College English, English
* Journal: First Class; The Iconoclast, Lilliput Review, Mandrake Poetry
Review; The Plastic Tower, Poetry Depth Quarterly; Poetry Nottingham
International, Rattle, Ship of Fools, and Tulane Review.

less)
 _

= (lie - ae ae :
poole ging aT, phat
eheseilh eolin!
Cad” Mal 8 uvedaen’

ee ee
ee Falye-og 1d ad tee! r
ee
7 a i ie —
sy
@ ATL; * - an
casahith ecAWiwe) Bal celal NOMS ae
di whist AVA on

~) a ee ce
or _

=>,

}}
Michael L. Newell was born in Florida in 1945. In addition to living in thirteen
states, he has lived in Japan, The Philippine Islands, Thailand, The United
Arab Emirates, Jordan, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Mexico, Egypt, and Estonia. He
currently resides in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

He studied writing with Benjamin Saltman and Ann Stanford. His poems
have appeared in a number of periodicals including Aethlon: The Journal of
Sport Literature, Bellowing Ark; College English, English Journal, First Class;
The Iconoclast, Lilliput Review; Mandrake Poetry Review; The Plastic Tower;
Poetry Depth Quarterly; Poetry Nottingham International, Rattle; Ship of Fools;
and Tulane Review.

COVER DRAWING ‘Without Compass or Map” by Clark Sarbaugh

$12.00 n es)Z \O NX oo jo) Ke)aS aS Ke)N ic 1e1]nh [o)

BELLOWING ARK Press m Shoreline, Washington

L86-VID
UOTE
OOO
00/0
A