Volume 1 2007
Introduction
Introduction
In this issue, we are featuring Clio, the Muse of History:
The American rebel poet Emily Dickinson wrote: “She sweeps with many colored brooms/” personifying Mother Nature and her shamelessly rich tableau of sky. The creative writing students of Warnborough College have chosen this line from Dickinson, a poet who was well before her time, a [...]
Clio
Clio, il MUSE di storia
Oil on canvas, digitally manipulated, with references to 15th century illuminations
Artist unknown
1.
Upon her breath I write this:
Ding Dong.
like the Avon Lady,
she appeared at my door, promising
the end to cover-ups,
if only she could stow her bundles and rest
those war bride Nikes:
What?
Didn’t I recognize
my time-warped history tutor made over?
And after so much wandering, [...]
Global Warmth
If anyone tells you to go into a shelter, bring your own cyanide. In New Orleans, the stench that carried for miles, the last circle of hell within the Superdome, the Convention Center, the highway littered with refugees, Washington’s human trash, narrate what no photo-op can render. Hug me, Mr. President. You are spinning out [...]
“The Ladybird” and Other Poems
Every issue of Many Colored Brooms will feature a chapbook from one of our creative writing students. A chapbook from Shurooq Amin begins this tradition. Shurooq is a professor of English at the University of Kuwait.
Broom Broom
There are many
types of brooms
we keep in
our closets
that spring to action
when we drop
cereal,
dust,
or cat food;
besom,
push broom,
whisk broom,
and corn broom.
Then there
are the brooms
we use to clean
away the past;
drink,
drug,
psych,
and anti-depressants
there may be
too many of these
brooms about!
There is also
the broom
my ex-
rides;
alimony,
palimony,
child support,
curds,
and whey.
and there is
the
broom……broom!
sound my
boy makes
when he
races his cars
I really
don’t have a problem
with these brooms-
they’re expected
and I [...]
Pounding History
I remember
the day
I fell from history.
I was grasping the last
rung,
but then
I just slipped.
They say,
never look into the abyss
called fear
but,
I wasn’t looking
I was falling!
I was accelerating!
Now, history
is cyclical
and this is probably
why
I kept seeing
the past
and the future
pounding into each other
on the way down.
Persia pounding Egypt,
Egypt pounding Greece,
Greece pounding Rome
and finally,
Rome pounding America.
I haven’t fallen
far enough
to see who
America [...]
Facing Invasion
Standing with Caryl by curb in Ann Arbor last evening,
candles flickering within our cup shields-
so something up there could see that we are here?
An officer’s report from the “demolished” village of Gusukuma, Okinawa,
June 1945 (from George Feifer’s The Battle of Okinawa):
I was surprised to feel that the ground was soft and soggy under
my feet. I [...]
The Beheading
Caravaggio suddenly appeared in the Biblically-
inscripted room, surrounded by
scenes slanting toward terrestrial power
but costumed as spiritual drama.
He shook the Counter-Reformation
decorum out of these tableau vivants,
eliminating from painting
saccharin distortion and ecclesiastic agit-prop.
If by “the human” we mean actual lives
kicking up dust as they speed toward us
shattering idealistic frames,
then Caravaggio, like Vallejo’s Human Poems,
produced human paintings.
A young [...]
Eve Speaks to Cain
I was dreaming of snakes
when I conceived you.
They slid up between my thighs
and some latched themselves
like strands of hair
rooted to my skull.
When I pushed you from my body,
I remembered the passage from the Garden.
as you passed from darkness into light.
And, as if I had swallowed my dream,
you desired to be near the ground,
a tiller of [...]
Kaiteur
Coffee-coloured water washes across the basin; tentatively touches the
forest, wraps its fluid arms around the hollow trunks of the Silverbally
tree, before flowing off the bank and coalescing into the body of the
Potaro. The water flows deceptively, ignorant of the impending plummet to
a different age. Where once was rock, now is found a collage of autumn
colours, [...]
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