issue 3
fall 2013
Glen Armstrong
Sam Cha
Kalmina Wu
Christopher Mulrooney
Brian Clifton
Chandler Lewis
Doug Boiling
Brittany Willis
Vanessa Couto Johnson
James Maya
Ginger Galloway
David Stone
Richard Baldasty
Issac Escalera
Michael Cooper
Mark Young
Kristin Abraham
Carly Vogelsan
Sam Cha
Kalmina Wu
Christopher Mulrooney
Brian Clifton
Chandler Lewis
Doug Boiling
Brittany Willis
Vanessa Couto Johnson
James Maya
Ginger Galloway
David Stone
Richard Baldasty
Issac Escalera
Michael Cooper
Mark Young
Kristin Abraham
Carly Vogelsan
Sam ChaSam Cha recently received his MFA in poetry from UMass Boston, where he was the recipient of the 2011 and 2012 Academy of American Poets Prize. He was a finalist for the 2007 Anderbo poetry prize and the 2012 Memorious Art Song Contest. He lives and writes in Cambridge, MA.
He writes: "Ekphrasis: Wall at Shay's Pub" is a reaction against the conventional ekphrastic poem, in which you have the conventional "I" sitting maybe on a bench in some sterile gallery, jerking off with their moleskine or ipad, trying to stage An Authentic Encounter with Great Art. This is an ekphrasis of a brick wall in a dive bar where they play the same songs all the time. the basic unit of the poem is the line,
ekphrasis: wall at shay's pub |
Kalmina WuKalmina Wu is a poet, photographer, musician, bean counter, thief, garbage disposal, cartographer, bicyclist, professional amateur, endangered species, writer, ghostbuster, mosquito, and the gum at the bottom of your shoe. She's currently studying economics at UC Berkeley. When she’s not indulging in literature, she can be found collecting bottles under pier docks, aggressively telling people that she loves them, and pretending to be pleasantly surprised to see you. She is presently working on a chapbook of experimental poetry. You can find her quiet insights on life on her tumblr.
Kalmina says: Life moves too quickly for us to read the whole thing. My intention is to cut up the words and leave just the important bits. Livermore High Class of 1965
Dido and Aeness |
ChanDler LewisChandler Lewis grew up in Western Pennsylvania and went to school in Buffalo, New York. Some of his poems have appeared in Beard of Bees, Altered Scale, Shampoo, Onedit, Zafusy, Prick of the Spindle, Radioactive Moat, whyarewenotinparadise?, Tool a Magazine, and Dance to Death. Spire published his chapbook "Illuminated Aluminum" in 2011. He is a public school English teacher.
About his poems, he says: These poems came from a larger series titled "Residual Traffic." I had been in conversation with a colleague about "prescriptive prose" and "descriptive poetry" -- her contention was that prose typically demands the reader comply, while poetry doesn't make such demands. Anyway. In the end, I wanted poems that moved from a sense of openness to claustrophobic closedness, from pliant flexibility to spasmed rigidity. I like the idea of reading poems that promise one thing, and then delivering something else even the poet didn't expect to deliver. Like a pizza guy showing up with a new set of encyclopedias instead. Sohounds
Twining |
Doug BoilingDoug Bolling's poetry has appeared in Basalt, Marginalia, Indefinite Space, The Broome Review, Tribeca poetry Review, Toasted Cheese, Trajectory, Inflectionist Review and Slipstream among many others. He has received four Pushcart nominations, currently occupies space-time in the greater Chicago area in Flossmoor, Illinois.
He writes: I'm much interested in exploring ways to liberate the poem from the traditional constraints---including some in modernism. 0pen up the interior spaces of a poem and let it breathe, let it ride far out, plains horses ripping across the turf, etc. As well, working with freeing up metaphor from its usual inward turning centripety--blow it open where closure falters and the reader/listener can't make a cognitive gestalt. I try to take inspiration from painting: the shift from realism/naturalism to impressionism to expressionist work and on to abstract expressionism. anti-poem #8
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Sam Cha |
The map is the territory, the territory is the poem (or, 'The basic unit of the poem is the line') |
Sam Cha recently received his MFA in poetry from UMass Boston, where he was the recipient of the 2011 and 2012 Academy of American Poets Prize. He was a finalist for the 2007 Anderbo poetry prize and the 2012 Memorious Art Song Contest. He lives and writes in Cambridge, MA.
He writes:
"The map is the territory, the territory is the poem (or, 'The basic unit of the poem is the line')" was an attempt to map out the everything that goes into generating a rough draft, from writing prompt to aborted dead-end lines, to random access memories, to "finished" draft. I wanted to see if these things--the things that get filtered out--could work as art when systematically arranged and catalogued and linked. The shape of the process, and the tangle of vectors was the point. If there was a point.
He writes:
"The map is the territory, the territory is the poem (or, 'The basic unit of the poem is the line')" was an attempt to map out the everything that goes into generating a rough draft, from writing prompt to aborted dead-end lines, to random access memories, to "finished" draft. I wanted to see if these things--the things that get filtered out--could work as art when systematically arranged and catalogued and linked. The shape of the process, and the tangle of vectors was the point. If there was a point.
the basic unit of the poem is the line
ekphrasis: wall at shay's pub
ekphrasis: wall at shay's pub
Brittany WillisBrittany Alyse Willis is a poet and performer in Texas where she received her BA in Theatre from UNT. She spends most of her time wishing she could be paid for playing kazoo or dancing on bubble wrap. Her greatest passion involves finding new ways to explore theatre, literature, visual art and music as tools to be employed alongside one other.
She says: "To the Twelve Tribes" was a poem written from my own fascination with the dark tales in the Nevi'im/Prophets (from the Jewish Tanakh or Christian Bible). After editing the written piece, it became obvious to me that the poem needed to be heard. In parts. All the parts. With a sense of atmosphere and setting. To the Twelve Tribes (audio and written)
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Vanessa Couto JohnsonVanessa Couto Johnson is an MFA candidate at Texas State University. Her work has appeared in A cappella Zoo (as 'Vanessa Lessel'), Willows Wept Review, amphibi.us, Liebamour, blossombones, and other places. Selections from “Imponderables in Excess” is forthcoming in Eratio. She runs www.treksift.com, blogs at www.meansofpoetry.com, and has a BA in both English and philosophy from Rice University. She says: I am interested in using methods/constraints to generate new work from chosen source texts. Note on “3 Types of Fear That May Be Keeping You Fit from How to Overcome”: I wanted to use the three primal colors on a text. I took a blog post from a “primal lifestyle” site, and I rearranged the text by each sentence alphabetically (thus altering its coherence). Red is used consistently on –ing endings plus the letter before the –ing. Blue indicates a subtraction in “ONE,” an addition to create a new word within an existing word in “TWO,” and merely an emphasis to highlight internal words in “THREE.” Yellow is used to fade-out letters: in “ONE,” for one of the vowels per paragraph/stanza; in “TWO,” to allow another word to appear; in “THREE,” arbitrarily to tighten the language. Note for “What happens when health advice becomes partially hydrogenated”: Source text: “The Modern Primal Blueprint® – The Rules of Living Today” By ‘partially hydrogenating’ a text, I mean an “h” is added once to each word that has an I or F, twice to each word that has S or O, thrice for N or P, and four times for C (as inspiration for number of “h” to be added, I have consulted the periodic table of elements [to know how many hydrogen atoms could bond to each atom of the element], and I decided to only consider elements whose chemical symbol are composed of one letter)—words with multiples of these letters will have multiple h’s accordingly 3 Types of Fear That May Be Keeping You Fit from How to Overcome
What happens when health advice becomes partially hydrogenated |
Ginger gallowayGinger M. Galloway is a Christian, wife, mother, poet, writer, artist, teacher. Ginger earned her Bachelor Degree in Human Development from Azusa Pacific University and currently Ginger teaches a multi-grade classroom at a private Christian school in California. Ginger has authored several collections of poetry and two stage plays. Ginger enjoys writing poetry that connects with the audience where they are, making light of real-life situations or causing them to take a deeper look at themselves. Ginger, her husband Richard, and four youngest children live in Riverside County, California.
She says about her work: Stretching out of my comfort zone I have attempted to condense my poetry into something that is much more organic. I am hoping to encompass thought beyond the mundane of day-to-day living and say what's truly on the mind. why?
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chandler lewisChandler Lewis grew up in Western Pennsylvania and went to school in Buffalo, New York. Some of his poems have appeared in Beard of Bees, Altered Scale, Shampoo, Onedit, Zafusy, Prick of the Spindle, Radioactive Moat, whyarewenotinparadise?, Tool a Magazine, and Dance to Death. Spire published his chapbook "Illuminated Aluminum" in 2011. He is a public school English teacher.
About his poems, he says: These poems came from a larger series titled "Residual Traffic." I had been in conversation with a colleague about "prescriptive prose" and "descriptive poetry" -- her contention was that prose typically demands the reader comply, while poetry doesn't make such demands. Anyway. In the end, I wanted poems that moved from a sense of openness to claustrophobic closedness, from pliant flexibility to spasmed rigidity. I like the idea of reading poems that promise one thing, and then delivering something else even the poet didn't expect to deliver. Like a pizza guy showing up with a new set of encyclopedias instead. Sohounds
Twining |
David stoneDavid Stone spent most of his childhood on his family's farm in Waverly, Pennsylvania. He is a seventh generation descendent from the founder of Waverly. He has taught English at Loma Linda Academy in California for the past eleven years.
David earned a Bachelors degree in English from Atlantic Union College (S. Lancaster, MA) and a Masters degree in English from La Sierra University (Riverside, CA). He has taught various courses in literature, writing, and ESL to high school and college students in Arkansas, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Beijing, China. Besides his wife and two children, David finds pleasure in cooking, nature, and writing. Comments: David enjoys the playful spirit and sounds of nursery rhymes and their archetypes. He hopes his poems discomfort his readers and express the insights and puzzles he gains through whimsically playing with their texts and images in response to his personal experience. Ink tinkers
Riddle |
richard baldastyRichard Baldasty is Shuf veteran (Issue 2). Recent work online includes publication in Thick Jam and Burrow Press Review. His day job is garden design; when he watches bees hover, he thinks of John Ciardi's description of them as hunchbacks in pirate pants.
Richard says: It's [my poem] is text/image, collage and prose poem. It subverts itself, but doesn't withdraw itself--not so ironic that it flattens out its own visual impact. It draws upon conventions of B-grade monster movies: this one would be something like Attack of the Giant Squid. Such dramas always end with excessive "rescue" forces. They are stories that thrill though they can't be taken seriously. But this is also true, sometimes, of solemn high art, and there's nothing more solemn or arty than T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," a work often half ready to wink at its own gloom. I have lifted three lines: "My nerves are bad tonight . . . Stay with me." Parlous or Parodic?
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isaac escaleraIsaac Escalera is a MFA student of Poetry at Cal State University of San Bernardino where he received his BA in English Creative Writing with both University and Department honors. His poetry and fiction have been published in The Sand Canyon Review, The Pacific Review, The Redlands Review, Badlands and Flies, Cockroaches and Poets (a journal by the Chicano Writers and Artist Association at CSU Fresno). He has also been an editor for The Pacific Review and has collaborated on the monthly-ish magazine, The Secret Handshake, a magazine he is waiting eagerly to rise once again like a phoenix.
Comments: Though much of Isaac's poetry is narrative, invested in the lives of everyday places and people, he believes that life itself is still very complicated and full of beautiful mystery. He believes poetry should push the boundaries of the written word and genre to get to these deeper meanings or at least close enough to catch a glimpse. He would like to think of his more "experimental" poems as the "RUSH (the band) Songs" of this work. Thinking about an all encompassing You with a footnote regarding I
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Michael CooperMichael Cooper is a MFA student at CSUSB who is fascinated by the fragmentation of language. His work plays with diction and polyphony in an attempt to shock us back into a critical awareness of how frail we are. He feels we are at our most beautiful at our point of failure: orchids in the same vase of water.
Troop Movement is experimenting with lateral fracture of the poetic form, like Taxonomy it is attemtping to express the sum of events being felt at the same time from different points of view. In this case syntax is intentionally left broken so the threads can be followed individually as well as in composite. Troop Movement
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Kalmina Wu |
dido and aeness |
Kalmina Wu is a poet, photographer, musician, bean counter, thief, garbage disposal, cartographer, bicyclist, professional amateur, endangered species, writer, ghostbuster, mosquito, and the gum at the bottom of your shoe. She's currently studying economics at UC Berkeley. When she’s not indulging in literature, she can be found collecting bottles under pier docks, aggressively telling people that she loves them, and pretending to be pleasantly surprised to see you. She is presently working on a chapbook of experimental poetry. You can find her quiet insights on life on her tumblr.
Kalmina says:
Life moves too quickly for us to read the whole thing. My intention is to cut up the words and leave just the important bits.
Kalmina says:
Life moves too quickly for us to read the whole thing. My intention is to cut up the words and leave just the important bits.
Livermore High Class of 1965
Dido and Aeness
Dido and Aeness
vanessa couto johnsonVanessa Couto Johnson is an MFA candidate at Texas State University. Her work has appeared in A cappella Zoo (as 'Vanessa Lessel'), Willows Wept Review, amphibi.us, Liebamour, blossombones, and other places. Selections from “Imponderables in Excess” is forthcoming in Eratio. She runs www.treksift.com, blogs at www.meansofpoetry.com, and has a BA in both English and philosophy from Rice University.
She says: I am interested in using methods/constraints to generate new work from chosen source texts. Note on “3 Types of Fear That May Be Keeping You Fit from How to Overcome”: I wanted to use the three primal colors on a text. I took a blog post from a “primal lifestyle” site, and I rearranged the text by each sentence alphabetically (thus altering its coherence). Red is used consistently on –ing endings plus the letter before the –ing. Blue indicates a subtraction in “ONE,” an addition to create a new word within an existing word in “TWO,” and merely an emphasis to highlight internal words in “THREE.” Yellow is used to fade-out letters: in “ONE,” for one of the vowels per paragraph/stanza; in “TWO,” to allow another word to appear; in “THREE,” arbitrarily to tighten the language. Note for “What happens when health advice becomes partially hydrogenated”: Source text: “The Modern Primal Blueprint® – The Rules of Living Today” By ‘partially hydrogenating’ a text, I mean an “h” is added once to each word that has an I or F, twice to each word that has S or O, thrice for N or P, and four times for C (as inspiration for number of “h” to be added, I have consulted the periodic table of elements [to know how many hydrogen atoms could bond to each atom of the element], and I decided to only consider elements whose chemical symbol are composed of one letter)—words with multiples of these letters will have multiple h’s accordingly 3 Types of Fear That May Be Keeping You Fit from How to Overcome
What happens when health advice becomes partially hydrogenated |
david stoneDavid Stone spent most of his childhood on his family's farm in Waverly, Pennsylvania. He is a seventh generation descendent from the founder of Waverly. He has taught English at Loma Linda Academy in California for the past eleven years.
David earned a Bachelors degree in English from Atlantic Union College (S. Lancaster, MA) and a Masters degree in English from La Sierra University (Riverside, CA). He has taught various courses in literature, writing, and ESL to high school and college students in Arkansas, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Beijing, China. Besides his wife and two children, David finds pleasure in cooking, nature, and writing. Comments: David enjoys the playful spirit and sounds of nursery rhymes and their archetypes. He hopes his poems discomfort his readers and express the insights and puzzles he gains through whimsically playing with their texts and images in response to his personal experience. Ink Tinkers
Riddle |
Mark YoungMark Young has been publishing poetry for nearly fifty-five years. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages.
He is the author of more than twenty books, primarily poetry but also including speculative fiction & art history. New e-books are due out soon from Quarter After Press & The Red Ceilings Press. He is the editor of the ezine Otoliths, & lives on the Tropic of Capricorn in Australia. Please visit here for an essay about his poetic methodology. Jersey City
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kristin abrahamKristin Abraham is the author of The Disappearing Cowboy Trick (poetry, forthcoming from Horse Less Press) and two chapbooks: Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus (Subito Press, 2008) and Orange Reminds You of Listening (Elixir Press, 2006). Her poetry and lyric essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Best New Poets 2005, Columbia Poetry Review, LIT, and American Letters & Commentary. She teaches at a community college in Wyoming, and lives in Colorado, where she serves as editor-in-chief and poetry editor of the literary magazine Spittoon.
Comments: This poem is a part of a larger series that explores contemporary American female archetypes. The Helena letters, specifically, are an attempt to investigate self-castigation and self-hatred that some women (and girls) internalize as a response to the archetype; the speaker in these poems and the "you" (Helena) are different identities/voices of the same woman. [Helena Letters #5]
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james maya
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James Maya rides his buffalo from time to time and writes poetry.
About his poem: Petrichor plays with the idea of science and nature merging with each other. Today, we ignore nature for the screen of our smartphone of computer. On part of Petrichor is written in HTML to illustrate the dominance of web-code in our lives. Note: We at shuf placed the poems side by side to highlight how they devolve. Petrichor (parts 1-6)
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Glen armstrongGlen Armstrong is Detroit area poet and musician. He holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He also edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His recent work has appeared in Conduit, Juked and Cloudbank.
Comments: It's a little odd to me that most poems are written on computers and still behave as if the were etched into stone. So, the piece is about a clash between old and new approaches. The saxophone is, of course, a technology I'm still mastering. Saxophobia/Saxophilia
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Additional Bios
Brian Clifton
Brian Clifton lives in Kansas City, MO with his pet pig, H1N1. He walks pretty much everywhere.
He says:
These parts from "Sincerely, The Moon" are an erasure of Part I and an erasure of an erasure of Part I. Note: We have animated his poem to highlight the erasures.
He says:
These parts from "Sincerely, The Moon" are an erasure of Part I and an erasure of an erasure of Part I. Note: We have animated his poem to highlight the erasures.