Welcome

This is an archive of posts from the mostly daily Crisis Chronicles Cyber Litmag that Cleveland poet John Burroughs created and maintained from June 2008 through January 2015. Scroll down our left sidebar to the Category Archives to explore nearly 3000 literary works we’ve posted over six years of publication.

We migrated the Cyber Litmag to WordPress on 25 May 2014 after GoDaddy decided to discontinue their Quick Blogcast service. However, in the process of migration, some photos that were hosted by GoDaddy disappeared and many formatting issues crept in. A few years later, many photos hosted by Photobucket also disappeared.

Perhaps we will get these issues fixed someday. We might even start publishing again when you least expect it.

Reverse Cowboy Hexapod Viking (by William Merricle)

 

Reverse Cowboy Hexapod Viking

Fragments of goodness and mercy glare blue,
sad for having wasted my despair. Don Juan
Quixote’s flirting at windmills again. Thunder
has no need to rehearse. Life carries cancerous
specifications. Bend the rod while it’s still hot.
The graveyard’s made from the alphabet. The fact
that the cockroaches are uneasy is cold comfort.
The tide knows I’m innocent, but it doesn’t care.
The flagellum has Gnostic overtones. I hear
my heart is shameless. A calving glacier groans
a verse. Oh new season, help me sleep less badly.
I’ll never forget the night we huffed the mildew

remover and jumped over a series of candlesticks.
Please try to look like you aren’t hiding
a tray of nightcrawlers in your smile.
Lunchmeat hunts for the nature of truth
in the back of the fridge. Yonder lies the fodder
of my cattle. No one could tell if it was the end
of the funeral. Knowledge says anything to show
besides that crust of dried blood? As with all myths,
the stains are downright creepy. Under the bed,
the pods have plans for us. In the Greyhound,
the comedian silently weeps. The seashore
tersely shreds documents relating to our origin.

 

* * *

William Merricle lives in Lima, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Pudding, Slipstream, ZeroCity, and many other publications. His chapbooks include Heimlich The Donut [Pudding House], Grace, You Let the Screen Door Slam [Crisis Chronicles] and, most recently, Chaos Theory [NightBallet].

“Reverse Cowboy Hexapod Viking” © 2015 by William Merricle, used with permission

 

Romance Is a Problem Too Massive to Fix (by William Merricle)

 

Romance Is a Problem Too Massive to Fix

Nobody’s saying
we ought to slow down.
All we’re saying is
we ought to turn and run.
Tears fall into spilled milk.
Redemption policy available upon request.
For a time I wished everything would die

in a state of joy.
Circumstances changed and now I’m naked
and trussed on the warm hood of an Impala
heading home to a wall.
Romance is a corporate entity too big to fail.
I was dreaming about cloud design
and lost my love again.

At the back of the crowd
someone was saying,
“Let’s dress the emperor.”
Once the facts had been established
the records were destroyed.
We desired a desire
that would stick to the ribs.

Ruthless in El Paso
wraps her legs around my skull
so hard I can see the abyss of heaven
but not quite reach it.
Sometimes the heart needs
to be told to shut up
and run.

God says I must forego my last quarter
of a century
and thanks me for being
part of the team.
As a loyal follower,
I must say I was disappointed
when his final tweet

consisted of 140 interrobangs.
Nobody’s saying
this existence is a road kill restaurant
in the parking lot of a mobius strip mall
but the primal forces of the universe
are not well pleased
when I ask for extra ketchup.

 

* * *

William Merricle lives in Lima, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Pudding, Slipstream, ZeroCity, and many other publications. His chapbooks include Heimlich The Donut [Pudding House], Grace, You Let the Screen Door Slam [Crisis Chronicles] and, most recently, Chaos Theory [NightBallet].

“Romance Is a Problem Too Massive to Fix“ © 2015 by William Merricle, used with permission

 

Xanax for Xmas (by William Merricle)

 

Xanax for Xmas

 

I’m dreaming of suggesting
in the strongest possible terms
that a white Christmas
get lost

Is tenderness legal
tender? As a child
I didn’t know everybody
was hurt

Tree branches and blood
vessels glisten with gifts
never opened

I’m scheming with
a brain stuck
on merry and bright

The meds kick in
like sleigh bells
packed with mud

Loneliness is my favorite
window to watch the snow from
the luxury of hell

 

 

* * *

William Merricle lives in Lima, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Pudding, Slipstream, ZeroCity, and many other publications. His chapbooks include Heimlich The Donut [Pudding House], Grace, You Let the Screen Door Slam [Crisis Chronicles] and, most recently, Chaos Theory [NightBallet].

“Xanax for Xmas“ © 2015 by William Merricle, used with permission

 

Trusting That the Heart Will Know the Way (by D.R. Wagner)

D.R. Wagner [photo by Glenda Drew]

TRUSTING THAT THE HEART WILL KNOW THE WAY

We came upon a pale landscape plain
Made paler by the moon, white past
The white of death with bushes white,
Upon which horses roamed, whiter than the
Whole of what we saw.

For most of night we were a silent crew,
Tired from too many mountain passes,
Descents into forgotten valleys, then up
Again toward snowy peaks that gleamed
Like teeth and drifted white with snow,
Borne by the coarsest wind
That tore into our skin and face for days.

Yet here, upon this night, the landscape
All seemed careful to our eyes.
We knew that we belonged to another world

And took a curious comfort in our own
Shadows. It was as if we walked upon
Detritus of some senseless time, that archeology
Could not undo or yet explain.

Still there was a sweetness there that
We felt resembled eternity or what
We thought eternity might be. It trembled
And looked to protect secrets.

Our dreams and half-dreams flooded
With so many yesterdays we could, at times,
Move only by following echoes and paths
From one another’s memories.

These places did not depend on us
To reckon their distances and plains.
We finally trusted that the heart would
Know the way, bring our sweetest bliss
Back to our stories and our now frozen lips.

And so, we traveled on, imagining ourselves
Cold historians, transforming all we
Saw into fantastic tales that we
Could tell to one another, hoping
That each one would tell us who we were.

* * * * *

“Trusting That the Heart Will Know the Way” ©2014 by D.R. Wagner, from The Night Market [Crisis Chronicles Press]

The Night Market [cover/art by ReBecca Gozion]

D.R. Wagner is the author of over twenty books and chapbooks of poetry and letters. He founded press : today : niagara in Niagara Falls, New York, in 1965 and later Runcible Spoon (press) in the late 1960’s and produced over fifty magazines and chapbooks. He co-wrote The Egyptian Stroboscope with d.a. levy in the late 1960’s. He read with Jim Morrison of the Doors in a legendary reading with Morrison and Michael McClure. and has read with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Al Winans, Viola Weinberg, d.a. levy, E.R. Baxter III, Ed Sanders, Anne Waldman and many, many other poets over the past 40 years.

His work is much published and has appeared in numerous translations. He has exhibited visual poetry with the likes of William Burroughs, Byron Gysin, Ian Hamilton Finlay, bpNichol, bill bissett, J.F. Bory and John Furnival in venues ranging from The Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, at the Louvre to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

He is also a visual artist, producing miniature needle-made tapestries that have been exhibited internationally and are included in numerous publications and museum collections. He is, further, a professional musician, working as a singer-songwriter and playing guitar and keyboards.

Teaching Design at the University of California at Davis since 1988, he also teaches in the Honors program at the University conducting classes in Poetry by Design. He continues to design interior carpeting and tapestry as well as write, perform and publish poetry regularly.

He currently lives in Locke, California.

anti-mold momentum (by j/j hastain and Juliet Cook)

Juliet Cook and j/j hastain

 

anti-mold momentum

The phantom tries to mold me
into amber embryos
and as I gather pictures
along
the brink I break
cigarettes
little binkies
in a mouth unfinished

Unfinished or not
the mold won’t work
I’ll scream and break
glass
and then drink
what I broke out of.
It’s been done before
chew the contents

then chew the form
as a way of making
both more content. Mysterious
risks. Glass grows stronger
and we pour our sea salt
into the glass cabinet.
Will it melt or crack or
break another mold

release the latest specimen
racy and with crisp
momentum. A silo
a spillway being swallowed
in sallow halos will lead
towards self-created flying things.
It doesn’t matter how far down
you throw me.

Even if I break again and again
I will re-grow, re-birth,
create
new shapes
new directions.
Redefine this fodder.
Fold me out of the line,
not into it.

* * * * *

 

j/j hastain is a queer, mystic, seer, singer, photographer, lover, priest/ess, and writer. As artist and activist of the audible, j/j is the author of several cross-genre books and enjoys ceremonial performances in an ongoing project regarding gender, shamanism, eros and embodiments. That project is called: you make yourself your own tilted stage.  j/j is the author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), anti-memoir a vigorous (Black Coffee Press/ Eight Ball Press), Secret Letters (Crisis Chronicles Press) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance. j/j’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe and Tarpaulin Sky. j/j has been a guest lecturer at Naropa University, University of Colorado and University of Denver.

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver and purple explosions.  Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications, most recently including Arsenic Lobster, Menacing Hedge, Mojave River Review, and Tarpaulin Sky. She is the author of more than thirteen published poetry chapbooks, most recently including FONDANT PIG ANGST (Slash Pine Press), Tongue Like a Stinger (Wheelhouse), POST-STROKE (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 5), Thirteen Designer Vaginas (Hyacinth Girl Press), POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press) and RED DEMOLITION (Shirt Pocket Press). A new collaborative poetry chapbook created by Juliet Cook and Robert Cole, MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. Juliet’s first full-length poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX. In addition to her own writing, Juliet is the editor/publisher of Blood Pudding Press (print) and Thirteen Myna Birds (online). You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

Concrete Dandelion (by Christian O’Keeffe) – video

Video permalink: http://youtu.be/ESgjzcgvf28
video courtesy of Mathias Peralta

Christian O’Keeffe reads his poem “Concrete Dandelion” on November 22nd, 2011 in the Wick Poetry Corner of the Kent State University library. Some of Christian’s influences included the river, Jim Carroll, Maj Ragain, Jack Micheline, Bob Kaufman, moths, deer, blue heron, Kurt Cobain, Arthur Rimbaud, and that ecstatic act of walking. Christian died on 27 May 2012 at age 20.  In 2014, his chapbook Irises Made of Moth Wings was published by Crisis Chronicles Press.

This is Gonna Hurt Me (by Jami Tillis)

Jami Tillis

“This Is Gonna Hurt Me

more than it hurts you,”
is what Mama used to say
when I misbehaved or didn’t
listen to the admonition I was
given by my “loved ones.”
After the lashing, I fell fast
asleep. Before the lashing,
I pretended to be asleep—
attempting to escape hurting
Mama more than she hurt me,
as she said, my brother
giggling like a little school
girl and, to my surprise, my
Grandma too. There are two
sides to every story, and I wasn’t
always wrong, like when my Peeps
were tossed into the wind from
a moving car because McDonald’s
wasn’t junk food and my Peeps were.

* * *

“This Is Gonna Hurt Me” by Jami Tillis comes from her 2014 chapbook In Bold Blackness: Selections published by Crisis Chronicles Press.

Jami Tillis is 24 years old. She graduated from Northeastern Illinois University in May 2012. Her field of study is Secondary Education with a concentration in English and history. In college, she belonged to a variety of groups—Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Inc., Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society, and Pi Alpha Theta History Honors Society.

Jami has a 6 year old daughter named Chayse who is her current inspiration for writing. “All of my poetry and other written works are derived from real life experiences that I have witnessed and survived before and after she came along.”

Jami lives in Chicago and works as a 5th and 6th grade reading and writing teacher in Chicago Public Schools.

Cover features a Steven Smith photo of an Edward McKnight Kauffer illustration in the Borzoi Poe

The Vigil (by Shelley Chernin)

The Vigil
by Shelley Chernin

The Vigil © 2012 by Shelley Chernin
front cover art © 2012 by Jessie Herzfeld
first published 5/24/2012 as a small chapbook
(CC#24) by Crisis Chronicles Press

 

1

Lord Buddha attained enlightenment in Bihar
near ISM, the Indian School of Mines, in Dhanbad,
eastern Jharkhand state, Damodar River valley,

“The Coal Capital of India.” A city at the heart
of the coalfields of Jharia, its pulmonary veins
carry blood money to Tata Iron and Steel Company

Ltd. Its ground exhales the smoke of coal fires,
burning in the viscera, perpetual dyspepsia in
the second most polluted place in India.

2

In West Virginia, the Sago Baptist Church was founded in 1856 by Lucy Henderson, Hester Summerville, and others. Seventy years later, historian E.R. Grose would write:

This church has wielded a large influence in the lives of the Sago people. It has never been large in numbers but has stood faithfully for the best things in life; and only eternity can tell the influence it has exerted.

That’s a long time to wait, congregate. Youngsters in the first Sunday school competed to memorize scripture. L.B. Moore once recited two chapters of Matthew, left no time for the other children. At age twenty, Moore entered the Union Army, fought with Company B of the Tenth West Virginia Volunteer Infantry for three years. Wounded on the last day of the Siege of Petersburg, he returned home on crutches, joined the Baptist ministry ten years later. Company B lost fourteen to injuries and disease in the war. Moore founded a temperance society, preached against hard cider. Others went out as ministers from Sago Baptist, which first held services in the old log schoolhouse, on the river bank, at the chestnut tree. Many hearts beat there, and in the 1873 white painted church-house that became Mr. Burner’s barn twenty years later.

3

Rutajit studies mining engineering at ISM, plays
cricket on collegiate fields. His stomach growls
on fasting days; he snacks on sabudana khichdi

made from sago, pith of cycas revoluta, pearls of flour
leached of natural toxins. The recipe is simple:
Soak the sago overnight, melt ghee, brown chiles

and cumin seeds and maybe potatoes too, add soaked sago,
cook until crisp. Garnish with coconut and cilantro.
Do not cover the pan or the sago conglomerates

into one lump. Sago thickens like tapioca and plots.
Despite popular myths, white sago is no purer
than the light cream variety. Rutajit feels full. 

4

Sago Baptist Church is the point where trapped miners’ families gathered on pins and needles to wait for their loved ones to surface. Neighbors brought glazed hams, potato salad, and homemade black walnut apple cake with vanilla icing. The children ate. Red Cross workers brought cots, blankets, and Tylenol. Pastors Day and Barker, joined by Pastor Murrell of The Way of Holiness Church of Buckhannon brought hymns and scriptures, read Romans 8:28:

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Families watched the mine entrance across the street. President Bush offered his prayer: May God bless those who are trapped below the earth, and may God bless those who are concerned about those trapped below the earth. Bush, Murrell, and Day asked us all to pray, so prayers circulated like oxygenated blood down through the national arteries, branched into our capillaries, in search of miners’ cells.

5

Rutajit’s name means “Conqueror of Truth.” Hindus permit
debate on the existence of God. His parents congratulate
their future mine safety expert. A “mining accident”

is any accident that happens in a mine. If five or more
people die, the accident is called a “mining disaster.”
Rutajit loves science and his girlfriend, not words. His heart

pounds, but he does not pray the first time
his class enters Bagdigi Mine. Twenty-nine men died
in a flood there in 2001, he learns. Inside the mine are signs

of concern: Coal dust hai kahtray ki naani, is mein chheeto
hardam paani. (Coal dust is the grandmother of all dangers,
always sprinkle water on it.) Dust and ashes

are cognate. If footprints are visible on the mine floor,
fine particles can explode, produce 200 mile per hour winds,
dispersing additional dust from walls and overhead

beams. There can be secondary explosions, fires. Anything
that can burn in bulk can explode when powdered
and mixed with air. Coal, wood. Churches.

6

Westboro Baptist Church is down in the basement of Reverend Fred Phelps’ home in Topeka. Twenty members trekked to West Virginia for the miners’ memorial service. A holy pilgrimage. Their leaflets blasted Sago Baptist Church

for blasphemously misrepresenting the sovereign, predestined providences of The Almighty in the Sago Mine matter.

They proclaimed God’s absolute power to cause or prevent tragedy, abused the bereaved for the sin of failure to rejoice in God’s tragedies. Human compassion ignores the logic. At the core, faith is thick and dark as a coal mine, burns like fossil fuel. When the dead miners’ families misbelieved that all but one lived, they celebrated their miracle, danced and sang. Pastor Murrell said after that it was like they had experienced The Resurrection.

7

In the month after the Sago disaster, four more
miners died in mining accidents in West Virginia.
Like miscooked sago, the flow of names congeals.

Rutajit knows a story. On May 28, 1965, an explosion
and fire in the Dhori Colliery in Dhanbad killed
more than 400 miners. Deep inside, heat blasted the mine

to darkness, blew off eyeglasses, burned off brows. The air
coagulated. The men died in denseness, unable to see
their own hands. Thick in prayer.

Shelley Chernin is a 59-year-old freelance researcher, writer, and editor of legal reference books. She lives in Russell, Ohio (aka Novelty, proving that the US Postal Service once had a sense of irony). Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon-Cleveland, the Heights Observer, the 2010 through 2012 Hessler Street Fair poetry anthologies and the Cuyahoga Burning edition of Big Bridge. She received the 2nd Place award in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest and Honorable Mentions in the Akron Art Museum’s New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. Her latest book, Oct Tongue -1, (2014, Crisis Chronicles Press) is a collaboration with Mary Weems, John Swain, Steven Smith, Lady, John Burroughs and Steve Brightman,  Yes, of course, Shelley plays the ukulele. Who doesn’t?

Tomorrow (by Alan Kleiman)

Tomorrow
by Alan Kleiman

Tomorrow never comes
but it’s here right now
in the living room with me
right next to my chair
the grayish one with the stripes
from the old days in the office
when sitting in the corner
in the cushy chair
was like taking a holiday
in Spain or Paris
even before the airlines needed
to whisk you away
to St. Tropez.

I had a trophy there
an award performance
remembered fondly by the walls,
the sheet rock
even the window
the fluorescent lights
that watched
from their off position
the whole dance
played out against gray carpet
a few chairs
and a table or two.

Well there it was in this setting
where those miraculous 40’s passed by
where the power of our life
was realized
where the strength of mature adulthood
took its mark and left it
in strength
as powerful as
we were going to be

That’s where we made our mark
That’s where we became
from our 30’s
boy wonders on the move
to our 40’s
boy wonders having moved life,
art, music, sex, divorce, children,
partnerships, new cars, new homes,
all these things took shape in the 40’s
so rich, so strident, so full
of taste buds’ delight,
yet filled with the lack of self awareness
that only hindsight brings to bear.

Here the 50’s redound
what do they speak of
but futures with a different sense of self
futures with a less powerful push
with less oomph than “I can do it”
Oh, I can do it, Oh yes,
but sometimes in the mirror
of my shadow on the walk
or just watching the flip
of a leg over a bike
I see the movement
of an old man
the stiffness that places
the fluid movements of youth
into old man categories
and straightens the curves
and makes the leg less swoopier
It’s a hint but it’s there.

We have all seen old men
and old women dance
It’s that dance that wants to audition now
for the new part that smiles
that says Polident instead of Crest
We see it as not bad or sad –
But changed so much
that even Autumn
can be tolerated now
even Autumn
that hurt me so in the past
that made me cry with its meanness
its stealing of the warmth
of the long days,
of the chirping nights,

That mean harsh Autumn
all dressed up in fancy clothes
never fooled me
I hated its mean endings
and its gifts
of ice cold gray streets
that Autumn, that same Autumn
comes now like an old non-friend
almost tolerable
sometimes showing
its good side
its sweetness smirking
behind its flash
and I can say, Ha –
Here’s old Autumn again –
He’ll be gone before the night is up
Let’s see his dress and his swank this year
because Spring, our beloved,
will be here before you can say blink.

Because with age comes speed
comes life as a roller blade wheel
that spins and circles
at its own momentum
with no rhyme or reason
and that’s how it is today
Some say hooray?

 

[“Tomorrow” comes from Alan Kleiman’s book Grand Slam, published in 2013 by Crisis Chronicles Press.]

 

Alan Kleiman’s poetry has appeared in The Criterion, Verse Wisconsin, Right Hand Pointing, Blue Fifth Review, The Bicycle Review, Pyrta, Eskimo Pie, The Montucky Review, Kinship of Rivers, Stone Path Review and other journals. He lives in New York City and works as an attorney.