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?

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Texas City (by Michael Ceraolo)

Michael Ceraolo [photo by John Burroughs]

Texas City

 

April 16, 1947

“This is a day of synthetic living”

                                                 a day

of better living through chemistry,

and,

        at the same time,

of better death through chemistry too,

the paradox of a petrochemical product

                                                           Specifically:

the miracle fertilizer,

                              the deadly explosive,

ammonium nitrate

                               On this day

over five million pounds had been loaded on ships

that would then leave port and set sail,

                                                         delivering

the miracle fertilizer to war-ravaged countries

who would use it to feed themselves

                                                        But

the deadly explosive intervened first

A hundred eves of destruction had passed

uncelebrated,

                     unnoticed even,

                                             until

the ship carrying the load caught on fire just after 8 AM

The fire department rushed to fight the fire

(there was no longer a fire boat in the port town:

the corporatized waterfront lay outside

the part of the town that paid taxes,

                                                     and

the corporations wouldn’t pay for it out of the goodness of their hearts)

The sight of the sea boiling,

mixed with the pretty smoke from the fire,

drew a crowd of spectators

9:12 AM

                  Explosion,

powerful enough to register on a seismograph

hundreds of miles from the scene,

powerful enough to toss one-ton chunks of metal

two-and-a-half miles,

incinerating almost the whole town,

                                                     killing

the entire twenty-seven-member Fire Department

and more than five hundred others;

the exact death toll would never be known

The town would win a lawsuit against the federal government

for failing to warn the town of the dangers

of ammonium nitrate

The case would make its way all the way

to the Supreme Court:

“Defendant did know”

“it was dangerous to manufacture,

                                                 dangerous to ship,

                                                                            and dangerous to use”

Unfortunately,

this was a dissenting opinion;

the majority voted to reverse

on the shakiest of grounds (if that),

that the government had the “discretion”

to not warn its citizens of danger

if it served some higher purpose

(as defined by the government)

More from the dissent:

“This was a man-made disaster”
“the disaster was caused by forces

set in motion by the Government,

completely controlled or controllable by it”

“The Government was liable

                                            If not,

the ancient and discredited doctrine

that ‘The King Can Do No Wrong’

has not been uprooted”

                                   As,

                                         to this day,

                                                           it has not—

 

* * * * *

This piece is an excerpt from Michael Ceraolo‘s ongoing project The De-Greening of America, an environmental history poem.

We also recommend:

Euclid Creek – available from Deep Cleveland Books
Cleveland Scores Early – from Kendra Steiner Editions
Cleveland Haiku – from Green Panda Press

Click here to follow Michael Ceraolo on Twitter.

Subconsciously Self-Restrained (by Johny Godace)

Johny Godace

Subconsciously Self-Restrained

Death and despair embed in the air
With questioning glares and embarrassing stares
Some empathy here, more sympathy there
The vision is dreadful and simply unfair
More hesitant glances and halted advances
The irony stance is now plainly aware
That follicles fail and comparisons pale for a male
The thought of him losing his hair

 

* * *

About Johny Godace:

I’ve always enjoyed poetry and I started on Shel Silverstein when I was young. Poe became a huge inspiration later on. Other inspirations include Alvin Schwartz (writer) and Stephen Gammell (illustrator) who worked on the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series. Various Hip-hop artists played an integral part as well as Kevin Smith: screenwriter, actor, film producer, and director, as well as a popular comic book writer, author, and podcaster. I always loved good wordplay and appreciated intricate ways words can make the reader feel and give them a visual for what the writer is communicating to the reader.

bridge avenue perfumery (by Jeffrey Bowen)

Jeffrey Bowen – photo by Kim Yanoshik

bridge avenue perfumery 

he sniffs the air like his canine brothers,

detects artist’s paint and sweet roses

on the summer breeze,

cigarettes and herb

from the neighbor’s open window,

sulfur from the most recent barrage

of fourth of july firecrackers,

red wine and black coffee

walking hand in hand

toward the gathering sounds

of ohio city restaurants.

he’s missing the party,
again,

stayed home alone

to do the laundry,

read,

keep close company with old records,

and words wrapped tightly

like hand rolled

cuban cigars.

he savors the solitude

but longs for

feminine contact,

the top note of anticipation

wafting like jasmine

across the citrus

of intelligent conversation.

he savors the caress

of this cool summer day’s slowly

passing,

recalls the warm sands of proximity,

the euphoria of bright eyes across the table,

and fingers barely touching
electric.

* * * * *

Jeffrey Bowen’s poetry has been published by ArtCrimes, Cicada, Cool Cleveland, Crisis Chronicles, CSU Poetry Center, Dimensions, Doan Brook Watershed, Excursions, Green Panda Press, Hessler Street Fair, Procrastination Press, Poet’s League of Greater Cleveland, The City, The Cleveland Reader, and Whiskey Island Magazine.  He is one of six poets profiled in the 1995 documentary, “Off the Page”.  Four of his poems are featured on Cleveland Tumbadors, an album of Traditional Afro Cuban Music and Latin Jazz on Fame City Records.  Jeffrey is the resident poet & conga player with the band, Cats On Holiday, and his poetry appears on their CD, Holiday in a Box from COHTONE Records.  In addition to his poetic work, Jeffrey’s writing has appeared in Call & Post, City News, Cool Cleveland, EcoWatch, Elephant Journal, Girl Scout News, GreenCityBlueLake, Live Cleveland, Neighborhood News, Nonprofit Notes, Sun News and various Habitat for Humanity publications.

Inside Out (by Jennifer Hambrick)

Inside Out

Peel off that skin
that doesn’t fit, has never fit.

Take that skin to a tailor,
who will prick it with pins
to suit your shape and size.

Wash that skin in the machine,
on the “delicate” cycle,
where warm water will tease away
its tautness.

Hang your skin on a clothesline
so the sun can kiss it dry.

Smooth from your
muscles and bones
the protruding angles of the past –
piercing blades of loss,
shards of bitter words –
and place them in a box.

Then let your skin glide
over smooth dunes of flesh,
embracing, like a fine silk stocking,
every assured step.




* * * * *

“Inside Out” comes from Unscathed, recently published by NightBallet Press.

Jennifer Hambrick ‘s first chapbook of poems, Unscathed, has been lauded for its “crystalline, poignant images” and for its “fresh palette of questions, longings and unadulterated class.” Jennifer’s poetry has also been published in Pudding Magazine, WestWard Quarterly, A Narrow Fellow, Common Threads, the 2013 Ohio Poetry Association anthology Everything Stops and Listens, the Columbus Creative Cooperative’s Ides of March anthology, and the Ohio Poetry Day Best of 2011 prizewinners’ collection. Jennifer won the Ohio Poetry Association’s 2013 Ides of March contest, was a prizewinner in The Poetry Forum’s 2011 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest, and received multiple recognitions in the 2011 Ohio Poetry Day contests. She enjoys a lively schedule of featured poetry readings around Ohio. By day, Jennifer Hambrick is a classical musician and public radio broadcaster, producer, and blogger.

Moloch, Moloch (by RA Washington)

RA Washington at The Lit in Cleveland – photo by JB

MOLOCH, MOLOCH

                               For Allen Ginsberg

 

This was not a generation

 

It was a genocide.

 

My corpses piled along internet apathy

 

Or strewn toward ghosts. The angry children

 

Fear and pose, play pasts to passive

 

Flick flowers, grave are you.

 

The postage stamp heroes we will not be.

 

 

This is no generation

 

For we alarm their shaking jowls

 

Rooted magic, napalm inside me.

 

Me for you

 

Me, this flinging and failing

 

Me, general of boys who weep gutters

 

Me, of women who sing at their stolen hoods

 

Clits singed proper, skirts up.

 

The money is looking

 

Me, of stark hovels, the conforming comfort.

 

Me, broken vows, the worthy say so.

 

 

This was no generation

 

Leaders lobby to stay lobbied

 

The dope flows, secrets uttered obscene.

 

Homo, bitch, nigg (with the A)

 

Before we war ourselves silly trumpets

 

Cow bells and awkward phrasing

 

Tweet twit bewitched for inching despair.

 

Path so disease the puss ooze out in Vogue.

 

Nights of prayers

 

People who love too much, shoved just enough

 

Go, vita

 

Go, street

 

Go, ape

 

                Shitting dawn and no care

 

Go, Jesus

 

Go, life

 

So fuck your womb we know better.

 

Go, cynic

 

Go, lists

 

Go, for goods hatched in distraction

 

Go, pummel, yes, pummel

 

For we drag our dicks like clubs, and ambition.

 

Go, modern

 

Go, fleets of madness, we all must be.

 

 

This is no generation.

 

Still wishing sit ins matter

 

Taking riot gear as holy shroud

 

You, for the well we must keep

 

You, for the passive rebelling

 

You, amongst fear, so silent

 

The violin without strings

 

You, must be lying

 

Off alone, left out.

 

Leftist pleading mercy from wolves

 

Hail of Marys

 

Who kept to saying their real names

 

We men, yelling, bend over, bend over over

 

Love is lust

 

So the nut is empty

 

As workers wallets and your belief

 

All eyes are pennies, their guts in the street

 

Taken as litter, and ash trays

 

You, muse of beer

 

Neglect as poignant as the news

 

We might be killing ourselves

 

No, frank ohara or Sinatra

 

No, Charles

 

No talking assholes

 

Wait – yes, talking assholes

 

No allen, no jack

 

No patti, or leroi

 

Just the forgetting the hettie amongst us now.

 

No power, black or white

 

That was them. Them dead. Boomers Florida now.

 

No deaths to martyr

 

                                                Malcolm, martin

 

No bobby, but there is a Jackson and we decided to mourn him.

 

Or mother, or daddi

 

Jimi angels all.

 

This is no generation

 

This is a forgetting, in place of pasts

 

Jostling for an us

 

Amongst fables.

* * * * * * * *

Ra Washington Is a writer living and working on Cleveland’s west side with his wife, historian Lyz Bly. He is the author of 24 books – most recently the novel, Run Along, The FIRE Says – and he operates the bookstore/zine cooperative, Guide To Kulchur, in the Historic Detroit Shoreway neighborhood. He also curates the electronic music label Cleveland Tapes. You can find him on twitter @clevelandtapes.

“Moloch, Moloch” (c) 2012 by RA Washington, used with permission.  The poem originally appeared in his book Primer for the Vanguard Youth, published by Crisis Chronicles Press.

 

Primer for the Vanguard Youth – cover photo by Steven B Smith

The Reading (by Marcus Bales)

 

The Reading
by Marcus Bales

Her mouth too near the microphone
            She first intoned her title; 
Her voice a buzzing monotone 
She said, I think, our souls would moan
With howls like Allen Ginsberg’s own,
And slurred and blurred her dreary drone,
            In tedious recital.
 
She gripped the podium on stage,
            Her poem never ending —
And only her decrepit age
Assuaged the next three readers’ rage
As, turning yet another page,
She spent our time as if her wage
            Depended on its spending.
 
As moderator, I did not
            Perceive a lot of choice
As murmurs grew: somebody ought,
No, had, to halt her verbal squat
So toad-like in our garden spot,
And find a way to staunch this rot
            By stoppering her voice.
 
So arms out toward, as I’d been taught,
            The middle of the mass,
I aimed, breathed out, and squeezed, and shot
The leather-lunged and doddering blot
Who’d droned along as if she thought
That once she’d seized the mike she’d got
            Some sort of life-time pass.
 
The general approach of Law,
            And many of its minions,
To shooting someone through the craw
For her inane blah blah blah blah,
However last that last last straw,
Is that it is a fatal flaw
            In not a few opinions.
 
The prosecutor even shed
            A manly tear to show it
Had moved him greatly she was dead:
“Her pure poetic spirit fled
Prosaic Death’s pedestrian tread … “
“Wait, wait — “ the jury foreman said
            “You say she was a poet?”
 
The prosecutor said “Indeed!
            And she was published widely —
I’ll use your question to proceed
To show you.” He began to read.
At length, the foreman knelt to plead:
“Stop reading! We have all agreed!
            We can’t abide this idly!
 
“You’ve put us through this punishment
            And made your case absurder;
We find the shooter innocent
Of any criminal intent —
Indeed, we actively lament
Your sly attempt to represent
            This noble act as murder.
 
“We hold free speech must know its place
            If it is to continue:
You must not underbid your ace,
Nor doubt the Holy Spirit’s grace,
Nor sing the tune if you’re a bass,
For decency demands you face
            The moral law within you!
 
“But poets who have read too long
            Must all be superceded —
We urge you when you’re in a throng
While poets thus are in the wrong,
To make your protest very strong
And aim to end such ceaseless song
            With shot and shell as he did!”
 
The prosecutor gave a sigh
            And packed away his pleadings,
Then gave me such a look goodbye
It made me think he meant to try
To mutely say, or just imply,
That maybe I’d be wise if I
            No longer read at readings.

* * * * *

Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or Poetry magazine.

John Peter Altgeld (by Michael Ceraolo)

Michael Ceraolo, poet [photo by Jesus Crisis]

John Peter Altgeld
 
“Government must defend itself; 
life and property must be protected, 
and law and order must be maintained; 
murder must be punished, 
                                       and 
if the defendants are guilty of murder, 
either committed by their own hands 
or by some one else acting on their advice, 
then if they have had a fair trial, 
there should be in this case no executive interference” 
 
Pretty much the words one would expect 
from a tycoon who spent $100,000 
of his own money on the campaign 
that elected him Governor of Illinois; 
he would be another in the line of elected officials 
who had done and would do nothing 
for the remaining three inmates 
convicted in the Haymarket case 
(George Bernard Shaw on some of those officials: 
“If seven men must die for the Haymarket explosion, 
civilization can better afford to lose 
the seven members of the Illinois Supreme Court”) 
 
                                                                               But 
this official was John Peter Altgeld: 
 
“no man has the right to allow his ambition 
to stand in the way of the performance 
of a simple act of justice” 
                                                     (something 
never even thought by Kennedy) 
                                                  and 
“If I decide they are innocent 
I will pardon them if I never hold office another day” 
 
And so: 
 
                “The record of the trial 
shows that the jury in this case was not drawn 
in the manner juries usually are drawn” 
that bailiff Henry Ryce had been appointed 
as a special bailiff to summon prospective jurors, 
that Ryce had successfully impaneled 
“a prejudiced jury which he believed would hang the defendants” 
 
and findings of fact: 
 
                                 “until 
the State proves from whose hand the bomb came, 
it is impossible to show any connection 
between the man who threw it and these defendants” 
                                                                                and 
“It is further shown here  
that much of the evidence given at trial 
was a pure fabrication; 
                                   that 
some of the prominent police officials in their zeal, 
not only terrorized ignorant men by throwing them into prison 
and threatening them with torture 
if they refused to swear to anything desired, 
                                                                 but 
that they offered money and employment 
to those who would consent to do this” 
 
And thus: 
 
“I am convinced that it is clearly my duty 
to act in this case for the reasons already given, 
and I, 
         therefore, 
                         grant an absolute pardon to 
Samuel Fieldin, 
                        Oscar Neebe, 
                                               and Michael Schwab 
this 26th day of June,1893″ 
 
                                              And 
then the attacks began, 
                                   by 
those stern guardians of right and wrong, 
                                                             the press, 
                                                                            all 
having little to do with the substance of the message: 
 
“an alien himself” 
                              who 
“does not reason like an American, 
does not feel like one, 
                       &nb
sp;          and 
consequently does not behave like one” 
                                                           who 
“has encouraged anarchy, rapine and 
the overthrow of civilizations” 
 
                                                  And 
for those who think nastiness and name-calling 
are recent phenomena in politics, 
                                                 these statements 
from the re-election campaign in 1896, 
                                                          uttered 
by a future President 
(who will remain deservedly nameless in this poem), 
Altgeld was: 
 
“one who would connive at wholesale murder” 
a man who 
                   “would substitute 
for the government of Washington and Lincoln 
a red welter of lawlessness and dishonesty 
as fantastic and vicious as the Paris Commune: 
(red-baiting never goes out of style, 
sadly) 
 
                 And 
such attacks worked, 
as they usually do: 
Altgeld was defeated, 
                                 his courage  
not rewarded in the short run, 
                                              and 
in constant danger of being forgotten 
in the long run

* * * * *
This poem comes from Michael Ceraolo’s work-in-progress Profiles in Courage: An Alternate Array.  We also recommend these Michael Ceraolo poetry collections:
 
Euclid Creek – available from Deep Cleveland Books
Cleveland Scores Early – from Kendra Steiner Editions
Cleveland Haiku – from Green Panda Press

Lacie Clark Semenovich: Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour 3/8/2013

Video permalink: http://youtu.be/k6tB7632ZQU


Lacie Clark Semenovich reads poetry, including from her book Legacies (2012, Finishing Line Press), during the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour at Mugshotz in North Royalton, Ohio, on 8 March 2013. 

Born in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio, Lacie Clark Semenovich moved to northern Ohio in 1996 to attend Kent State University where she earned a B.A. in English and a Writing Certificate. She moved to the Cleveland area in 2001, with her husband where they live in a perpetual construction zone of do-it-yourself home renovations. In 2008, Clark earned an M.A. in English Literature from Cleveland State University. Her poetry can be found in Barrelhouse, Autumn Sky Poetry, Zygote in My Coffee, MOBIUS, Kansas City Voices, and other journals.

No TV for Me (by Steven B. Smith)

Back cover of Unruly by Steven B. Smith
published 8/20/2011 by Crisis Chronicles Press
(foto by Smith, text added by JC)


No TV for Me
by Steven B. Smith, from Unruly 

News depresses me
with its shallow anger and hate
but what gets me more
is doing our laundry
at the Soap Opera Laundromat
having to hear Drew Carey
call contestants down
to The Price is Right stage
where they bounce
and jiggle
and squeal
and wiggle and squirt
in greed of need
and want to flaunt
something for nothing
in quarter hour fame
before the shame
of being same
returns
all small and normal

 
Front cover of Unruly by Steven B. Smith
(foto by Smith, text added by JC)

Steven B. Smith‘s poetry chapbook Unruly is available for $7 US from Crisis Chronicles Press,
3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111.

More Smith:
http://reverbnation.com/mutantsmith = music
http://walkingthinice.com = blog of Smith & Lady life love art adventures
http://agentofchaos.com = Smith & friends art / poetry journal