The Inflectionist Review Issue 3

The
Inflectionist Review
No. 3

© 2014 The Inflectionist Review
Portland, Oregon
www.inflectionism.com
Art by Jonathan K. Rice
Cover Art: Liebestraum
Design by John Sibley Williams
All future rights to material published in The Inflectionist
Review are retained by the individual authors and artists.

No. 3 Fall 2014
Portland, Oregon

mission
The Inflectionist Review is a small press publishing stark and distinctive
contemporary poetry that fosters dialog between the reader and writer,
between words and their meanings, between ambiguity and concept. Each
issue gathers established and emerging voices together toward the shared
aim of unique expression that resonates beyond the author’s world,
beyond the page, and speaks to the universality of human language and
experience.
Inflectionism is an artistic movement that was started in 2010 by three
Portland, Oregon poets who sought a more organic approach that
respected both poet and reader, both words and interpretation. As a
creative philosophy, Inflectionism seeks to build upon what has come
before and gently bend it to reflect what has and has not changed about
the world and the language we use to express it.
editors
A. Molotkov
John Sibley Williams
info@inflectionism.com
www.inflectionism.com

from the editors
Let each thing and all things show me
who I am. I trace this outsight
in the sky’s own words. I have no others.
Janis Lull’s lines speak to the mystery at the heart of language. We must
employ the human construct of words to describe the external, yet words
seem born of outside influence. At what point do the sky overhead and
the “sky” in our mouths converge? Or diverge? What role do objects play
in our pronouncing and communicating them? Many of the poems in
this issue strive to address the if and how of unreturnable communication
with things. All of these poems live within the lack of answer.
We are honored to present the ambitious and evocative work of
Vancouver, BC poet Daniela Elza in this issue’s Distinguished Poet
section, alongside the textured abstracts of featured artist Jonathan K.
Rice.
Each piece in TIR thrives within its own created world yet adds to the
larger discourse we hope to foster. We invite you to join the conversation.
— A. Molotkov and John Sibley Williams

The Inflectionist Review
No. 3 Fall 2014
Jose Angel Araguz
Jeff Whitney
James Ducat
Anton Frost

David Radavich
E. K. Mortenson
Ellen Goldsmith ______
Ellen Goldsmith ______
Karen Neuberg
Michael Collins
Jeanette Clough
featured artist
Jonathan K. Rice
Artist Statement 25
Untitled 26
I Only Have What I Remember 27
Flying South 28
Untitled #22 29
Seaside Memory 30
It Never Ends 31
8
9
10
11
12
14
15
17
19
20
21
22
23
32
33
34
First Night
Blue in the Rain
Imago
In Medias Res
The Gift of Shadows
A Dislocation of Synapses
Neuro
Evening
Koan
“the intervention of a conscious
observer”
“but if that is what we see that is simply
because it is what has actually happened”
“techniques for the measurement of the
frequencies of spectral lines”
“everything that can happen does happen”
Loops
Esse in Anima
Un-moth

Doug Bolling
Jeffrey Zable
Janis Lull
Kelli Allen
Carol Shillibeer
Lediana Stillo ______
Barry Blitstein
Bruce McRae
A.J. Huffmanaria Rilke ____ _
Chelsea Cefalu
John SweetRae _____ _
Peggy Aylsworth
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
44
Ledian
a Stillo
______
62
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
Evocation (Or widen)
Hearing Loss/Gain
Travels in Strange Space
Leaving a Trail
The Orbit
Outsight
Separations for Fall, for Winter, too
this unauthorized text
intermittent
Contributors
distinguished poet
Daniela Elza
interview with Daniela Elza 46
self-portraits 52
this is not a rehearsal V 55
the colour of dreams 57
wednesday. rainfall. 59
A Sudden Dissonance
Repossessed
The Sanctity of Dreams
The Absence of Dreams
Hickory burn
Temporal bond
a flag, bleeding
a place
Not Instead Of

8 The Inflectionist Review
Jose Angel Araguz
First Night
No one recalls their first night
on earth, night like all others,
with words and darkness, cries
and stars, only you didn’t
try to fight or count
them all. No part of you
recalls because no part of you
reached out. You at your most
hidden, unknowing but known,
fresh, a secret shared
for the first time. Like all things
secret, you quickly lost track
of where you came from. Darkness
and words, cries and stars.

9No. 3
Jose Angel Araguz
Blue in the Rain
The man gestured up the street again,
shoved the piece of paper back in my face,
blurred ink breaking the smile of the woman
sketched in blue. More and more I grew convinced
what he held was not a map, but a memory.

Light, we are told,
goes on forever.
Barbed wire snaked
through the fingers of heaven.
Blood rivered
into dimples of skin.
Like winter
and after—
flowers,
all the light left on earth
walking out of
the shade of trees.
Jeff Whitney
Imago

11No. 3
Jeff Whitney
In Medias Res
bats like dark plums
on the fingers
of a tree
Beyond Reach

I was standing in the dark to see
the experience of night.
It wasn’t an ocean
through I counted many shores.
*
We have pain
so the consequential tastes
sweet, sweetness
so the consequential
might break us
beautifully.
*
We live in a house on fire.
It is as simple as that.
*
The gift of shadows is
you can always look away.
*
There is an utterance
that never grew wings
at the back of each throat.
Jeff Whitney
The Gift of Shadows

13No. 3
*
The way the night is what is felt
and not seen. The way a house speaks
when everyone is gone.
*
Something is in the water.
It is very far away.
*
I don’t know about the end.
I have heard
it has something to do with fire.
The Gift of Shadows

— for S.
She misplaced myelin,
tripped over the curb
of nerve ends,
slowed, slowly.
Statuesque flesh,
assembled elbows, knees,
a confusion of ligaments
braided in sinuous assortment.
To make sense of a thing
is to dissect, is to truss,
is to pound tender
until—unlike the deveined
semblance of tree,
of puddle—she sits,
unable to deform.
James Ducat
A Dislocation of Synapses

15No. 3
As we walk up a dusty road
the trees end the light begins
my body narrows down
to an arc.
My body moves—
the way light doesn’t move,
but exists as everything.
My brain remembers what you said:
“you live
then you
live then
you live.”
What’s on my mind
is what never happens.
“Let there be dust,”
then your laugh turned to a cough.
My brain crawls out of the dirt
wailing—
the sorrow of fireflies
incommunicado with sun—
before realizing
it was my own sorrow.
Anton Frost
Neuro

I’ve breathed
in so much dust.
Before my brain could stop me
I breathed.
Neuro
KingdomofSpirits

17No. 3
Anton Frost
Evening
a green fly trails absence
across a room with blue walls
the music gets loud
the air turns
into things
we rummage through spaces
we allow things to happen
yellow light
emptied bottles
hummingbirds
we make drawings with pencil stubs
of each other
you think about
shades of purple
by touching the gentle dark beneath my eyes
i think about
things without edges
by smelling the places
where you’ve rested your head
the sky bruises
the room folds up

and
what could be the last thing
we ever do
we do.
Evening

19No. 3
Many are
the forms of exile.
Perhaps worst
is the body
divided from itself,
apple that
cannot be eaten,
rose that
refuses its perfume.
Where else
could music go?
This arbutus tree,
taller than sky, bends
orange in rain
that does not stop
and does not
stop.
David Radavich
Koan

E. K. Mortenson
“the intervention of a conscious observer”
your hands under running water their silver shimmering
the shape of your back this overwhelming sense of something
very important that fills my heart the hour between light
and dark that smells so sweet and sounds like balancing or a sigh
in such a world the sea caresses the bouldered shore

21No. 3
E. K. Mortenson
“but if that is what we see that is simply because it is what has
actually happened”
suppose it is early morning and the rain is falling
outside blue rain dripping from the sky and soaking
through our clothes suppose I am buried by the weight
of you on me shocked by your desire and gasping for air
a chestcrush embrace I’ve spent my life crying out
to be cherished begging to be something someone
everyone is alone lives do not share

E. K. Mortenson
“techniques for the measurement of the frequencies
of spectral lines”
the wisps of hair near your ears glow like the clouds
of late summer sunset all things now happening happened
and there is some small comfort in this all things now
happening shall always happen they might tell a story
that might be important might have a lesson might change
my life sunlight filtered through gnathaze

23No. 3
write the number of our days on a scrap of paper
let it be displayed in a glass cabinet full of here
along with a swallow’s wing a maple leaf and
a closing door’s shadow let this be the marker
that I have touched something so sweet as you
E. K. Mortenson
“everything that can happen does happen”

featured artist
Jonathan K. Rice

25No. 3
artist statement
Image, color, composition, and texture are all informed by what I read,
what I listen to, and that which surrounds me. I work with acrylics and
mixed media, painting and creating assemblage and collage as well. My
work is primarily abstract.
Through my paintings, I explore the relevance of the indescribable,
and work toward the understanding of that which can’t always be
understood. In this sense, creating art is a spiritual journey as I seek to
connect the physical and the nonphysical with the intention of drawing
the viewer into a deeper understanding of his or herself in relation to
the world and that which is physically beyond them.
When asked how I begin a new piece, I like to say that I let the canvas
tell me what to do. I may start with a wash of one color and build layer
upon layer of blended washes. I may take a palette knife or a wide putty
knife and spread on a layer of thickly textured acrylic medium. I may
begin by gluing various papers to canvas or wood panel. I like quiet time
late in the evening. Sometimes I like to paint while listening to music. On
occasion I work on more than a few pieces at a time. In the end though,
the canvas tells me when to stop as if it cries out, “No more!” That’s
when I step back and say, “It is finished.”
— Jonathan K. Rice

Untitled

27No. 3
I Only Have What I Remember

Flying South

Seaside Memory

Always trying
to loosen
into fuzzy
logic, then gently twist
into loops that appear
comfortingly complex
but dissolve
as they are followed
until the footsteps you hear
coming from behind
are your own as you
move through the depths
of a night you swam
the entire length
of your own dream
Karen Neuberg
Loops

33No. 3
Michael Collins
Esse in Anima
We are each ourselves at the harbor:
Runners run, readers read, children play,
I wander within myself within
the world, nothing is even wrong
with the distant cars in their straight lines,
driving from lot to lot, while the ducks
simply sit and sun while people walk
between them—I’ve given my eyes
too deeply to the breeze this morning;
I nearly stepped on one of them.
From how it looked, he would have let me.

The morning routine, soap that dries on its way to your body, then
cleaning up the insects lining the lamp’s inner rim, whatever gave
light or moisture like the bedside scented oil coated with winged
spots, the sinks, tub, and adjacent surfaces—though there’s a sharp
decrease over the past two days so perhaps this has been their
season and they are fluttering toward the next stage of mothness,
making more of themselves, transient as torn lettuce, as an ant’s
ginger mound on a dirt road, lingering, as one left suddenly alone,
as drops of oil isolated on a tile floor and never absorbed.
Sidestep, just for a moment, winding sideways in loping S’s, the
early breeze embryonic, soft as a coyote’s ear brushing your cheek
with a hint of cucumber, disentangling, strewing the powdered veil
under which you have lived.
Jeanette Clough
Un-moth

35No. 3
Or widen, beyond the trimmed orange to the fan palms,
spikey and difficult, bearing their small edible fruit.
Her documents are disarranged, word-dense. Which book
will tell about scat, detritus, what to get rid of?
Which fire will the chopped wood feed?
Shades of basil and burnt garlic. She has reached
a whittled-down place the color of every shed skin.
Jeanette Clough
Evocation (Or widen)

Doug Bolling
Hearing Loss/Gain
Where shore and sea meet
I listen for the unspoken that
hides among crash and
shifting dune.
Land holds its own
losing here and there
to moon’s surging lust
of wave and plunge.
I call into the wind
and my words
fall away, drowned
in that far greater.
Now here I stand wanting
the deeper soundings
only silence knows,
a language untamed, uncharted,
emptied out of whatever tectonic
the taught mind imposes.

37No. 3
It began on Tuesday
then turned blue
We met among the vanishings
just the two of us
Your poems
my umbrella
rain everywhere
As we walked
making words
remembering
How did we arrive here
I asked
What the mindset on
just this day
The wind
the low moans
of a past
I believe we were lovers
I believe we
stepped inside
a text
unedited
pristine
not understood.
Doug Bolling
Travels in Strange Space

Jeffrey Zable
Leaving a Trail
Yes, try to smile. The invisible camera is watching.
The birds on the wire are tense, leaving one by one
through an air that has forgotten their names. In the
aftermath of so much bleeding, the hands turned blue
and the fingers stretched to the end of the path where
a man with a broken umbrella is twirling and twirling
around a stature of bones. Leading a brigade of hunger
and thirst, a recent suicide has returned for one more
performance, dancing with rubber legs and eyes that hang
from their sockets. My father used to say, Never bet more
than you can lose, and hearing little more than his voice
I would respond, The day is lost in the desert sands
and the old woman weeps while the cows leave home.
I’m leaving now for parts unknown to man or beast,
leaving a trail of memories that burn through the skin.

39No. 3
Janis Lull
The Orbit
Egg-shaped, the self falls short
of a circle, falls long, tracks
past the body and out
toward love, work, child, toy.
Inside the egg, the body waits
like a secret that calls you back.
In the hours of longing, of journey
through dark space, you pity the body,
its steady decay. It cannot house you,
nor can the star you travel to
or from. Nowhere to lay your head—
no head to lay—only a path around
two fires, neither of them home.

Janis Lull
Outsight
The sky speaks. Greater than dreamed
it declares itself, and in my language.
“I am you,” the billions say,
“Look outward and see yourself.”
Just so, this small planet—
the hearth, the house, the trees—
have always said, ”I am you.”
Let me look further, up to the sky
through cloudy eyes, smeared windows,
branches losing their leaves.
Let each thing and all things show me
who I am. I trace this outsight
in the sky’s own words. I have no others.

41No. 3
What’s unlikely is this rain. Even
the sparrows are agitated
and waiting. But I am contacting
you not for some contract to be signed,
finally. Rather, I want us to hurry
across and ripen the letters for evidence
of closing. We have lodged
complaints before and each skims
the pond quick, a rehearsal we perform
in fog. What is likely is assumed distance.
We are not the same small animals
curled against blurred margins
and dropped pebbles. Our hands let
go their thefts months ago. I can hardly
remember accumulations. This is
to convey regret, maybe desire,
too, as my tongue waits, turtle-
shelled in the mouth.
Kelli Allen
Separations for Fall, for Winter, too

flung along the raw whirlwind of the material
you and I are chemistry thinking
amid the risen worlds, amongst the green
years & the red millions, the long dead
and the yet-to-be-living, we are
all molecular morphologies
regardless, without
intent and yet
it’s curious that in the time it takes
to layer rock over the wind-riven
plain chemical grammatologies
have woven their way
through the storming earth,
into mountains & bodies, into specie
after specie, into we who here kiss
one chemical sentence, one bonded fling
at a time oh for the body
for the material body
(the singular chemical word)
if we are to hold on, survive the cataract
of data, we, these touching hands, these
unique chemical moments, we who fall
wet in the world as it is,
the plain-jane random plink & sink of the rain;
we all, blind as moles, and even so
those of us with this small wet mind
we call ourselves, even blind
to our beginnings, to the burning engine
of our chemical authority, here we are
refusing the whisker’s quivering pen,
Carol Shillibeer
this unauthored text

43No. 3
because of this we are driven in the dark,
this small truculent desire
for textual authority, an animal’s thirst
on the rolling sea of chemical reality.
this unauthored text

absence
Diagnosis followed an of perception as much as seizure. In one place the anomaly
spoke of alteration through ingestion; in one place the spoke of neurological undoing.
In the place of undoing, the woman and her electrodes spoke of in the afternoons
at the the tea shop across the hospital’s wind-side door. The long body of building, with stubby pin-
feathers, the dull of wet brick, issued new realities packed parsimoniously in water,
without reference to cost. The girl remained an ; she was there, and then not there, in
the examination room, then not. The electrodes measured ; tailed with black wires,
their heads were white and round. Their pulsing industry left a gift for the girl, gelled clouds in between
follicles. On the bus home white clouds set in small cumulus whirls on her head, as if a wind had
escaped the and left behind only its iterant trail.
presence
Diagnosis followed an i’m here of perception as much as seizure. In one place the girl stole the
air; her teacher of don’t go, i’m spoke of neurological undoing. There were times when the
girl was inappropriately absent from class. Two scarred fields and three slammed doorways between
her and here, let me the last time she and the hospital door swung the winds up, let me take
her friends said “no” just like her doctor. There was a list of don’t do that she the feet up the
mountain, lets hang felt, somewhere, ought to be done immediately. And so she left on the next
wind, wound up and twisted, somehow pendant from the mountain, lets climb into inside the
blue.
Carol Shillibeer
intermittent

45No. 3
distinguished poet
Daniela Elza

the interview
Q: Your deconstructive use of language if fascinating. Has
language, especially poetic language, reached the point when
anything can represent anything else? What does it do to you
as a poet?
I am not too keen on poetry that just deconstructs without offering anything
in return. It is easy to take something apart if you do not intend to put it
back together again. We have enough examples of this kind of fragmented
thinking in the world today. The trick it to be able to build something in
return. I deconstruct, but I also hope to construct something in the process. I
find it irresponsible to deconstruct without having thought far enough to have
something to offer in its place. I use all the tools available to the poet, regardless
which “school” of poetry claims them. I call this my serious play, it helps me
push language to serve me better in what I do.
I don’t think language has reached the point where anything can represent
anything else. We probably would not call it a language then. I am reminded
of something Virginia Wolf said: “They [words] hate anything that stamps
them with one meaning or confines them to one attitude, for it is their nature
to change.” I try to find out how far I can go with this change, to crack words
open to where they become more aware of themselves, to where they embody
a consciousness, something coming into being. To get to the point where
language itself is renewed, can serve to bring one to their own awareness. It
becomes a medium of transferring something between us. Something we can
feed each other. Something like bread. So we need to keep this medium in good
shape.
Another benefit of this for me is the realization of how we can also begin to
distinguish when language controls us, and when we are in control of language.
Which will it be? Part of my work hopes to address these issues of freedom,
control, and power.
Q: Some readers might find your nonlinear manner of
expression confusing, while others might enjoy the complexity.
When writing, do you care more about expressing yourself
clearly, or affecting the reader in a certain way?

47No. 3
When I write I explore possibilities. I do not really think in those moments
about myself, or about the reader, but what is possible. In fact, I have been
known to say that I can only write when I am beside myself. By which I mean,
to get out of my usual self to make room for something unknown, unmet,
unfamiliar. I want to commune with that self we become when we are in love
with the world. The one we terribly miss, once we have met.
At a later stage I think about the reader, at which point I want to be beside the
reader. I want to be sitting alongside the reader, and I want to be the reader.
The best moments are when I can distance myself enough from the writing and
enjoy my work the way a reader might.
An important aspect of the non-linearity is again the notion of creating
awareness about language and how it works on us. How we work on it. For
the frustrated reader this could be a point of inquiry. If I am asking them to
do something they find uncomfortable, why is it uncomfortable? Same goes for
the reader who thrives on the multiple layers and complexities I try to embody
and embed in the poems. As you read and make meaning you are given the
opportunity to observe your mind at work. We can learn something about
ourselves. Just as I was given the opportunity to observe my mind at work and
to struggle with the non-linear nature of thought. If I get frustrated with
that, then I would never write anything. Instead, I get curious. I want to see
if it is possible to convey this complexity by doing something with language.
Can I teach language something? So I keep trying. I am interested in capturing
the sound of perception/thought. Of course, I will never know how you
read a poem, unless you wish to tell me. And some of you have, and it is most
fascinating and rewarding. For that, I thank you. Both for sharing it with me,
and also for the effort you put into getting there, for not giving up.
Q: Most notable in your “self-portraits” series is a balance
between the intimate and universal. How do you compose
poems about personal experiences in a way that speaks to the
world outside yourself?
One of my current obsessions is exploring the notion of intimacy. What is it?
How many ways do we have of being intimate? Are we hurting ourselves when
we are made to believe that you can only experience intimacy with one person?
What about the non-human world? What kind of intimacies does it offer? Just
sit under a tree for a while and you will see what I mean. We have diminished
eros to the point where it is almost embarrassing to talk about.

I am pleased with your observation. The intimate can be universal and the
universal can be very intimate. And it might be as simple as how we allow
ourselves to be present in these, that will make the difference. Of course, there
is the crafting and work that needs to be done on the level of words. Which is
really where the writer spends most of their time. Crafting a vessel that will
be able to carry both of us. Where I make room for you. It is a courtesy, really.
It is an openness and a vulnerability which ultimately makes us stronger. Such
moments of intimacy push back on feeling invisible, on the sense of emptiness,
and on that pervasive sense of alienation.
Q: Self-portraits appear to represent more than one person?
Are you alluding to the dialogic view that no one is an entity
on their own, but only through their relationships with others?
Everything is a relationship. We become in relationship. Even research is a
relationship. I do not know how anyone can think they can be an island onto
themselves. Maybe. They will probably still have their iphone, though. And they
will want to have trees and water and dirt out of which something will grow.
It is a sad thought to think we are not connected to everything else. In other
words to think we are not in many different levels of interactions, relationships,
and dialogues with even the minutest of living things.
We also can get lost in relationships. How dependent we are on each other
(something as basic as how we look upon each other) is something we need
to not only embrace, but accept as integral to becoming who we are. I was
thinking recently how we are full of if only I did this, maybe then I will succeed/
be recognized/seen. But really so much of what we consider success is recognition
by another. It begins with either seeing or not seeing the other. If anyone thinks
that they can exist outside of others, without another, then solitary confinement
will not be such a bad idea.
In self-portraits I have these questions that get thrown out, to which I want
answers. Questions open up spaces to explore. Sometimes, you is me, and
sometimes you is you, and sometimes you is everybody. I am calling to you. I am
struggling with representation. (At one point I thought of colour coding the
you, ha ha, but I trust the reader to be able to navigate this you maze). The
dialogue is both inside my head and at the same time with the reader and the
world. Thought is not orderly. It bounces around, flits and hops, like the self. So
I struggle to capture as much of that, and as authentically as I can.

49No. 3
I need you to participate with me. I want to know: have you asked yourself
those questions? So I let them sit between us. Participation is key. This is not a
passive kind of activity. Existence is a complex thing. I will not be using poetry
if I can narrow it down to a few sentences. In fact, maybe part of the problem
is that we narrow it down. And leave so much out in the process. I have made
peace with uncertainties and paradoxes. Certainty lacks a sense of adventure. It
also lacks humility. In an interview, Tim Lilburn says: “Without poetic attention
the world could become too clear—it’s dangerous.” We can sit in the certainty
of our convictions, but that does not allow for growth or discovery. I think that
is where the self is marooned and stunted.
Q: “The self – a small bird that pauses on a branch.”
The motif of finality appears to mean a lot to you.
What is the self ’s responsibility in this eroding life?
The self is a responsibility in itself. The self for me is not something solid. If
it were, we would not spend so much time looking for our selves. It is a-coming-
together-in-the-moment, for me. It shifts. Which places immense responsibility
on each of us, each moment of our existence. We also have so much bearing on
it. We can have a say in how it comes together. In fact, the self is like language.
If you do not renew it and give it life, it will erode. That is why poetry matters
to me. It seems to attend both to self and to language. So it is efficient in that
way too. It renews life.
Q: As some seem to be words spoken by a character or narrator,
some simply thoughts, and others linguistic manipulation, how
do you select which lines and phrases to italicize? And what do
you feel the use of italics adds to the dialogues you create?
Italics in my work vary in their functions. Sometimes they are someone else’s
words in the poem. Sometimes it is a borrowed idea, not directly quoted but also
not my own. Linguistic manipulations are obvious, like words within words.
Sometimes it is just emphasis on a word. More recently in some of these later
poems I am experimenting with the conversation. What you perhaps allude to
as dialogic. There is a shifting of address sometimes and a shift in glance. Also a
shift between the thinking and feeling being. It is very perceptible for me. So for
now the italics seems to be doing some of that work, until I stumble on better
ways to represent that movement.

Q: You say “truth is wherever you want it”.
Can you please comment?
This poem was written right after I saw an exhibit at the Vancouver Art
Gallery which was called The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in
Art, curated by Dawn Ades and shown between May 28 and October 2, 2011.
Italicized phrases in the poem come from the exhibit: a quote, some titles of
paintings, and echoes of other paintings (see acknowledgements). I picked
phrases that jumped out at me. I liked truth is wherever you want it because it
expressed something I deeply feel and believe. We will make meaning even
when there is none to be had. But how can we say that? Meaning is made. So
if it is made there is meaning. There is a lot of effort put into controlling how
meaning is made through all sorts of human institutions. There is an inherent
freedom in making meaning. Both in reading and in writing. Funny, how we
want everyone to read and write, but then we go to a lot of trouble to tell them
how to make meaning. That is where art and literature come in, to break some
of that hold on meaning. Even though art and poetry as institutions also attempt
to impose and control meaning. But meaning making is an organic process.
Simone Weil somewhere said something to the effect that the mind is enslaved
when it accepts connections which it has not itself made. I thought at first
enslaved was too strong a word. But now I think it is an ok word. I am actually
still trying to break free from some ideas that were ingrained in me and did not
match my experience. We make meaning. We will make meaning. Any meaning
is better than none. It is what we do. And it will be purely our own, until
someone imposes a different meaning on us. Truth is a tricky concept. Whose
truth? Perhaps truth is making meaning.
Q: A subtle thread woven throughout much of your work is
that of linguistic duality: spoken V. unspoken and what is
said V. what is meant. Do you see these apparent contrasts as
dichotomies or as complementary elements of communication?
Thank you for this question as well. As I launch into each of your questions I
appreciate the time you put into the questions you chose to ask, and delight in
your thoughtful reading.
I see them as complementary. Dichotomies are dangerous. The poetic way of
being in the world and the poetic use of language include an awareness that
words tend to make rigid, calcify, what is ever flowing. Also as a poet, whose
medium is language, I am aware that I cannot entirely convey in words my

51No. 3
experience. Language is not a perfect tool. I like the way Hans Hess said it (in
How Pictures Mean): “We have to understand the artistic process not only as an
attempted solution of a paradox, but as the paradox itself. What one knows,
one cannot say, and once said, it is no more the same.” Meaning goes beyond
words, yet we cannot get at meaning without language. My kids have heard me
say many times: Do not listen to what I say, listen to what I mean. They don’t like
it when I say that. It throws them off, puzzles them. But I want to convey to
them how much of communication is beyond language, and how much of what
is contested sometimes is on the level of words only. So I want them to learn to
pay attention to language beyond language.
The meanings that constitute a poem are transmissions from a world not
reducible to language, yet at the same time manifest only in the medium of
language. So, too, the meanings that serve to constitute the very being of the
self are somehow, in part, the transmissions from a world beyond the limits of
the ego. Thus, the boundaries between self and meaning, world and language
become blurred. My interest in the freedoms that poetry offers leads me to the
question of the relation in poetry between the self and the world. And, so, the
conversation continues.

Daniela Elza
self-portraits
what went wrong went wrong.
I never had a chance to rehearse this life with you.
slowly objects in the house emptied of dreams—
we moved them around in our absences.
even the furniture plays visual tricks on us.
I fall asleep in one place wake up in another.
the silences between us split at the seams
into loneliness. the body wears them with a lack
of understanding. even our ghosts are listless
stare hopelessly take bets on us.

53No. 3
Daniela Elza
self-portraits
the city legislates our movements
paves the places we are supposed to walk.
there is barely song here in the footfall
the negotiation of space— the way we avoid
bumping into each other
as we bump into each other.
each day our together wakes up
remembers itself into not-being
raises itself from the ground up
like a city— stunned and unbelieving
in the choreography of this struggling light.

Daniela Elza
self-portraits
when we knew the right things to say
how we went a long way to mean them.
now everyday I slip down the steel hill of your gaze
whittle myself down to a nerve ending.
sit on the edge of each evening
as the river of dusk ushers the crows
in its streams overhead
——reassure me some things still make sense——
the way
the underside of wings captures the last sun rays—
the way I want to scoop the good years inside me
roll them and stash them in poems.
simple things—
the many winds in your hair
the way we kissed while waiting for
the light to change.
if I can put these fragments together
I can convince myself
we existed.

55No. 3
Daniela Elza
this is not
a rehearsal V
you think we are just performing here
but you will only know it
if you dance it
if you put the bowl under the moon
and drink.
today endless drizzle
the timed light. the slow clock.
streams of carbon pour onto paper1
—
this place where I cross the river to speak
with what is dead.
this logic is not
chronological.
and for all intense purposes
does not further the plot.
*
in the single fact of a dark room
our needs are always in a hurry2
do not ask how many times a day
I think of you
in the discipline of breath and word.
1. something a friend said in conversation
2. these words come from Creative Unity by Rabindranath Tagore, published 1926 MacMillan and
Co., London.

this is not
a rehearsal V
today the incessant wind
whips up the instant blue
into cloud.
*
this logic is not chronological.
neither is it a close collaboration with darkness.
the light too thinks its way through cracks
through the dim corner of this room that passes
for daylight.
sometimes all that creeps in
is self-doubt.
the flower you are growing bleeds its sorrow
on the hard wood floor.
you want to be the needle on the compass
shifting to its magnetic north.
the self— a small bird that pauses
on a branch briefly
before it flies off.

57No. 3
(at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 2011). 1
“truth is wherever you want it.
we found it all within the body.”
—Yunus Emre
truth is wherever you want it.
the mind—
the upper side of the sky.
we found it all within the body’s black
mirror. the studio door—
its quiet morphologies/ ajar.
a meditation on an oak leaf
the house opposite and reason/
bewildered. we recognize each other
in the cabinets of curiosities. objects
rife with dream and /memory slipping
between. a small chair /in the bottom
right hand corner
a black canvas/
and a body becomes a prayer.
1. the italicized phrases and echoes in this poem come from the exhibit the colour of my dreams:
the surrealist revolution in art which was shown between between May and October, 2011 at the
Vancouver Art Gallery, curated by Dawn Ades.
Daniela Elza
the colour
of dreams

the colour
of dreams
/chance encounters blur boundaries
the moss dreaming along tangents
and the warrior branches into /anticipation
anti-paintings./ a lost piece of paper
blowing down the street becomes grief.
found poster of missing person— named.
movement understood only when
time is cornered and framed.
acknowledgements
“truth is wherever you want it. we found it all within the body.” by Yunus Emre, (translated by Kabir
Helminski and Refik Algan – ‘The Drop That Became Sea’)
paintings:the upper side of the sky, by Kay Sage, 1944; studio door, by Man Ray, 1939; black mirror,
Roberto Matta, 1947; psychological morphologies, Roberto Matta, 1938-39; the prayer, Wilhelm
Freddie, 1940; meditation on an oak leaf, André Masson, 1942; the house of opposite, Leonora
Carrington, 1945; the moss is dreaming, Judy William, 1966; warrior memory, Jack Shadbolt, 1969;

59No. 3
Daniela Elza
wednesday.
rainfall.
wednesday. rainfall. warning
in effect. thinking is. trans-
corporeal. in the evening rain.
at times heavy.
what moves poetry
between bodies in the dance of showers
and drizzle.
in the temple we say:
prayer we say book we say vessel
amidst a cloudy prognosis
icons of winds and thunder
precisions in our pockets.
the air charged with what has been
unthought yet—
this moment between. intimate.
shivers
under the well meaning rain. a touch
and flash flood soaks us through with
pure difference.
in the blood work of the poem you are
distance between the pages
where the lines tend
to their own uncertainties.
this week in March is going to be all rain
and cloud again. all warnings disorders
stripped wires and endings

wednesday.
rainfall.
with a chance for something
off to the side outside the template
outside the scope of your attention—
a sense organ that opens into
the dark mischief of the poem
like a grace.

a sudden dissonance in the choir of storm voices
entices her to rise
leave the fortress of her bed
face the window shade fierce with wild silhouettes
she rests her forehead against the cold glass
sees the edge of something in desperate motion
between the sill and siding
a flying thing is caught
she reaches out
pulls the loose board away
the flying thing remains caught
she grasps a wing with one hand
pulls the siding away with the other
tugs at the wild thing
brings it inside
it is too feeble to fight
too broken
dies
my rescue was of myself
i shall bury it without ceremony
where it may feed what
will feed on me
Barry Blitstein
A Sudden Dissonance

63No. 3
tonight
in the storm
so that I may sleep
A Sudden Dissonance
Distractions

Bruce McRae
Repossessed
The dolls’ house on the street in my mind.
Its tiny curtains drawn, the rooms dark and dusty.
The finger-sized furniture tipped over,
after what might have been a drunken rage,
with no sign of its missing occupants,
the little back door kicked in, or nudged by a mouse,
the fourth wall gone in this theatre-of-play,
revealing a family’s unspeakable secrets.
And in its homey plastic kitchen, a bit of smoke.
A fire coming. A cleansing fire.

65No. 3
A.J. Huffman
The Sanctity of Dreams
This bed is my altar, I sacrifice
my sanity to various pillows, nightly.
Attempting to sink into subliminal
realities or fantasies, anything that might stand
as a break from my own.
I am daylight’s beast,
howling at forbidden moon. I pray
in prone form for slice
of moonbeam to sever conscious
ties. Finally darkened,
by body floats free, a temporary
angel, a blind man
granted reprieve to see.

Echoing emptiness is the only terror
to tremble beneath. Eyes that have seen
too much tend to boycott the buoyancy
found beneath star-filled skies. Mine
have no desire to launch themselves
into oblivion’s embrace.
I have lived a thousand deaths.
A thousand lies have passed
between my lips. I choked on none. Nothing
is the legacy of my nights. Switch
me on. I glow without fire.
A.J. Huffman
The Absence of Dreams

67No. 3
Chelsea Cefalu
Hickory burn
When it burns hickory
you offer your blisters.
I hold them, steaming
in my mouth to stay their burst.
The wood between us
doesn’t spark
or smoke or bluster.
It burns neatly,
its ash the wish of dandelion fuzz.
When it burns hickory
it burns hotter than liquid,
hotter than children.
Hotter than falling Rome.
It boils our prophets
in the Earth’s tender meat.
Dandelions burst from the entrails.

Wanna watch me cut down a tree?
I meet you behind the shed-
you’re there first,
of course.
Chainsaw primed.
Arms hard. Heart ripe. Blood
overfills your eyes.
It springs slick on my palms.
The tree, a dauntless
weed, grown burly
with leaves. He rattles
his drums. You bare
your steel. My throat fills
with branches. Slipped
from temporal bonds, smoke
and pulp marry, consummate
in turned earth. The flecks
in my eyes beguile the sun.
The chainsaw lies silent.
The air is salt, gasoline,
cauterized wood.
The soil is mint.
You, your warrior stance.
Blood.
Chelsea Cefalu
Temporal bond

69No. 3
this memory of your mother
crawling through the shadows of clouds
these hands of yours
useless and frozen
lie there naked in the sunlight at
the water’s edge waiting for summer,
for glory, for what you believe to
rightfully be yours
listen
no one breathes in poison for 40
years and then walks away unharmed
no one talks to angels without
scars forming on their heart
the hills are a gift, and the rivers, and
the sky will always be more beautiful
than any god invented by crippled minds
the truth will always be
so easy to twist and bend
stand there where your mother died
and make it into what you will
John Sweet
a flag, bleeding

in ornamental silence all
regret and bitterness the
failure of the past of
the present
the future and
trees on fire and
buildings collapsing all
motion and sorrow and
even with no need for lies
lies are all we tell
even with no need for fear
we are nothing but afraid
John Sweet
a place

71No. 3
He wrote letters of apology
to adverbs, punctuation marks,
occasionally to parentheses.
There were days when he would linger
with the word significant. Trees
surprised him without their names.
Snows from far-off mountains
melted onto the pages. A silver
thread reminded him of her face
but the stars too distant to signify.
Out there meant gathering the world.
Within would find its place.
Peggy Aylsworth
Not Instead Of

contributors
Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and
internationally. She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has won awards for her
poetry, prose, and scholarly work. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge
and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri St. Louis. She is the director of
the River Styx Hungry Young Poets Series and founded the Graduate Writers Reading
Series for UMSL. She is currently a Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing
at Lindenwood University. Allen is the author of two chapbooks and one flash fiction
collection. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, arrived from John
Gosslee Books in 2012. www.kelli-allen.com.
Jose Angel Araguz is a Canto Mundo fellow. He has had poems recently in Barrow
Street, Slipstream, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, and RHINO. He is presently pursuing a PhD
in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati. He runs the poetry blog, The Friday
Influence.
Peggy Aylsworth’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals throughout the U.S. and
abroad, including Beloit Poetry Journal, The MacGuffin, Poetry Salzburg Review, White
Rabbit (Chile), and Yuan Yang (Hong Kong). Her work was nominated for the 2012
Pushcart Prize. She is a retired psychotherapist, 93, living in Santa Monica, CA.
Barry Blitstein began in theater (MFA) and migrated to poetry. He has lived in New
York, Southern California, and Berlin. Most recently his poems have been published in
Off The Rocks and Hartskill Review.
Doug Bolling has received five Pushcart nominations and a Best of the Net
nomination. Some recent publications include Redactions, and/or, Stoneboat, BlazeVOX,
Kestrel, Water-Stone Review, Connecticut River Review, and Hamilton Stone Review.
Chelsea Cefalu lives in Pennsylvania with her family. Her poems have appeared or are
forthcoming in Flutter Poetry Journal, Poppy Road Review, and Decades.
Jeanette Clough is author of Flourish (Tebot Bach) and Island (Red Hen). Her work
appears in Colorado Review, Steam Ticket, Pool, and Cider Press Review. In 2012 she was
an Artist-in-Residence at Joshua Tree National Park.
Michael Collins’ poems have appeared numerous publications, including Grist, Kenning
Journal, Pank, SOFTBLOW, and Smartish Pace. His first chapbook, How to Sing when
People Cut off your Head and Leave it Floating in the Water, won the Exact Change Press
Chapbook Contest in 2014. A full-length collection, Psalmanadala, is forthcoming.

73No. 3
James Ducat’s work has appeared in Word Riot, Specter Magazine, Mojave River Review,
Convergence, The Citron Review, and others. He received an MFA in creative writing from
Antioch University Los Angeles, teaches writing at Mt San Jacinto College, and lives
with his son in Redlands, CA, in a house painted pink.
Daniela Elza’s work has appeared nationally and internationally in close to 100
publications. Daniela’s poetry collections are: the weight of dew, the book of It, and,
most recently, milk tooth bane bone of which David Abram says: “Out of the ache of the
present moment, Daniela Elza has crafted something spare and irresistible, an open
armature for wonder.” Daniela was the 2014 Writer-In-Residence at the University of
the Fraser Valley and the 2014 guest editor of emerge anthology.
Anton Frost has appeared in Parcel, Verdad, The Bacon Review, The Inflectionist Review,
and elsewhere. He lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.
A.J. Huffman has published nine solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through
various small presses. She also has two new full-length poetry collections forthcoming,
Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press) and A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing).
She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in
hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey
Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work
appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind
of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com
Janis Lull is professor emerita of English at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Over
the years, her poems have appeared in such magazines as Epoch, Poetry Northwest, Beloit
Poetry Journal, The Little Magazine, FallOut, Lake Street Review, Woman Poet, Heartland,
and Ruminate.
Pushcart-nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 900 publications,
including Poetry.com and The North American Review. His first book, The So-Called
Sonnets is available from the Silenced Press website or via Amazon. To hear his music
and view more poems visit ‘TheBruceMcRaeChannel’ on YouTube.
E. K. Mortenson is the author of the chapbooks, The Fifteenth Station (Accents
Publishing, 2012) and Dreamer or the Dream (Last Automat Press, 2010), as well as a full-
length collection, What Wakes Us (Cervena Barva Press, 2014). His work also appears
in both print and online journals as well as anthologies. He was the 2008 recipient of
the Leslie Leeds Poetry Prize, the 2012 Accents Publishing Chapbook Award, and is
an instructor in the MFA in Creative and Professional Writing program at Western
Connecticut State University. He writes and teaches in Pennsylvania where he lives with
his wife and two children.
Karen Neuberg’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous publications
including Levure Litteraire, Tinderbox, and Zingara Poetry Picks. Her latest chapbook

is Myself Taking Stage (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and she is associate editor of the
online poetry journal, First Literary Review-East.
David Radavich poetry collections include America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007),
Canonicals: Love’s Hours (2009), and Middle-East Mezze (2011). His plays have been
performed across the U.S., including six Off-Off-Broadway, and in Europe. His latest
book is The Countries We Live In (2014).
As a visual artist Jonathan K. Rice works primarily with acrylics and mixed media. His
art has appeared in a number of solo and group exhibits in North and South Carolina.
Some of his work has been featured as cover art on books and in online magazines,
such as The Pedestal, Referential Magazine, Red Headed Stepchild and the international
online magazine Levure Litteraire. In 2012 he had a painting selected for inclusion in the
annual Art for Auction exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art. He is also editor/
publisher of Iodine Poetry Journal. Jonathan lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Carol Shillibeer lives on the west coast of Canada. When she writes what will become
a new poem she does it with her mind focused on something other than the writing.
Her eye is usually watching a bird, or some point in the middle horizon. Unencumbered,
her fingers translate what her senses are translating about the world-as-it-rushes in
through the eye/nose/skin/. Then, days later, Carol-the-editor, translates again. This
multiple translation process has something to do with why she often messes with form.
Recent publications include fillingStation, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, and Fur-
Lined Ghettos. Her publication list is at carolshillibeer.com.
John Sweet is the winner of the 2014 Lummox Press poetry prize. Previous work has
appeared in Luciferous, Montucky Review, Burning Word, and elsewhere.
Jeff Whitney is the author of four chapbooks, two of which are forthcoming from
Thrush Press and Phantom Limb Press. Recent poems can be found in birdfeast,
burntdistrict, Devil’s Lake, Salt Hill, and Verse Daily. He lives in Portland.
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays for dance classes and
Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s published five chapbooks including
Zable’s Fables with an introduction by the late great Beat poet Harold Norse. Present
or upcoming work in Futures Trading, Toad Suck Review, Clarion, Edge, Talking River,
Lullwater Review, Owen Wister Review, Serving House Journal, and many others.

submit to The Inflectionist Review
The Inflectionist Review has a strong preference for non-linear work that
carefully constructs ambiguity so that the reader can play an active role
in the poem. In general, we commend the experimental, the worldly
and universal, and eschew the linear, trendy, and overly personal. Work
that reveals multiple layers with further readings. Work that speaks to
people across borders, across literary and cultural boundaries, across time
periods, is more likely to fascinate us (and the reader). As most poetry
practitioners in this day and age, we find rhymed poetry to be a thing of
the past. We read only unrhymed poetry.
guidelines
•We read submissions year round, but please submit only once each
quarter/issue.
•You may submit 3-7 poems at a time. Please include all poems in one
document, uploadable via our submission manager.
•Do not include any personal information in the document, as
submissions are read blindly.
•In the Comments section of the submission manager, please include
a cover letter and a short biographical statement, including previous
publications and a few words on your poetic approach or philosophy.
•Turn-around time is approximately 3 months.
•Simultaneous submissions are gladly considered, but please email us at
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elsewhere.
Unfortunately we cannot offer payment for the publication of your work.
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For more information on the Inflectionist movement, please visit
www.inflectionism.com.

a language untamed, uncharted,
emptied out of whatever tectonic
the taught mind imposes.
— Doug Bolling

The Inflectionist Review Issue 3

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