Tinfish - Number 4
TINFISH • Number 4

Contents
Kapulani ......... Makaleho
Murray Edmond .......... Le livre de l'histoire du monde
Adam Aitken ..........The Astral Traveller's Guide to Alice Springs
Pam Brown ..........City
Yunte Huang ..........Farewell to Farewell
Richard Hamasaki .......... Da Mento Hospital
Rebecca Mays Ernest ..........Scratch Factor
Paul Hoover .......... The Mezzanine
John Noto .......... Persona And Thrall
Dan Raphael ..........[untitled]
Gabrielle Welford .......... Con labor ay shun
Joshua McKinney .......... Icarus Backwards
Jorge Guitart .......... Mr. Hiatus
John Kinsella ..........nature morte: Oh Rhetoric!
Yunte Huang ..........Tofu Your Life
Pam Brown .......... In One House : Adam Aitken : A Review
Susan M. Schultz .......... from Addenda
Loss Pequeño Glazier .......... Kyushu
Sue Moss ..........Cautionary Tales
Murray Edmond .......... The Gannets of Pilsen
Dan Featherston .......... rioatoyac
Michelle Murphy .......... Conversion
Liz Waldner .......... Talented and Gifted
Cydney Chadwick .......... Hangman
Marie Hara .......... Over a Drinking Fountain As I Recognize the Face
the Metal Parts Make: Eyes, Nose and Water Shooting Out of a Mouth
Marie Hara .......... A Conehead Marching
Joshua Harmon .......... New Orthography
Hazel Smith .......... from Walking the Faultlines

Contributors' Notes





Kapulani

Makaleho

Click to enlarge


Murray Edmond

Le Livre de l'histoire du monde In remaking the world we have come full circle. But we have remade the world with our own hands-rediscovering all things, not once imitating anything. -Michel Seuphor The world was stitched together at noon on Sunday out of old bicycle parts by a mouse with thread of ice and eelskin silk. The first woman said to the first man: "Hola! In a cave not far from here I keep 1000 geese." At sea the pig fell overboard and so arose the custom of sacrificing the first-born child by casting it at birth into the ring of beehives. Chroniclers began to write it down about the time major technological advances were made in the art of navigation. Possibly a heavy protein diet contributed. The rebels sailed out into the centre of the lake from whence they could be heard hurling atavistic insults at night, their naked shadows big as wind-tossed trees on the torch-lit water. First the world ran out of participants; finally the observers too became extinct. The bare, brown earth and red, crumbling rocks were alive with a carpet of gregarious mice. Mutant eels with fixed grins which displayed their sabre teeth infested the remnants of fresh water. Ice descended and froze the ink in pens and saliva in mouths. The image which was evoked was neither the man weeping after the film because he had recognised the impossibility of ever returning to the land depicted on the screen nor the piled bodies of the stupid army who camped in the bush clearing and were shot where they shat by volleys of accurate fire, but the dry laundry flapping day after day in an exhausted air with not a soul at home left to take it in and fold it up. Barcelona, 8/12/96


Adam Aitken

The Astral Traveller's Guide to Alice Springs As if the town has lost its sight to cataracts, the cold gravel the ghost gums. The air's too pure to create clouds, or the simpler structures of human kindness. Brown hawks carve the air, ground zero over football fields, sprinklers fan out into rainbowed mists. It's a place where dogs chase rocks and stalk mountains, for gazing at stars, so many stars seen by so few. We leave our signature in the sky, before we descend, guided by the star fire of dead ancestors. There's work to do, finding out what it was exactly, modifying our accents, and sounding out the brittle earth, test the exact composition of gases, life- supporting in proportion to life-threatening. We gauge in the driest creeks and in the flesh of thinnest cows the hazardous nature of propagating a new race of ourselves, even in the form of trees modified by nitrogen overload, or as other organisms that meet a sympathetic balance with the native inhabitants. As gentle as befits our cosmic nature, we sprinkle the dirty ice we are among these pilgrims in a shopping mall, all wearing T-shirts of rocks: central landmarks we have used to navigate our countless passes of this continent. We follow them-discreetly as scientists-to their place of nourishment-a watering hole of complex anthropological interest. Here the spirit of the tribe is ennobled-not by mere trinkets-but by the wrought iron runes of a crueller script they call Branding Irons, a typeface signifying ownership of their four-legged herds. It is clear we have stumbled on empires of meat, and this its temple, and these their custodians and their icons: photo-chemical representations of shelter, ideal scenes of water, moments of harvest, a muster of beasts by elegant hovering vehicles they call helicopters. Might this be the place to declare ourselves a delegation from Halley's comet, but too shattering an interruption to their industry, and our accents as yet too strange. We return, puzzled that our prophesies predicted so little of this, so little written but with this new knowledge we see our home for what it is: magnesium and ice never seen before or ever imagined, in orbit round the sun.


Pam Brown City A yearned-for somewhere adverb-physically as lost as now gazing across the chunky valley to a hill of quivering lights- There is no destination- just a place no site not olympic village site not harbourside casino site nor section of expressway just east of where coincidence has determined your residence in a city you returned to to remember why you left- Inventing nostalgia for elsewhere- you'll live there in the future-


Yunte Huang

Farewell to Farewell stripping off all articles we are non-natives excitement of city air final- ly stinks on pages leaves (farewell) rotten in mouth we don hav any to say though so energetic those pages of snow so dreamy those letters of summer where is day keeper tell me how to me morize with id you pay 3.75 for movie that doesn't hurt but leaves of me- (autumn) mory free so farewell to farewell go back there your seat and hear me sing not swan dirges but peas in showers


Richard Hamasaki

Da Mento Hospito Eh, somebudi lik make one big freeway tru my vallee t'dey lik bill 'em reel beeg and strong man lik one battl ship so t'dey can send all t'dem kars an trucs an busses t'rew da mowntans an make moa condos and macdonals and purlridges so da turists, and da grunts, an da locos can bang each a'da moa not only dat, but the air fors guys lik hapai dere missos tru da mowntans from heekem to mokapu an bak one na'da hi'way ain't gonna keel dis iland brah dis iland alredi' dyin- da hungri politisans da govament an da beesnees mens tink dey can ku'aku'ai da aina lik one prostitoot eh, so wat if get one moa hi'way tru da mowntans who gives a fricken "A" about da farmas da fishamens da fresh wata da wind da rain an da makas yeh, da eyes, da makas dat luk da mowntans an spak da new hi'way runnin tru da vallee da eyes dat see nottin' but one beeg town an pretti soon we can drive dawreck- from halawa prison oneway to da hawaii state mento hospito in kaneohe circa 1983 Da Mento Hospito E, sambadi laik meik wan big friew chru mai vaeli de laik bil om ril big aen schchrawng maen laik wan baeto ship so de kaen sen awl dem kaz aen chraks aen basez chru da mauntenz aen meik moa kandoz aen maekanoz aen prlrijez so da turis, aen da grants, aen da lokoz kaen baeng ich ada moa not oni daet, bat da ea faw gaiz laik hapai der misoz chru da mauntenz fram hikam to mokapu aen bak wan nada haiwe eint gona kil dis ailen dis ailen awlredi dain- da hangri palatishenz da gavament aen da biznez menz tingk de kaen ku'aku'ai da aina laik wan prastitut e, so wat if get wan mo haiwe chru da mauntenz hu givz a frikin "e" abaut da famaz da fishamenz da fresh wata da win da rein aen da makaz yae, da aiz da makaz daet luk da mauntenz aen spak da nyu haiwe ranin chru da vaeli da aiz daet si natin bat wan big taun aen priti sun wi kaen jraiw darek fram halawa prizen wan we tu da hawai steit mento haspito in kaneohe (rendered into Hawai'i Pidgin [Odo] orthography by Charlene Sato)


Rebecca Mays Ernest

Scratch Factor x home/ x factory Shock of delicacy finished flavor withering in the bud think quick out of a paper bag perimeter of parameters food for the barn dance standing date at the seat of production pull close the building blocks of organism nest in Chinese boxes how lived is what built when living in it as it builds earn hard free time transact mortar negotiate solder homework the landscape brick by brick project distinguished contexts weighing plane figures of tin fields of trope, candor, lawn of lays root by sound plant a candle, taste movement cracker pie, barbells, milkmaid's buckets rond de jambe sautŽ counter factual axel airy, ery, ory x factory / y home Y call this summer born to wild raised to be intellectual studied spontaneity cottage industry exerting, detecting ceaselessly, seamlessly spat cultch molluscular waste conduct carryover hallmark of a vestibule chirographic noodling circuitry trading crafts like beads of common sense mood rings pieds poids the transfer of weight commodity at premium as if everyone were dying tomorrow as if everything were to disappear remain without remainder pearls of great silliness hut cot hut Rest Matrix, it is not said yet dough must Roman couch of multiples isotopia secretly trite freshly jaded hackney abroad what is where is when is how wooden overcoat six foot bungalow Dutch basement waterlogged pillow utope, euphorist give us a last dying simile involved, folded, complicated unleavened greening inseep deepening binary, supernumerary nouminal mettle of kilter angel biscuits, airs play them, breathe them, don them unitrine y home / y factory Edenic side of a barn spite painting or irresistible palette nitty gritty brook and bridge dawning artery blue willow patterned pie chart concurring in nature region's rights war conditions versus reasons recognizance reconnaissance recognition good 'n' plenty 'n' strange the sea by the sound of someone's voice does the hearth extend to the waterfront pressure points distinguished locomotif roundhouse for maintenance of crazy urges fretless a bird calls like somebody learning to whistle y factory / x home Spontaneous studiousness venture some geometry in time makepiece plug into the campsite delect on the right gristly landings prior to the promised answerable answeringly sensible host implicit responsible acting foundation presence like articulation monk abode a sphere curled ribbon on the package around the point at which everything remains to be done tear ducts, hidebound peppercorn homeplated movement over the tongue


Paul Hoover

The Mezzanine Fumbling in a vein glassy with its transit, the story will not begin, the story will not die. Repeating the world like water, events begin their nervous arrival. Now we have cognition no nicety can kill. The mother theory swells along the neuron range. The social anvil rings. Money as love, love as greed, greed as a kind of fate. When the god of dirt's transparent, the stealthy world's in flood. World of utter words. In the summer of that idea, passionate excess, bruised with attention, breaks. Large men are seen walking, embarrassed by their size. At the bottom of human nature, something beaten stirs. Instead of desire, a brown tree and a blue, marge of snow at the garden verge, and the new dark age. We sit in the excavation between silence and white noise, where the blank weight of existence thickens but will not shine. Except of course those clouds, stately against the mountain, which in their brilliance blind grass and shatter water. We are beneath one now, prepared to be impressive.


John Noto

Persona And Thrall Mand; wheel-bloom; locking gardenias; My idle mind is sitewild, a tumescent bauble throbbing the infrared, a trussed mud-puddle, revisited architecture of the graveyard theatre, history of storm sewers, minutely stepped on brick ready for the sun's light pulver: Day! The broadside vehicular flush is a revolution, cleansing vacuum pedal-steel vascular ducts on-line, yellow bands of tendon drill under blue membrane, jangling, ringing out the grey-soft data-glove; THERE is my reprieve: mind like cauliflower celluloid peeled from luminous thirst movements; Remixable debt-weather lightening over broad, sculpted lawns of March time blooms awash in flesh, and the field density wakes volcanic shot-glass vernal with tears, the measured pour bursting from stems into petals FOREVER is only slightly more than worn velvet remade in another shift or cell structure; The spit of morning rotates on axial-cone elastic sublet arcs coloring up the rinsed ochre astrolabe; early-blistering clouds pipette vaporous lubricants through sinus vagrancies windblown leaf-buds cut across the looped crane's nest moon's toss'n'turn cabinet.


Dan Raphael

"you write about the audio-visual psychic barrage that batters the mind and heart to a pulp,. . . while i write about the moon cause that's what i'm looking at" - mark sargent getting barraged with all these moons useta bother me. i'd keep running to avoid, while others wafted through impervious or oblivious. maybe inoculated, or immune these fuzzy fires. these powdery chills a tingling dearth of focus pull-array peeling back dead sensors to vector through rocklight adding beasts to each letter: rose beasts halo beasts moon beasts raining like an army of sew machines like spring break florida beach a sudden aluminum forest: the sound wind makes through crowds of naked silent people grooving with moving, tuned with the light phoneless ears shadeless eyes hair active as a cat's tail when birds arouse these bird moons- I could be one, let go and particulate, flying as if hunting seeing as if special swimming the wind through skin evanesces thermotropic pulse aglint and active, swirling ephemera evolve wormtread language or morphology: scarf held till the right moment needs hillocks of desired muscle like half-baked rice paste humming the ceiling down: space squints time forgets my body is dense as the wind at earth's core, shoes like capacitors feeding me earthwind, i'm jumping till i'm knee deep spasm-dancing like a helicopter made flesh


Babrielle Welford

Con labor ay shun Onceuponatime YEStuday it finally came down to this. No more nutmeats. Hear me? Hair me? I am in this adamant. The first man, and not even hairy, all-breasted, s o f t in the right places. Don't take advantage. Dis is yer mudder speakin. Co, co, co, co - what was the word? How write it? Brain lost, no exit, no weigh out? Opt, operation, odger, velo, llaboration yes, yes. And what's that then? lippiness? labia? work? lip-service? libbers? labbers? collabers. Who, hoo, woo? These painful headshorn. These guileless workworn. Con labor ay shun. Tutti mutti. Woik tugither. No prob. Woik tugither good, woik tugither bad. Woo say good, woo say bad? Woowho say tugither wit du wrong who. Mostly inwar. Inwar the wrong who is con labor. Tantamount tu treacle. Mountatante tu treasurn. Ticklemepink & I'll tellall. Tugither wit du rite who is. Not inwar.


Joshua McKinney

Icarus Backwards hurtles into the sun from now on unable to recall the conditions to elicit the luxurious past, its always- correct observations on suffering, betrayal, dimension and disuse. I read all morning a book I couldn't close: it was the cruel flash as light angles into a wave and then the wave is gone. But it wasn't like that. If there were any, the venders' shops are closed, a village exactly as I remember it. for Edmond Jabès


Jorge Guitart

Mr. Hiatus eclectic odium during happy hour one of a series litotes to papier reality to saboteurs bobtail collects sentimental alps o kool pragma portico it ceases to designate as soon as you touch me this is the spirit in which prejudice glyphs moved i created a superb bluster for the summary of kissing i translate scalp paradoxes proclivity plague breaks out you are good at monasteries & oozing time covers the monopoly of snow but the frog met the tepid then i see you are a pillar of the ad hoc an axon clogs configures glass gears forget phonation & feel this if you follow lineaments you'll find postcards now only the behemoths have become details this could be inference arriving rebarbative sales i wish to call the ridicule patrol i am sugar's ligatures & a long congelation why don't you infest this for now while the strip-searcher blinks organic matter keeps you up all night like i said the undermining champ yet the monstrous everyday phrase & the inerrant minaret dude the sheep are lunar when they want to & yet you sleep with the kites front-row tickets to hints? the board destroys the logogram a miasma festival and the out-of-towner puts a finger in everyone's it though a good fist is conversational i'll focal variation you buster to the throbbing friend you have been simpering for centuries no not cavalleria talmudiana i negotiated with the lacustrine folks behind the dump truck determine if resemblance plays a bosomy role rust is in shipshape & python is the colonel of the wind of a shell my mucous nemesis i happen nearer your body thanks to being atheoretic & the standard girl pauses in persistence's interstices the fatal constraint hits low you derive confidence from phlogiston three times a day my stomach constructs a deal a dunce is nice watery architecture since supper i've known what meaning can do to you


John Kinsella

nature morte: Oh Rhetoric! for John Tranter Calls for clarity suggest the breakdown or rediscovery of a market like horrible workers following Rimbaud as he moves through and out of the post-modern work ethic, meaning just hanging there like an island buoyed by dense air, as the earth revolves unsecured beneath. The masters leave studios & paint only for personal gratification-horrible workers keeping the studios going, contracting art to a single flourish of pen or brush. Like Cicciolina being the model for everything in the glossy magazine apartments of meta-kitsch. Or Elle Macpherson saying you should only read what you've written yourself. Or Christo hiding dead art beneath swathes of wrapping. On the Island of Doctor Moreau the animal-humans animate analogies & moralize as we take our medicine. Taking the cure means making it suffer. Metaphor is the only way of saying something plain & simple & as we turn full circle towards Babel Fowler becomes a kind of trendy gibberish. In Giacomo Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash _we_ notice the energy of a still in which Balla delights in the simultaneity of deprivation. Innovation is the fraudulent usage of an established method of discussion on the nature of intent & inspiration only because there's a market. We might still be drawn to expression without a means of exchange but it's unlikely we'd be pushed to validate it. But that's in a perfect world where your indulgence wouldn't bother anyone a damn. That if you didn't work you'd starve along. A doctor tells the story of a suicide who survived just long enough to fully comprehend the totality of pain. He'd drunk toilet cleaner & then changed his mind. Like the late twentieth century. There's no need to refer to particular incidents to make _this_ a political poem. I can analogize by using the Island of Doctor Moreau & prompting the reader to consider the tyrannies of science, which is a euphemism for. _The Law Giver is dead_. The Ipecacuanha like a UFO fixation. In the House of Pain Moreau said: "You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things." Here, if you wish for an absolute kind of illumination you must of course read the book. I have read the book. A lot of my friends are writers. Many are venerated by their peers & would be considered to have good taste in things literary. I write a poem & hand it around. Some praise it as the best thing I've written, others suggest I return to the draft-board, others that I scrap it & take a rest. I consider that the best thing you've written might not mean much if deep down they think that the rest of your stuff is pretty lousy. Even their judgements have different meanings depending on how they tell me & how I listen. Style doesn't change, but styles do. I once led into a poem with a quote from Brodsky: "Everything has its limit, including sorrow." I read the poem. It's titled "Trans-celluloid Vision". I consider why the quote is used? The poem is in three parts and the last stanza reads: "Everything has its limit- the train slowing, the journey almost complete. Relief borders on sorrow. I lose track of the plot, embracing the platform." In the _light_ of the rest of the poem this is a little "tacked on". It is a poem about a fragmenting relationship; a kind of lament. But this doesn't really come through so it can't _really_ be about that. I haven't guided the reader. through italicizing "can't" to make my intention clear(er). My problems continue(d) with a second reading & I suggest(ed) it's another of those I gave up on but wasn't able to get rid of. Years later & I'm at it again. The first line of section 1 (View from a train) reads "The curve of the track / betrays the engine." I remember the train going from Sydney to Melbourne. That the _mystery of movement_ was lost when the engine appeared out of the window. I think it was raining & the atmosphere was "surreal". But this is not my word, it comes from somewhere else. The poem continues: "Moisture trapped within the double-paned window makes liars of manufacturers claiming air-tight security. I stare past the frame of lacquered wood & outside the day is cinematographic. Flickering from reel to reel until the credits show the names of logging & catering companies, trucking & management industries." The second stanza turns against the first: "A green desert. Sheep moving slowly through viscous paddocks, water pooling like blood. Dry country stranded on the backbone of grey granite. A washed sunset emphasizes the sharp teeth of a retreating city." I recall being dissatisfied with the "washed sunset"-maybe "brooding" or "harsh" or some other more active adjective? But it was the bitterness of sorrow that intrigued & this disparate image stuck. In the dissection of the corpse of this poem I recall Lyn Hejinian telling me how she'd gone to watch autopsies with Mike Patton, the lead singer of Faith No More. I wouldn't have mentioned Mike but his music has always interested me & if he hadn't been on world tour I'd have tried to solicit material for the literary journal I edit. Lyn said that in this de-sensitized environment (actually that's my word, I can't remember what she said specifically but its effect on me was to suggest this) the body wasn't that frightening. I think she held a liver. I asked if it was like a collection of artefacts being removed carefully from a tomb. I think she laughed. But it might not have been a comfortable laugh. The second section of my poem is entitled: "The Cat & The Canary or The Absence Of Sorrow Accompanying A Belated Reading Of The Millionaire's Will: A Reconstruction To Help Pass The Time" So, it's _sorrow_ by association. In _true_post-modern spirit I digress into commentary on a 1927 b & w horror film. Somewhere in there there's the influence of Tranter. I'm tossing up whether to "background" this piece. No, I'll quote it in full & then elaborate, simply noting that the long lines do not best capture the short subtitles that accompany silent movies but _do_ suggest the notion of linear narrative. Maybe as you read the long-lined version you can also visualize how it would look were it segmented, chopped up: "The late night silent classic for the real buffs. Shot in '27. The director died two years later Of blood poisoning. The screen throws a double image, The UHF aerial failing, or the ghost of the director Fermenting 'in-camera' with age. He has the cast Lip-synching their way through a reading Of an eccentric millionaire's will in a house That his ghost has occupied for twenty years. There is Mammy Patient, Susan & the famous West Diamonds, Annabelle, Paul, & The Lawyer. GHOSTS! the portrait falls to the floor. Mammy inks her brow. The will Mentions a distant relative & demands Sanity. The lawyer disappears. The murderer Claw-fingered & with nails like razors Is seen only by Susan, who must PROVE Her sanity! The doctor with peculiar hands Arouses suspicion. There's a moth in the safe Though it's not been opened for twenty years! And who hired the imposter asylum warder Who's hunting a madman who tears His victims as a cat does a canary?" Strangely, this section stops here. No witty line that might hint at resolution. If the title is considered we might reflect on the ruthlessness of the participants. An allegory of the twentieth century. Or of the human condition generally? It's been noted that the last stanza of the final section seems a little "tacked on". But in the light of the second section maybe it's a pretty obvious conclusion? Part 3 ("Solarization-a celebration") reads: "Sunrise. My mind blank. Spencer Gore's painting The Icknield Way 1912 appears stereoscopic on my glasses, or so I'm told. A geometric almost tabular sky registers through a film of brilliant light as the train celebrates the approaching city's solarization. The sky inflects & organizes fancy: the landscape bright, explosive, threatens to ignore the script." "Organizes fancy"-_it_ reminds _me_ of a review by James Dickey on John Ashbery's first collection of poetry. I can't remember what he said exactly but he hated the book. I tracked the book down & thought it was great. But then I like Ashbery{'s poetry}. There's something about his use of weirs, I think. I'm reminded of Vasari talking of Leonardo saying that he could find no living model for the features for his head of Christ, so it was best left incomplete. It existed in my files as a kind of still life, as a piece of dead nature waiting for clarity, hinting at de- compositon.


Yunte Huang

Tofu Your Life frame de frame rule de rule ______________ | your life | | a small | | square tofu | ______________ unnegotiable shape soft to chopstick \ \


Pam Brown

In One House : Adam Aitken A Review reading a set of poems is easier & usually more pleasurable than talking about one, about how, for instance, adam, in his book, shifts between realms of identity, between the record- an itinerant childhood- & , as an adult, a reconstitution the poet's mission, declared first off, in a quote from "Art & Lies", is to recover past, home & place. (mission impossible?) the first poem's title:-- _Post-colonial._ via various tourisms- tv airport history- africa leichhardt gilligan's island cambodia burma uluru thailand enmore saigon surry hills, from bruce lee to barthes, james bond, & mr. & mrs. big a kind of analytical umberto-eco-everywhere gone "asian" finally lands in Bondi & exotica- monkeys angkor wat's bats karma tantra buffalo buddha tiger balm- rendered the quotidian- even the shopkeeper from Saigon spoke Greek to sell his cheeses- the exotic, the "oriental" charted, examined, lamented dismissed, embraced-- the spectacle is integrated & it's all on SBS ("_the world is an a-ma-zing place_") the writing- as adam fixes imagination's artifice to art what bob adamson's blurb calls john forbes' "hip technique," naming the influence, reminds me more of dawe breaking away from his mentor, forbes, (this poetry's less eccentric) into, for example, a rhyming formalism- in _Indochine_ She gave birth to fearless boys, who sold the farms, who played chicken on highways for dying on; they'd live again as dashboard tiger charms. & _Sailing to Byzantium_ Byzantium: east meets west in search of fame Strangers to each other--from a life of action To a layer cake of fin de siecle, a corrupted game this dark-ish humour doesn't joke and love? every poet's gnawed old bone- cool love appears but the tone is mostly temperate, serious & sensual- Rivers of jungle honey you'd agree thick enough to sweeten bitter herbs so deepened empathy becomes a protest poem _The Bad Women of Bangkok_ the cynical excess- sex without eros- and the girls disguised as monks smuggle into clubland where you can lambada with a snake or smile in a cage of disillusioned crocodiles, or edit their lives and take them back to the hills of their youth riding whatever tiger you choose, and call it a safari. adam edits life upfront & stretches application as he calls his English language home, the referents comfortable at last in the title poem- but here to stay like a generation tagged on to the last, bemused by the next, some still writing poems to their friends.


Susan M. Schultz

From Addenda

And distress fled to the outlying regions. She was left with a band of contentment over her brow, the one that had throbbed violently in the past, and couldn't know why she was chosen to lose herself in ongoingness: the present belongs to those who relinquish desire as a good against absence or the threat it leaves like a homeless man's mattress at the door; he doesn't threaten you, but his circumstance does, so you retreat into the sanctity of your castle, sacred if only because it stops the drafts from disrobing your security zone. So contentment is always at the mercy of the next plunge in stocks (at best) or thermometers (at most contingent). The invitation obviously false, you arrive late to find the company banded like endangered birds (not those of prey but other more delicate ones whose beaks can't reach into most flowers for their rudimentary nectars), conceived in discourse and bounded by it, as I am bounded by these narrower than usual margins. The culture shock eased a bit, white people seeming more or less inevitable in every circumstance, and so did the reflex anger that greeted her first public exposures to the old rules. Yet the purpose is to conjoin elements, allow them their clash, then recuperate whatever's left as sediment for the newer dispensation, the one that promises to arrive like express mail, a day or two later than promised. The local is real, as my students remind me, white woman shuttling unpredictably in and out of her symbolic value, the duck/rabbit example hardly an instance of autobiographical excess. Fluttering like a lid or nervous astronaut in front of a zoom lens, space between him and more space, you recoup your losses as evidence there was a gain, embarrassed knowledge taken like a fortress, or the ego's precarious pylon on the far cliff, ropes in arrears as usual. Guilt greets you less as fact than as necessary outback to operate through, though your ancestors did not, & etc. Intellect is molasses compared to historical necessity arbitrated by oppression's stern rehearsals history's over for you guys, but not for us. The phone rang and you neglected it, hoping instead for more direct speech, the blood knowledge that the wanderer set his chips on. Plantations run by such as you, "discovery" made by such as you, evidence that agency sells disaster and an outsider referring to "the rape of the land" is a fool even for noticing it. Metaphor as defense or irony, and I love them both, don't do it when communication occurs on the head of a pin and there's no time for prettiness (considered with or without its "r"). Old judges told tales predicated on outside value; the newer ones start from a siege and then take the shelter of their sufficient arguments for enclosure, which later bites them as an instance of bourgeois power realignments. The gap is there to slip through, so take up your pen and write (if not here, oh crucial"if") a measured dialogue with other selves, even where the landscape falls away and all you see is ruin around the billboard advertising your front yard as paradise, lest you prick the bubble to which you signed a loyalty oath. I wouldn't cheer for that if I were you.


Loss Pequeño Glazier

Kyushu And words to match. The great work creeds from (take one vantage pointing to an etymology, for example "horizon", "Ho rhizome" or "O chorizo", depending which way you're framing the sea). That's not to say there aren't any rhythms--the feet vary then consume them, nor a common denominator for the waves that cosign this loan as presence the few points on its surface from which we spy land we cite as 'typical'. Bent forward blasts and crosses the region with barbs of economy. Horno, petulance, or hana hou. I first saw signs of its coast called baja (named in contrast to an alta that no longer qualifies but flatly assumes). Short poems in the vein of this looking outward as the necklace pearls define a path: typhoon in Japan, telescope mirrored in Hawaii, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, and both sides of the basin (from "basinette," a small spit worn when swabbing diskettes drug in from the Net). As basta, there's plenty of North--you name its Sur or San. Russians galloping to wood forts, a presidio built to preside over religious custom. What whet lands consumed by blasts of this populace of verbs. From Santa Cruz to Saigon. Reddened jangle of fruits stretching to sea-blasted hole in ocean rock. It is flesh defining pliant sand--the way you once strung words to narrate it (alternatively the spit of ice that joined enough preceding my Mayans to) mindful of the spring-fed pool amid redwood burls curled past a pretense of rock. Talofa anyone use the same roof for "pacifier"? And "pacifist" itself presents one with a fist. What timbers or joists would bolster thus "metonymy", a tick on the piano, a key that sticks in some shale scrawled "C". Haole adjectives and naval verbs. To lint or prick. To give volcanic pressure. Returning to the continent she could no longer accept her prior language and switched (though having no athletic ability) to major in Phys. Ed.-the only discipline that did not betray her pidgin. Ever pretend to make a list or to digitize your addenda? For example, who would you ask to name that perfect colorful flash before the word fills with screams? I've seen such descriptive terms--take the video on fly fishing. O'er the sounds on its crests that prate then plaster. Without benefit of lights nor shaving hot water. A baleful black oyster. The rock that juts through its tempestuous lather. Save a chapbook mailed or the way we net across this distance rather than attempting to swim.


Sue Moss

Cautionary Tales

Click to enlarge


Murray Edmond

The Gannets of Pilsen "jet out from Muriwai"--Colin McCahon claims that an enormous diamond lies buried under the fetid, sculpted smoothnesses of the ground of the colony are surely false yet their gold, cream and black heads multiplied many times are mythic in their clarity as is the knowledge that these are remnants, the dwindled descendants of millions and millions of ancestors the one-eyed general had his good eye shot out; not only that, the Catholic enemy snuck out from within the city walls and stole his diversionary Polish camel from Nuremberg and defeated his army their wings, double-jointed and stretched out and still in the act of flight tremble under the dialectic of pressure and the begged question of wind from the train window we watched a mother pull her daughter along over the ice on a tiny plastic sled their bones were used to make tools for moko, their feathers hung from ears on the clifftops of Otakamiro Point and Motutara [Island] on Auckland's rugged West Coast, with a wingspan of over 2 metres and a taste for anchovies these birds are graceful hunters and fearsome fliers whether these birds have been sighted flying west over the city of Pilsen is a question only you can answer though the numbers in the colony dwindled alarmingly this summer without apparent cause hitting the water at speeds up to 150 km per hour they reach depths of up to 10 metres and attack their prey from below how intimately our second guesses are connected to farewell and departure, hands on hips, searching the horizon for an incoming jet off Muriwai or a departing spirit journeying north she leaned forward after describing her production of King Lear with 14 year olds, how they had used balls and skipping ropes and children's games to create this infantile world, middle class kids for whom Cordelia was introduced as too clever by half and fooling everybody succeeds only in fooling herself, to say, "I hope we kept the Bolsheviks entertained" so all information is part of the natural camouflage of the narrator, the multiplicity of stories, the simplicity of plot as it flies without any preliminary flying and having never fed themselves, they leave the nest to fly directly to Pilsen over 10,000 km. away bamboozled with occasion, huddled in the car at the top of the cliff above the colony lashed by such a dense blur of rain and wind we could not see out at all, hieratic man alone the kind of no-frills, no-thrills, provincial capital bustling with energy and solid with ice with a busy market beside the cathedral and a sign reading, "Chicken Roasted Just for You" or words to that effect and even in such slim conditions the gannets are still dropping off the cliffs and lifting into the drafts, performing their aerial hermeneutics how could I have children he often asked, when I might be dead tomorrow and nobody dared say to him but isn't that the case for everyone and now he is still alive today while several of his colleagues have died and he is heard to say but do you mean to suggest that this is somehow my fault while under the aura of wisdom his eyes at least look scared and why won't he is not speak to you at least make an appointment when you have known him so long mating is for life, hermetically closing the saga of solitude on the south coast of Australia, say Queenscliff at the heads of Port Phillip Bay, defining a lump of grass, sticks, seaweed, earth etc. for better/worse/ever you were arrested and detained for 48 hours and released and immediately rearrested and detained again for the maximum legal holding period and released and rearrested and so on and this went on for 10 times until you escaped and hid out got married had a child were again detained lost your job sold flowers and after years finally worked as the psychologist you always had been all you lost was the ability to distinguish a real persecution mania from genuine harrassment after 100 to 110 days the mature chicks grow restless, gazing out to sea, hands on hips, how ingeniously the plot is constructed since everything is natural and nothing can be taken for granted how old are the daughters then if the father is "four score and upward not an hour more or less" there is no mother where is the mother take for example that day on the beach, after the pulverising wind and the black blasts of rain, we walked freely in a light air under mild-yellow sun, seeing dogs trot alongside, kites overhead and paintings forming on the horizon far out to sea, to the right of the seal colony beginning of your journey and so, historical as love is-- ecce, the bird of latitudinal migration, who bears this message like a true pigeon


Dan Featherston

rioatoyac banked bright fluttering wash to reeds' weft. soft tin over the bridge morning glories twined to dobe hear trumpeted blue thin wisp over there.sierra's fringe while haze. under the sun these flowers burned closed by light. museum's closed light a little bone lamp. mosaic stone wig mixtec skull. heart's rose crown a petaled crush. accreted stone. gives, absorbed, language to be at stake under the sun yoked to robelike flutter. cartilage frill loosed from fipple heart's white heat. whole corollas trembled along tongue's inverted root. lengua's twofold speakerspoken: soil under strata of speech even roots will not raise. ruin's pure stone of speech I cannot bear nor roll away. some turquoise. some fractal blue sustained on spinal rig as if color were mineraled light. word's deep weight of raised surface to loom drawn from the very fiber very thing weaving of itself.


Michelle Murphy

Conversion When she was young, she possessed a hand, now irrevocably lost, holding an apple. She used to stamp her boots to crow songs, raise a thigh-high dust in honor of their impermeable music. The callused balls of her feet engaged in the residue of dance, a fox trot or cha- cha. Her legs threatening a disco split in the early morning frost. To keep her questions alive she carved them in stone, laid them beside the roadways, believing that miracles could play themselves out, one way or another before a new dust would blow it all away. To keep her weight among the epitaphs, it was said she converted apples into hands and hands into thin letters, that once unsealed provoked riots in far away cities, caused household pets to come together in one simultaneous scream. When she was young, she would kneel for the fountain coins of luck, taking back the wishes. She thought how stationary one must be when our history gives into an undeniable absence, when an arm suddenly vanishes without appeal. How still to divide the waters. There is a photograph, dog-eared, that shows her standing at the edge of her land, hands struck open like a match. An apple rests precariously on the top of her head while one eye squints into the camera, laughing.


Liz Waldner

Talented and Gifted He hurt her amateur feelings. No bandages, please. A panda bear from the county fair is like unto a spelling error: Ouch, delete on bended knee. Pedigrees not withstanding on their greasy feet (O blue blood, O 10W40, O lubricated with nonoxynol, O engine engine #9; how doth thy corporate chassis shine, $$$ maketh the world to turn, you _______ my _______ and I'll ______ thine), pigeon is a language spoken by all who puffeth themselves up, causing their chest parts to go before them as pride goeth before a fall. An economics Just-So Story, brought to you by the makers of Geritol. Can you say Black Monday? Forced retirement? Over-inflated? The market is a little bit nervous, the market has the jitters, the market has an Excedrin headache: no futures trading tonight, dear. No nonoxynol necessary; the fruits of his labor land in a little wad of the financial section while she sniffles in the next room. He sleeps, snores, stretches, thumbs through the coffee table volume The Sexual Parts of Plants. Geez Louise, who framed thy fearsome symmetries? Faithful dog noses his crotch for her head to be petted. Oh dog (he pets), you really are clairvoyant and a relative of god. Make that _mature_feelings.


Cydney Chadwick

Hangman They have been best friends since they were nine, and during every study hall have surreptitiously played the game of Hangman. They are so quiet and practiced they have never been caught. At the end of the seventh grade one of the girls is distracted and bored with the game, but plays anyway, sloppily marking the binder paper with lines where the letters will go, while looking around the study hall in the hope that a particular boy is watching her. She smiles at the boy and crosses her legs so that her skirt rises to reveal her thighs. Each time her friend guesses a letter, the figure of the hanged man receives another embellishment. Finally the stick figure is complete and the girl writes: you lose,displaying the word her friend was supposed to deduce. But you misspelled it!, her friend shouts, causing the teacher to rush over and make black marks next to their names in her book. One of the girls spends the summer on the other coast, and that fall they encounter each other on the first day of school. Over the summer the girl who drew the hangman developed breasts, while her friend got acne. The former girl walks past her friend and joins a group of eighth grade females who also have breasts, who are also wearing dresses and makeup. They form a tight cluster next to the lockers, talk and laugh among themselves. Instinctively the other girl goes toward some students she has known since the fourth grade, girls who are either pre-pubescent, wear braces, glasses, or have imperfect skin. Although they know they are too old for it these girls go to the playground, swing from the monkey bars, or rock up and down on see-saws. Bored with this, they drag their shoes through the coarse sand. As dust flies they become increasingly frenetic, begin running haphazardly around the playground, their arms outstretched. Ugly bitch they shout and scream while trying to knock one another down in the dirt.


Marie Hara

Over a Drinking Fountain as I Recognize the Face the Metal Parts Make: Eyes, Nose and Water Shooting Out of a Mouth

I tell it lots: how when I walked past TGI Friday's and looked over at Straub Hospital before I checked out the park, I watched while the first car in the lineup at the light stopped too soon, and all the ones in back began to hit into each other like a herd collapsing in smoke and screeching noise while they fell to the road in shudders of heat. How when I walked past the wooden bungalows the tvs went on one after another because of something in my magnetism, and the Cablevision guy waved at me. How when I was downtown the sparkle of the ocean by the piers kept hiding away from me behind the buildings which were built to keep us from seeing the deep, waiting water and running in. How tunta girls know when I side-eye stare at them, because I know who is planning to be hookers from their high school, because I like how the girls are free now, not like us who had to had to had to and in veils in this hot weather, yet. How I don't like the looks of a squad car roaring toward some angry emotion, violent blue light yanking everyone's eyes away from their proper dreams. How a real estate agent accosted me yesterday. Who do they think they are to sell us out with their signs and their messages everywhere we want to see peace and quiet. How a white cat with no teeth and weepy eyes, the one that follows, recognizes me without fail. How a black dog who has escaped will consistently lead me farther into loneliness because of loyalties, unbelievable to many. Makes you think.


Marie Hara

A Conehead Marching Sitting at the bus stop in broad daylight, not moving except to breathe, I feel that no one can see me anymore. Part of everything finally. When I was young my mother had warned me that men could come by, breathing closely, in their cars, looking out to steal girls. Torture them. Rape them. Throw their bodies into faraway gulches. I didn't hear her then. Who I have become is no longer bait for such men. But I hear her, her quiet voice, her cold watery questions. I feel my body blend into another crowd that gathers around the concrete bench. When the bus arrives, they shuffle move to get on except for a dwarfish lady. We are alone for a while. I memorize the pattern of the material of her dress. Then she leaves without our having looked at each other's faces. Two invisibles. Late in the afternoon here comes a bunch of school kids from Ka'ahumanu School with teachers holding traffic cones at the front end and in the back guarding them. Precious cargo moving through dangerous streets where anything could happen. Past me, all of them. They insert themselves into my vision, marching full of explosive noises and color. In the middle of the parade a boy with an orange t-shirt wears a traffic cone on his head. Of course he feels different and alone in his costume. It shows in his looking around. I know this. His head is small enough to fit inside the cone as if a helmet had been made just for him to look like a walking crayon. A clown. His serious dark eyes meet mine. He is surprised, but not too much, because only he sees that I am here and he knows the others don't mark me. I put my finger slowly to my lips so that he doesn't startle. He shrugs his shoulders, and he doesn't call the others. Then the clown is gone. But I can hear the warm, splatter of words and sounds, the lighthearted footsteps receding for a long time. Bicyclists in helmets and those pants like black plastic now and not one of them looks this way. The sunset that comes on is huge, red and takes its time. At nightfall I move on like a cloud away from the headlights. Slow, wet with no tears--no regrets, thanks, anyway--and a quick rainshower, I leave a trail of broken things in my wake. Bits of Kleenex, unspooled tape strands, toilet paper underfoot, crushed tickets, torn up money, grubby pennies, puka panties, useable cardboard, my old address on a crumbled note, self pity, twisted scatter pins, a good zori, the unused supermarket cart, last night's newspaper bed, the one sweater with a button, directions from my empty pill bottle and the snapshot that was left. All I got now is their faces. A few of their voices in my head. That's about it, honey. I say that. Loud so it feels good and fades until nothing's there from me, all gone.


Joshua Harmon

New Orthography Entre's extract twoo strict annverse unversed strickin nether universal co cau a dy spent a drawe, forgo nedles given t groudn,-cover,-less, new orthophony nede to examine times staffd sheets or lves not synchronous installed aboue, erly tha mourn yet im under plus-ground,-water, dug up, -foot and appraeciated wll wool her will pure genius of cous in crisis or crisscross a folklore [illegible] swg veto enclose't sums time soon vote too hard to give it up to say it say simulate at the same time stimulate.


Hazel Smith

Perguiltspek From Walking the Faultlines a hypermedia, installation piece. shunder urtli stroqua agalan stroqualan ault? tauf intervirt? qual anapex? brekem omaguis woance ferguisling, sepho spyrou valpe baterou. brekenoch phaton phora isginoic ault. olo woance plakinvo rebse lansnot. shunder brekwa rohor antergat voper. intervit oiter babetrou acen bowa plakinvo. wofor? veltrans? eclovo? acen isplenus phaton. brekwa rouks belbalo. acen plape phatapex, acen sinin spinispek. oiter inglingance acen rebse breke inguilor. babetrou oiter woance olo isginoic! brekenoch brekwa rapho calwo eclovo! shunder inglingance urtli inguilmor phora spepho? rants sinin cultimur. roucks sinin cintevep. rohor leslex laslo isginoic. spinispek wadora brekenoch intervirt plakinvo. shunder stroqua cultimur calemwo. brekwa acspe inglin. brakwa plapwa tulariv, brekwa phaton ferguisling inglingance. intervit plakinvo inguilor shunder brekem plakinvo isginoic. Poetics she spat out her past at the speed of light the quest for language unborn and buried the route is never the same rule twice a man cracking the egg of the text she found herself born into endless caressing dead authors swimming in their own semen the site where the phallus hovers and shuffles a light dissembling into silence a breath which blurs the edge of the mirror a woman and man slowly undressing the earth unsettled the earth unsigned a pathway at the squirt of a button metaphors loosening at the joints trains at the crossroads of dying and living a woman tearing the bread of being a woman tonguing the wine of syntax one voice disembowelling another a woman defecating dead reason a worry taking the route of a wish a longing that springs from mental re-jigging a world at the edges of spilling and spinning a word begetting ancient beginnings a piece taking the part of the whole the tune that makes the bow play the fiddle a wish to make a jigsaw of space the end is always in the incision a box containing festering riddles Monologue You know I've always wanted to write a stream of consciousness piece in reverse. And I've always wanted to perform my life as if I believed in my actions. The whole thing is in fragments which you sew together. I've been permanently in exile spitting out and sucking in my past. You keep saying the same thing and it becomes something else. The trouble is people don't like my voice, they say it's too loud, too masculine, too aggressive, too soft, too feminine: the list never stops. But you mustn't let fate be your physician. Because everything is terribly odd and it's all a case of getting even. They said you're parading in the nude, but I said I'm just knocking the socks off language-it's a will without an agenda. At the same time at the centre of everything is this terrible fear I have, that by thinking about death I might cause it. I stand with my back to the mirror and keep turning my head. All I can see is England replete with redundant meanings. I've realised that I feel at home in cyberspace because I have no sense of direction. I like the routes without rooms. When I started to read Freud I couldn't believe how much he and I had in common. Yet a text has to go somewhere occasionally or drop off at a likely destination. It's keeping your eye on the timetable which counts. Inspiration is a lie but anything can trigger it. For example, I like the flowers Suu Kyi wears in her hair, don't you, a reminder that somewhere she has another life and exists in a different way, even if she's forgotten. I often think I'm only a photocopy, or a ghost on the faultlines. It's not chic to write about love so you have to kill it or bend it double. But I like to resurrect the text with my voice. You keep walking without feeling you've ever arrived, and when you do it's never the place you intended. Then his eyes appear in close up. His mouth loosening at the corners, the most seductive smile. It's romance, it helps you to forget. After that it's all corridors and low ceilings. Pol Pot and Hitler, not to speak of Stalin. You have to be on the alert like a bird sleeping with one eye open. It may be best to speak a language no-one understands. At the very best translation is always desecration. There's always this wish to master the text, but you have to break the rules to know them. And you have to stand your ground. Round about you everyone is pushing buttons and reproducing themselves. It's all emotional hide and seek. I remember my aunt baring her breast: I'm still afraid of catching her cancer. There were a lot of hidden things, and also whispered words I couldn't understand. My father's name carved upon a tombstone. But cemeteries are cities where they keep the dead. I don't want to go sightseeing because I might get caught in the traffic. I'd rather swerve between channels and eat books: text in the hole, soupe ˆ la situation. It's good the way you are beginning to see things my way, just as I am beginning to catch up with your way of thinking. But however clearly you think things out, there is always someone crying in the next room. Which is hardly surprising because, on the whole, men can't tell the penis from the phallus and I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference myself if I didn't write. Why do you think I'm telling you all this? Well, you can't live to rule but you can light a room by blowing out the candles. The more peculiarly I write the more infectious the aroma. I like to speak, but generally when I do I'm sorry. I learned Hebrew as a child but I could only read, I couldn't understand a thing. I'm no good at crossword puzzles, keep imploding in the mirror. Yet, they say, there's no such thing as a word which doesn't strike a light. I'd like to be myself but I hardly ever am because I don't exist. They painted letters on me, but in the rain they washed away. And monologues can be boring. Still, it's good to wipe the screen and clear the decks. Dead lovers in Bosnia, the murdered at Port Arthur. And the almost over-leaning tower of Pisa. A sign that nothing stays as it seems. And no-one gives a damn whichever sex I'm choosing.


Contributors' Notes

Kapulani lives in Pu'ahu'ula on Oahu • Murray Edmond is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Auckland. He recently traveled to Detroit, Buffalo, London, Prague, San Francisco, Honolulu, and elsewhere • Adam Aitken lives in Sydney; his new collection is In One House, reviewed in this issue • Pam Brown lives in Sydney: among her many books are This world / This Place. Her review of Adam Aitken's book also appeared in Heat magazine • Yunte Huang attended the University of Beijing and the University of Alabama before entering the Poetics Program at SUNY-Buffalo, where he is currently a doctoral student • Richard Hamasaki dedicates this poem to the memory of the late Charlene Sato, whose work continues to inspire cultural consciousness, resourceful scholarship, and social activism • Rebecca Mays Ernest works in Special Collections at the University of New Hampshire Library • Paul Hoover co- edits New American Writing with Maxine Chernoff in California. He edited Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1994). Among his books of poems are Letter to Einstein Beginning Dear Albert (1979) and The Novel (1991) • John Noto edits Orpheus Grid, and is author of the recent collection, Psycho-motor Breathscapes, from Vatic Hum Press, San Francisco • Dan Raphael lives in Portland, Oregon. He has recent work in Caliban, Cyanosis, Juxta, Tight, and Heaven Bone • Gabrielle Welford is a doctoral candidate in the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's English department. She is currently President of the Hawai'i Literary Arts Council • Joshua McKinney teaches at Valdosta State University in Georgia. He has been a firefighter in California and lived for a year in Japan. He was winner of the 1996 Pavement Saw Chapbook contest for Permutations of the Gallery • Jorge Guitart grew up in Cuba and is now a linguist in the Department of Modern Languages at SUNY-Buffalo. He is author of Film Blanc (Meow Press) • John Kinsella's The Undertow: New and Selected Poems was published recently by Arc, in England. He edits Salt, in Australia, and presently lives in Cambridge, UK • Susan M. Schultz's "Declensions of Is" is reprinted in The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry 1994-1995 and she has work forthcoming in The Poets' Calendar (both Sun & Moon books). Voice-overs, with work by her and John Kinsella, is forthcoming from Tinfish Network • Loss Pequeño Glazier is a widely published poet who runs the Electronic Poetry Center in Buffalo; he is co-editor of the electronic journal, Rif/t. The EPC can be found at: http://wings. buffalo.edu/epc • Sue Moss is a Tasmanian poet, playwright and performer. Her collection, The Upwardly Downward Mobility Blues, was published by Penguin Australia in 1994. She traveled through outback Australia in 1995 in a Kingswood station wagon. Cautionary Tales was designed by Julie Hunt • Dan Featherston's poem is part of a larger work, "Mexico Weave." He lives in Tucson, Arizona • Michelle Murphy lives in San Francisco and has recent work in Orpheus Grid • Liz Waldner is currently a writers' colonist in California; she has a book forthcoming from O Books • Cydney Chadwick runs Avec Press in Penngrove, California. She is author of Enemy Clothing, published by Five Fingers Press in San Francisco • Marie Hara lives in Honolulu and is author of Bananaheart & Other Stories (Bamboo Ridge Press, 1994) and winner of a 1995 Cades Award for Literature. The two pieces printed here are part of a longer series, TRUE STORIES of Wanda Ku'uipo Wakita, a Cultural Observer • Joshua Harmon lives in Ithaca, New York, and has recent work in Verse, Alaska Quarterly Review, Western Humanities Review and elsewhere • Hazel Smith is a poet and musician who lives in Sydney and teaches at the University of New South Wales. She is author of Abstractly Represented: Poems and Performance Texts 1982-90, published by Butterfly Books. She has two CDs of performance works. Of Walking the Faultlines she writes: "[it] accesses the extremes of language, subjectivity and location. 'Perguiltspek' consists of a newly constructed language; 'Poetics' is based on images which are grouped musically rather than thematically. The monologue creates a sense of a particular voice, but is also a 'polylogue' of different voices" • Suzanne Kosanke (graphic design) teaches English at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa • Gaye Chan (cover) is an Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. She likes to look at both beautiful and horrible things • Duncan Dempster, Jr. (cover) works at lo-fi press, a division of compress productions.

Correction: In Tinfish 3 the poems by Che Quian-zi were translated by Jeff Twitchell and Zhen Zhen.