bent pin

• ordinary wings

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:04:33 -0400

The Next Word You Say by Cortney Davis
When I’m Alone by Peycho Kanev

• time lines.... (Cleary / Rayner)

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:08:35 -0400

Last Day of Vacation by Elizabeth Cleary
On the Wings of Seasons by Genie Rayner

A Poem at Length (Willitts)

Wed, 3 Jun 2009 09:24:22 -0400

Moving Like Cherries in Brown Hands
by Martin Willitts Jr.

• retest daily (Castle / Lankford)

Tue, 26 May 2009 16:43:17 -0400

Historical Cycles by Bob Castle
Choosing a Title by Drew Lankford

• capitalist method (Flowers / Raven)

Thu, 21 May 2009 10:29:29 -0400

Outsourcing During Rapid Eye Movement by Christopher Flowers
Patent Application (9) by Francis Raven

Poet Ralph Nazareth talks about poetry

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:18:24 -0400

A poem by, and a video conversation with poet, activist, professor Ralph Nazareth author of Ferrying Secrets

Poem at Length - Kitchen Songs (Tietjen)

Wed, 6 May 2009 12:16:42 -0400

Kitchen Songs by the late Richard Tietjen

— I —
the common thread
small corruptions of transmission

I realized just before the party—everything would be all right.   I realized what it was about this fall—the hazy air, the mottling of
the trees—something seedy showing through, something stripped bare
in me too. Disillusion, the ground of despair; disillusionment with
something fundamental in me, like how I see from here.

Becoming colorless as the fall gets brighter before November. Once it was acid that bleached me as the fall got bright with no necessary place for me. My aloneness is coming back again. A circuit is completed.
empty life, empty house—

there's a fine line here
this is important territory.
Bare bones and we shy away.
I'm alone with this.
Why do I do the things I do?

I kept saying things that seemed commonplace to me and he didn't understand.
His bad faith runs deeper.

Maybe that's what another person can do:
supply a third for your dialectic.
Maybe I can supply my own third.

Oppositional thought
holding the two pieces up next to each other

I'm moving into questions of mind
while drinking beer

what are you doing here?
I'm the common thread

What you don't understand is that it's possible for people to say these
things and really mean them. It's really true that she looked out her
window and cried to God. She didn't say God answered, she said that
for once she didn't jump to fill the void with more of her prison-stuff,
herself.   Yes, the castle-in-the-air is beautiful, but it's still just a prison.   My way of life is completely superior to yours. You think you are in pursuit of the higher meanings of life, art, and politics. Your surroundings are a mess, your emotions are a swamp. You have no idea of what it could be to think and feel cleanly.   When you die they will take away even your face and give it to someone else.

Looking in the mirror: That's personality, right there!
Could I really take the chance and look another way?
What did I see?
The monster of inquiry

question and answer
affirm and negate
a conversation, I summon my parts for a conference
I was getting tired of the uniform voice of assertion
ranging the fields of memory.

It's all part of wanting only to be right and controlling the voice so that in my considered opinion I am never wrong. So I'm stuck in only old stuff that has been simmering and melting together for a long enough time to just kind of pour out with a flourish.
bulletins from the front
voices in my head in my house
it's a party.

Diagram a sentence according to which I each phrase came from.
I've got a long way to go.

— II —
“Emotion that endures.”
“In our family we stammer, until, half mad, we come to speech.”

Acid and aloneness and the naked light bulb: I can have that too now because It has a place.   The wild animals taught me a lot about how to live right.  Put away your food tight and don't throw garbage in the bushes.   We set such stock in separation—our house from the out-of-doors. When a mouse shows up inside we call it vermin and set out to arrange its death.
The improbability of many loves
but fact.
Is it more difficult to have loved than to have missed many women?
The heartbreak is that they are gone and feeling lingers around
One more gets added on top of the heap.

Some woman is going to get the culmination.
She's going to have to carry around a lot of women inside.

The thing about getting drunk is that you can't have any pretensions about doing something worthwhile.  The great leveler.   My neighbour who herds his errant sheep on a riding lawn tractor.   If I have to rehearse a thousand times it's worth it to pick up that cup right.  Once is enough, always.

— III —
Dear Jill,

Talking to you is like talking to an egotistical record player. Your idea of a
conversation is two people taking turns telling sections of their intensely
interesting life stories.
Well, you're faced with that or asking her to wake up which you would probably do in a painful manner.

Tonight she told me about being at Antioch during the student strike, me always wanting to talk about something else more common and immediate. She said she was hit by a cop with a billy club and thought—What did I ever do to you?

   I said, “This is probably way off the wall but whenever I bump myself or whatever, my very first thought is why did you do that as if somebody else had done it, not me.”

   She said, “Well, I think it's my fault when it's with objects but not with people.”

I said, “Well, I don't think there's much difference, objects or people. It's my fault either way.”

   She said, “What if the other person has something deliberate in mind?”   Richard makes a speech: “Well, you know, Jill, I don't believe most people have anything deliberate in mind, they just sort of stumble through their lives. It's my job to get out of their way if I see they are headed on a collision course with me.”
   So my feeling was, there, I got in my two cents worth of opinion in the service of higher truth, satisfied? Not really. We're just trading identifications, these are my cards, these are yours.   And later in the parking lot alone thinking: I am capable of manipulation still in the context of stumbling blindness even though I believe there's no need. I still believe there's something to be gained in my own interests, I don't believe everything's all right as it is and will proceed taking care of itself.

   Revealing itself as it is, not as I dream it to be. I want to influence her or whoever because in the short run that is less painful than reaching into the moment and turning the key.   Last night I dreamt of Jill who wore horn-rimmed glasses this time
and expressed rather well the nature of our reciprocal coldness. Saying
what it was like talking to a man who didn't show any warmth.   A world of blind people. It's not like there are people with sight who
sneak around and trip us. It's like blind people tripping other blind
people, maybe just because we are all stumbling around in a busy con-
course, lying in the common thoroughfare. Falling over each other,
cursing and kicking.

— IV —
illth is the opposite of wealth   “You're either dead or you're alive and if you're alive you think you're crazy because that's not the way it is on TV.”
True love is two things:
seeing yourself as another sees you, from their place.
and acting from there.

Have the courage to create yourself in the moment
'cause that's the only chance you'll get
even though it's not enough or doesn't seem to be.

You put yourself in another's place by virtue of long accumulation of impressions of yourself at both ends of every stick.

Billy told the story of an acid trip, walking by a football game, the players grunting.

Maybe what happens with letting the other write on me is that after a few times part of me gets impatient, says, “Yeah—What about my turn?”
It doesn't work if you listen with superiority.

So let's pause and recall that listening is the whole point. I want to have a direct perception of reality. I don't want to listen to my own tapes: he's full of shit, I'm a good listener.

I waken in the morning to flies walking on exposed parts of my body.
writing writing.

How black is a crow?
wings beating the air

When I say something, does that make it obsolete? Does it become true? Is it the vibrations of my voice that matters?   All of the above?
Us against a backdrop of nothingness:
a kind of light: shot full of holes
shot full
That's what was horrifying about nothingness
not what it was (or wasn't)
but what it revealed.

What do we want from each other?
On the one level we want to be recognized as who we are
and on the level that isn't true yet
to be created, renewed.
“When I'm enthused about writing I don't care if I'm consumed it just feels so good to be in a different head.”
When I lived in a tent, I couldn't get enough of the outdoors. I would sit by my tent and just look and listen. I went for rambles after I ate, through Madeleine's orchards and fields. I was still hungry for that stuff.   It seems to me when you live in a house you're stuck in one thing at a time to the exclusion of other things. If I listen outdoors, I'm listening to many things all at once: brooks, trees, cars. You're listening to the record player. You're cooking dinner, you're writing.   Writing—one thing necessary because of those other one things?
— V —
Being alone means being in conversation
being human
I'm talking to the radio I'm laughing
I'm talking to her I'm talking to you
Is there any such thing as talking to myself?

being written on by myself, by the world-stuff
all these fragments get woven into dreams

The poetry of egoism is dead
there is no self

Distinguishing the action of negativity
from the action of directed thought,
I learn from what I do.
What I do gets created in me
I have no standards perfection isn't real
Perfection is what gets sanded off of me

The magical world
it's “I” that is dead
The location is very much alive
house parties

In the end
what difference does it make
whether you want to write something beautiful
or finish the page

Goodnight

© Richard Tietjen

• spring negotiations (Grey / Peters)

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:55:48 -0400

When twenty-five - John Grey
It - Dave Peters
.... Two varieties of mental foreplay?

Nature poetry by Polly Brody

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:58:35 -0400

SATORI OF THE CROW

He came into the winter-bare dogwood
not a minute after I dropped
the suet chunks on snow.
Had he been staking out my door,
sitting somewhere in a dark hemlock--
obsidian spy--shadowing me?
His eye misses nothing.
Suet on snow, white on white,
drew his swoop, the bird
a black glide over my winter yard.
He hunched above the offering
I thought a blessing, yes,
take the fat put out for you.

A sudden sable wing touched me:
this is not my gift...
I saw the driven steer,
his furred brow,
the deadfall mallet.
He received the thunderbolt, not I.
This lard encased his kidneys.

The crow, cocking his considering head,
will soon drop down upon this meal.

What alert and savvy eye
is measuring me?

HUMPBACKS FEEDING

Sleek hulks glide, dark
beneath a skim of water
to port and starboard, and below our bow.
When wet mammalian heads breach
we hear a gasping paugh!
then air drawn hissing
down the gaping blowholes.
The whales sound, one after the other,
and sea grows still
but petrels fret above,
watchful in the air.
Now a surge and roil wells,
slate-blue depths turn brilliant teal.
Silver flashes boil up, bait fish
netted in a thrumming whirl
of clamorous bubbles and singing froth.
Leviathan breath so overwhelms
their auditory flanks,
they're shocked from sense.
I would like to think
their frantic reel to surface
a sort of ecstasy--
to die in such a vortex,
such incandescent turquoise splendor.

© Polly Brody

• first flowers, old stories (Solonche / Monroe)

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:31:41 -0400

The 18th of March -- J. R. Solonche
Two Contemporary Yankees Hike Colony Preserve -- Jenn Monroe

• the family vortex (Monroe / Good)

Wed, 8 Apr 2009 09:47:16 -0400

Fault Line -- Jenn Monroe
Everything Simple Becomes Complex -- Howard Good

Story within story 4/1/09 (DeMaio / Jones)

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 14:50:57 -0400

Allegro - Joanne DeMaio
No reasonable offer refused - Bellicose Jones
editor’s note: This is the first week of our new format. Author bios are now at the end of the page followed by a brief note on the pairings, and a teaser for next week’s features....

Allegro,
Quick tempo; Cheerful

My father used to play
piano. He’d pluck out only
one tune, playing forte with
thick butcher hands that
didn’t know the difference
between forte and pianissimo.
His foot pressed randomly on the
pedals, echoing the song through
our home. We lived in a six-family
tenement house at the time, well
technically a five-family, because
my parents converted both the
first floor apartments into our
one home.
If you walked out the front door,
down off the porch and turned right
on the sidewalk, the massive, gray
stone, cathedral-like Sacred Heart
Church rose directly before you.
Our house was the first on the street, and Sacred Heart was positioned on the cross-street, facing us, the parish school behind the church. The nuns wore long blue robes with black habits and big holy medallion necklaces. This was where my education began, in Kindergarten with Sister Stanislawa. The community was predominantly Polish, and Pani came regularly to our class to teach Polish lessons, no matter what your heritage
.
That parish had a great influence on me while we lived in our tenement house. For five years I pretended to be a nun - evidenced by my pinning bath towels together, one hanging along my front, one down my back, secured by safety pins at the shoulders. We were a big family, seven in all, hammered at by a failing marriage and subsequent divorce. So solace came where you found it. That beautiful church saved us both, me and my father, somehow. While I pretended to be a nun, my father pounded out the hymn Ave Maria.

That poor piano. Following the divorce, my mother moved us kids to a hundred-year-old house in the hills of New Hampshire, little spinet piano in tow. It was a house that, should you render it in a cartoon drawing, it might not sit straight on the foundation, and the second floor would be slightly akimbo to the first. The thick woods of Robin Hood State Forest bordered our backyard, and in hunting season, gunshot sounded at random. We’d walk on the trails, my siblings and I, calling out every now and then that we were not deer, so please, don’t shoot. I’m almost sure there is a term for the rewards of faith. Guardian Angel, I believe it is, and was my reward for those years pretending to be a nun. Our friends up the street lived in a tarpaper shack, with no permanent heat. Another neighbor kept a bird farm in their yard, and we’d occasionally look at the peacock. Around the corner, across from the dark forest was a huge cemetery that housed what we thought was a crematorium.

In New Hampshire, with all this other excitement going on, we never played the piano. It sat idle in a small, dark living room that I also don’t remember anyone ever using. All I remember is the big wall mirror mounted above it falling behind the piano in the middle of one quiet night, somehow crashing to the floor intact but making a horrific nightmare noise in the process, piano meeting heavy mirror, forte.

I’m not sure just exactly what those two years living at the edge of the woods were about, being only ten at the time and engrossed in wild raspberry bushes and in the stallion corralled across the street and New Hampshire things like that. I was exploring a new planet, with forest clubhouses made from huge fern plants, and porcupine needles fanning from my dog’s muzzle, and classmates who you could tell, really, didn’t have hot water, or didn’t bathe regardless. It felt like some kind of scientific study, hey, let’s try living like this now, until we ended up back in civilized Connecticut, back in that original marriage, with our spinet piano. This time around, I don’t remember my father sitting at the piano. This time around, the marriage lasted a year or two before my mother took only the piano to a little second floor apartment at the shore, leaving us all behind. She learned how to play, but like my father, she too had a heavy hand, even knowing the difference between forte and pianissimo. My mother was not emotionally demonstrative, which had a way of carrying over to her monotone piano playing.

Somehow I managed to finish high school, tinker with college and founder into adulthood sans the piano. Eventually, though, yes eventually, it landed in my married home. The thing is, our family had too much baggage, no matter whose house you entered. Oh, you? the piano must have thought when it came off the truck and saw me again. Sigh. My mother had replaced the piano with a newer model and she thought my daughters might learn to play, so Little Sadness was tucked into the small dining room of my ranch house. That piano gave us so many chances to break out of who we were, of what defined us. If only one of us might rip into it. What an escape hatch we had, right in our midst. But we didn’t know how to access music. This is what I’d think to be one last chance. My mother would come by on Saturday mornings to give lessons. Her second husband waited at the table in my tiny kitchen with a newspaper and box of doughnuts, a one-hundred pound German Shepherd at his feet. Mom, meanwhile, sat on the piano bench and put happy stickers on the pages of my daughter’s drill books to reward her efforts.

She tried, she really did, to teach, or touch, it’s a matter of semantics, until one Christmas Eve, carol lyrics in hand, she fathomed a happy piano singalong. But usually if you want a happy singalong, you can’t grumble all night about everything else, the prepared food, the pretty Christmas decorations, the company. End of piano lessons. End of trying. It had been our way, I suppose, of holding onto something else. But you could tell, besides all the family drama and the occasional cat sitting tolerant on it, the piano was not happy. If you’ve ever heard a happy piano, you know what I mean.

March 10, 2006. Billy Joel lays into the piano at the Hartford Civic Center. His identity moves back and forth between his body and his piano, the line of distinction blurred by music. When he sits quietly at it between songs, he talks about the beautiful warm weather, and how he rode his motorcycle earlier in the day. He tells the story of a fisherman he used to know. The way he puts comments into his concert reminds me of Frank Sinatra, who I saw years ago. Not in his music or his singing, but in the way he talks to the audience. It is obvious he connects, especially with that piano sitting center stage, deferentially an armrest while he talks. At the end of his show, he returns for an encore. He is singing The Piano Man. Fifteen thousand people look at Mr. Joel. Each and every one of them lean toward him. The embrace is immeasurable. Mr. Joel quiets. He is rapturously still and silent, sitting center stage at his grand piano. And he listens. That is all he does for these moments. You can see it, on his face, what he is doing. It is beautiful, to watch him listen, the keys still. Fifteen thousand voices, unrehearsed, join in chorus. “Sing us a song, you’re the piano man,” we sing, a soft cloud of music rising from the darkness. “Sing us a song, tonight. Well we’re all in the mood for a melody. And you’ve got us feeling alright.”

I thought my little piano would never come close to evoking a response from people. No one would ever sit at it at the urging of someone pleading for a melody, their head tipped back in the pleasure of another’s desire. The ad I wrote offered it away for $75, my last chance to break it free of the confines of this family. A young father called, wanting to buy it for his daughters so that they might give music a whirl. It was a perfect, late summer day, blue sky and all. He arrived at my home with a couple other men and they lifted the little spinet gingerly and maneuvered it out my front door, down the two steps to the lawn. They set it down on the green grass to study the piano moving situation before lifting it onto their truck.

Sometimes a moment comes right before a great event transpires, when all the forces come together in beauty. The moment is silent, but brimming. Something is about to spill out of it. I watched one of those moments, right before the piano was lifted, when the father sat at the piano bench, fingers floating over the keys, and without thought, broke into Marvin Hamlisch’s The Entertainer! He laid right into it with that bouncing ragtime tune. On my front lawn! A concert. My hands clasped in front of my huge smile. Oh happiness! Finally, my little piano! After thirty-five years, I sold the past, not for want of trying. And look what happened! Allegro. Allegro!

Ticket Stubs

March 10, 2006 $77.00 Billy Joel
Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, Connecticut

Ticket Stubs

April 22, 2006 $41.50 Billy Joel Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, Connecticut

© Joanne DeMaio

-----------------

Joanne DeMaio is a writer living with her family in Connecticut. An old Ticketron envelope filled with twenty years of concert stubs holds a lifetime of her stories. Her work has appeared in Cezanne's Carrot, flashquake, The Hartford Courant, and other print publications. She maintains the blog Whole Latte Life at joannedemaio.blogspot.com.

Bellicose Jones runs a junk store but prefers not to say where. “Bell” says he finds the unfinished story in stuff other folks toss out. He enjoys reading poetry and fiction by established writers and poets, as well as looking at Fauvist paintings, eating creole cuisine and listening to jazz. This is his very first publication credit.

WHY?
Both pieces either hint at or feature family in changing circumstances and items and people passing out of one situation into another, into someone else’s hands, perhaps into a new life of sorts..... More obviously they both make use of the odd image of a piano on a lawn,.

NEXT WEEK:
JENN MONROE’S “FAULT LINE” with
HOWARD GOOD’s “EVERYTHING SIMPLE BECOMES COMPLEX”

Announcing a new format

Mon, 9 Mar 2009 18:06:08 -0400

Bent Pin, originally conceived as an electronic version of a quarterly print journal, is about to make a small transformation. After two years and eight issues as a quarterly, we are adopting a page-a-week, 52 week format starting in April. Bent Pin Quarterly is now, simply, Bent Pin. The content will remain the same as before. The underlying format of Bent Pin has always been that of a blog, but one where all of the entries for a specific issue were made in a single day. Now we will take advantage of, rather than fight with the underlying structure - each latest page will be at the top of the contents list.

New pages will be uploaded each Wednesday morning, and as always, will remain available to readers online. The cover, table of contents, submit and philosophy pages will remain as they are, and undergo a periodic design change. The one page per week, will allow more of my attention to each page, allow for an independent design each week, and a more timely matching of events and seasonal material.

********* Our new web address will be http://www.BentPin.net ***********
********* Our new email address is BentPin@me.com ***********

Dear readers you are encouraged to subscribe via RSS or to check back each week for the latest page. The first page in our new format will be uploaded on April 2.

8th Bent Pin Cover 1/2009

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 23:56:47 -0500

Cover from January 2009 - the last of our issue based covers - but each splash page will be added here as a entry when the new splash page replaces it.

Notes (Walker) The “Christmas Letter” Life... (Sampson)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 11:55:51 -0500

an editor’s note about this issue and a bit of truth from poet Robin Sampson

The Featured Essay 1/2009 (Davis)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 11:54:17 -0500

Uncle Abe’s Dirge
by Jewel Beth Davis

Story Within Story 1/2009 (Jenkins)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 11:51:09 -0500

The Sentencing by Greg Jenkins

The Poem at Length 1/2009 (Dev)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 11:51:03 -0500

No More Party Dresses
by Meena Dev

• unexpected occurrences (Maxwell / Klassnik)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:51:56 -0500

The Light Switch on the Head of the Pin by Matt Maxwell
Chestnuts by Rauan (Ron) Klassnik

• roar from darkness (Reconsiderate / Fitzell)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:51:51 -0500

He won’t die by Reconsiderate
The Beast Speaks by Mike Fitzell

• the damage (Modugno / Palmieri)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:51:06 -0500

Blue Model Airplane by Joseph Modugno
Seven and Grey Matter by Tony Palmieri

• stark eulogies (Willitts / Walker)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:51:05 -0500

The Dead Rise Like Music by Martin Willitts Jr.
Directions From Limbo by Mistryel (Mar) Walker

• 2nd falling shoes (Sampson / Willitts)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:50:44 -0500

Throw it to the Wind by Robin Sampson
The Sower by Martin Willitts Jr.

• unsettling skies (Dubrovin / Klassnik)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:50:32 -0500

The Black Moon by Yelena Dubrovin
From The River (3) by by Rauan (Ron) Klassnik

• expecting the light (Mooney / Jackson)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:48:00 -0500

Dragonfly by Patty Mooney
We Were Never Small by Daniella Jackson

Contributors 1/2009

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 10:40:06 -0500

Who are these poets, prose writers, providers of wild wonders in many forms?

7th Bent Pin Cover 10/2008

Thu, 2 Oct 2008 00:00:41 -0400

The cover of this issue is a digital permutation of a photo. Around a dozen altered versions of this same photo were used in this issue.

Notes on this Issue 10/2008

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:59:25 -0400

Notes and News for October 2008:

Story Within Story 10/2008 (Scheer)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:58:42 -0400

The Long Drive Home by Wayne Scheer

A Featured Play 10/2008 (Lecce)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:58:06 -0400

Henry’s Day by Jenny Lecce

The Poem at Length 10/2008 (Jeffrey)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:57:34 -0400

This is the worst by John Jeffrey

Restless in the dark (King / Potter)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:56:49 -0400

Robert S. King -- The Gravedigger Pacing His Cage
Adrian S. Potter -- The Insomniac’s Lullaby

Unintended aftermath... (Benedict / Sanville)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:55:05 -0400

Kate Bernadette Benedict -- The Hollywood Hills
Terry Sanville -- Almost Perfect

Asylum songs (Oliver / Benedict)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:54:44 -0400

Maurice Oliver -- An Asylum, Brandishing A Flashlight
Kate Bernadette Benedict -- The Plant

Bones, bare or broken (Sampson / Stolis)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:54:15 -0400

Robin Sampson -- The Sentence
Alex Stolis -- Arlene Ang starts the revolution

Hope’s frailty (Willitts / Goodwin)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:53:52 -0400

Martin Willitts Jr. -- Foreclosure in the Pastures
Peter Goodwin -- The First Lady Visits a Distant School

Languid wantings (McNerney / Gerard)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:51:34 -0400

Joan McNerney -- Shadow Boxing (Hudson River Memories)
Christian Anton Gerard -- The Height of Being

Department of tourism (Dunn / Munoz)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:51:28 -0400

R.S. Dunn -- A Sneak Peek Into Our File
Victoria Munoz -- Caught Between Salsa Beat & Commentary While Driving

Static: the full score with orchestra (Pokrass / Oliver)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:50:21 -0400

Meg Pokrass -- She Never Sang
Maurice Oliver -- Produndity, Listening To Lounge Music

Revels on high (Curtis / Stolis)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:10:06 -0400

D. R. Curtis -- In Search of the Holy Spirit
Alex Stolis -- Nothing Delivered Nothing Gained

The cycle (Monroe / McNerney)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 03:50:43 -0400

Jenn Monroe-- Tree Service
Joan McNerney -- Beginnings (Hudson Valley Memories)

Memory's release (Willitts / King)

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 00:13:06 -0400

Martin Willitts Jr -- The Letter
Robert S. King -- Darkness Too Is A Mirror

Contributors 10/2008

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 00:01:33 -0400

Poets, prose writers, providers of wild wonders

6th Bent Pin Cover 7/2008

Wed, 2 Jul 2008 00:00:58 -0400

A series of photos of summer greenery was used for this issue, some taken specifically for this purpose.

Notes on this Issue 7/2008

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 13:34:23 -0400

Because of the summer heat, numerous electrical storms and the insistent delirium of living, the July issue of Bent Pin dabbles in the historical, the hysterical and the surreal. It nudges pairs into triptiks, flames up, suffers various passions, expires, wilts, thinks that it might run amok. It features summer green in many shades, fails to take a stand(since it hasn’t a single weight bearing wall), erodes to rivulets in the just-dug soil, like my garden in the summer downpour.

BEcause of the price of gas, the rise of rice, swirl of server space costs, the impossible cost of everything - we have added to most pages (mostly at the bottom), one tiny little square google ad as an experiment. We are sorry if the content (over which we have no control) offends in anyway.
--- Mad mar (MM Walker, editor BPQ)

PS - problems, comments? bentpinquarterly@yahoo.com
Should your item have been omitted, or mangled, have faulty links, line-breaks, spellings or attributions - let me know and I will fix the problem immediately! - MMW

The Poem at Length 7/2008 (Manuelidis)

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 13:33:49 -0400

Monsoon, Sylhet, 1966 by Laura Manuelidis

Story Within Story 7/2008 (Pobo)

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 13:32:12 -0400

Through by Kenneth Pobo

• Expected arrivals (Mcguire-Schwartz / Smalec / Becker)

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 13:31:26 -0400

Coatless -- by Mark McGuire-Schwartz
Everything Makes Sense at Midnight - by Ronald Smalec
Waiting for Perseid -- by Kimberly L. Becker

• Epicurean excess (Klein / Hinton)

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 13:28:28 -0400

Food Thief by Terri Klein
Man’s Best Friend is a Serial Killer - by Le Hinton

• Relative value & choice (Castle / Oliver)

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 13:28:11 -0400

Immoral Wars by Bob Castle
Bulletproof Dumbfoundry, Moralizing by Maurice Oliver