I Race a Train

I Race a Train

I race a train to erase the day

tough graffiti, I tap my foot to the chuga-chuga,

count each day unsolved like the box cars,

which are full of the lumber

we used to call trees.

I race clouds in canals next to the harbor,

watch seabirds watch

frigatebirds dive into toxic tides.

I race rows and rows of lettuce,

Lettuce rises like a choir of voices: steam

above each head, sound

is drowned

by the thwack-thwack of a helicopter rotor

hiss and spray over the fields,

I cannot outrace this fog

of filth,

and try not to breathe as I enter my house.

Outside my window

a valley of wind and lettuce

in a sea of earth. 

Off in the distance

a helicopter

no bigger than a spoon is headed toward my table.

Photo Credit: Stewart Ferebee

In Salt Water

In Salt Water

The sea. He came up from the sea. His voice green, water tones, splash of froth, spray, and crash, crash. I’d swim on my back and listen, legs and arms out, listen. Tentacles tipped. A clown fish with intelligent eyes looks into my eyes. Questioning. A hatchet fish frightens me so I swim on.

            And then he’d speak. I’d often cut my feet on his words sharp like urchins, and get pinned in by the tide. My footprints a lexicon of glyphs on rocks, slap, smack, splat.

            He would leave me then and return. Where eels arrow their way across fields of vision, I’d kayak, and cast a net to catch the giant fish. But no one goes as deep as he does. But stay in the shallows, where light refracts and turns the ocean blue. The sun cannot reach his home, only elongated eels to conduct electricity. I almost caught this fish once. But capsized, swallowed salt water, coughed up foam on the shore like some wide-mouth gulper eel, sucked air, blacked out, woke up aglow, coughing, choking, coughing, until I coughed up a lantern fish, death-twinkle.

A Triangle of Palm Fronds In the Window Means it's Morning

A triangle of palm fronds in the window means it’s morning

A colony of souls

awaken

to a murder of crows fighting over coconuts.

Boats waffle blue waves.

Signs say:

Noel Coward fucked in this hotel.

And white sheets froth the bed.

Somerset Maugham

masturbated

here to the batik face of Gauguin.

You use a straw as a snorkel

to navigate the day—

A cruise ship cuts through the champagne cake

but this is the year of no cake,

only salt and

the one tooth left a ravenous dog.

Come, dogs, a triangle of palm fronds

in the window

means it is morning

“You can’t keep me from drowning if it’s what I choose”

“You can’t keep me from drowning if it’s what I choose.”

your voice is an osprey’s

plunge

to catch a fish.

The answer of nests

on telephone poles.

The blue lilt of my sigh,

on this kayak

slapped by the sea, I tilt.

At the last gulp of salt water:

my stubbornness

a hammerhead

circling

a vortex

buoys me up

into the day’s

long light.

slap my silver

self on board,

ungaffed

and gasping--

East Coast Release Party was Amazing!

 On November 7th Ping-Pong magazine once again took NYC by storm with its annual release party, this year it took place at the One and One Lounge on the Lower East Side.
Much fun was had by all!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2604702715364.2145391.1188755942&type=1&l=8554b56035

Henry Miller in NYC (again) Ping-Pong East Coast Release Party!!!

Thaddeus Rutkowski and the late Cheryl Burke with friends at last year's reading

 

One and One Bar

Saturday, November 5 · 7:00pm - 10:30pm

76th East 1st Street, New York, NY 10009

A comedian, a burlesque dancer and 8 poets walk into a bar... It's the Ping-Pong East Coast Launch Party! One & One Bar (1st Ave & 1st St. on the LES), Sat., Nov. 5, 7PM. Featuring BRANDO! the funky No Cal band, Leta LeNoir, the fancy dancer, and Kathy Smith, the family-friendly comedian. With readings by Ping Pong contributors Cynthia Cruz, J. Hope Stein, Phyllis Wat, Sara Goodman, Joanna Fuhrman, Whitney Porter, Thaddeus Rutkowski,and Mark Lamoureux, as well as editors Maria Garcia Teutsch and Christine Hamm. Performances begin at 7:00. The event is free and open to the public. Pushing the envelope till it bleeds!


Bios:

Thad Rutowski: Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the novels Roughhouse, Tetched and Haywire. Haywire reached No. 1 on Small Press Distribution's fiction best-seller list. Both Roughhouse and Tetched were finalists for a Members' Choice Asian American Literary Award. He teaches literature at City University of New York and fiction writing at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in Manhattan.

Cynthia Cruz: Cynthia Cruz’s is the author of Ruin. Her second collection, The Glimmering Room, will be published in fall of 2012 by Four Way Books. Her poems have been published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review and others. She has been the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder Fellowship. She currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Joanna Furhman: Joanna Fuhrman is the author of four books of poetry, most recently
Pageant (Alice James Books 2009) and Moraine (Hanging Loose Press 2006.) A new chapbook The Emotive Function came out in June. To learn more, please visit her website JoannaFuhrman.com.

Mark Lamoureux: Mark Lamoureux lives in Astoria, NY. He is the author of thee full-length collections of poetry: Spectre (Black Radish Books 2010), Astrometry Orgonon (BlazeVOX Books 2008) and 29 Cheeseburgers / 39 Years (Pressed Wafer, Forthcoming 2012). His work has been published in print and online in Fence, miPoesias, Jubilat, Denver Quarterly, Conduit, Jacket, Fourteen Hills and many others. In 2006 he started Cy Gist Press, a micropress focusing on ekphrastic poetry. He holds an MFA from the New School and teaches in the CUNY system.

J. Hope Stein: J. Hope Stein is the author of the chapbooks Talking Doll (Dancing Girl Press) and Mary, both forthcoming in 2012, and her chapbook Light’s Golden Jubilee was a finalist in the 2011 Ahsahta Chapbook Contest. Her short film, The Inventor’s Last Breath, based on her full-length manuscript about Thomas Edison, was screened at the 2011 Cinepoetry Festival at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. (More information
on this project is at http://jhopestein.wordpress.com/) J. Hope Stein is also the author of poetry/humor site eecattings.com, editor of poetrycrush.com, and a member of Calypso Editions artist co-op. Her work can be seen in various journals and anthologies,including Poetry International, The Boog Reader: Boog City Anthology of New York Poetry, Web Del Sol and Ping Pong. She is a member of the faculty at the Chicago School of Poetics.

Sara Goodman: Sara Goodman graduated from Purchase College in 2005 with a B.A. in Creative Writing with her concentration on poetry. Her poetry has been published in several journals and has been defined as a melding of the romantic with science fiction. She currently teaches workshops in New York for adults and children on poetry and art.

Whitney Porter: Whitney Porter is originally from Houston Texas; however for the last 17 years she has resided in Brooklyn. She has done undergraduate work at the University of Houston and Brooklyn College and finally after many years of slogging from one university to the next has just this last year received her Bachelors Degree in Journalism. She is now currently studying with Phillip Schultz at the Writers Studio, in Manhattan. She has publications in Battered Suitcase a quarterly webzine from Vagabondage Press, Ping Pong Literary Magazine, and Craniotomic, a webzine out of Chicago.

Phylis Wat: Phyllis Wat is the author of three poetry books, "Shadow Blue" (Hot Water, 1988), "The Fish Soup Bowl Expedition" (Ten Pell Books, 2000), and "The Influence of Paintings Hung in Bedrooms" United Artists, 2007), with a fourth on the way. She is a poetry co-editor of the online magazine "Press 1," and publisher of Straw Gate Books (distributed by spdbooks.org).

Maria Teutsch: Maria Garcia Teutsch is a Santa Cruz poet. She has recently been published and has forthcoming publications in anthologies Conversations at the Wartime Cafe, and Eighteens, and Two Review. She has been editor of the Homestead Review for the past eleven years. She also serves as president of the board of the Henry Miller Library where she is editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong journal of art and international literature. mariateutsch.blogspot.com

Christine Hamm: Christine Hamm is getting her PhD in English Literature, and teaches at CUNY. Nominated four times for a Pushcart, her poetry has been in Rhino, Stone Canoe, Pebble Lake Review, Women's Studies Quarterly, Blue Earth Review, Rattle, and many others. She has published three books of poetry, and the most recent, Echo Park, was just released from Blazevox. Christine is the east coast poetry editor for Ping*Pong, a literary journal published by the Henry Miller Library of Big Sur, CA.

(The Dancer) Leta LeNoir: Hailing from the great state of Michigan Leta LeNoir has been dancing on stage since she was five years old. She has been performing Burlesque and gogo in New York City for over three years. Miss LeNoir studied the great art of the strip tease at the New York School of Burlesque and can be seen showing off this exquisite talent at venues all over the city.

(The Music) Dan's Guerra's Band: Brando from California. We are gonna melt faces!

(The Funny) Kathy Smith: Kathy Smith has been doing stand up comedy for a little over 10 years. She’s performed regularly at Caroline’s on Broadway and Don’t Tell Mama’s. She’s currently a regular at the Laugh Lounge and has been a MC at office gatherings on request. Kathy’s comedy is good clean fun, sexy and relatable across generations.

Me and Christine Hamm

Ping Pong Party (PPP / P3) in SF tomorrow. It’s a perfect “first date” – we even have an itinerary laid out for you. | The Henry Miller Memorial Library Blog

Ping Pong Party (PPP / P3) in SF tomorrow. It’s a perfect “first date” – we even have an itinerary laid out for you. | The Henry Miller Memorial Library Blog