Poetry Magazine Craig Czury

Craig Czury

USA

Craig Czury has conducted poetry writing and poem fusion workshops in Russia, Lithuania, Argentina, Northern Ireland and throughout the U.S. for performance on stage and radio. His new website is Poet-in-Education. His latest books of poetry are PARALLEL RIVERTIME (bilingual Russian/English edition) Petropol Press, St. Petersburg, 1999, and UNRECONCILED FACES, FootHills Publishing, 1999. Co-editor of Red Pagoda Press Poetry Pamphlet Series, Czury lives in Reading, Pa. where he conducts his on-going Berks Poetry Project, creating multi-voice poem fusions with the African-American, Hispanic, Asian and Anglo communities and juvenile lock-up.

BOOKS OF POETRY: JANUS PEEKING (1980 First Book Award, Montana Arts Council), Calleopea Press, 1981. AGAINST THE BLACK WIND, Two Magpie Press, 1981. SCHACHAMEKHAN - eel stream, & HITCHHIKING THE RUINS, Mulberry Poets & Writers Cassette Poetry Series, 1985. GOD'S SHINY GLASS EYE, Great Elm Press, 1987. EXCEPT..., FootHills Publishing, 1990. HACKING AND SMOKING, FootHills Publishing, 1990. FINE LINE THAT SCREAMS: Anthology of Prison Inmates' Poetry, (editor), Endless Mountains Review Press, 1992. OBIT HOTEL, Pine Press, 1993. SCRAPPLE, Night Shade Press, 1995. SHADOW/ORPHAN SHADOW... SOMBRA/SOMBRA HUÉRFANA (bilingual English/Spanish edition), Spanish translation by Rosann DeCandido Kamin & Alicia Partnoy, Pine Press, 1997. UNRECONCILED FACES, FootHills Publishing, 1999. PARALLEL RIVERTIME (bilingual Russian/English edition), Russian translation by Irina Mashinskaia, Petropol Press (St. Petersburg, Russia), 1999.

BOGSIDE MURALS

                                        at a glance
      will arrest you

will stop you in your tracks

and search you
armed with stone and mortar

full force in the
face

painting these walls must have been a fistfight

plastic bullet words

petrol bomb brushstrokes

paint stirred in the
blood
with blood and smoke

                                   there will never be a peace settlement
between
                                               mural            billboard
     graffiti

no plaster decommissioning

when these walls start
talking to you
it's time to rethink your life

(for Willie Kelly, Tom Kelly, Sean
Loughrey & Kevin Hasson)

Afterward

talking to Kelly (Willie) at a pub whose name neither of us the next day
remember about how murals influence my poetry~how the huge public space of
the wall stretches me to expand the private anonymity of the page~not as
sheet of paper but wide sky~not closed and shelved with its invisible ink~but
intentionally open~each page hung out to dry like a placenta flag (that's a
good title) from a newly chartered wasteland~anthem and obituary~poem you can
approach/reproach from any entry~right to left~midriff~bottom upward and
wandering~the tense of this poem wavers between present (at the moment of
seeing) and the past made present (past-present perfect)~I am writing this
the day after when all nerve endings are on the surface of memory and
pulse~while Unionist/Sinn Fein peace talks hang on a thread of memory and
pulse~talking to Kelly on one of those timeless and ancient afternoons about
walls~this could be Vilnius 1991 or Lascaux~the way paint teaches me ink is a
cutting torch and the page a shredded box~a fist right after hurling a rock
wide open screaming STOP.

14/11/99
Alleymans
Derry
N. Ire.

OF WHICH WORD
(for betty kowalkiewicz)

it has taken me these many years
to lift you into words

you who are a continuous breathing
furthest inside me

but if only in silence how will you know

and of which silence do i expect you to hear me

of which word this deep hermetic
this continual strain of letting go and closing
of which no word has either

                          for weeks i am dressed orthopedic
blue flower print house coat
                                                          babushka
when the phone rings i pick it up without saying hello
test of spite who will speak first when you finally visit
    chewing my food carefully
                                             napping in my chair
on the sofa is an envelope from the orphan’s court
                   photos from our last visit
i’m curled between your breasts you’re feeding me
        the pietà
until someone at the head of the table leans forward

    whispers
look girls he’s the spittin’ image of your
               freeze frame/ glosses to chipped plaster
i wrap the curtain around my legs against the draft
                                                                          father

“god gives you one face
and you make yourself another” —chinese fortune cookie

in time stone returns to stone
earth turns to earth
my face turns back to your face
                                 here
                                /
     at this moment

what does he want?

each word garbled in meaning at the surface of speech

i am holding the phone to my ear not saying a word
i am grasping the door without turning it open
i am suckling your tit without kissing my lips
your feet strapped to the bedside
i am rethinking my view of the death penalty
bastard son of the blacksheep sister

when what i was talking about
mirror inside
the mirror of a shattered glass

as if it is just a matter
                   of closing my eyes
letters from an abandoned script
      written and erased into this blank
                              lost conversation

but what if this silence was only in my head
and this cacophony of pleading is you
with my voice under your breath
my ear to your lips

breathe in breathe out

a secret note passed
from my right hand to my left

Afterward:
wondering how silence speaks between us~you reading from your solitude what
I’ve written from my solitude~solace and ignore-ance~wondering how much of
ourselves we recognize in each other at a glance~and when I found the woman
who gave birth to me what has always been saying us between cheekbones and
eyes~chin and cleft~hair hairline~obstinacy and every reason I get slapped
for her mouth~a perpetual conversation from birth to silence~memory as a
collective silence~her ear against my lips I’ll call paper for the sake of
inheritance~tongue inside a shell speaking the sea.

5/11/99
Derry
N. Ire.

STRADDLING THE FOYLE

a deep
            howl
at the moment of death
primal manannan mac llyr
        not wolf
                              clarity
from the middle
                    only deeper
the way your eyes gloss liquid
        visceral            into memory

               at such altitude
       if you saw me
                     i wouldn’t be moving
like being born
       or     blurred on the surface
             from the other world
i am standing in the middle
                        between filament and silt
                                giving birth to my father

Afterward
I lost my voice~an oily sludge coating the loam of my throat~Jesus told me to
gargle the sea~lie down silent on stones~a north-flowing tide ripped me
swifter to my sister floating a grey fallen sky out my lungs~the eyes of
pregnant girlfriends kissing bubbles to the bloated fish~resurrection and
redemption~it was possible to set me on fire and cut me loose with the next
ground swell~spray of fireworks painting sun-glare off the ripples of my
hair~all those words you never wanted gaping like gills in the chinks of the
quay.

31/11/99
Derry/Londonderry
N. Ire.

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