BIO: Rivka Keren is an Israeli writer who has a bio available on Wikipedia!
All artwork used were provided by the author as either their own work and/or the work of others which are all protected under creative commons licensing.
THREE POEMS INSPIRED BY VARDIS FISHER
I
Dream
I had a dream
About the writer
In Jerusalem
Coming from afar to meet me
At the Gate of Lions.
Web of spicy alleys
Spell-bound pilgrims blocking Via Dolorosa
Mount Temple is gold and Armenian blue
Mad seers
Oracles
Angels
Everywhere
We are sipping
From tiny cups
Coffee with Cardamom
His eyes blazing torch
His words beads of Amber
Show me the places of your childhood
He says
Show me ancient altars
Catacombs and idols of antiquity
Take me to the hideouts of the
Kings and Prophets
To the Temple of the cunning Goddess
Show me Galilee
Damascus
Babylon
Drunken maidens
Hugging Cedars of Lebanon
In full moon
Take me to the caves of
Roaring fires
Searing meat
Show me
Pristine wilderness
Fossils of gigantic
Lizards
Reptiles
Mastodons
The sheer loneliness of mankind
In the face of doubt
Show me the
First Light
First Whisper
First Bliss of Soul
Then some day look for my distant home
Across the ocean.
II
In Hagerman
In Hagerman
The writer’s memory is fading
Only an old man from the fish hatchery
Down the valley
Is sadly nodding
Raising his arm toward the woods;
He was living there.
Very private person
Kept to himself
The house caught fire long ago
Nothing left
Except a chimney.
The Sun is Rising Again
On The Wild Ones
Epitaphs of soot and ivory
Two reckless spirits are roaming the primeval
Hills of Idaho
Bitter in vain
Chasing the shadow
Of their destiny.
III Oblivion
Arriving from Canaan
Land of Purple
The Testament of Man
In my heart
I stood awestruck in front of the
Lonesome chimney.
Rust
Debris
Moldy suitcase
A bathtub upside down
Pink mortar
Pieces of melted glass
Upon the slope.
How many plans
How many splendid ideas
Went up in flames
Swept to the river
Scattered by winds
Beyond the thunder
Forever.
Wow! What a weekend at Shape of a Box! We had a video that I reported on yesterday which clicked over to 2000 views and today a new one has joined the 1000 Views Club! Congrats to Michael Lee Johnson:
We were very happy to share poems written & read by Bryan Borland in yesterday’s Issue 64 of Shape of a Box, but did you know that Bryan also read poems for us before?
Check out Issue 41 where he voiced two poems by Rane Arroyo:
For Issue 64 of Shape of a Box we present two poems by Bryan Borland.
BIO: Bryan Borland, a graduate of Hendrix College, is by sunlight a corporate suit with a background in law and psychology and by moonlight a barefoot poet with pieces appearing in dusty corners of the Internet, including his website www.poeticgrin.com. He has been published by the Young American Poets and The Foliate Oak and will soon be featured in Breadcrumb Scabs and Ganymede. He lives, works, and writes in Little Rock, Arkansas.
WATCHING BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN IN LITTLE ROCK
White-haired ladies wear their Sunday best
next to husband and wife sharing the buttered body of Christ,
a teenage boy with the beginnings of a beard
shuffles anxiously in
stadium seating stiff as a church pew,
the makeup of parishioners
like a sanctuary on Christmas Eve,
unfamiliar faces but welcome nonetheless.
In Arkansas we see two men kiss
and turn away. Thereís no
affection on rural streets,
just pickup trucks and
rednecks on our breath.
In the temple of theater,
we are studied, two men
sitting too close, legs touching the way
our hands cannot.
We watch and recognize,
tune out the action movie stigmata
bleeding through the walls.
IF RIVER PHOENIX HAD LIVED
When I saw you in movies after Stand by Me
it was like youíd been resurrected,
though it felt like I was cheating the universe,
that I wasnít supposed to watch you grow older.
When you first disappeared to a haunting instrumental
of that title song, I mourned you. The second time,
Iíd been robbed again, your beautiful face
crushed against the LA pavement
while a thunderstorm played paparazzi
and punk angels sang you to sleep.
If you had lived, your home would be lined with
golden statuettes. I picture them weeping
from roles others have played,
a gay cowboy or tragic rock god.
The internet is a viper, room
for a photograph of your open casket
and stories of those thieving seizures.
Iíll remember you as Chris Chambers,
walking away, vanishing from sight,
never more perfect than at twelve years old,
Jesus, is anyone?
Wow! Just thought I’d do a quick check-in this morning, as I try to do each day and noted that one of our videos suddenly jumped to over 2000 views and is now the highest viewed video on our site!
From our 7th issue is the short story Old Baby by Leslie What.
For Issue 63 of Shape of a Box we present two poems and art work by Fariel Shafee
BIO: The author works in the field of physics but enjoys writing and art. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Ygdrasil, Danse Macabre, DecomP, Skive etc and her art have been accepted by Mary, Retort, Journal of Truth and Consequence among many.
TREES AT NIGHT
That gloomy linen of dusk
is
wrinkled
: gravity wiggles it
recklessly.
Those streaks of vertical
furrows,
the ghostly shadows of night
pressing against the
sky,
guard
the sparks of life,
and the exhaled breaths are
silent,
not to bother
the bat
or the owl,
perched upon these living logs:
to note the beat
of a throbbing
heart next to the glowing
eyes.
THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
Sunlight .
rejuvenates the sleeping cells;
wakes them up in a spurt, to cook
starch with water and
air.
A group of fragile beings, clawless, shaded with the
hair of a worn out, sinewy
tree, are soaked in last night’s tears;
They strike a pair of stones: a shooting star
dashes across.
A tree arm burns:
a wildfire devours with lust.
It is dusk yet again; and silhouettes of the stars
twitch
solemnly,
a sole hiena cries, behind the ghost of a
fallen tree in a pile of tar and
ash.
Below the smoldered soil, is a galaxy of seeds
in the fertile womb of earth
: civilization is to be born.
As we are working towards transitioning this site to new editorship, we want to ensure that as much of the content is still available to the public and our contributors as possible. We are also very concerned with the recent stealing of one of our videos and the text for a blatant ad/spam site.
What we would like to offer our contributors is this:
If you appear in Issues 1-52 the text of your piece is most likely in the side bar of the video we made. We would like to offer to take the text off of the YouTube site and either put it in a blog post here and link back or simply not post the text depending on your preference as you hold the copyright to the text.
If you are very concerned and what your material completely removed we can do this and we will give you the opportunity to download an MP4 version of your video from YouTube before removing it. You can still credit Shape of a Box as the publisher..
If you appeared after Issue 52 then the text of your work only appears on the blog. I hope to retain the archive here but I may move the archives to my personal site depending on who takes over the site. I will notify everyone of what happens with our archives.
Oh the trials of publishing online and trying to do it virtually alone! Thanks to everyone who has published with Shape and whose work is still pending. We are still taking emails from parties interested in taking over Shape and we have decided to offer a one year domain registration and hosting via wordpress for shapeofabox.com which we had planned on registering after the first of the year. Our current email is shapeofabox(at)gmail.com
One of our contributors notified us that their work had been stolen and placed on another website. And, I do mean stolen because, while I don’t mind if the occasional individual asks to embed one of our videos on their blog, I do have a problem with a generic, spam and ad ladened website taking and embedding the video and THE TEXT! without our permission or the author’s consent.
My real issue here is the text which is the property of the writer. If you want to help stop this website from continuing to post this material, especially the text, please help! If you were able to get in contact with this site’s owner etc please let us know. Your help is greatly apprecaited. You can email us at shapeofabox(at)gmail.com.
The site in question if you go to this do not click through on anything this is only for illustrative purposes! there is a lot of spyware and junk on this site!!! (oh how I hate to post it) is HERE. I have already tried to contact them but I have not yet received a response.
