top of page

Click on ad for link.

Paula Bernett

MEMORY CONSUMED SO IT WAS NEVER

 

Scraps and mashups hover:

                                       kited above,

thermaled against the pour-down, against

                                                              the fit of frame.

 

The frame wants filling with red/blue to purple,

 

                but a pinhole leak to black plugs the way, diverts all aspirants

                                                                    to the scrub-out—

 

                          my gloved hands, dull blade, flensings.

 

A chink of I was and waft of indelible scent wedge among the shearings:

 

                          memory ragged and boned,

                                                                  the body used up. 

                                                                               Packed above the water-line,

                                                                  loot and salvage plow toward home,

                                                    becalming in an hour

                                       punctured by loss

 

and draining in slowest time.

QUILL AND BROOD

Spied through the pinhole pierced by quill, a laser

scythes through the meadows of my mind, chasing down brood:

                        Now thinning and hunching among the stubble,

                        slathering its black cheeks with whiteface and silence.

 

                        Now stringing runway lights around its body,

                        threading prayer-shards and cat eyes on fishing line.

 

Quill whittles itself to shank.

Lays my creed open from Object to Verb to I.

 

Required, this ritual of subsuming:

                        Quill cedes its lexicon and barb to brood.

Brood dissolves quill in the ink of absolution.

Quill

About the Writer            

 

            Drawing inspiration from a range of psychological landscapes, my work reflects a deep curiosity about the mind’s forays into language and association as the drivers for a rich and dimensional life.

            My poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Clackamas Literary Review, The Louisville Review, Margie, Nimrod International Journal, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and, Whiskey Island, among others.  My lyric essay "Digression and Memory, The Handmaiden Effect" and a companion essay "Four Hands Improvising on a Piano" appeared in Fourth Genre. My lyric essay "The Smallest Leaning Begins …" has been accepted by Eastern Iowa Review.

Bernett
Contents
Poetry

Robert Rothman

 

-- Ambassador To A Distant Kingdom In The North County

-- The Monk's Halo

 

Leah MacLean-Evans

-- Blood Days Recipe

 

Paula Bernett

 

-- Memory Consumed So It Was Never

-- Quill and Brood

Gordon Massman

 

-- The Master of Nothing

-- My Appassionato

-- Finnegan's Religion

Naomi Ruth Lewinsky

 

-- To My Brother's Late Dragon Lady

Marie Andree-Auclaire

-- Closer Than One Thinks

Joelle Barron

-- Total Eclipse

-- House Stuff

Claire Matthews

-- My Underwear Drawer Houses the Book of Mormon

Claire Kelly

-- Poem for a Woman I Made Up

Benjamin Hertwig

-- sunday mornings, after Afghanistan

Eugenie Juliet Theall

-- Other than a Paperweight

Will Harris

-- Imam Ali Shrine

-- Kangaroo Wall

Prose

Mallory Tater

 

-- Heat Dream

 

Liz Johnston

 

-- Public Transit

Gardner Landry

 

-- Mayonaise

Benjamin Dugdale

-- Orlando Two Point O: Hashtag Forever Yung

Artwork and Photography

Gord Marci Jr.

-- Typewriter With Note

Allen Forrest

 

-- The New World Manbike 12 x 9 2016

-- The New World Workers 2 Ink 15 x 11 2016

Kerry Rawlinson

-- Mistry Trees

David Mutnjakovik

-- Let it Begin

Colette Campbell-Moscrop

-- Untitled-Gouache, Graphite, Ink and Watercolour on Laid-Textured Paper

-- Nope-Gouache, Graphite, Ink and Watercolour on Found Paper

-- Horrible Together, Full Circle-Ink on Cardboard Paper

Reviews

Margaret Crawford

 

-- A Review of Kathleen McCraken's Double Self-Portrait with Mirror: New and Selected Poems (1978-2014)

-- A Review of R. Aviars Utskins' The Hoosier Zebra and other "Poims"

bottom of page