Harp & Altar
POETRY

Andrea Baker was the recipient of the 2004 Slope Editions Book Prize for her first book, like wind loves a window. She is also the author of the chapbooks gilda (Poetry Society of America, 2004) and gather (Moneyshot Editions, 2006). Raised in Florida, she now resides in Brooklyn, NY, where her apartment is small and entropy upsets her.  She maintains a Lyricism Blog at andreabaker.blogspot.com.

 

Jessica Baran has a BA in visual art from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry writing from Washington University in St. Louis, where she currently resides.

 

James Gallagher’s collaged images have been shown in galleries across the world and have been spotted in Arkitip, in J&L Books and Die Gestallen publications, and on fancy linen tea towels. He was born and raised in the Midwest, but has now lived most of his life in New York. His work can be seen at www.gallagherstudio.net.

 

Elise Harris has written for the New York Times Book Review and the Nation.

 

Stefania Heim is co-founder and co-editor of Circumference: Poetry in Translation. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including The Paris Review, The Literary Review, and La Petite Zine. Her review of Elizabeth Willis’s Meteoric Flowers was published recently in Boston Review.

 

Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Thomas Kane is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Pittsburgh. His work is forthcoming in McSweeney's, and his translations of Tomaž Šalamun’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Harvard Review, Chicago Review, Crazyhorse, and Denver Quarterly.

 

Eugene Lim lives in Brooklyn and works as a librarian in a high school. “Product Placement” is an excerpt from a novel in progress called Loop. His writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Boog City, sonaweb, and elimae.  He  became fiction editor of Harp & Altar after the publication of the first issue.

 

Jill Magi is a 2006–07 writer-in-residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program. She is the author of Threads, a hybrid work of prose, poetry, and collage forthcoming in fall 2006 from Futurepoem Books, and Cadastral Map, a chapbook published in 2005 by Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs. Prose, poetry, and visual works have appeared in HOW2, The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket, CutBank Poetry, The New Review of Literature, Aufgabe, Chain, and Pierogi Press, and are forthcoming in The Tiny and Second Avenue Poetry. She runs Sona Books and teaches literature and writing at The City College and The Eugene Lang College of the New School.

 

Michael Newton is currently at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, pursuing a master’s degree in visual art. He likes art a lot.

 

Cameron Paterson lives in rural North Carolina.  He is currently a graduate student in classical philology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

 

Lily Saint is a lapsed poet. While she awaits the return of her muse, she is working toward a dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center.

 

Tomaž Šalamun lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and is the author of more than thirty collections of poetry. The most recent English translation of his work is Blackboards (Saturnalia Books, 2004).

 

Joanna Sondheim’s work has appeared in canwehaveourballback, sonaweb, LitVert, Boog City, Bird Dog, and Fishdrum, among others. Her chapbook, The Fit, was published by Sona Books in 2004.

 

Paul Winner has entered his final year of divinity school in New York.

 

Michael Zeiss lives in Woodside, Queens. This is his first published story.

from Nival
Jill Magi

Nival (ni' vel): of or growing in or under snow.

 

 

( )

 

 

A walk into what has eclipsed us.

 

 

Cutwork                               absorbing                          

 

 

“I feel barren”

 

                                                setting up—

 

 

( )

 

 

Fallen into          above.

 

pry

pockets of blue

open—

 

rain                        toward

 

                                                “I did not expect—         

 

 

( )

 

 

Neap tide fossil.

 

Folded stone

 

teasing the boundary of blindness. 

 

 

( )

 

 

From the cell—                 electrical.          

 

 

Retracted, she lost her humor.

 

 

( )

 

 

Spokes light the wheel.  Hub,

a fascicle.  Impulse to collect—

 

                December dream 

a Cooper’s hawk. 

Yesterday, five

buffleheads,

the merganser pair,

swoop of a cormorant

drawing the horizon

                us,

 

 

( )

 

 

Warming—         

                               

                                                                                                enough god—

 

if

 

 

( )

 

 

Concave side of quiet

 

taking rooms out of confines

 

 

                                                                                January enwreathes.

 

 

( )

 

 

potter wasp

 

equipoise

 

hollow-balance

 

“I am nothing                    absolutely.”

 

floating rib

 

story

 

 

( )

 

 

Great black back gull coasting

northeast wind                                 I hold

clouds

 

window                delight

in false. 

 

Wisp to vein to                                 table-sky.

 

 

( )

 

 

Anchor-pulled

 

whorled.

 

Imbricate prayers

 

imagine edges. 

 

 

( )

 

 

Wall-expansion                                after

 

 

                                                grief                       porous.

 

 

(Marginalia sustained the binding.)

 

 

( )

 

 

What is the substance of shadow? 

 

(Atrium of disaster-sense.) 

 

What is between the twenty-second and third hour?

 

(Crux.  Roomage on all sides burns glister—

 

                                temperature spike in the space

between winter and kiln.)

 

( )

 

 

Ideas about curled iron. 

(About is around.)  Month

vines its way

 

capillary bed. 

 

 

( )

 

 

Canyoned water

 

silhouette / tidemark

                                                                (“I am—               )

 

 

mirror  a moiré effect. 

 

 

( )

 

 

Tree of bowls

 

turned

 

                to hold—

 

 

( )

 

 

Arrow-cloud.  

 

Drill bit traces   read “remove/place.”

 

Marital sculpture.

 

 

( )

 

 

required to say

that we came to an amicable agreement.  Truth

on the hinge

                                (              sutured rock, signatures.) 

 

 

( )

 

 

Ivied house.  Endless chatter.

 

Lived house.  Still

 

questions pond in the crook of a mountain, wintered. 

 

 

( )

 

 

opening               inching from

 

 

right to left

 

glass / sky

 

                                                                —unaware, leaning on left to right.

 

 

( )

 

 

A bottle gourd is not round.

A battle ground may be partially.

 

 

My apsis                              your form. 

 

 

(Take away this desperate                           .)

 

 

( )

 

 

Dripstone

 

                                                                                                / mass.