Excuse the Dust
July 9, 2004
Welcome… I’m still moving in, but I hope to have things under control by the end of the weekend!
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September 23rd, 2005 at 4:15 pm
TGAPS
Check it out.
Larry Ziman
November 9th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
The Great American Poetry Show has a new domain name: http://www.tgaps.net and a new email address: info@tgaps.net The Great American Poetry Show is a hardcover serial poetry anthology open year-round to submissions of poems on any subject and in any style, length and number with a SASE. Email poems only from outside USA/Canada. We have four editors and we can handle a deluge of submissions. So please flood us with poems. Simultaneous submissions and previously published poems are welcome. Response time is usually 1-3 months. Each contributor receives one free copy of the volume in which his/her work appears. Volume 2 is scheduled to appear January 2007 if we have enough good poems (about 100); if not, we will just wait until we do. Check out our website where you can preview Volume 1 of TGAPS and also purchase a copy. And take a look at our links page with hundreds of interesting sites to visit. We trade links. We also have a chatroom for discussions about poetry and other literary topics. And please use our messsage board where anyone can post poetry news, reviews, essays, articles, recommended poetry books, etc. Larry Ziman
January 27th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Dear Mr. Ziman:
Enclosed are 2 poems from my expanded chapbook (40 pages), Bully In The Spotlight, and On The Pond:
OUR IMMUNE SYSTEM IS OUR COLLATERAL
Asthmatic bronchitis, infectious hepatitis,
ulcerative colitis, flu, typhoid fever,
costochondritis, kidney infections, flu,
osteomyelitis, peritonsillitis,
Sjogren syndrome, flu, hypoglycemia, rhinitus,
sinusitis, flu, thyroid cancer and diabetes—
the visible gifts from Father.
Protracted fear and rage,
the unseen silent killers
inseminated into me,
grew stronger with each rape.
Their accrued psychic harm
is obvious to many.
Not so with damage to the brain—
years of stress-induced,
high glucocorticoid levels
produced permanent neuron loss
throughout my hippocampus,
shrank it—neurons
to the seat of memory burned out,
connective conduits fried.
Had I not buried fear and rage,
had I been strong enough
to remember each rape,
had I murdered my psychic killer
by going public,
my immune system would not
have succumbed.
Hiding, letting buried memories
and feelings secrete hormones
to do their frantic work at night,
magnified, extended the rapist’s
thrust long after his death.
Harm to mouth, vagina, anus,
was just the beginning.
Rapists invade each cell
and educate the body,
yield a doctorate in abuse.
Truces occur but scars remain
in the vestiges of our being.
Rape is a Grand Larceny
of the self
and the immune system.
Instinct for homeostasis
exists within us.
Trying to retrain my nervous system
I do yoga, meditate, and
write, write, write.
WIND AND SKY MY NEW SISTERS
I fly down the beginners’ slope,
a hundred pound bird
with skis and two six foot poles.
Sun-warmed face caressed by wind,
eyes feasting on white
and shadowed snow —
a family outcast,
I race into Nature’s arms.
Trees and sky my new family
healing as kisses
from my German shepherd
who whined and pawed Father,
pleading for him
to stop hitting me.
Nature, added to my allies,
her aerial bouquets
of sun-rimmed clouds,
her tree-studded land.
Speeding down,
down — gravity
fuels my power.
Entwined with the wind,
I traverse the hills,
intoxicated.
Skis lift me
from the corner
I crouched in at home.
And the music —
wind through bare trees,
birds luring me
to sustained flight.
I am a new member
of a diverse
and large tribe,
always among family.
ON THE POND
One foot on the dock,
gingerly I put the other
in the canoe
pulling it toward the dock
to avoid landing in Lake Mactaquac
8 a.m., bridal netting still
covers lake, hill and sky.
Shyly, green pine,
meadow, and birch emerge
as sun pulls gauze
up to the white sky.
Slowly I paddle past reeds,
punks ripened to fluff, purple strife.
A startled red-winged blackbird
bursts from an alder,
across the sky.
A loon yodels then disappears—
water-rings the only vestige
of its presence.
The lake dawn-still, mirrors birch,
shrub and hills.
I slice the water
silently as I can
but with each retraction
lake-water clings to my paddle,
splashes warnings to kingfisher,
white-bellied larks, beaver.
My goal to be invisible
fails with each stroke.
I deepen each plunge,
slide along the mirror
before summer heat
and Canadian breeze curl
ripples beneath me.