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XXV:2
June, 2010

LYNX  
A Journal for Linking Poets  
  
   
     
     

 

TAN-RENGA
Claudia Brefeld
Martina Heinisch

Die Tür fällt zu –
in der Garderobe
noch sein Duft

ein Hauch Bitterkeit
auf dem Schaum des Cappuccinos

the door snaps shut –
at the coat rack
still his scent

touched with bitterness
the foam of the Cappuccino

 

Waldlichtung –
aus zahlreichen Skizzen
das fertige Bild

das Gelb des Pinsels
lächelt zurück

forest glade –
from numerous sketches
the completed painting

the yellow of the brush
smiles back

 

Morgenandacht –
Sonnenkringel fallen
auf den Altar

im Rosenkranz
die Zeit fließt …

matins –
curls of sunshine falling
on the altar

in the rosary
time flows …

 

Die Wärme
deines Rückens – ich falle
in den ersten Traum

Morgennebel –
den Berggipfel umspielt ein Licht

the warmth
of your back – I fall
into the first dream

early morning mist –
light plays around the mountaintop

 

Nebelberg –
ein Blätterschwarm erhebt sich
über kahlen Zweigen

im Erdkeller
Kartoffelduft

foggy mountain –
a swarm of leaves soaring
above  bare branches

in the earth cellar
smell of potatoes

 

Muttertag –
Zwei alte Hände
finden sich

ausruhen
im Gebet

Mother’s Day
two old hands
find themselves

resting
in prayer

 

Wiedersehen ...
die überreichten Blumen
welken

Seine Augen so dunkel
wie damals

reunion …
the presented flowers
wither

his eyes as dark
as at that time

 

 

LINKED ONE-LINE MS HAIKU 
Michelle V. Alkerton
Suhni California

burning cold     this invisible disease of contradictions

gray matters on the MRI the doctor announces 'there's nothing there'

$10 admission to a colourful art show     brain from all angles

double vision in the mirror two of all the wrong things

multi-tasking challenge of synapses gone awry

another email trying to write hopelessness out of each line

 

long afternoon i apologize to my bad leg for calling it a bad leg

choosing the metallic coral cane that matches my car

obsessing over diagnosis they toss one out i toss it back

unable to grasp     how I can still type with useless left hand

dyslexic notes to the doctor re: her dyslexic prescriptions

financial help hinged on strangers with degrees in other bodies

broken thermostat my weather here & there out of control

sitting inside wearing double wool socks and not much else

the erotica i used to write when i usta coulda remember

short term memory problem doesn't let me forget pain

twisting my ankle the male nurse helps me untwist my gown

apartment searching     third floor unit just too many stairs

 

clinging to his optimism our future plans take a new direction

optometrist wouldn't take 50% off for just the one eye

browsing sales ads for discounts on sleeveless shirts

the usual nip & tuck i study my new shrink studies me

folding in nuts for Great Grandma's banana bread recipe

outlived its' usefulness my mother's over the counter remedies

dizzy from bending I leave tomatoes to spoil on the vine

mixing tai chi & chai tea into my tongue-tied exercise for the day

carrying the moon     movement names the body in motion intent on life

bedridden another morning with no one to hang the sun

numb fingers try to wipe up sunlight patches cast on the carpet

emergency appointment the specialist checks the wrong side

 

lumbar puncture bits & pieces of the past collide in bits & pieces

willow twigs blown free tangle among the rosehips

dusk from window to window each dark cloud

wearing a path in the yard counterclockwise

a squiggly line thru broken goals

deleting the lists no permanent reminder of the could nots

Aug. 24, 2007 - Oct. 13, 2007

 

 

latin

Collaborative Haiga: Vergil shows Dante Hell – 14th century book illustration in the British Library

 

 

ATEMTIEF
Ramona Linke
Heike Stehr

Vivaldis Herbst –
die Töne legen sich
über das Unerschaffene

um uns herum
tanzt der Regen

ganz ohne Groll
dem Mann begegnen den sie
Vater nennen soll

nach der Therapiestunde -
sie rückt die Fußmatte
gerade

„Kabale und Liebe“
unplugged

atemtief
im Geburtshaus
ein erster Schrei

 

 

DEEP BREATHING
Ramona Linke
Heike Stehr
Translations by the authors

Vivaldi`s Autumn –
sounds encase
the uncreated

rain dances
around us

without grudge
meeting the man she’s to call
father

after the therapy hour –
she straightens
the door mat

“Intrigue and Love”
unplugged

deep breathing
in the birthing center
a first cry

 

SMOKE
Patricia Prime
Catherine Mair

beside the 'Bird Walk' sign … a thrush

at the flax's heart sudden panic

among russet reeds purple convolvulus

looking just like the one he made me - pukeko wading riding an electric

bike on the stop bank,  elderly lady incoming tide - 2 men getting

their boat shipshape with a squawk the heron lifts off from the swamp

out there on the wetlands - flapping of wings in the girls' sunglasses

reflection of the river hidden in bleached grasses an insect chirps

curving the same way - river, path, smoke bent flax stems catch the

afternoon sun cracks in the riverbank darker than the clay

 

 

YEAR OF THE TIGER
Giselle Maya
Jane Reichhold
 
 
 an insect
 fossil within amber
 a favorite stone
 I stretch my limbs long
 before the sun rises           
 
 
 celebrating
 another birthday
 the camera
 holding the people I love
 with a touch of the finger        
 
 
 a long tail
 of many bones twists
 and turns
 the tiger¹s gait
 into a flowing dance        
 
 
 many rivers
 from each crouching hillside
 a rush to the sea
 the weather man predicts
 another week of storms       
 
 
 in spite of pitfalls
 life has become whole
 I listen
 the twitter of chickadees
 effaces shreds of sorrow      
 
 
 radio static
 the local station fades
 the voices
 of neighbors across the fence
 with a gentle breeze of gossip  
 
 
 waiting
 to sprinkle seeds
 into fresh earth
 impatient for winter¹s
 grip to be released         
 
 
 hoping to win
 artwork sent to a contest
 not picked
 yet the piece made for fun
 comes home with a prize          
 
 
 collages reviewed
 in my winter studio
 combining
 poems and images
 the only critic ­ the cat          
 
 
 litter box crumbs
 trail from room to room
 am I a witch
 following Hansel & Gretel
 or lover of a purr-son?  
 
 fearsome hissing
 a grey stranger has dared
 enter the cat door
 I feed him just the same
 he is thin as a winter mouse        
 
 
 koto music
 from her delicate fingers
 spinning
 the disc in a machine
 brings so much pleasure  
 
 
 where
 have the icicles gone
 has the moon
 sipped them
 drop by drop                
 
 
 my dearest  friend
 her blank face searching
 for a word
 in the cemetery
 drifts of daffodils  
 
 snow
 on red pomegranates
 gone to seed
 Demeter will be
 delighted to hear it      
 
 
 earthquake
 the rumble sways walls
 bursting open
 ripe fruit falls to the ground
 food for the wild things        
 

 what is it like
 life in the underworld
 a few seeds tasted
 half a year in darkness
 does Persephone complain   
 
 with billowing clouds
 from drying puddles
 the month ends
 this is too good to stop
 so add more verses please  
 
 February usually
 the month of almond blossoms              
 tightly closed this year
 the frozen earth melts at noon          
 then weaves an icy patched quilt        
 
 the comfort
 in seeing a childhood  friend
 at the end
 of the muddy rutted lane
 a wild cherry tree in bloom    
 
 snow tiger and poet
 intentional solitude
 can we return
 empowered, invested
 with fabulous word-links    
 
 seeking company
 one more evening watching
 “Camelot” the movie
 into the musical darkness
 the ring of the phone    
 
 tigress
 tending her cubs
 does she live
 both backward
 and forward in time   
 
 teenage faces
 reciting their own verses
 at a poetry slam
 a child and an adult
 in each performer   

watching “Gandhi”
the film moves me
to tears
through spring mist
mountains of my last years    
 
 
I have danced a lot
no lightning can touch me
with four charms
trying to return to water
streaked with hieroglyphs
 
 wishing to find
 a fitting pen name
 I have googled
 ANTELOPE
 and found we are alike
 
 lizards
 are for dream time
 with beads
 I find myself sewing
 red, green and blue bodies
  
sacred symbols
the fox shrine under snow
snowshoeing
my friend and I
cleansed by winter air
 
time
unravels from the ball
to reveal
we are today and yesterday
in the beginning of spring

 

 

COOLHEAT
Werner Reichhold as COOL
Jane Reichhold as HEAT

 

ACT I

Scene:

is

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HEAT: Since this interview is in summer, I am wondering where your comfort zone is? Where do you feel good?
COOL: In the disjointed areas of spiritual life where the well known subjects don't need to be discussed again.

HEAT: What do you see as your purpose in life?
COOL: During the intervals between work, for example watching a raccoon leaving its burrow, calling me Sahax, the flesh of water; then washing his feet and sharing food with me.

HEAT:  If you could spend a vacation anywhere in the world, where would you want to go?
COOL: I would look for a place corresponding with the temperatures Jane and I develop in order to reload our batteries. We don't have to travel, the ocean is on our doorstep, and the nude beach on the Gualala river is only minutes away. But Sonjefiord, Norway, would be the third and unparalleled choice.

HEAT: What is the best thing you have done today?
COOL: Probably first cooling off from too hot feelings and thoughts; then falling apart into single pieces that differently organized finally make everything fit together. Followed by the hope others may recognize my work as their inspiration.

HEAT: And what turns you off?
COOL: Children’s toys.

HEAT: Okay, what turns you on?
COOL: Being turned off from everything that doesn't help composing text and pictures ever more seriously. Reactivating the masses of destructive powers inside, set them on fire and let my neurons absorb the light and reflect it.

HEAT: Where do you think we could meet?
COOL: Where the light curves away from other light curves, where the pain goes to rest, and has no other choice as to find a pivot line in order to reconstruct happiness – in the dark.

 

 

ACT II
Scene: A room that has just been emptied by movers. An abandoned curtain rod dangles at the window, a stack of old newspapers has tumbled over, the walls show faded places around where pictures once were. In the middle of the room is an ironing board, set up as if to be used but there is no iron. On the ironing board is a can of pop with a straw in it.

COOL: What is it you call a vital spark?
HEAT: The necessity of our being together in this one day. Can you think of billions of people – all different, all someone else, all inhabiting other skins, other worlds of dreams and worries? Yet, for some unknown reason you and I as close a magnets just before they move to click into one bar of iron with a heat of friction that warms them.
God has set his sea on them, the cicatrix
naked among them like a savage source

 
COOL: Why does it ignite so much of what you never thought before as important to your growth?
HEAT: Growth comes in zigzags; never in a straight line. In the pulse of the tides that fill the cove, so I grow and shrink with each breath. However when heat is applied to many things, (you find the names for them), they will grow and expand. Perhaps this is a reason for having Heat around the house?
even awe-inspiring ripped and smarting hanging and full
the best I can give belonged to someone who gave it to me

COOL: Why does asymmetric thinking puts my temperature slightly up?
HEAT: Because a truly memorable woman is always crooked.

COOL: Where is the heat when you try to get a grip on it?
HEAT: At the end of your fingertips.
whatever they could remember in the taking of pleasure
falling between thumb and fists with their earnest visions

COOL: There is barely a quarter moon’s light at this dark night – and yet why is its warmth moving me?
HEAT: Is the COOL white of the moon warming? Or COOL? What does this have to do with eating frozen brownies?


of "I want" or imagine the speaker transformed into
anxiety, like outrageous injustice, sudden death

 
COOL: Why does it radiate heat – the blue in one eye at daylight?
HEAT: Because I am looking at you. I can melt your heart without even touching you!

then the noise of several men mounting the stairs
they were not in love – merely the only two humans available
through the slits in both of your eyes at sleep?

HEAT: So you have found the door to my dreams! That is you standing at that crack watching my movie show of not-yet experienced memories.

on the bedrock no light reaches this place weekly but strong
COOL white blossoms church bells ringing in the distance

COOL: What made them both reacting if not a dream – in both cases?

HEAT: You know, dream-watchers burn in two hells – their own and the hell (or light as the Germans say) of the watched.


a pinto pony on the prairie as a river brimming cobbles
the railings painted white for reading a wonderful book

 
COOL: Do you allow your breasts to ask questions when your face starts blushing?
HEAT: No, they already know the answers.
dense and boring as a mouthfuls becoming a matter of bone
emptied of that breath slides into, slips its fingers inside

COOL: Does the left nipple ask for a boy?
HEAT: The left nipple is for my boy lovers.
but so does everyone at the end of time we know nothing
of how youth in pagan harmony can speak to costumed
characters of language

COOL: The right nipple for a girl or visa versa?
HEAT: Mostly the right nipple is for my women lovers.
she said to a face “so you are my twin!” and spoke into cell holes
flowering to become my most ingenious relentless critic

COOL: Does the transparent blouse, hanging over a chair, still keeps traces about it?
HEAT: Yes, that is why blouses have arms in them. So they can wrap the heat up, hold it against its shoulder, or clutch it about the buttons. T-shirts have no buttons and therefore they cannot hold the heat, smells, and love of the wearer.
there are drawing of purple horses under the bed
as if they homed in from all over the world where people
who come in a little later, when we can exercise
in the terrible red flower of her melting box of a room

COOL: Where do the traces later go - or do they stay active even if someone else is going to wear this blouse?
HEAT: They stay. They are simply recharged with love. Or. . .
the way the smell keeps coming out of your nose
into a fleecy river meandering between steep banks


ACT III

Scene:

sealife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COOL: Who believes it wasn’t the heat?
HEAT: We learned in science that “for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction” but this rule was concocted by a man who had never loved. 

COOL: It was cold when you domesticated your first friend. What was the hottest thing he asked for?
HEAT: He didn’t have to ask! I gave it to him with opened arms before he knew what he wanted.

COOL: The violin sounded tuned. Why, then when the temperature changed the sound seemed warmer?
HEAT: The desire of the warmed ear is greater than the changes to the wood or the air in the body of the instrument. Warm ears hear better than cold ears. You know this. Think of the quietness of a snowy day.

COOL: “Attempted suicide, but survived,” the letter says. What kind of warmth could be helpful?

with that fire
it’ll feel good
to become ashes


HEAT: I agree and can only add:


the angels spoke the ticketed words secular
that I might fly where ships carve air

skipping the moon the night filled up with crows
today shining where the light was dragged away

 

COOL: In the garden, I stood side by side with a dahlia. It was hot. We both let our heads sink. Did we feel coupled by a foreign rule?
HEAT: Ah, the power to give up control – to let others do the work for you, to let them take control, to be dead without dying. Lying on a beach and letting the incoming surf do your breathing for you. Even dreams come without will.

COOL: The house deeply snowed in. Why only a few minutes of sunshine changed our mood?
HEAT: We met. In Hamburg. It was March.

COOL: Migration of all senses. Do we get a feel for the rubbing, the striking surfaces, the frictions’ radiating heat?
HEAT: Yes, it all came with me in the plane. The other occupants had no idea of what was flying with them in the very same cabin. If they had, they would have panicked.
thus she began to fly as if being like
ten Chinese scroll paintings or thin nightgowns

which appeared to reach almost to the horizon
and kept on being themselves giving honor

lover or fear sits in the field where angels play
sometimes after they are gone I am happy

COOL: The role of the fire in the mind of an artist – and presented that cool in glass, in clay, in steel, in marble?
HEAT: Fingerprints of the fires of mind and heart. Everything we make, even cookies, are witnesses to our lives.

and far in the sky a rooster announced beginnings
there is no life in her maze of passages of snow

I'd better leave a suicide note

COOL: All Saints Day - in a mountain village church the air frozen – what does the candlelight do to our prayers?
HEAT: An upward spiral draws our DNA and draws out our lives shaped by prayer.

 

 

 

Collaborative Works

TAN-RENGA
Claudia Brefeld
Martina Heinisch

LINKED ONE-LINE MS HAIKU 
Michelle V. Alkerton
Suhni California

Collaborative Haiga: Vergil shows Dante Hell – 14th century book illustration in the British Library

ATEMTIEF
Ramona Linke
Heike Stehr

SMOKE
Patricia Prime
Catherine Mair

YEAR OF THE TIGER
Giselle Maya
Jane Reichhold

COOLHEAT
Werner Reichhold
as COOL
Jane Reichhold
as HEAT

   
     
     
 

Back issues of Lynx:

XV:2 June, 2000
XV:3 October, 2000
XVI:1 Feb. 2001
XVI:2 June, 2001
XVI:3 October, 2001  
XVII:1 February, 2002
XVII:2 June, 2002
XVII:3 October, 2002
XVIII:1 February, 2003
XVIII:2 June, 2003
XVIII:3, October, 2003
XIX:1 February, 2004
XIX:2 June, 2004

XIX:3 October, 2004

XX:1,February, 2005

XX:2 June, 2005
XX:3 October, 2005
XXI:1February, 2006 
XXI:2, June, 2006

XXI:3,October, 2006

XXII:1 January, 2007
XXII:2 June, 2007
XXII:3 October, 2007

XXIII:1February, 2008
XXIII:2 June, 2008

XXIII:3, October, 2008
XXIV:1, February, 2009

XXIV:2, June, 2009
XXIV:3, October, 2009
XXV:1 January, 2010

 

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Next Lynx is scheduled for October, 2010.


Deadline for submission of work is
September 1, 2010.