The Cenacle | 105 | October 2018 | *Just Released*

[cenacle]

The Cenacle | 105 | October 2018
Reading link: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/105.html
Download link: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/105_october_2018.pdf
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Hello everyone,

Here comes the just-released Cenacle  | 105 | October 2018. The wonderful autumnal cover launches another delightful issue of writings & graphic artwork. Contents include:

From Soulard's Notebooks:
[Sample] I'm terrible at letting go, & there is no art or craft to my efforts.

Feedback on Cenacle 104:
[Sample] Charlie Beyer fights the law and the law wins. He includes a studly photo of himself at the end, fuzzy and buff, standing on a sun-dappled forest path. I am so glad I am not a girl because I would fall in love with him immediately. [Nathan D. Horowitz]

From the ElectroLounge Forums:
[Sample]
The neighbor's geraniums
unremarkable flowers
don't need poems and forevers.
[Martina Newberry]

Poetry by Martina Newberry:
[Sample]
We wrote until all our writing paper
was gone and we wrote on napkins,
receipts, and cigarette papers,
and on purloined memo pads,
and on the back of the odd photograph.

Provisional Truths (Travel Journal) by Nathan D. Horowitz:
[Sample] Speaking of supernatural phenomena, what does it mean that people say shamans turn into animals? I'm trying hard to figure that out. Haciendo yai—doing jaguar, making jaguar—is what the Secoyas call it in Spanish. Maybe a better English translation would be incarnating or performing jaguar. Maybe there's no good translation for the phenomenon in either Spanish or English. But haciendo yai is what Rufino said I was doing that night with Joaquín and Lázaro. I sure had no problems with demons then. Would've scared the hell out of them, roaring and pounding on the floor of the hut. Similarly when I roared at that photojournalist. But I was a bit demonic myself then. Hmm.

Poetry by Joe Ciccone:
[Sample]
The fog rolls in
but this time not all romantic-like,
more like a brush fire
the kind that precedes tragedy

Notes from New England: 36 Love Epistles to What's Lost
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Sample] Mimé aka Ida Cohen, my grandmother, known most in my youth (1970s-1980s)—You brought me books. You were kind. You told funny stories about working in the thrift shop with your friend Anne. My dad loved you like I love my own mother-in-law now. You read biographies. You loved Gilbert & Sullivan light operas. You called me Raymond years before I preferred it to all. I was too young to converse with you properly, to discover who you were, not simply & passively enjoy what you were to me. I love biographies too, especially of writers, musicians, & artists. I've saved Gilbert & Sullivan, not yet tried. I hope I like them too.

Poetry by Judih Haggai:
[Sample]
three plums in the store
only three plums and no grapes
night prayers for plums

Notes on Science's Progresses & Regresses by Jimmy Heffernan:
[Sample] I wouldn't necessarily dismiss a person for atheism but, unfortunately, most science-minded people denounce any notion of the ineffable, the supernatural, the mystical, the religious along with it, out of hand. That could be one reason why progress in science is relatively slow these days. Almost all of the questions raised in the 20th century, especially pertaining to quantum mechanics, have gone unanswered—over almost a hundred years. And so far, there has been no bridge between the mystical and scientific, except in a few philosophical notions. Hopefully this will change.

Many Musics (Poetry) by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Sample]
Creatures do not live in the
simple years of men, their straight
arrow, their before & during & after.
In dreams, this made sense, a part
of how they live & prosper in the
Cavern below the Tangled Gate.
Time like the Wide, Wide Sea.

Poetry by Ace Boggess:
[Sample]
Yesterday, I saw a vine—leafy,
emerald, full—snake past my window
as though winged Quetzalcoatl
carried elsewhere like a bullet train.

Same Moon Shining (Memoir Excerpts) by Tamara Miles:
[Sample] Recently, I found out that my grandfather had twins with someone else than my grandmother, while they were married; and although some people in the family knew about it, I never did. There were rumors, yes, but I didn't even know those until I was an adult, and my cousin Marlon started talking about how his father hated Papa, and how we probably had cousins all over town. Even then, I wasn't quite sure whether that was an exaggeration.

Poetry by Tamara Miles:
[Sample]
Our love is liquor-bound and blue,
in what you said I mean to you,
on wooden floors of north and south
that tantalize a sullen mouth.

Poetry by Colin James:
[Sample]
I presented myself as fifty years older
yet arrogantly adept at getting wood,
largely due to her immaculate pussy,
which tasted and smelled of strawberries.

Poetry by Dylan Thomas:
[Sample]
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Mother-in-Law Present [Travel Journal] by Charlie Beyer:
[Sample] My surveying assistant and I enjoy swapping lies about our lives while taking measurements on the frozen steppe. We shuffle from foot to foot as we talk, stamping occasionally, trying to prevent frostbite in the toes. The ice crystals swirl about our feet, hurrying across the whitened ground. He tells me of the golden river where he easily dug one hundred ounces of nuggets one blissful summer.

Poetry by Gregory Kelly:
[Sample]
I sought stillness
But
Nothing
Is ever still, is it?

Bags End Book #11: Algernon Beagle Wakes Up (Part 1):
[Sample] Goodness, where was I? It was something like a dream, though not like the one of Weedz music, & they told me a long time went by too, & then I came back as suddenly, & here I am, your old pal Algernon, once more. I think Iwas supposed to bring back a message, or something like that.

Poetry by Tom Sheehan:
[Sample]
Morning's promised vise went on its rampage,
the last ounce ushered into gear, heady, sticky
later on if she had left it alone, but oh no, not
this imagery in morning's walk which cleaned
as good as any kitchen lady at dined finishing.
Wipe down. Wipe out. How do you like those
oranges, my faultless mister in the night?

The New Alchemy [Essay] by Alan Watts:
I have not yet been able to use LSD in circumstances of great physical or moral pain, and therefore my explorations of the problem of evil under its influence may appear to be shallow. Only once in these experiments have I felt acute fear, but I know of several cases in which LSD has touched off psychic states of the most alarming and unpleasant kind. More than once I have invited such states under LSD by looking at images ordinarily suggestive of "the creeps"—the mandibles of spiders, and the barbs and spines of dangerous fish and insects. Yet they evoked only a sense of beauty and exuberance, for our normal projection of malice into these creatures was entirely withdrawn, so that their organs of destruction became no more evil than the teeth of a beautiful woman. On another occasion I looked for a long time at a colored reproduction of Van Eyck's Last Judgment, which is surely one of the most horrendous products of human imagination. The scene of hell is dominated by the figure of Death, a skeleton beneath whose bat-like wings lies a writhing mass of screaming bodies gnawed by snakes which penetrate them like maggots in fruit. One of the curious effects of LSD is to impart an illusion of movement in still images, so that here the picture came to life and the whole entanglement of limbs and serpents began to squirm before my eyes.

Labyrinthine [a new fixtion] by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Sample] [Sitting on the bed & floor, the three of them watch Maya sniff back & forth with MeZmer the White Bunny, & laugh as she doesn't often. Her laughing lures to play the tiny little individdle pandy bear
Rosa!eeta who sits on Maya's hand, cackling merrily & gnawing her palm lazily.

Comments are welcomed here or by email at editor@scriptorpress.com.

Peace,
Raymond