moonlit this is issue number three

did I mention moonlit 3?

2 copies arrived via post haste & I’ve been reading 1.

some notes:

hello Chuck Stebleton, I like your poems. from “Red Walls”: “Another spoon / bender in the lobby. // The net of next / events is thrown / wide to each.” yeah, man. &, from “Talking Book”: “Persimmons shook often // once we stopped / to knock our weapons. // Still the peripheral // let’s an ideogram be.” I’ll keep an eye out for y’r work.

of th’Flim folk: Amanda Ackerman’s “Autumn Poem Written in Spring” lists what “we would like to see changed, altered, improved, ended, stopped, enacted, protested, organized, continued, or brought to justice, if we had our say, and others like us as well. If we had our say. If we did make decisions that are recourses to actions.”; we've friendship from Harold Abamowitz’ “Measure #1,” “such stuff, such violent and dedicated stuff, such stuff, that friends are made of” & from “Measure #2," “in front of a train / the train is your / friend // in a fiery furnace”; close-ups “from Lip Service,” by Matthew Timmons, “impress upon the audience / the best lips are now.” & how; & Kate Schapira leads us into her city, “…made magic by apricot…” her city in “from The Bounty: You’re a Stranger”: “New lights and darknesses cross the same faces….” as an editor, it is reassuring to see again how excellent the poets I’ve published all are.

Jessica Bozek’s poems, typed on the inside of matchbooks must be seen; a reshuffling of words plays across the flaps; from “4: a”: “where I am / wax // walls extend // up from //the roof / inside // my arsenal / raindrops”; then, from “4: b”: “I prefer / the roof // a gun to / most walls // wax seams // rain anodyne wolf.” patterns emerge & criss-cross--these poems avoid the problem, for example, of Jenny Holzer’s visually striking but texturally dull text art--both components are interesting, vital.

on Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney’s collaborations: here they’ve corresponded with a series of letters to each other--mostly “Elisa to Kathy”--a clever conceit for collaborators. “Elisa” seems to be querying Kathy for advice to escape a relationship: “Any tips for getting a ring off my finger / &/or becoming a better singer in public / you sometimes careerist?” & “With this dead, damp leaf / I thee wed. Kindling / my love, but killing my joy / your stable of words / falls upon me like a / cartoon anvil.” w/in the context of collaborative poems, this desire for escape is particularly perverse: “Terrified / my success will soon dwarf yours & / then explode & die.” clever & perverse? fine.

moonlit 3’s good looking: take a look