Author Archives: madeby18

Ryan Mihaly

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Excerpts from “B-Flat Clarinet Fingering Chart”

[G♯/A♭] [Sarcasm]

ryan mihaly

[C] [A split second]

ryan mihaly

[D♯/E♭] [Vision: chaos of birds]

ryan mihaly

[G] [Vision: peace]

ryan mihaly

Currently based in Greenville, SC, Ryan Mihaly is a business manager at a farm-friendly grocery/cafe, a music teacher, a collage artist, and a poet. His work has appeared in 3:AM Magazine, The Adirondack Review, DIAGRAM, Opossum, Asymptote, The Massachusetts Review, and in Ilan Stavans’ anthology On Self-Translation: Meditations on Language. After completing his MFA at Naropa University in 2018, where he was an Anne Waldman / Anselm Hollo fellow, he attended artist residencies in Ireland, Macedonia, and Slovakia, where some of these pieces were written.

Ryan Clark

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VII. [ vie ]

VIII. [ vie ]

These poems all come from my manuscript, “Arizona SB 1070: An Act,” which is a homophonic translation of the anti-immigration bill of the same name passed in Arizona in 2010. My method of homophonic translation relies on the re-sounding of a source text, letter by letter, according to the various possible sounds each letter is able to produce (ex: “cat” may become “ash” by silencing the ‘c’ as in “indict,” and by sounding the ’t’ as an ‘sh-‘ sound, as in “ratio”). These particular poems are translations of the 7th and 8th pages of the bill. As can be seen, the source text is present in gray above each translated line, so as to better show the poem as a rejection and rewriting of the bill.

Ryan Clark writes his poems using a unique method of homophonic translation and is particularly interested in how poetry responds to the oppressiveness of borders. He is the author of How I Pitched the First Curve (Lit Fest Press, 2019), and his poetry has recently appeared in Bear Review, Yemasse, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tahoma Literary Review, and HOLD. He is a winner of the 2018 San Antonio Writers Guild contest, and his work has been nominated for Best of the Net. He currently teaches creative writing at Waldorf University in Iowa.

Joanna Fuhrman and Toni Simon

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The Ruler of Rusted Knees

THE RULER OF RUSTED KNEES

You were the king of all the abandoned bathtubs and I was the king of air/ space/ time/ questions unlucky fuzzy key chains and speech. Were you jealous? Um, sorry (?) I'm was never actually kidding. You were the king of all the abandoned bathtubs

and I was the king of air/space/ time/ questions

unlucky fuzzy key chains and speech.

Were you jealous?

Um, sorry (?)

I was never / actually kidding.
thoth3

 In the beginning, we made birds chirps translated into the language of broken chairs.

No one exactly understood us, so they called us wise.

This was before the bloody fedoras,

before the arrival of floating leaf territory.
rustedknees4

 Try to balance
like an idea,

like a balanced
idea, like the idea

of balance like
an idea balanced

on another idea,
on balanced ideas

on many ideas
balancing.
rustedknees5

 Back then—you were
the ruler of plastic wrap,

lost words and
radiators.

I was the ruler
of disobedient vowels,

folded origami-style
guidebooks.
rustedknees6

 A man with double eights
in his halo is lucky.

A man without a head and double eights
in his halo is unlucky.

Can a man have a halo without a head?
Can a haloed man be unlucky?

If a man is lucky and unlucky at once,
he is doubly unlucky and doubly lucky.

If you try to be lucky,
you’re unlucky.

If want to be unlucky,
you’re in luck!

thoth7

 In the beginning, we didn’t need to be friends with all the parts of ourselves.

It was enough to listen to the wind tear the world to pieces.

Later, the wind swallowed parts of ourselves we had no name for

but missed terribly.
rustedknees8

 We had happened in many
different somewheres,

and everywheres,
and were here now.

Like the taste of teeth
is here, or the migrating

space around a loose flag.

rustedkness9

 You can be the king
of whatever–the-hell

you believe
you are the king of.

Take light,
for example.

If you whispered to the light,
no one would

say you were
wrong to believe

its flashing was a product
of your will.
Artists’ Statement

In our mixed-media literary project, Egyptian gods, stripped of their context and role, wander various New York City neighborhoods trying to figure out where they belong, how to make sense of what they have lost, and how to get along with one another.

In the first step of our project, Toni Simon constructs three-dimensional, small-scale figurines out of paper, modeled on Egyptian gods. She then paints them with abstract, graphic details. We then take the little gods out into different neighborhoods and take hundreds of photographs of them. We select eight to ten images, which become the basis for a series of poems written by Joanna Fuhrman.

So far, we have created picture/poem serial combinations in Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Chinatown, the Reversible Destiny Studio, Red Hook and Gowanus (featured here). Parts of the project have appeared online in paperbag and Talisman and in print in the 100th issue of Hanging Loose.

Toni Simon is a multimedia artist living in Brooklyn. Her illustrated book of prose poetry “Earth After Earth” was published by Lunar Chandelier Press in 2012. Over 80 of her illustrations appear in “Contradicta: Aphorisms” (Green Integer, 2010) by Nick Piombino. She has exhibited her drawings at the Drawing Center and at the AIR Gallery in NYC. http://tonisimonart.blogspot.com

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of four books of poetry, most recently “Pageant” (Alice James Books 2009) and “Moraine” (Hanging Loose Press 2006), as well as the chapbook “The Emotive Function” (Least Weasel Press 2011). She teaches poetry writing at Rutgers University and through Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Other sections of her project with Toni appear online at paperbag and Tailsman and in print in the journal Hanging Loose. For more see: Joannafuhrman.com