The silence that stood between two bodies
took an eternity to settle.
When it settled, it settled like snow.
I will carry my silence this winter,
and maybe when it gets too heavy, we can stop,
and rest for a while. It is a very long season.

We use this quiet nicely.
Short days entail choosing your words carefully,
speaking less, listening more, cleaning mirrors and
unclogging the sinks. We sit avoiding the cold,
drinking herbal tea and watching steam rise from our mugs.
We take long baths, do the laundry,
and clutter our bed-stand with pills and medicine bottles.
We brush snow from our shoulders,
and learn to breath in spite of the cold, and each other.

In the winter, we begin to learn
what is simple and necessary;
Antihistamines, hot soups, staying warm in the house.
We allow winter’s silence to drift down
and gather like frost on our floors.
I think about moving often,
abandoning our home while the earth stays frozen.

To leave in the winter is unnatural.
Movement breaks its stillness and hold,
an impossible infidelity to the past, to others,
to old notions of oneself.
Leaving someone in the snow shatters
the heavy silences carried over long months,
breaking the spell to end all spells.
It is a necessary betrayal,
a declaration that things can be not only different
but better, as we open our front doors
and step out into spring.

El Alma del Mundo est Sangrando

No es esencia de flores
El olor de los explosivos
No es de colores Holi
Sólo sangre, olas de sangre
De los que están matando
Inocentes, la mayoría pobres
Y hermanos.
Las luces de Buda, Chaitanya
Kabir, Nanak, Gandhi se desangran en la oscuridad
El alma de la paz es la hemorragia
Tienes mil formas de protestar para detener la sed del terror
No puedes ganar o acordar
Sin cambiar la ruta de acceso
Pues en la sangre, no florecen rosas.

There is a gaping hole in each one of us
That we didn’t even know you filled

Why did you have to leave us
Broken, without you to fix us?

You were the best of us,
Your leaving makes no sense.

You were the one who held us together,
We are falling apart without you.

We need you back
To make us whole again

Where can we find you?

We are broken
Pieces of what we were before
Without you.

And who strung them?
but you and I
lifelines from our fears, our mutual alibi.

They quiver and shake now,
in their electric fever
snakes of conduct in the garden of Eden.

Illegitimate children
with unnatural powers of conduction,
birthed from your blood, my flesh
those rabid nights of seduction.

Bastards they are not, for they’ve taken our name
hyphenated of course:
we both bear the blame.

Two tongues dancing,
Thinking allowed.
Making jokes,
And dreams,
And memories
But, dancing
All the while,
All around:
Around the future
Around plans
And gossip and war
And politics.
But really nothing.
Nothing.
Two tongues dancing in unison
But,
avoiding the questions,
Avoiding the end,
Avoiding
The unknowns;
The unavoidables;
The eventual:
The potential to disarm,
To cut off,
To destroy.
Two healthy tongues aware of their own mortality.

Luckily for Prague poets and poetry lovers, the city boasts an active literary journal and a number of readings which have helped establish a supportive community of craft and creative expression to keep one’s blood flowing through even the wickedest of winters.

May 2008 saw the publication of The Prague Revue Issue 8, which represents the journal’s rebirth after a seven-year hiatus. The Prague Revue was a mainstay of Prague literature from 1996 until 2001, publishing seven issues of writing in all genres from Prague and around the world. During its first tenure, The Prague Revue garnered positive reviews from a number of journals and newspapers in Europe and abroad. Rebekah Bloyd, co-translator of Miroslav Holub’s The Rampage (Faber & Faber), for example, described The Prague Revue as “daring and original.”

Issue 8 continues The Prague Revue’s high standards, featuring work from renowned writers such as Czech novelist Ivan Klíma and American poet Alicia Ostriker, as well as photography from Martin Desht and a series of paintings by Edward Hopper. The Prague Revue is currently accepting submissions for Issue 9, due out in May 2009, which promises to continue the publication’s status as a cornerstone of the thriving English-language literary scene in Prague.

For poetry lovers who aren’t keen on reading, Prague offers numerous performance venues. The longest-running and most regular is the Alchemy reading series, held on the first Monday of every month at the Globe bookstore. Each month features both a main reader, usually a foreign poet visiting Prague on grant money or a reading tour, and an open mic where local poets and musicians can perform their latest work.

The most conclusive proof that poetry is alive and well in Prague is the work of some of the city’s active poets. Though these poets do not represent a united stylistic or conceptual front, there are underlying themes and similarities in their work which will provide readers with a clearer idea of what is happening in Prague poetics in 2008.

Scottish poet Chris Crawford has been living and writing in Prague for more than six years. With a fine ear tuned to the physicality of language, Crawford crafts poems that unite compassion and stoicism. The poem “Řešit,” featured in The Prague Revue Issue 8, exemplifies Crawford’s uncompromising sense of language and his willingness to explore the unknown dark.

Řešit: in Czech: To Solve.
The hooks above the r and s
pull them up to the top of the word.

The ř is a tangling of tongues
at the bastard marriage
of the English r and z.

I don’t know any other way to understand that.
…

Řešit. To say it,
almost impossible.
Though out of my mind
on drink, it lets itself out uninhibited,
like the loose cough
of tuberculosis:
more a solution than anything else.

Crawford’s attention to language and craft is clear both in the conceit of the poem and in its construction. Each line is a separate unit of breath and thought which allows the poem to wend from start to finish, accruing meaning along the way, as in the line break: “Though out of my mind/ on drink.” Crawford’s poetry is an unflinching exploration and portrayal of emotional experiences which are both exclusive and universal.

An intense involvement with language and experience is also exemplified in the work of Crawford’s contemporary Elizabeth Gross. In her poems, Gross often engages the past, revisiting and rewriting history with attention to what William Carlos Williams called “the radiant gist.” “What I Lost at Waterloo (Napoleon to Josephine)” also appears in Issue 8 of The Prague Revue:

What I learned at Waterloo
I forgot one August afternoon
while tending my windowbox
geranium, running an index
finger over the arch of her neck.
…

This grooved thumb of mine
is a map of victories, of defeats
is a gift to you.

I wonder what a rose forgets
so she can bloom, bare
her first teeth, draw blood.

Gross uses poetry as a tool to engage history on a level of intimacy normally absent from recapitulations of now-abstract events. The poem is a key which opens the locked door of the past. By boldly personifying a well-known historical personality, Gross grants frail humanity to an otherwise impersonal character.

Poetry is thriving in this golden city on the banks of the Vltava. Publications and literary communities around the world are beginning to take notice of contemporary Prague poets. In closing, I refer to a poem of my own, entitled “Praha,” which both describes and exemplifies Prague as a city and a nexus of poets living and writing in the white heat of inspiration, love, alienation and grief.

City where Soviet tanks
turn pink & sprout fountains

City of snowy fingertips
& fists of rain

Whose river is a woman

City of sisters silk & silver,
thighs & velvet cheekbones

City of a man in fray-cuffed khakis
kicking wishes from a wilted dandelion

City of din. City of breath.
A brick on my tongue.

I

Sexual insecurities suck.

Or maybe I would, if I didn’t have them. That

And a debilitating

Gag reflex.

II

Venereal yearning overcomes ‘I should know better’,

Hovering rough warmth teases slumbering nerve-endings.

Inner muscles stretch

And convulse,

The succulent potential, corporeal and mind-bending.

Nails dig, gouging for the shuddering culmination,

The satisfied sigh at the end of a laundry cycle:

Warm

Wet

And always filthier than you expected to come out.

Laundry’s probably not what you want on your mind

As you feign enjoyment of a lumbering prick ploughing you.

Cut in with i-pod shuffle’s romantic choice

Of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Am I Hobbit-fucking?

Is good sex

Unachievable?

How much longer is this going to

III

A rollie would have lasted longer.

Nicotine grants me the heady inebriation that you can’t.

The cigarette drops,

belligerently like you did,

And ash sears through the rejected latex impediment,

Our scapegoat of inadequacy.

I ejaculate white smoke

And leg it.

Could you return my bra in the post?

to watch the world go by:

a

bright

flashing

merry-go-round

before my awestruck eyes.

But these cigars, this wine, this bread, all fill me up

with sorrow.

The glowing jewels blur my vision,

and I cannot find my compass.

I writhe,

I rise -

intoxicated,

and turn away from the fading world,

full to the brim with a cannibal’s passion,

and leap from my hollow seat

to whirl the dervish

and face the rising sun.

But the horizon is dark: the sun is setting.

A ghoulish black squid

cloud licks

a pale-skinned moon that drips

its drowned light

down on the stale, fetid landscape.

Jupiter is silent, but violet -

his rage is pent.

Skeleton trees house bloated silver worms,

their breath abated,

that shiver when the cold wind whips its way across this waste.

And then she comes,

charcoal – heaving,

shrieking like the Furies,

unto my frigid helpless mind.

She beckons

with the eyes of a child -

I heed.

We ride, and pass Zarathustra on his way.

I smile -

He waves politely.

We escape the shadows of the cracked sky,

the mirrored earth and echoed cry

and reach the fairgrounds

where I dismount.

I lead the mare

before the crowd

below the fire-breather

beside the clown

and speak her name.

Laughs the woman:

‘Looks more like an ass!’

Bleats the man;

‘Away with you, beast – you stink!’

The child watches,

dumbfounded,

and a tear slips from my scaled eye.

With hoarse voice,

I turn her muzzle to the wind – ‘God speed’ -

and she is off.

Jove rumbles.

Laughter bursts from me

as I turn to watch the fun.

I take a stick of fairy floss,

and buy myself a gun.