Dane Cervine Writes

Anthology List - & Monterey Bay Poets 2004

 Here are some of the recent anthologies my poems have been privileged to appear in -- scroll through the listings in ANTHOLOGIES for more detail in chronological order, with poem samples and publisher information. Most books can be ordered too through your local bookstore and Amazon:

 

 

The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets 2004 is a great collection of work from a wide spectrum of poets living in the Santa Cruz and Monterey regions, published by Chatoyant Press.

 

 

 

My poem Every Last Bit Of It is on page 18 of the hard-copy, and appears below:

 

Every Last Bit Of It

 

My son calls me, daddy come see! as I saunter into the backyard,

find him bare-legged, bare-chested, bright red under-shorts

caked with mud, as are his shins, his hands, his face, as though

a young Jehovah, ecstatic in the garden he was making, paused—

water & dirt of life smeared up to elbow & knee—bellowing

that first exclamation, that it was all good, every bit of it,

even the mud, especially the mud. Unlike that young,

effervescent deity, my son

has someone older to ponder his handiwork: how the hose,

hooking like a snake round the tree, has created a small river,

how the river has dug a channel, the channel now a lake

for boats filled with tiny pirates marauding the coast,

the forest of lawn lurking dangerous nearby,

myriad adventures waiting on his whim to unfold.

What I see:

sturdy eye calculating the damage to clay path,

the now filthy grass, the time it will take to make it right—

how age shapes estimation, the crazy extravagance of spring,

the raw glee of summer’s heat never failing to remind

of autumn’s steep fall into winter—the work it requires

to be ready, always ready. This may have been the feeling,

my own father standing in the carport when I was five,

hands on hips, surveying the damage to the VW bug that I,

the painter, had rendered. Swaths of color across headlight,

fender, hubcap—this masterpiece of unrestrained creativity—

my slow dawning that something was amiss, that it wasn’t

all good, not every bit of it, not this urge inside

to find out for myself: this undertow into the underneath

of things. As with my son now, his eye scanning mine,

intent on finding praise—and I give it, his flush of pride

evident on skin amid mud. Then we begin

 

the slow task of unraveling creation, the story of how

it must be made whole again, the garden put back

not quite the way it was: laden now with memory,

each fault buried beneath new clay, each mistake softened

till the path is smooth, the grass again green, father & son

knowing that it is good, that it is all good,

every last bit of it.

Sacred Fire Anthology

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My poem This Burning is included in the anthology Sacred Fire.

The poem was inspired by the true life story of a father I met at a mental health conference in San Diego, and my subsequent drive home through a night-blaze in the hills north of Los Angeles:

This Burning

 

In the dark ahead, it floats like an orange mirage,

eerie flame of light in the hills that surround Los Angeles

like taut, brown undulations—driving back from a conference

about youth, abused & neglected—how the world swims

in alternating waves of fierce light & dim shades of despair.

The plenary speaker with his grim tale of childhood—

the rapes, the abuse—how the system saved his life,

foster parents lifting him up far enough

to stand on his own DNA & the mysteries of karmic spirit

carrying his story to the New York Times,

his work to three presidential citations for excellence.

 

Now the road winds higher through the night as the orange glow

grows brighter, remembering the next speaker, Azim—

Persian born in Africa, educated in England,

financial consultant turned crusader against the violence

that took his son in the streets of San Diego,

a college student delivering pizza unfazed by the bogus address

in the run-down neighborhood, the 14 year old gang-banger

waiting for him with the gun, told he’d become a man

by taking the other one down. And in the aftermath,

Azim finding the 14 year old boy’s grandfather, saying

my son’s death must come to mean something—

how they banded together bent on saving at least one more,

and another, then another. How his eyes burned

as I shook his hand, thanked him for his story,

told him it means everything—

 

how I drove silently in the night

into the heaving hills of Los Angeles afire, so close now,

not knowing if there would be a way through,

the black asphalt road leading inexorably

into the smoke-orange flame of the grapevine,

the only way out being through—and there it was,

the fire-break, the very road I was on, separating

Hades’ heat on one side from the quiet untouched hills

on the other. In between, in this eerie safety

of windshield & engine & wheels, I see

there is but one way to travel this world,

and it is towards, not away,

from this burning.

Working Hard For The Money, POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Two of my early poems were included in the anthology Working Hard For The Money: America's Working Poor in Stories, Poems, and Photos from Bottom Dog Press. They are Radar, and Lions After Slumber.

 

Radar

 

There was a man

unraveling down the sidewalk along

the backside of the Capitol’s Rotunda

a man vexed

all in a wrangle

arm through a tattered vet jacket

holding a black phone receiver

talking loud trying to get through

to somebody...

but it was an old 50’s phone

frayed cord dangling from the mouthpiece--

it wasn’t connected

and no-one was listening.

 

There was a woman

whimsical and wiry as a homeless gypsy

worn red jacket and yellow scarves

radiating so bright

she’d be impossible to miss

unless that was your plan

smiled as I passed

caught that glint in my eye like

a hidden wavelength

called out behind me

How are you today? Yes you, you look alive!

and I am and wonder

how she knows...

an invisible beam

emanating between agents

secret in the wrong country.

 

There were three cadets

young white and true blue jogging by

in grey shorts neatly cut hair

innocent and clean as the sons

you’re supposed to have

chuckling between easy breaths

eyes like radar

scanning for what is out of place

on their tracking screens

light on we other three

circling the capitol looking

for a way in

and I

wondering will we show up as friend or foe.

 

Lions After Slumber

 

Poetry used to be worth the world, before cloistered

in academic circles, resplendent in literary silk, dead.

 

But in 1909, women of the Ladies Garment Union

pressed on against winter, scabs, prison

reciting Mask of Anarchy as they worked inside the

Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City:

 

Rise like lions after slumber, shake your chains

to earth…Ye are many, they are few!

 

When fire broke out in the rag bin, sweeping through

illegal floors with locked doors too high for the ladders

to reach, the New York World responded in lyric:

 

They jumped with their clothing ablaze…

        they leapt with their arms around each other,

onto growing piles of the dead and dying.

 

When it was over, one hundred thousand marched

down Broadway, because it mattered,

because the twenty seven thousand killed on the job

every year at the turn of this great century

made silent poems of their lives, because Joe Hill

was charged with murder as he sang, lyrics inciting

the downtrodden to throw off their chains

as gospel hymns the slaves before—

 

and because his poetry mattered, he was executed

by firing squad in Utah, calling man, woman and child,

black and white, immigrants all, to do something

tangible, now.

 

Which Langston Hughes did in the 30’s,

wedding the poem to the world rather than the classroom,

calling to the people

 

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain…

Must bring back our mighty dream again…America!

 

Poetry must rise as a lion after slumber,

hunt game of import, roar with every stroke,

for we cannot matter to the world

if the world does not matter to us.

 

Emerald St. Writer's Anthology: HARVEST

I have eight poems included in Harvest from the Emerald Orchard: An Anthology of the Emerald Street Poets recently published by the writer's collective I belong to. It is a wonderful collection, with diverse but congruent voices from seventeen poets in Santa Cruz, California.

You can read the following poems by clicking on this link:

 

 

Download emerald_st_dane_poems.doc

• The Anonymity of Poets
• The Meaning of Life
• Every Wound A Kiss
• Sin
• A Rose, A Thorn
• How to Know God
• Would You Recognize the Truth If You Saw It
• Becoming a Poem

 

The other great poets included are: Julia Alter-Canvin, Len Anderson, Virgil Banks, Jenny D'Angelo, Guarionex Delgado, Kathleen Flowers, Robin Lysne, Joanna Martin, Phyllis Mayfield, Maggie Paul, Stuart Presley, Carol Rodriguez, Joan Safajek, Lisa Simon, Robin Straub, Philip Wagner.

If you'd like to order a copy, just send me an email at: [email protected] and put "Emerald Anthology" in the email title.

Poem in Out of Line 2007 -- Writings on Peace & Justice

A new poem appears in the 2007 anthology OUT OF LINE:

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Daughter Reads The Morning Paper

She opens the world

as a present unwrapped slowly,

unsure if it might be her heart's desire

or a sensible pair of socks to replace the one

with holes. Unraveling the morning paper,

she comes to expect the small wars,

the persistent headlines about this tragedy

or that, the occasional stories of everyday people

triumphing against the odds. Mostly she loves

the comics, the heroism of sports, learning

the world's humor, a taste for winning.

Twelve years of tenderness are woven

through the strands of her heart,

the softly spun gray matter

cupped in her skull more precious

than radium or plutonium, the potent

half-life of her soul glowing now

as it meets the lost half of the world:

I hear it calling her in the earthquakes of Iran,

the tin-cities of Brazil, the picture on the back page,

the one she doesn't mention, the one

she peers at as though the world, unwrapped,

was more than she could dare

to care this much for.

 

Out of Line is an annual anthology of imaginative writings with underlying themes of Peace and Justice. Sam Longmire, editor.

"Out of Line combines a passion for justice and peace with a passion for excellent literature. Whether the poems, stories, and essays focus on war, racial injustice, child abuse, or any of a number of other issues, they are well-crafted and moving. Each issue inspires me both to improve my writing and to increase my commitment to make this a better world for everyone."
- Wilda Morris, President, Illinois State Poetry Society

This poem also appears in my book THE JEWELED NET OF INDRA from Plain View Press.

COME TOGETHER, IMAGINE PEACE: New Anthology from Bottom Dog Press

I am proud and thankful to be included in a new anthology from Bottom Dog Press entitled COME TOGETHER, IMAGINCE PEACE. The poem is called Savoring The World, and is included side by side with poems from Ellen Bass, Robert Bly, Jane Hirshfield, and many others. You can order the book for $18 from Bottom Dog Press, PO Box 425, Huron, OH 44839, or on-line from Amazon.com. Here's my poem:

Savoring The World

 

Washington DC, a warm evening in November,

sitting outside the Sultan’s Palace waiting for a gyro,

sipping Almaza beer while the world rolls by,

students from Georgetown & Howard universities

chattering on cell phones, and I have never been so happy

to be alone, listening, open as a gate in this corner chair,

the sensory soup of neighborhood, globe,

anywhere I look seeing what God was aiming at,

the words ordinary, mundane made up later

by those with a short attention span. Look!

at the silver sport utility vehicle gliding by,

windows rolled down, blaring bass syncopating

with the sirens searing down the adjacent block:

could it get any better than this! And the faces

of Arab, African, & Asian so at ease you could almost believe

the Shoe Repair sign across the street:

that anything broken can be mended, here.

 

And so I listen to the bald man in white shirt,

white slacks, white shoes tell his cell phone

my brother died of AIDS ten years ago, and I’m still grieving.

And how the jaunty-capped black man lights up

with Mother! as his cell phone jingles, flips open,

carries the voice of the one he loves. Listen

to how the world can only be what it is—

invoke the sirens circling now like dogs

to keep at bay the rabid snarl of wanting things

to be other than they are. Like the blond woman

in the crosswalk just now, two Dobermans leashed

& serene: there’s no fathoming what goes on inside,

the political science of hormone & heart begging détente,

a kind of soul you could actually live in.

 

So when my gyro comes—all tactile & aroma—

every taste bud kneels down, prays

that this pepper mixed with sweet bean,

this flesh of fowl & wheat, be its own sacrament—

savoring the carnal world sacred.

Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair: Best of the Texas Poetry Calendar

Dos Gatos Press published a new anthology: Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair: Best of the Texas Poetry Calendar. It includes a poem of mine entitled Vanishing Over The Horizon:

 

Vanishing Over The Horizon

 

I believe in Texas               as a state of mind    

                                   

the wide deserts                                    room for elbows

                       

and other desires—

 

cowboys

 

lonely and rambunctious             roping steer

                                               

repairing fences

 

            then galloping wild

 

                               over

 

                                    every             post.

 

Kicking up heels                 the tap of boots

 

                              a mantra

 

there is space in my life for the unexpected to occur.

 

I close the magazine

 

    saddle up my inner horse

 

            and ride into the orange sun

 

                   vanishing

 

                          over the horizon

 

                                    like a buffalo

 

                                           into the glimmering fields.

FIST, PALM, HAND appears in New Anthology

A poem about my mother's first stroke appears in the new anthology entitled When Last On The Mountain: The View from Writers over Fifty, a beautiful collection of poetry and prose...worth buying.

You can read the poem here:

Fist, Palm, Hand

 Your hand opens and closes and open and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralyzed.

                                    ---Rumi

 During my mother’s stroke, her left arm swung

suddenly at her side like a stranger. She called out,

was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. 

Now, recovering, her hand won’t unfold—fingers curled,

supple, but unable to fist or extend. I think of this,

standing alone outside St. Agnes Hospital in Fresno at night

by the stone statue of Jesus, at the end of a spiral stone path,

my palms extended in prayer or defense under the thousand blind eyes

of heaven, sparkling. I make a fist, then open each palm,

then fist each hand again and again, remembering.

 

The next morning, I wake in the Red Roof Inn’s pale room

next to the Korean Mart and the Jack-in-the-Box—the incessant

air conditioner already battling the incessant heat. I stare at a photo

of my father, dead four years now, but still speaking to me.

His hand on his tool belt, his heart full of fists, of waving palms,

the valves opening and closing, opening and closing, finally

closing. If he were always open, rather than mysterious, even dark,

I would never have questioned, never pushed into the depths,

would have been paralyzed by light.

 

Holding my mother’s arm as we walk now to the car, we pause

by a fountain, a statue of two young girls running to touch

six birds escaping into flight, hear the sound of falling water

on blue tile. The stone girls will never reach even one bird,

but my mother, already, begins to flex the fingers

of her stricken hand open, then closed, then open.

Poem in new anthology: FACING THE CHANGE - Global Warming

 

An earlier poem of mine called The Last Days, about my daughter and I reading the newspaper over breakfast musing on the state of the world, just appeared in a new anthology from Torrey House Press, entitled Facing The Change: Personal Encounters With Global Warming.

You can check out the anthology description at the Torrey House Press website:

Torrey House Press

 

The Last Days

My daughter looks up from the Sunday news—

an earthquake in Pakistan, the many dead—

betrays a quick glance of fear, after so many

hurricanes these last days, New Orleans flooded,

Texas evacuated, Florida bracing, Indonesia

reeling from the last tsunami. The book

of Revelations lies in my childhood memory,

prophecy of flood, famine, fear—but I

can’t bear to tell her my secret misgivings,

that I am nearly fifty, peering down the gauntlet

of my own last days, wondering how to spend

judiciously, extravagantly, each one of them.

But this is all so personal, a sin, really,

when living in the belly of an empire

bent on catapulting us into the next war,

the next bald-faced robbery of a planet’s future

for this year’s money-grab, the whole world

aghast and envious of this drunken bully

staggering belligerently towards oil

like an addict who would do

         anything, anything

for just one more fix. But I am no prophet,

succumb to the small world of breakfast

my daughter and I share, intimate,

in these last days of childhood, poised

as she is on the lip of a world that would

just as soon devour as kiss her, and

how can I prepare her for this rogue?

The way fear’s scripture insinuates its way

into the petty concerns of a life lashed

to the mundane but longing for revelation,

for some final reckoning. How do I say

I love you when this world is the only gift,

the pitiless dowry, I have to offer? How

do I say it is you, your brother, your friends,

the only hope for this brooding planet,

a new seed of reluctant messiahs peering

at the earth you shall inherit from us—

this thin, ephemeral line between

Eden and Armageddon.

DRAWN TO MARVEL Anthology: Superhero Poems

 

Minor Arcana Press has just published an amazing new poetry anthology, entitled Drawn to Marvel: Poems From the Comic Books. It includes poems by the likes of John Ashbery, Rae Armantrout, Dorianne Laux, Tony Barnstone, Denise Duhamel, and many others, which can be found here:

Drawn To Marvel - Contributors & Press

 

The anthology includes this poem of mine:

 

The Fantastic Four

 

After the phone call with my three siblings,

I remember our childhood, the four of us pretending

to be The Fantastic Four superheroes from Marvel comics:

Stretcho, the Invisible Girl, her brother the Torch,

their rock-man friend The Thing. Each imbued with a gift—

elasticity, invisibility, fire, strength. My two brothers,

my sister and I, perfect incarnations of this quartet

as we’d run the sidewalks confronting the hidden villains

of quiet suburban streets. Looming in the distance,

the adult world of parents sagging onto couches at day’s end,

wistfully lingering over Ray Charles’

Take These Chains From My Heart and Set Me Free.

It was a world only the brave could face,

which we did, slowly transmogrifying

into the adult heroes we wanted to become.

As now: phone cradled, silent,

mother’s stroke menacing our horizon,

but the telepathy still working,

the call springing us into action—

an invisible force-field to bind us, together,

in flame, the irreducible strength of stone,

the heart stretching, stretching.

 

 

 

RECKLESS WRITING Anthology: Four New Poems

Chatter House Press has released an anthology called RECKLESS WRITING, that started as a spoken word collaboration for poets in the midwest, but expanded to include both coasts and a broad age range of writers: Reckless Writing

The four poems of mine included in the anthology are:

• I Read Like An Animal
• Butt Crack at the Poetry Reading
• My First Day Working at the Psych Hospital
• Why There Is A Permanent Investigations Sub-Committee

Download Reckless Writing Anthology poems from Dane Cervine

 

I Read Like An Animal,

all tongue and claw and eye. Bargain bin classics for fifty cents once scripted by hand, transported in oil-skins rare as gold. In the old days, you could be burned for hiding the wrong book in your secret chest, ratted on by a scared neighbor. Now, I grab a New York Times bestseller about Galileo and his secret letters from a dusty cardboard box beneath a table of bright orange tie-dyed T-shirts in the corner retro-hippie store on the Haight in San Francisco. Walk boldly to the counter and palm two quarters onto the beaten wood.

It is stunning not to be afraid, after so much death over a few heretical words. Now, it is what to read in the face of dizzying plenty. Like Lewis and Clark traveling by keelboat up the Missouri, glimpsing Eden—the parchment inked that evening by quill more precious than the tobacco, powder and ball, axe and whisky they carried through storm.

And here I sit on a Sunday with the pages of their world lounging in my hands like a fresh bible, like a religion. And what shall I read today, books spread before me like the Empire-Chinese-Japanese-Thai-Korean Buffet I discovered while lost in Gilroy amid giant wholesale stores, stumbling upon rows and rows of sushi and orange chicken and bamboo shoots and garlic beef so immense my appetite seemed inadequate for such a feast?

If there is an imperative, a morality of reading, I am searching for it. Because if I don’t read about how the young Arab woke up naked, strapped to a chair in a white room, fed only Ensure and water for weeks while bombarded night and day with air-conditioning and loud chaotic music at an American black site in Thailand, then how can I bear witness? And if I don’t know that Hemingway stumbled back down to the docks at midnight to pummel again with his fists the great marlins he’d landed by day, then how will I ever find this pathos in my own body?

Oh Galileo, lend me your eye! Hemingway, your heart! Meriwether, your indomitable hand! I consume you hungry as the coyote that chews off its own leg to be free from the iron trap of small minds, or the jealous god baiting me to ignore the one tree worth its weight in fruit in the goddamn center of Eden.

 

Butt Crack at the Poetry Reading

 

It was an Oscar quality crack,

completely itself, naked, sincere.

The man on whom it was adorned

was a lover of poetry

whose immense buttocks were worthy

of a heavyweight plumber down on his knees

in the kitchen, listening to the sound

of pipes, lost in their leaky articulation.

His ample torso crammed into the black

plastic folding chair with the empty space

between back and seat framing like a TV screen

his buttocks’ red fleshy cleavage.

 

Lifting my gaze from his hypnotizing masterpiece,

eyes roaming over shoulder muscles thick

as barn beams, broad bald head,

flared red ears fanned like satellite dishes,

I found myself applauding.

The pugnacious suchness of this man,

leaning into the sound of sentences,

his body the perfect tool

to bear literature’s weight,

the tonnage of meaning

down to the evening’s last

iron word.

 

My First Day Working at the Psych Hospital

 

I knew there was something wrong

when I peered through the small seclusion room window

at my friend from high school sticking

his finger up his anus then licking it

while staring at anyone who looked.

As though life was shit and he knew it.

 

I was only twenty, but suspected the brain

might be a bully menacing the best of us

when the charge nurse said the head psychiatrist

had hung himself in his garage days before.

The world

 

harrowing in its raw nerviness, like

a bad game show where friends

and bosses are playing for their lives,

and maybe me too, only it’s unclear

what’s behind Door Number Three,

maybe death, or a refrigerator, or

an all expenses paid trip to Miami

with the girlfriend who later ends up

marrying the prick from high school,

all three of us wondering what the hell

happened to the simplicity of geometry,

skipping gym class to kiss and smoke,

and what the hell to do with the rest

of our lives. After working summers

 

at the tomato cannery in town, I’d had

enough, took this psych-ward job knowing

there was something wrong with the brain,

how it worked in small towns, how

the world could crush it like a plum

in a fist unless you understood how

the bully worked. Knew I needed to

show some nerve, pick a door, any door,

and walk through it like I owned

the whole god-damn world.

 

 

Why There is a Permanent Investigations

Sub-Committee:

           

Because the heart cannot be trusted.

Because hearts must be legislated.

Because any one of us might be dirty,

because the mind is a labyrinth of secrets

and one of us is hiding.

 

Joe McCarthy ransacked libraries for seditious books,

including The Selected Works of Thomas Jefferson.

Maybe he was right, there’s sin in each citizen,

we cannot be trusted, revolution lurks

round every corner. So bring on

 

the orbiting satellite cameras, the threads of high speed

optic fiber surveillance, the computer analysis

of library books read and internet sites viewed,

control the gods to whom we pray,

the genders we love, each secret dream.

 

Because we are not just going to hell in a hand-basket,

we are on a runaway train towards the fall

of Western civilization.

 

Investigate me, please, because Armageddon is lurking,

the brimstone is burning, because my contrary

wild heart is breaking.

 

 

Note: McCarthy used the Permanent Subcommittee of Investigations (still active today) to launch his anti-communist vendetta in the 1950's.

 

 

Veils, Halos & Shackles - Poem in New Anthology

VEILS, HALOS & SHACKLES, is described as the first-ever anthology of international poetry specifically addressing the oppression and empowerment of women, includes over 250 poems by poets from dozens of countries. It includes my poem, STARING AT THE HEADLINES, about the role of allies and journalism in speaking out. The book is an important and compelling effort; see link below for more about the book, authors, and how to order:

http://www.kasvapress.com/books/veils-halos-shackles/

See also an article about the book release in the INDIAN EXPRESS newspaper, from India:

Download Indian Article about Veils, Halos & Shackles Anthology

Here's a copy of my poem: 

 

I Stare at the Headlines

 

Fanny in Medellin pulls the journalist off

the bullet-swept street into her kitchen.

They crouch on the floor with her children,

wait for hours till the firing moves away

and they can run for it. And you? she says,

Where you come from, isn’t it the same?

                            ~

The Tiananmen Mothers in China secretly

tally the dead, keep alive the memory

of their murdered children. They whisper

to the journalist, No one asks questions.

We live in a coma, blinded by fear

and new iPods!

                        ~

Mariam in the Afghan refugee camp, widowed, beaten,

teaches the women around her to make clothes,

shakes the journalist by the shoulders, says

You have language, you can write, tell them!

                        ~

Last night in my dream I was speaking and writing

and speaking and writing till my fingers failed

and my tongue hung from the world’s hook

like a dead fish.

 

Author Commentary in book: In matters of gender and race, and all differences, it is important that those who are oppressed have strong allies who will stand side by side with them and, when they cannot speak, who will speak for them. To be the one speaking, as the oppressed, is necessary but insufficient for change to occur in the world. Allies of those oppressed must speak, too, and bear witness. My book The Jeweled Net of Indra attempts to address some of these important interconnections between us all.

THE BORDER CROSSED US Poetry Anthology (Vagabond Press)

With an introduction by Los Angeles Poet Laureate, Luis J. Rodriguez, this anthology by Mark Lipman also includes 2 poems of mine, as well as poems by two other Santa Cruz poets - Adela Najarro & Doren Robbins. It's a diverse and compelling collection:

http://www.vagabondbooks.net/p/blog-page_13.html

You can read my two contributions here:

 

While Listening to Nelson Mandela’s Memorial

At the stop light, I idle

behind a cheery yellow Volkswagen Bug,

two University students inside and

at first I think they, too, are listening,

or singing to the radio’s riotous music,

bouncing in their seats wildly,

hands waving in the air—but then

the passenger’s face turns toward the driver

in rage and he is not singing but yelling,

face distorted like a demon. He spits

at the man, or woman, behind the wheel

who explodes as the car becomes a bizarre

mixed martial arts scene of flying elbows,

fists, saliva. Stunned, I honk loudly,

momentarily interrupt their rave

as the light turns green and the yellow car

speeds ahead. I return to the radio again,

listen to Mandela’s memorial in South Africa,

think of his years in that prison cell,

the violence of it all. Still

how he rose, fitted one bruised arm

then another into the sleeves of

his multi-colored shirts, lifted

a country from its dark trance,

each morning, every midnight,

the yellow sun rising,

the moon rising, disappearing—

how small I feel in the face of it

obsessed with my own grievances.

How I want Nelson to rise from the cold

concrete floor of my amygdala,

lay a hand on this reptile brain

like he must have those long years

when instinctual rage, the logical response,

would only kill you more. So

wherever you are, whoever you are

in that little VW Bug—or Texas,

Moscow, Oval office—

let us take the little fist of the soul,

pry open each finger, the thumb,

wave our hands in the air

like the fools we are,

sing.

 

The Dying Sun Beneath My Ribs

 

I.

 

Reading the news by my window,

the dogs bark and bark, the black olives hang

in their branches like black holes

at the heart of dead suns, and in Colombia

a father of three has sewn shut his mouth,

enclosing his head in an iron mask

to demand the government help his family.

The man says he bought shoes for his children,

but cannot pay the rent—will soon walk the streets.

 

I am doing this because people have a heart of iron

and also a face of iron.

 

Outside my window, small sparrows peck and peck

at one black globe after another.

 

ii.

 

In Colombia the guard-dogs bark and bark

while villagers crush coca leaves that will explode

like white nova suns in the nostrils of Wall Street zealots

who hover like black holes in corporate buildings

sucking the light from our bodies.

There is an evil in this world. There is no

other way to say it. This morning

the dogs of two countries barking as if to warn

I am an iron mask, a face

that does not speak,

skin that does not wound,

the heart a dying sun beneath my ribs.

CHANGING HARM TO HARMONY Anthology

 

Joseph Zaccardi, as Poet Laureate of Marin County in California, edited this anthology of "poem, letters & other writings" entitled CHANGING HARM TO HARMONY - Bullies & Bystanders Project (2015). Included is my poem, THE RODEO:

 

The Rodeo

The Mariposa County Fair is a small affair

tucked into the Sierra Nevada mountains

where my mother lives. This year I take

my young son with his grandma in hand

to gallivant along the crowded paths

past lemonade and popcorn,

ribboned whirly-gigs, festooned baseball caps,

toward the wooden stands of the rodeo.

Metal loudspeakers hung from the rafters

ask us to stand for the pledge of allegiance

as ragged old men with cowboy hats

and cherub-faced little boys with pointy boots

all rise for the blond high school girl singing

as though the Iraq war depends on every note.

After a robust blessing for all the young men

still defending our country in the desert

where the Bible was born,

we settle again on wooden benches

and begin to cheer for the brave cowboys

shot with a Hiyaah! from their chutes

toward the defenseless calves running

wild-eyed toward non-existing cover.

My son sits quiet, till one rambunctious calf

manages to evade the lasso as the horn sounds.

The dusty cowboy curses his failure,

a hundred men sink to their seats—

but my son, enthralled, hops up and down

clapping for the four-legged rebel

snorting his way past the flailing clown

back to his own kind.

Fall 2016 phren-Z Online Literary Journal

I've been a part of Santa Cruz' Emerald Street Writers critique group for about two decades. Every two weeks we meet at someone's house, enjoy a bit of wine and sundries, listen to each other's latest poems - for both enjoyment and refinement. A decade ago we published an anthology, entitled Harvest From The Emerald Orchard, but it's been awhile since our poems were gathered all together. So it was with great pleasure that Jory Post, editor of the phren-Z Online Literary Journal, devoted the Fall 2016 issue to our group. After a robust reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz, the issue is on-line at:

http://phren-z.org/

Ghost Fishing: Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology

The University of Georgia has just published a stunning anthology, entitled GHOST FISHING: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, edited by Melissa Tuckey, with a Foreword by the great poet Camille T. Dungy. There are poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, Joy Harjo, Brenda Hillman, Arthur Sze, Javier Zamora, and many others. I'm honored to have three of my poems included:

 

The Parable of St. Matthew Island

In the Bering Sea, the Coast Guard brought 29 reindeer to the island as back-up food supply for the nineteen soldiers stationed there. After World War II, the base was closed. Thirteen years later, a thousand reindeer fed on the four-inch thick mat of lichen that covered the island, then six thousand a decade later. In just three more years, travelers found only a small herd, not much lichen, and fields of reindeer skeletons. Soon, it was only skeletons.

 

The Dreams of Antelope

In Yosemite, they introduced wolves back into the mountains, which fed again on the antelope, which stopped over-eating the willow trees, so the birds returned to sing and beavers started making dams again from the fallen branches, resurrecting the marshes, and once more everything started turning green because a wild predator was allowed back into the dreams of antelope.

 

A Great Civilization

In the island forests of Bolivia before
any white man found them, the Arawak
cultivated lianas thick as a human arm,
blade-like leaves dangling six feet long
and smooth-boled Brazil nut trees,
the thick-bodied flowers smelling like warm meat.
Earth mounds rose above waters cultivated as canals
for travel between spacious villages framed
by moats and palisades, along which they’d walk
in long cotton tunics, heavy ornaments dangling
from wrists and necks. But in 1927,

anthropologists found their descendents living
in constant hunger, no clothes,
no cows or llamas,
no musical instruments,
no art—except necklaces of animal teeth—
unable to count beyond three, no religion,
no conception of the universe. They

thought they’d stumbled upon a primitive
humankind living in the rawness of nature
for millennia—unaware that when the first
Europeans arrived centuries before, influenza
and smallpox raced ahead, bringing
the Arawak to their knees. And no one

knew, till now: scientists piecing together
records of teeth, shards of pottery,
eco-analysis and voila!
a great mysterious culture heretofore
unknown emerged from the mists
of history. Might we too—

this culture of moon travel,
the great web of internet,
an entire library of world music
in the palm of a hand—one day

be discovered again, as
barefoot entrepreneurs
having lost it all.

 

Here's a link to more information about the anthology: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/events/145014/poetry-off-the-shelf-ghost-fishing-an-anthology-of-eco-justice-poetry

 

Two Stories about my Father in new anthology WHAT REMAINS

There's a new anthology with poignant and unique stories and poems about funerals and end-of-life rituals, entitled What Remains - The Many Ways We Say Goodbye. It includes two short prose pieces about my father's death, and related family rituals.

"The Sound", and "The Molecules of the Dead". The book, edited by Sandi Gelles-Cole & Kenneth Salzmann, can be previewed and ordered here; the two stories can be accessed in the second link:

WHAT REMAINS Anthology

Download The Sound & The Molecules of the Dead

 

New Poems in phren-Z: the Emerald Street Writers

The Emerald Street Writers critique group, which I've belonged to for over 20 years, was just featured on the phren-Z online literary magazine, curated by Santa Cruz' own Jory Post. Several of my new poems, from a new manuscript entitled NINE VOLT NIRVANA, are featured here:

https://phren-z.org/Summer2020/dane_cervine.html

From this website, you can explore all my fellow writers, and, the artwork of Santa Cruz' illustrious Jeanne Sofen.

The curated edition is also forthcoming in hard-copy anthology, entitled Unearthed, available here from Blue Bone Books:

UNEARTHED at Blue Bone Books