Table Of Contents al-Shaitan – Shaun Al-Shatti .............................................17-20 Images of summer: “Spectrum,” “Exhaustion,” “Garden,” *** “Dust Storm” and “Garden” – Renee Bau .....................44-48 Fiction Beading in school – Lana May .........................................73-74 Binoculars – Ruth R. Davis ...............................................15-16 High Rollers, Firefl y – E.A. Cervino ................................38-43 Happenings Carson Springer – Dan Romero .......................................59-72 Snapshots from Spring Festival April 18, 2010 .............31-34 Call to writers and artists ....................................................75 *** Nonfi ction A thank-you to friends, contributors, supporters ..............16 Southern Discomfort – Marcia Gold ...................................... 7 All about The Arizona Consortium for the Arts ................51 Signs – Allison Alexandra ......................................................8-9 The Mountain: The lessons I learned on Wayna Picchu – Lindsay Norman ...................................................................... 49 Healed by the Beat of the Drum – April Stolarz ............50-51 Editor’s Note Welcome to the inaugural summer edition of The Blue Guitar! Poetry This edition represents so many Grove, The Room, Summer Glimpses – Jeannine Savard ... 3 fi rsts for us — our fi rst summer Impasse, Jeans, My Mother’s Hands, Stray Cat, Stone – issue — stemming from the need to Ellen Sullins ............................................................................4-5 showcase so many great submissions Rebecca Voices, Kauai Shade, August After Dark, Clouds and Music that came to us for spring, so many “Becca” Dyer – Cathy Capozzoli ..................................................................... 6 that our cup literally ranneth over. Absence-Seeing What’s There and What’s Missing; Also, after featuring in our fi rst Swinging Gate; Maybe No One Taught Them; Rite of three issues the work of the winning artist in our cover Passage; Mums, design contest, as well as the work of the two runners- Then Geraniums, Then Poppies; Become a Crane; One up, for the fi rst time we have opened up the magazine Wire Away to juried art — for this issue, the works refl ect the From Dead Silence; Time Lines – Lauren Dixon ...........21-24 theme “Images of Summer.” Before My Eyes, South Out Of Silver, As Mental As The Distinctive writers, poets and artists — all Arizona Gods, Dearer To Me And More, Susan In Tucson – Michael Gregory ...............................................................................25-28 residents — have contributed to our fi rst summer issue. Patience will provide, Painful confession, Timeless Vow, Wisdom – Tim Kelly ..........................................................35-36 At a time when our society’s one-size-fi ts-all mentality threatens to overwhelm, our individual Forgotten Things, Sweeping – Rebecca Patchell ................ 37 voices struggle to be heard. We at The Blue Guitar into the lizard’s eyes – Lilvia Soto ..................................52-54 magazine remain dedicated to these unique voices Thirst, Moment to Moment, De Trivia, Sanctuary, Carpet and are committed to bringing to you our readers their Cleaner – Richard Fenton Sederstrom ..............................55-58 unique refl ections of the human heart. As always, thank you for submitting and thank you Art for reading! Images of summer: “Desert,” “Bakersfi eld,” “Berkeley,” Editorial Staff “The Nude Taco,” and “Pinacate”– Charles Harker .....10-14 Editor in chief: Rebecca Dyer Publisher: Elena Thornton Images of summer: “Bikini Top” and “Hotel Del” – Denise Production Editor: Richard H. Dyer Jr. Landis .................................................................................29-30 Artwork for front, back covers: Marjory Boyer The Blue Guitar arts and literary magazine is a project of The Arizona Consortium for the Arts www.TheBlueGuitarMagazine.org Summer 2010 2 Three Poems By Jeannine Savard Grove Summer Glimpses © 2010 © 2010 I decide to walk deep In the swimming pool into the woods. A bird knocks a cricket fl oats on its back; as light ascends my spine. the lawn mower groans off. Words drop-off like leaves. Red pine needles shed from old growth Some weird bugs invade catch inside my sandal. I slip the vegetable garden— closer to brook’s edge, a whole drawer of dirt, lunch: leftover squash. dead letters—sliding away. Chasing its own tail Zooms and glisks the cat spins grey-white taffy— a dragonfl y queries by humming. stretches afterward. Double-winged, it draws a lucent ring of heat around my head, lowers itself, Ripe olives roll down pulls back, pulls in: brow to brow— the drive, band of squeaky pearls one throb. One listening. cars crush entirely. A Woodpecker fl ies The Room straight for the hole in the palm— © 2010 Crow, fi t-to-be-tied. One I haven’t seen before fl ashes between the mailbox and the pygmy willow Desert Marigolds loaded with its red and white cones. knock heads with wrinkled lizards— mod wizards look spiff. It is a tangle of leaf shadow, cubes of grass and weeds Snake skin cellophane catching a neighbor’s jazz on the fl y. shed over blue granite deck— Man-friend, nine months gone. Breakfast there is amber accented. I might be a guest. Sugared strawberries, I might be a painter, an Agnes or a Georgia, clouds hang low at the horse track— holding open a drawer with linen-wrapped brushes. Rose wins by a nose. If I hesitate much longer, Turtles mount on logs, the diminishing light won’t let me enter. Totems, green and bean-yellow— I also have bones and colored minerals to carry. Count: two three zero. The eggs can wait. Jeannine Savard is an Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University and teaches poetry workshops at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Her new volume of poems, entitled “Accounted For,” will be published by Red Hen Press in Spring 2011. Contact Jeannine at [email protected]. www.TheBlueGuitarMagazine.org Summer 2010 3 Five Poems By Ellen Sullins Impasse Jeans © 2010 © 2010 Bedroom door ajar. blue jeans new jeans Gray cat stands looking out at everything i do jeans tortoise shell cat looking in. tight jeans Avoiding eyes, each pretends right jeans not to want to be isn’t that a sight jeans! where the other one is. worn jeans torn jeans Tortoise shell sits down. Mulls feelin so forlorn jeans memories of fi ne Egyptian mice. bleached jeans Gray assumes Chinese Cat Contemplating Bug streaked jeans pose. runnin on the beach jeans blue jeans Years from now, in this very spot true jeans there could be two perfect skeletons. livin like i do jeans One looking out, one looking in. My Mother’s Hands © 2010 Thinned skin wrinkles blue veiny maps brown marks the spot boney structure knuckles starting to knob nails growing ridges all this sprouting from my own startled wrists. Ellen Sullins lives in Tucson with her husband and their two cats. She is the author of “Elsewhere,” winner of the 2007 Plan B Press Chapbook contest, and is a recipient of The New Millennium Writings Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in South Carolina Review, Nimrod International, descant, Calyx, and Concho River Review, among others. She can be reached at [email protected]. www.TheBlueGuitarMagazine.org Summer 2010 4 Stray Cat Stone © 2010 © 2010 after Bishop I am no pawn of time and water and wind, as most Would have you believe - those who scurry like mice, I found a stray cat napping Too busy or scared to comprehend my powers. amid morning papers For I am the most patient seductress and time my closest ally. forgotten on the porch swing. Moving to shoo her away I spent millennia courting the wind, training the nuance I noticed her bag-lady mittens, Of his touch, whispering how to caress my curves just so, gray with white tips poking through Until my form was pleasing to me. Then I grew bored with one claw extended, And sent him on his way. Perhaps you heard his lament in the pines. peeling a translucent layer like mica. Her fox face lay at an angle But now the river has risen, drawn close by my throaty hum, on forelegs she hadn’t cleaned. And he will spend the next eon enthralled with me, Her nose a nub of charcoal eraser, Probing each cleft and crevice that summons, pounding and whiskers grew New hollows where I choose to yield, until my shape like fi lament quills on each side of that nose. Is pleasing to me, or I grow bored and direct my song Around her eyes were rings To the human world for a quick tryst with one of paler gray as if she’d worn glasses Who will think it is he who coaxes belly and breasts to work all day in the sun. From the blueprint I reveal as it pleases me. Then she opened those eyes: orbs clear as new glass, That paramour will vanish, as a raindrop into the sea, pupils quite round in the shade, But my sculpted form will survive long after I tumble irises the green of sea glass - From the pedestal, bored, and beckon old lovers again milky and worn. They noted me – the water, the wind, and sweet persuasive time. then fell closed again, though her left ear twitched sideways and the terminal inch of her tail fl icked twice before she laid it along her back leg where the hip’s tender curve exposed her undercoat, like a slip grown pale in the wash. And the fur on her side was the gray of a lake at moonrise, the swells of her breath made ripples of pewter, pearl, graphite, ash. Then she sighed, perhaps dreaming of birds or mice that got away, litters she’d nursed, dogs outrun. And I drew back my hand and left her to fi nd some rest. www.TheBlueGuitarMagazine.org Summer 2010 5 Four Poems by Cathy Capozzoli These are from a series of Ghazals I’m working on. Ghazals are 8-line poems following a tradition begun in ancient Persia. — Cathy Capozzoli Voices August After Dark © 2010 © 2010 What is lost between packing for travel to a hot place Today’s sun has fi lled the air with unburnt sage.