T HE C ENACLE / A PRIL - The ElectroLounge

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risk of not risking, until you’ve tried it all & do it all & be it all
you haven’t, & time passes, & you probably won’t, & time is up
& you didn’t, most of us on a deathbed only once, yet most of
us live like our lawless carnal hedonist mad dreams didn’t
exist, most of us behave without prompting, cower while not
compelled, will settle for whatever pathetic little we are given,
adjust our internal mathematics lower & lower, our breeze a
hurricane, our Malden an Emerald City, our deepest desires TV
dinner on the couch—
On the credits page is now included mention of all other Scriptor
Press projects: Electrolounge, RaiBooks, Scriptor Press Sampler,
“Within’s Within,” & of course the Jellicle Guild.
The many Seattle poems Ric Amante has been writing he culled
& reworked & Barbara illustrated them & the resulting piece was
called “Ferry Tales.” A piece of artwork by a person named Harold
Cunniff appeared. He’d seen SPS 1999 #1 at one of its distribution
points in Boston & submitted to it not ever having seen The Cenacle!
Mark Shorette’s story “Wherefore” marked his first fiction in The
Cenacle since 1995:
Incantation of the eyes.
Behold, behold, the shining retinas which merge dualities
into singleness
singleness which transcends the two from
which it was
whelped
for singleness is the birth of the hound of
heaven
behold in shining sleekness as she courses
about the
perimeter of time
young eyes behold always
old eyes behold, as death approaches
between, the gaze is broken, but by a few,
selected, chosen
by the handsome courser as she goes along, chasing the
deceitful prey.
How glorious in pursuit is she!
Ciccone’s contribution is a 4-page poem called “Merwin” dedicated to
his poetic mentor:
But for today, unmet friend,
all there is through the lens of this window are the same
stone towers, the highway with its tumbling whir
unending, beside the tracks that give way at times to the
windless train bearing off its dead, the puff of birds with their
The Cenacle / 50 / December 2003