The Cenacle | 103 | April 2018 | 23rd Anniversary Issue *Just Released*

[Cenacle]

The Cenacle | 103 | April 2018 | 23st Anniversary Issue
Reading link: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/103.html
Download link: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/103_april_2018.pdf
[Size = 14.1 MB]

Hello everyone,

Here comes the just-released Cenacle | 103 | April 2018. The Cenacle is the 23rd anniversary issue, in color as they are, & contains so much great work Kassi & I are proud to publish. The new issue’s contents include:

From Soulard’s Notebooks:
[Sample]
I wonder: what aches & which joys in our hearts strengthen us for the new steps we take with each new day, point us more clearly toward the new roads we’d like to think are still waiting for us to find & try?

Feedback on Cenacle 102
[Sample] I am struck by the amazing, beautiful work in this issue. The poets, the storytellers—all of it is a lightning bolt of fine work, of strength, of tenderness. [Martina Newberry]

Poetry by Jack Heitner:
[Sample]
Up the whale summit now
Always guided by the peak
Always finding firmer holds
We sometimes are the love we seek.

Travel Journal by Nathan D. Horowitz:
[Sample] “In that book,” I said, indicating El bebedor de yajé / Raíz de medicina on top of my stepdad’s 40-year-old olive-green army duffel bag, “there’s, like, one-upmanship among shamans. The question comes up, ‘Who has really seen God?’ Francisco says, ‘I went higher than any of those people around here who take themselves for witches. They thought they saw God, but what they really saw was the shining of God’s furniture!’ Then the Evangelical missionaries from the United States came. Francisco says, ‘I never argued about God with them. How could I? They’d never even seen God! They’d only read about him!’”

Notes from New England by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Sample] Anyway, it’s kind of like I never wanted to buy new clothes anyway. So you could say I got what I deserved that day when I walked into the clothing store, & it got held up by these strange robbers you couldn’t possibly imagine. One was very short with a long coat covered in epaulets, handlebar mustache, some kind of pirate’s hat, & the other one was even stranger, even shorter, she looked like a tiny little black and white pandy bear—

Poetry by Gregory Kelly:
[Sample]
two crows in flight
until the balls of
string have unraveled
and we have tied
the two expanses
together again.

Sapphire Sins [Travel Journal] by Charlie Beyer:
[Sample] It’s kind of an Amazon trek down the mile hill with the loads. All that’s missing is the screaming monkeys. We are all drenched in sweat. Evan goes ahead again with his 120 pounds and the saw. We hear lots of intense sawing below as we work our loads down, foot by foot. Must be one fuck of a logjam down there. It’s sawed out by the time we get there. A dozen trees about a foot in diameter, tied in as much of a knot as they could possibly get. Evan has sawed a 6-foot-wide trench in the tangle, which is 8 feet high on either side.

Poetry by Ace Boggess:
[Sample]
I wish I could possess you
like a firefly
in the gentle prison
of my hands

Same Moon Shining [Memoir Excerpts] by Tamara Miles:
[Sample] Another time I told my pediatrician that my Daddy needed a shot in the butt. I had fainting spells starting at about age two. There was an electroencephalogram, a diagnosis of petit mal epilepsy, and a prescription for phenobarbital. I took it until I was eleven and my EEG was normal. I read once that phenobarbital, long term use, can lower the I.Q. I started first grade when I was five, and could read just about anything by second grade. Later on in my life, when I was about 25, a psychiatrist told me that I probably never had petit mal epilepsy or any kind of brain abnormality beyond that induced by emotional trauma.

Poetry by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Sample]
Not morass or pattern but a kind
of willful suffering, explained
at length, justified in blood,
molded into life as a passage
through a test to somewhere
finer, not built by men; a somewhere
else where a cosmic paternal hand
could solely wield justice &
reward; or a cycle of simply being
alive & mortal could be broken;
or a box in the ground, & a cease
to all the unanswered questions.

Notes on Cultural Evolution by Jimmy Heffernan:
[Sample] Our ideologies and institutions can be quite stifling, and often constitute almost total malfunction, and this, coupled with a sedentism that goes wholly against our heritage of roughly 200,000 years, has led to a break with the genetic necessities specific to our species. This leads to a marked loneliness that, while not often talked about, is a symptom of a cultural bankruptcy and lack of sufficiency to provide for all members of the community of life which, until very recently in geological/evolutionary time, was being done more or less because of necessity, which preserved diversity, and which of course is a fundamental attribute of a healthy ecosystem.

Poetry by Colin James:
[Sample]
The claw marks on the door
attempts of an Oedipus fatalist
to check off the right box.

Bags End Book #9: Edgar B. Bear Visits Bags End!:
[Sample] Your old pal Algernon believes the best way to trod through this strange world is to put mah Beagleboy reporter’s fedora on straight, watch out for big guys with crazy dangerous confusing plans, & keep mah paws clumping steadily 4orward. I like mah share of hugs & kisses & smiles from nice guys like Miss Chris & Princess Chrisakah & the Blondys 3, who all believe that kindness is the best payment, not part of some tricksy plan.

Poetry by Joe Ciccone:
[Sample]
Let me guess you work in a room
without chairs
your attachments only
to air and emoji
beyond yourself you are aware of
nothing just your
own rituals like a child
often on a bike
and in the way you travel everywhere
but see nothing

Howl by Allen Ginsberg:
[Sample]
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night

Hartley’s Righteous Rants by David Hartley:
[Sample]
R.S. – Did you have any enemies?
D.H. - I only had one enemy: the government minions, troopers, bureaucrats, and politicians. It was not out of ideological distain, or some love of anarchy. It was simply because of the criminal immoral unforgivable evil acts they did. My disgust has only intensified. Truth be told, I think a man is shaped more by his enemies than his allies. Unfortunate reality. Mobs of Stupid Evil People with Power are what I’m talking about.

Poetry by Judih Haggai:
[Sample]
in the distance
one more phenomenon
beyond my control

“Now I know why fairy tales are full of jewels”: 1955 LSD Trip Diary by Anaïs Nin
[Sample] I had just read Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, but it did not impress me as much as Gil Henderson’s talk about the visionary effects of LSD. He had participated in an experiment by Dr. Oscar Janiger. He painted an American Indian doll before taking LSD and then again after the ingestion of the drug, and the difference between them was astonishing. The first version was rigid and photographic. The second impressionistic, emotional. Gil asked me if I wanted to participate in an experiment because Dr. Janiger was hoping a writer would be more articulate about the experience. There were to be two other subjects there, a biologist from UCLA and another painter. Gil would be my sober pilot, that is, a person who has taken LSD and now stands by to help one and guide one if necessary.

Poetry by Tom Sheehan:
[Sample]
It is always nearly Saugus
No matter where I am,
Coming from anyplace, going to,
Sure as snow or crocus after,
Or the clock turning on,
Sure as clam flats on air,
And kelp bubbles breaking down,
Under confection of dry salt,
And the river knowing its wares,
Through nine-foot cat-o-nines
Standing ripe as fire arrows.

Poetry by Martina Newberry:
[Sample]
The light is escaping the sky. I’ve rifled
through my lingerie drawer more times than I can
count, searching . . . Where is the “I” who cleaned the house,
drove for errands, offered gourmet meals, made love
like a young man’s myth?

Labyrinthine [a new fixtion] by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Sample] I push aside my armchair, & I pull open the trapdoor which leads to the Column below, this time climbing down it, not up, the Beacon now in a shoulder bag I bear along, climb down stair after stair, until I come upon a strange glowing green & gold door, of course, & push in, & tis dark, & low, & I crawl & crawl, a long way in the dark, crawl & crawl, & then suddenly emerge from what looks like a cave mouth, the sounds of laughter & festivaling is nearby, easy to follow until I arrive to the elongated Great Clearing where the Thought Fleas & many others are gathered as part of their weekly Production, & also of course the Rutabaga Festival & Fleastock is going on, where the great Kettle of Rutabaga Soup is free for all, bowls & spoons a-plenty, two ladles for use,

Post comments to this thread or reply to me directly & off-thread at editor@scriptorpress.com

Peace,
Raymond

[judih]

your sample certainly is tempting.
will click to see the colourful side of the anniversary issue.
thanks, Ray

[Cenacle]

Thanks, Jude. Having your work in The Cenacle is part of the deep pleasure of publishing it