The Cenacle | 119 | April 2022 | 27th Anniversary Issue *Just Released*

[Cenacle]

[/i]The Cenacle | 119 | April 2022 | 27th Anniversary Issue!

Reading link: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/119
Download link: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/119_april_2022.pdf
[Size = 10.3 MB]

Hello everyone,

Here comes the just-released Cenacle | 119 | April 2022! Our 27th anniversary issue! Wow!

This issue features wonderful contemporary poetry by Tamara Miles, Martina Newberry, Judih Haggai, Jo Monea, Colin James, Tom Sheehan, & myself.

Also great prose pieces by Ace Boggess, Jimmy Heffernan, Sam Knot, Timothy Vilgiate, Nathan D. Horowitz, Kenzie Oliver, Charlie Beyer, & myself.

There is also much fine graphic artwork by Kassandra Soulard, Sam Knot, Tamara Miles, Jo Monea, Nathan D. Horowitz, Timothy Vilgiate, Judih Weinstein Haggai, AbandonView, & Michael Couvaras. Plus our excellent newcomers, Epi Rogan & Louis Staeble!

Contents of this new issue include:

From Soulard’s Notebooks:
[Excerpt]
It’s not over yet, my friends. Neither Dr. Anthony Fauci nor Presiden Biden nor any world leader or credible scientist is claiming so. Stay careful, my friends. Stay alive.

Feedback on Cenacle 118:
[Excerpt]
Martina Newberry’s poem “The Odor of Never Ending Pretence” really grabbed me, by force at first, but somehow she managed to turn it into a hug, which I am grateful for. (Sam Knot)

From the ElectroLounge Forums:
Dialogue Between Martina Newberry & Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Excerpt]
When we were done with tea, she took me to her back yard, and we picked some apricots and pomegranates and a bowl of string beans to take home—along with a jar of homemade jam—to my mother. She had me come visit many times after that. (Martina Newberry)

Notes from New England: Dream Raps, Volume Eleven
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Excerpt]
I look through my notebooks thoroughly. I want to prepare to arrive at the Great Liberry. One does not show up half-intentioned, as it will affect what you find. You see, when this roofless bus gets me there, when I arrive to the Great Liberry, I am going to do some of the deepest researches I’ve ever done, into the Dreaming. For I’ve learned, in one way & another, that there are Sleepers who travel the Dreaming, trying to cause change with good ripples forward. They find it harder to change things the farther back they go, because history weights heavy upon any ripple.

The God-Maker (Fiction) by Ace Boggess:
[Excerpt]
That first meeting, I said nothing. I didn’t so much as mutter my name when the chairman asked if there were any new members. Instead, I sat there with my head down, like a schoolboy stuck in the corner for spitballs and backtalk. I’m not sure I listened at all that day, and I can’t say for sure if the mud queen ever entered the room. The alligator made its appearance, however. I spotted it beside me out of the corner of my eye. Different arms held it: a man’s hairy, muscular arms. I thought little about it at the time. I sat dumbly through the meeting, then stood up and skipped out before the closing prayer. I moved so quickly I forgot to get my paper signed for the judge.

Poetry by Tamara Miles:
[Excerpt]
Remove your poet’s hat.
There are no days off for fevers—
take firm the better term, clean feverishly.

Dialogue on the Eternal Now by Jimmy Heffernan:
[Excerpt]
I often wonder about the talk I hear these days regarding living in the present moment, the so-called “eternal now.” I see this idea as a kind of paradoxical misnomer. If one has left the clutches of the dimension of time—however fleetingly—then a concept like the “eternal now” has no meaning. There are no moments. It is not “now.” It is forever.

Mabon Calling (Fiction) by Sam Knot:
[Excerpt]
I pass by the tree shrine, somewhat mystified to see the lady in the tree is not the young beauty I had imagined myself to have encountered, though I can see how I might have thought her so. I can still see her youth, but she has been weathered too. Perhaps human hands have even exaggerated the process here and there, loosened her breasts, heightened certain skin folds to bring on wrinkles in her face. She remains just as beautiful, I think, perhaps even more so. I enjoy how I seem to have known her in different times. She wears her different ages like rings around her, a parboiled white onion of revelation.

Poetry by Martina Newberry:
[Excerpt]
Do you know: I never saw my body
in the same way after I submitted it to you?
Scars became stars.
Bruises became Fauvist paintings.

Many Musics (Poetry) by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Excerpt]
Mentor shows us how entry. Pauses, then runs hard
at the left-hand window, leaps at it,
leaning hard forward, arms raised wide.
The top of the window falls in just enough
for his weight to carry him on through, tumble
him over before the window moans heavily
back into place, as though never moved.

Rivers of the Mind (A Novel) by Timothy Vilgiate:
[Excerpt]
And now there was something else, something else I didn’t know how to even talk about. It had happened right after the explosion. Everyone’s kids froze still. Suddenly, I couldn’t move. I saw this old man. He looked like a walking corpse, and he was dragging a fishing pole across the field. And, behind him, there was this roar. This awful roar. Everything went black. I had this terrible feeling that I was dead. That everyone was dead. I only remembered flickers of it.

Back in San Pablo (Travel Journal) by Nathan D. Horowitz:
[Excerpt]
Never nail a well-graduated healer into a coffin. That would injure him and prevent him from rising. You can do that with people who didn’t drink yagé, who didn’t see the celestial beings, who lived without knowledge. When they die, people like that exit the grave in spirit without body and go to the place called Tiuntupe, also called Ocotupe. Five or ten days later, they go back to the grave and they make noise. People who live nearby can hear screams, footsteps, and more, and they get frightened. Those souls went back to the grave because they didn’t go to heaven. They transform into evil spirits and are dangerous to the living, sometimes killing them with evil traps.

Poetry by Judih Weinstein Haggai:
[Excerpt]
Before each step, discovery.
After each step, gratitude.
Before I see, epiphany.
Having seen, humility.

I wait, weightless.
I sing, voiceless.
I’m free to slip away.

Secret Joy Amongst These Times: The History of Scriptor Press, 1995 to the Present
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Excerpt]
Dr. Leary walked the honest walk in believing that psychedelics could heal & change the world. He eventually went to prison for these beliefs. Like Obama, his legacy is that of a good, brave hero.

Dock Jumping (Prose) by Kenzie Oliver:
[Excerpt]
Despite my warning, if you do decide to jump off the dock when it’s cold, no problem. There in the waiting room is a nice bench and a furnace. While you warm up and drip off it will start to smell like a sauna. It’s due to the heady combination of seawater mixed with all the Maine-grown pine benches and walls.

Poetry by Jo Monea:
[Excerpt]
until the day of the last fruit
with no seed of potential
the sweetest fruit
a credential
bare as bones on the inside
a blinding white so crisp, it’s every color

Bags End Book #20: Go Into the Sea! Part 1 by Algernon Beagle:
[Excerpt]
Alex said that many languages filled the world, & turned people-folks into kind of teams against each other. Made them feel they were different than each other because their languages were different. This hurt them down deep, & they hurt the world too.

Poetry by Colin James:
[Excerpt]
Comments like: “When are you
going to repair your philosophical
floor?” I am infinitely able to deal with.

The Story of Sindbad the Sailor from The Arabian Nights (Classic Fiction):
[Excerpt]
There lived in Baghdad, in the time of the Commander of the Faithful, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, a man called Sindbad the Porter, who was poor, and who carried loads on his head for hire. One day, he was carrying a heavy load and, as it was very hot, he became weary and began to perspire under the burden and the intense heat. Soon he came to the door of a merchant’s house, before which the ground was swept and watered, and the air was cool and, as there was a wide bench beside the door, he set his load on the bench to rest and take a breath.

Kaspar Hauser and the Chicken (Prose) by Charlie Beyer:
[Excerpt]
What I knew of chickens came in a paper bucket with a picture of the Colonel on it. There were not many chicken farmers in the hood. In fact, none. Weed farmers, pit bull farmers, gun sellers, but no chicken farmers. The Yellow Pages (an ancient printed version of the Internet) has a poultry factory listed in what seems to be near downtown. There I go.

Poetry by Tom Sheehan:
[Excerpt]
Curry a new poem
with a wire brush

toss vanity aside
when you dare to

Labyrinthine [a new fixtion] by Raymond Soulard, Jr.:
[Excerpt]
“And, tis said, at the very center of these, far away & deep in outer space, a Carnival of Creatures, guised like stars, dances eternity away, & with any lucky enough to visit!” He smiled ’pon Asoyadonna merry & mischievous. She’d learned many of his stories were true by their own strange reck.

Respond with your feedback here—or by email at editor@scriptorpress.com

Peace,
Raymond

[judih]

more than good! Wow, Ray! and 27 years of the Cenacle! Congratulations.