New Additions, plus Recent Readings, etcetera

Spinozablue welcomes poetry, art, and short fiction by J.I. Kleinberg, Lorette C. Luzajic, Bart Edelman, Roberta Beach Jacobson, Dan Raphael, Barbara Anna Gaiardoni, Howie Good, and Duane Anderson.

It’s been hectic here as of late, so will just mention a few recent books I enjoyed, and will leave it to other reviewers to go far more in depth about each.

First, for those who liked the movie Oppenheimer, Benjamin Labatut’s The Maniac is a must read. As he did with his amazingly good When we Cease to Understand the World, Labatut merges fact and a bit of speculative fiction to recreate scientific lives, their context, and impact on the history of ideas.

Two Poems by Duane Anderson

In the Eyes of a Shadow

Wherever you go, I tag along,
following you around like a stalker,
though at times, I am invisible
when the sun is out of view,
the streetlights are not active,
the lights in the house are turned off,
all taking a break for the duration,
and me, holding my breath,
but as soon as one comes back to life,
I am out at it again.

Sometimes, I lead the way,
and other times I trail behind,
forever attached, though I will not hurt you.
I am a gigantic Hulk the closer
I am to the source that attracts me,
then shrink as you distance yourself from it.

Haiga Poetry by Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

Haiga Poem, Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

 

Haiga (俳画, haikai drawing) is a style of Japanese painting. Haiga are typically painted by haiku poets (haijin), and often accompanied by a haiku or senryu poem. Like the poetic form it accompanied, haiga was based on simple, yet often profound, observations of the everyday world. My haiga is a contemporary haiga. In particular, this poem is a senryu with portraits of artists and other figures in a relatively quick, loose style which looks somewhat cartoonish.


Copyright© 2024, by Barbara Anna Gaiardoni. All Rights Reserved.

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni received two nominations for the Touchstone Award 2023.

Poetry by Dan Raphael

Meal Plan

Eating only goes so far
at a time
without the seasoning of appetite
no choice, the table’s set

The meals come in weekly cartons
but I shuffle the deck—
a day of three breakfasts
a week without fish

This anonymous cow,
wheat from three neighboring states
something on this plate was barged
something was grown without soil or celestial light

Would this taste different in a glass house, in a cave
if I still had dirt on my hands
from capturing this potato

Predicting what’s in the box of tonight
unfolds into a scenario, someone knocking on the door
bringing their own unspoken menu

When the internet’s down & recipes inaccessible
who needs fire, silverware, or a table
I listen for movement in the box before I open it

 

—by Dan Raphael


Copyright ©2024, by Dan Raphael.

New Poetry by Salvatore Difalco

Christmas In July

 

The reward of water—it has no shape.
A rainbow in the hand is a fish.

Slime is paradoxical.
The hand immersed in slime beckons.

What cannot happen
enters the water and passes time.

A nearby fit
lifts your head above the fog.

This is your world,
for now this is your world.

Shout, look down,
hooks pierce your bones.

You lose shape quickly
in the cyclone of your mind.

Remember the cool wind
whistling through crosshatched branches.

Fireflies, Christmas in July,
and the iron taste of broken lips.

Don’t bite your tongue,
you can rest on the big red rock.

Performance Art, by Roberta Beach Jacobson

Finally I was down to my last abstract. Once it sold, I’d be finished cleaning out my spare bedroom. For my other paintings I’d asked $60 apiece. The last one standing, one of my earlier works, was nothing more than eclectic yellow and blue blobs. I glanced at my watch. I’d gladly accept $40 for the piece just to put this suburban flea market experience behind me.

A guy approached my table without greeting me. He began, “Ah. Birds, birds in the Anthropocene. Yes! I adore it.” As he waved his wallet wildly, he squinted at the canvas. “Are the birds dancing?”

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer

It is, generally speaking, difficult to film the process of thinking. When thoughts are directly connected to matters of life and death, and, potentially, the life and death of worlds, quieter moments to read and reflect tend to be more effective vehicles for understanding, especially when we’re dealing with complex fields of inquiry like the sciences. To keep film-goers entranced, however, in our age of rapidly dwindling attention spans, we need our bombs, car chases, dramatic affairs, betrayals, revenge cycles, and so on. Philosophical journeys, within the isolated caves of our many selves, even angst-driven, profound explorations of what it means to be a human animal in this world, typically don’t survive modern film, with exceptions.

Lorette C. Luzajic: The Place Behind the Orchard

The Place Behind the Orchard

Inspired by Mourning Picture, a painting by Edwin Romanzo Elmer (USA) 1870.

Mourning Picture, by Edwin Romanzo Elmer. Oil on Canvas. 1890.

On an afternoon of clean cashmere clouds and heavy with apples, a girl with a lamb came in from the orchards and plunked herself beside me. She was spilling with stories about meadows and rivers and a clapboard house. She had a doll named Agatha, in a red and yellow buggy, and a pet chicken, but she’d lost them along the way.

Along the way where? I asked her.

To here, she said.

Celine Song’s Past Lives

In Celine Song’s beautifully understated debut film, 12 and 3 stand out as key numbers and portents of fate for three intimately connected lives.

Scene 1: Present day in a New York bar. Three people sit and talk. We can’t hear what they say, just narrated guesses by an off-stage chorus of two, observing them, intrigued by the sight. Like games we may have played when young, watching others on the street, in a bus, in a store, attaching this or that life-story to people we will never know. An echo of us, perhaps, the film’s audience, watching them from a great deal further away.

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