RMR2, ROUGH BEAST, SLOUCHES TOWARD BETHLEHEM

We are still here.

The media empire that is RMR continues its inexorable pursuit of total market dominence. Today, central Alabama. Tomorrow the world!

Lots going on in the last two months:

RMR2 is back from the printer and ready for purchase! New work from Joan Connor, Rane Arroyo, Diane Glancy, Jim Daniels, Janet McCann, and lots of others, "emerging and established," as the saying goes.

Just send us a check or money order for $6 to RMR/ASFA Foundation, 1800 8th Ave N, Bham, AL 35203. Or better yet, buy us right here on-line (see above and to the right)!

Poet Jim Murphy has agreed to come aboard as Poetry Co-Editor, joining the inimitable Mary Kaiser. This stokes us.

Last but not least, we've completed a deal with absnth.com to produce a stand-alone limited edition version of our chapbook each year! That means you can get Lou Suarez's On U.S. 6 to Providence (see above left) all by its lonesome for just $4. Buy it here on-line today! Here's a little teaser...titular, no less!


On U.S. 6 to Providence

Today I am lonely. It is not
the loneliness of a city without a river,
the waters on which the new ducks
enter, stay, then leave, on which
boys skip rocks and into which
girls wade knee-deep. Nor is it
the loneliness of the Confederate soldier,
so statuesque in the town square.
The pigeons at least flock to him
or splotch his head and shoes with white
that becomes black and hardens in sun.
And it is surely not the loneliness
of the bare tree in a field. No, not like that,
and not the tire in a roadside ditch,
not the fire escape
behind a school, the school itself.

I have never studied loneliness,
do not know how it resembles, say, love
or glory, nor how it differs from solitude, thirst.
I know this much: each has its own
rhythms that, when played together, make
a syncopated music I hear
in a part of my brain not meant for hearing.
I hear it in human breathing, hear it
in the truck driver's voice and hunch,
the bed wetter's, the asthmatic's....


Want the rest of the poem--and sixteen others as contemplative and wise? Buy it here! Now!