Season of THE FLEA

You've got to pick up every stitch,
The rabbit’s running in the ditch,
Beatniks are out to make it rich,
Oh no! Must be the Season of the Witch...

http://www.the-flea.com

Thomas Zimmerman, Marly Youmans, Gail White, Timothy Murphy, Rick Mullin, David W. Landrum, Rose Kelleher, Clive James, Jan Iwaszkiewicz, Midge Goldberg, Richard Epstein, Ann Drysdale, Kevin Cutrer, Norman Ball, Gene Auprey, Mark Allinson, Mary Alexandra Agner.

Who decides which poets editors may publish?

I am the founding editor of Shit Creek Review, The Chimaera and The Flea, three poetry venues which between them have published nearly one thousand high-quality, mostly formalist poems as well as short stories, reviews, essays and poetry features. I have had no option but to resign from the Eratosphere poetry forum because of the activities there of a particular group of members who have consistently and forcefully attempted to dictate who I may or may not publish in my poetry magazines. More details on the Caratacus blog.

I left my brain at Shit Creek.

Now that I'm on board the Shit Creek canoe (and wielding a paddle... mostly on Nigel... he's incorrigible) Paul thinks I should post to the SCR blog. So here I am. Too bad I have nothing to say.

Ever since I came on board I've been teaching myself PHP and the ins and outs of Wordpress. Not that I need to do much for SCR, with the brilliant Peter Bloxsom working quietly behind the scenes. But it's a compulsion. The left side of my brain wants - no, needs - to be creative, in its sharp, clean, linear way. It knows poets don't think much of it, and it doesn't care; it's not very social. It's a nerd, but that can be a good thing. Old Lefty has integrity. It has principles, it has rigor. It also has its own sense of beauty, its own deep yearnings - O, when a piece of code works perfectly! When is a poem ever perfect? So sneer if you want to, murky-minded poets. Lefty loves the symmetry of curly braces, the humility of tags that are never greater-than they are less-than, the democratic nature of one foreach. It's a poet of the people, it sings as it works.

At the round earth's imagin'd corners

     .....blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go...

Yes, me friend,
We deh a street again.
Yes, me friend, me good friend,
Dem say we free again.

The bars could not hold me;
Force could not control me now.
They try to keep me down,
But Jah put I around. Yeah!

Yes, I've been accused many a times
And wrongly abused, now.
Oh, but through the powers of the Most-High,
They've got to turn me loose.
Don't try to hold me up on this
bridge, now.
I've got to reach Mount Zion -
The highest region.
So if you a bull-bucka,
Let me tell you this -
I'm a duppy conqueror - conqueror.

Yes, me friend, me good friend,
We deh a street again.
Yes, me friend, me good friend,
Dem say we free again.

So don't try to cold me up
on this bridge, now.
I've got to reach Mount Zion -
The highest region.
So if you a bull-bucka,
Let me tell you this:
I'm a duppy conqueror - conqueror.

Yes, me friend,
Dem say we free again.
Yes, me friend,
Dem set we free again.
Yes, me friend, me good
friend...


Check out Caratacus' Blog  http://caratacus.blogspot.com/

Skirmishes in the hedgerows. Smite the Evildoers; bring on Armageddon

And She said...



Send us you Wars, all kinds...in art and poems... for the next issue...coming soon.

Caratacus Rides Again!

My Domus Carataci personal blog on JournalSpace with years of posts was destroyed when JournalSpace's server crashed in 2007. Since then I haven't run a personal blog, channeling most of my energies into Shit Creek Review, The Chimaera and THE FLEA and their respective blogs. But some material fits better onto a personal blog than onto the more formal context of a literary magazine's blog; with that in mind I have revived Domus Carataci, now on Blogspot, and renamed it I, Caratacus. I will update it from time to time, whenever Bloggina, the Muse of Bloggers, inspires me.

Pushcart and Dzanc Books Best of Web Nominations

SCR/The Chimaera/The Flea

2009 Nominations for the Pushcart — Best of the Small Presses Anthology and the Dzanc Books Best of the Web Series.


Pushcarts

SCR

'Prayer for a Horseman' by Timothy Murphy

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue10/prayer-for-a-horseman/


'After the Funeral' by Janice D. Soderling

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue9/after-the-funeral/


'After Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night' by Sam Byfield

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue9/after-van-goghs-cafe-terrace-at-night/


'Kung Fu Monkeys Hijack Armored Car' by Dennis Loney

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue9/kung-fu-monkeys-hijack-armored-car/


'Life' by Bill Greenwell

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue10/life/


'Monstrance or Reliquary' by Ann Drysdale

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue10/monstrance-or-reliquary/



The Chimaera


'The Red Mud of Lydney' by Ann Drysdale

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Aug2009/Spotlight/AnnDrysdalePoems.html


'An Understudy for Desire' by Alan Gould

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Aug2009/Poems/Gould.html


'Lighthouse, with Poet Brandishing His Hat' by Rhina P. Espaillat

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Aug2009/Theme/Poems/Espaillat.html


'Talcott Mountain' by Martin Elster

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Aug2009/Theme/Poems/Elster.html


'The Annexe' by Stephen Edgar

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Feb2009/Spotlight/StephenEdgarPoems.html


'I Am Going Drown' by Charles Musser

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Aug2009/Theme/Poems/Musser.html



The Flea


'Two Theories' by Rhina Espaillat

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue2/TwoTheories.html


'Against Beauty' by Alfred Nichol

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue2/AgainstBeauty.html


'High Bank' by Bill Greenwell

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue2/HighBank.html


'Body of Evidence' by Catherine Chandler

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue1/BodyofEvidence.html


'Iconography' by Maryann Corbett

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue3/Iconography.html


'Said Yeats’s Bones to Hardy’s Heart' by Ann Drysdale

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue3/SaidYeats_sBones.html




Dzanc Books Best of Web

http://dzancbooks.org/BestOfTheWeb/index.html


SCR

'After the Funeral' by Janice D. Soderling

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue9/after-the-funeral/


'Prayer for a Horseman' by Timothy Murphy

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue10/prayer-for-a-horseman/


'Death Watch' by Michael Cantor

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue10/death-watch/


The Chimaera

'Sonnet 23 from The Dark Lady' by Jennifer Reeser

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Aug2009/Poems/Reeser.html


'Distraction' by Rick Mullin

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Feb2009/Theme/Poems/Mullin.html


'Seeing People' by Geoff Page

http://www.the-chimaera.com/Aug2009/Poems/Page.html



The Flea


'Vertigo' by Stephen Edgar

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue1/Vertigo.html


'Clock of the Moon and Stars' by Marly Youmans

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue2/ClockoftheMoonandStars.html


'Hydrangeas' by Mark Allinson

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue3/Hydrangeas.html