Windjammer 2.0

I spoke with my uncle again on Thursday night regarding the re-booting of Windjammer Press. We are talking about using blogging software to re-build the site. Going this route should allow us to get better exposure and more traffic. I'm looking to add a forum where contributors and visitors can start discussions, so it's not just a silent art gallery.

One thing he suggested, and I've been mulling over for a few days now, is finding a way to specialize the site a bit more, so that it's not classified generically as a poetry journal. Midwest poets? Online poets? Something like that--something more defined and thus more apt to come up in specific searches, where the competition to be the top link is less crowded. If anyone has a good thought about this, by all means, toss some phrases out there... I don't intend to drop anyone I've already got archived on the site, but looking ahead I may narrow the submission requirements a bit to fit a theme.

Anyhow, the actual re-launching of the site would probably not be occurring until later in the year, as this is really a side project for both my uncle and myself, and he has actual paying customers who need his talent and attention. But the literary magazine (or whatever it may become in this next iteration) is something both of us need to do, I think, for our own reasons. Because we're both artists at heart.

And that... is really cool.

I Have To Do Something

Windjammer Press needs to come back. Last year, I allowed one bitter message board moderator to convince me that the site didn't hold merit, that it wasn't doing anyone any favors. And while it's true that my site will more than likely never be a stepping stone to anyone's literary career--well, if you're only in it for the money then you're doing it wrong. Call me a Socialist, whatever. If I have to bill the site as a personally curated museum of wonders, then that will have to do the trick.

One thing it does need is a board of its own--some way for visitors and contributors to interact, discuss the writing showcased on the site. If I build it, maybe they will come.

I'm off to go see when my renewal is due; tonight I'll speak with my uncle about giving the pages a facelift (something he's expressed interest in already). Maybe if I can keep this boulder rolling I'll start feeling more like a poet again.

A Living Fossil

The danger is not in sudden change,
a fault blown wide, a bolt out of heaven.

It's the reptiles.
Moving so gradually one day to the next

you wake to ribbed walls, tongue-runner hallways
and the same sad view beyond a porthole.

If it never moves
you never think to run away.

Until the second skin fits so snug
you become watertight, you are become death.

They say if that mouth is pink
you're a goner.

The Birds of North America

How soon did the birds
learn to line our live wires
as if that were how things had always been done?

Privileged with endless linear distance
they arrange themselves so peacefully
our lights never flicker at all.

Prelude

Page one. Pen cap picked off like the head of a black flower. A new sun, which does not mean a sun that is not visible, the way a new moon denotes an abscess. No, I mean a freshborn sun that has shaken off the slough of winter necrosis. There are crocuses and lilies in my thoughts, blossoms bulging with bloated bees--not bloated in a bad manner, but ripe with nectar they have pulled from this willing pen.

Start again. Start again. Every rusted gear has to scream at the outset. Atrophied muscle chews its nerves in protest, but still I whip it onward, unseen red masses ready to purloin pulsars into an orbit. Nebulous arms of thought snake outward, they are ink poured onto a spinning record, reaching by force for the outermost stainables. Black ink, white paper, page one.