Jim Culleny is the Poetry Editor of 3 Quarks Daily. After a stint in the navy, Jim received a BA in Art Education from William Paterson University and did graduate work in art at NYU. He taught art for several years in NJ public schools in Newark and Bergen County. Taught a little bit of everything else during two years at a remote residential community school in New York’s Adirondacks. Was a social worker in Lower Manhattan before Soho was Soho. Made a living most of his life as a carpenter, designer, and builder. Did regular radio commentary for about 10 years during Morning Edition on WFCR.FM in Amherst, Mass. and some for NPR on All Things Considered. Played and sang his way from rockabilly to jazz in numberless band permutations over a period too long to believe. Came to poetry through songwriting. Has had work published in The Third Muse Poetry Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Penthouse Journal, and in 5-Minute Pieces, a chapbook published in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. He’s also been writing a regular op-ed column for the past 12 years for the Greenfield Recorder along the beautiful Connecticut River, and is presently making a living as project manager for an Architectural firm. Jim lives with his wife, Pat, of 31 years, and his 17 year old granddaughter. He has three daughters and four other grandchildren. Email: jimculleny [at] comcast.net
Requiem . 3:40 am in chair I’m at my sister’s house (like home) swaddled wee-hour early, in an Afghan in a chair (me being at an age that easily chills) a codger reading poems of trees sent by a friend thoughts of climbing them unbidden come: young (youth well spent) amid limbs bent toward light…
The Slim Hope of Ponce de León . best of all seeming impossibilities, of all unlikelihoods at the heart of utopias, is the slim hope of Ponce de León— the golden nut of Eden’s tree to hoard and hold and keep alive, like the fire-tenders of prehistory, an ember no matter how small, red and hot of…
On Dystopian Ships of State I’m on a big boat (which the nautically savvy call ship) if this ship’s a cocooned load of light atmosphere its steel will float, but it will tip if its load’s unbalanced— if its equilibrium is off it’ll start to list— if not adjusted it’ll end a sacrificial goat, sucked to…
Please, See My Innocence I am small and innocent I’ve not yet had time to be misshapen by adults, but I know what they can do so, at the sound of boots I take refuge in this corner. I hide my eyes believing if I can’t see you, you can’t see me but if you…
Burning Bush At twenty I danced the tops of walls Najinsky of the double top plate bent in-two like an onion shoot unbending up through an earthen gate lifting sticks to be put in place nailing their tails held against my boot walking the wires of gravity’s net as a spider commands the filament web…
God gave names to all the animals, in the beginning, in the beginning …………………………—Bob Dylan Cut to the Chaste to be called anything, to be called, Jim, for instance, is to be tagged for life unless you choose otherwise and pull a new name from a hat— a new you, say, Ed— which would amount to a tangle…
Pattern Language strolling through town with Plato we take the sidewalk one step at a time; shards of its exposed aggregate form archipelagos, and overhead, Jesus in a cloud, or is it Lao Tzu explaining Is without a word clefts in the bark of trees we pass define Appalachian humps. we saw Scranton strewn along a grey gully on the…
A Question of Necessity Can you tell me a certain thing that is a moral fact? … is a specious question because the fact of the thing exists as something essential to the survival of homo sapiens in creating civilization, though civilization does not always believe in the necessity of its essential thing: the root of what…
Illinois man arrested for spray-painting swastikas on gravestones —NY Daily News, 5/31/18 Epidermis ….. skinhead: a thing shrink-wrapped in pink tissue, shorthand for fear ….. epidermis of a skinhead: a nonsensitive layer of skin covering the true skin, or corium; or the outermost living layer of an animal, a layer so thin it flakes like…
Pi —(Pi day, one day late…) pi is perfection with a loose end 3 point 1 four and so on without pattern or closure the precision of a mandala drawn by a drunk on three martinis not describing wholeness merely but thinking odd numbers spouting them while rambling home disheveled, irrational, unseemly as the similar…
9-Lived Cat where? where are you, ……….. on the willow-hung swing ……….. in a field of golden grass? where, ……….. in the hemlock ……….. straddling the limb at top ……….. hands sticky with sap? are you ……….. sitting on the well-house step ……….. with the lake at your back ……….. remembering a future of ……….. yes! or collapse? are you ……….. on the topmost…
Flight and Gravity a story, a recollection of 79 summer solstices bundled in one thought of when I was young—a carpenter with muscles, sweating, lugging planks from lumber stacks to half-framed houses, stud walls proud in sun, precise in ranks ………………………………………. a thought that segues into a later solstice down the line, along the way, a…
Replacing the Gates if I’d broken the laws of light— if I’d been arrested by a black hole and sent to prism, would you still visit with spectral frequency and split waves with me? would you help cleave white into colors and set them free to carom off everything in sight replacing the gates of…
“This is conclusive, and if men are capable of any truth, this is it.” ……………………………………………….…— Blaise Pascal, on his wager Blaise’s Place Blaise’s place is on a sunset strip sliced razor-straight through desert air many cul de sacs veer from its hot black path which is squeezed in a pass between mountains there west where…
Buddha Mind Buddha mind’s a still but never motionless field Buddha mind holds all, each wave and ripple subsumed along with every tiny dot, a broken wholeness no metaphor can speak its more-and-less no single thought can split its late-and-soon its splash and depth of shade, golden color, its sanguine stippled clouds, its calm bronze…
Uroboros new year, a day of ends and beginnings, two extremes of a rope, sunup-sundown, the moment we split our sign for infinity (that lazy 8 napping on its side as life goes on), the day we take a short breath in belief that its undulant line can really be cut and resumed without upsetting…
Prayer I thank Thee for this couch and the room it inhabits and the chair which, being its partner in undeserved comfort, leaves itself available to any weary stander who might take advantage of its open invitation to sit, and for those two aptly-named bolsters plumped at one of the couch’s ends near the bookcase…
Until I’ve not roamed the four corners of the earth but I have roamed the four corners of the earth I contain as much love and callousness as any human does I love and harm as sure as the passionate sun does, which inflames dawn clouds in iconic peace and beauty which inflames sunset clouds…
Everything passes and everything changes, just do what you think you should do …………………………………….… —Bob Dylan Flux You, Heraclitus! …. —for Brian Another lifelong friend has died Sunday part of me again has vanished too We were young together building things, partners, carpenters in sync we drove spikes through joists hammering steel to steel. You…
Imagine our town rests in a mountain-bowl at twilight, common and small as dust and dream but huge in life beyond what it seems, its few lights jitter on the river’s skin, the dam pond’s spillway lets its waters out as upstream they come in under a steel truss bridge, the dam buoys’ stillness under…