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
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…
“(Swifts) feed in the air, they mate in the air, they get nest material in the air. They can land on nest boxes, branches, or houses, but they can’t really land on the ground.” —Researcher Susanne Åkesson Swift I’ve been airborne since Augustus set the footings of the Roman Peace —in that alone I flew…
August 18, 12:10 pm orange serpentine between sloped green and me sky pondlight blue clean, clouds cumulous/cirrus half unseen in a frame like dream geometry/physics bone-like brick wood-like flesh and glass that, with reflections, sings with ridges and walls, choral: concrete, spheres, steel and other distinctly human things Jim Culleny 8/18/19
A Simple Ontology maybe flower petals are held to stems by thought and the wind’s a counter-thought that plucks and sets them elsewhere in the grass to grow in contemplative resolution beside the notion of a grub-pulling crow maybe the wind itself is a palpable bright idea, something about motion and the abhorrence of vacuums something about coming and…
Getting Sealegs topside sun’s brilliant as it’ll almost ever be on ship’s steel on deep see I never knew that things could (at once) still & moving be motion’s feel out here is constant news to me sound of sea-slaps-hull within sheer three sixty hoop that hems hull and me all new ………….unconsciously whatever’s ever…
Imagine This unlikely thing shaped like a dish saucer moonspan wide in nightsky laden with milk for a cat still and perfectly crisp who’s ever less than that and ever more than this sun up moon scats have you noticed that in a miraculous way fully backed by science, truth, even in the dark, will always stare you…
God gave names to all the animals, in the beginning, in the beginning …………………….….. —Bob Dylan Yclept 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…
Ostinato first their concerted honks— unseen, …………then as apparitions they rise from foliage at the foot of the hill framed in a window sash they rise to the cackles of crows already at breakfast in our yard arrayed upon green, black notes of an almost endless chord, ostinato of the articulated sounds of vees that…
Two young men greeted a new crew member on a ship’s quarterdeck 60 years ago and, in a matter of weeks, by simple challenge, introduced this then 18 year-old who’d never really read a book through to the lives that can be found in them.… —Thank you Anthony Gaeta and Edmund Budde for your life-altering input.…
Socrates said to Glaucon,”The things we think we know are like shadows cast by a distant light on the walls of a cave of things unseen we do not know.” The Thin Skin of Our Conceits —For L. who couldn’t find the balloon she’d saved in remembrance of a cousin of her childhood You called last night…
“Time is a static in the mind.”—Malachi Black, poet Timesea In the days when there were bona fide summers when months were loyal to the expected, when they stayed more or less within their lanes, December not copping the joys of July, for instance, when seasons honored tradition and did not insist on mukluks in…
Gull on a Spar I’m a gull on a spar —so much sea, so little far this perch is so unsteady I wonder what my bearings are the roll and sway and pitch, the other gull-calls I am hearing as ship slides into ditch of trough, this captain must be drunk the way he’s steering…