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
Snake Tales 1. Taking the Rap . . . so I said to Eve the Courageous: here’s something extraordinary— a thing as sweet as knowing but bitter too, possibly lethal, and (at the very least) a gateway to trouble, yet a wonder worth the risk while Adam (you must know) was not off on some pious ramble through the garden picking…
Autistic—for Danny, 1949-1976 When you caught that bird in flight,that was a wild moment, the reflex of it,as if you’d had the mind and eyes of a hawk,as if in your world, mysterious to us all,mother father sisters brothers—as if in that world you flew aboveless bewildered than we,island brother,eagle-eyed and quick,but whose aerie was…
I’m listening to something.I don’t know what it’s called but it’s Chopin. It’s something Alexa pulledfrom the high capacity byte magazineof her small black canisterwhich sits under a lamp upon a tableagainst the wall (where most of us have spentat least a little time, sweating)it’s power umbilical plugged to an outlet,its invisible wireless thread stretched…
I and I One says to the other, no man sees my face and lives —Bob Dylan When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. Neighborless and seamless, he is You and fills…
Astronomer —for Owen.I unclip the latches of your seatlift and pull you from the car into full light, into the light of the thingwhich dimples the gauze of spaceand holds you in that cuplike a ball in a ring of roulette in my arms you turn,and from the cuff of your coat,shoot your finger east…
Contingent I wonder if I existthe world’s replete it’sfull of stuff but where does I fit inwhere to set the sheath of skinat what point do I resistabsolute belonging and sayI amwhich can only be truein a vacuum, a noplacewhere nothing is contingent Jim Culleny2/23/18
In the Middle of Hosanna snow’s piled against the generator smooth white talusat the foot of sheer thought inarctic regions of mind through glass the near tangleof bare forsythia beneath draped wirespole to pole is a snap of unchecked ruminationsthat fold upon themselves in crazy chiaroscuroa dispensation of light expected in a skull of whimswhile…
Slaying of the Suitors —thoughts on finishing Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey Ancient Cinema Book 22 of The Odyssey plays like a scene of The Punisher so we know that men have been bloodthirsty since the Greeks sacked Troy (at least) and that Homer rivals Hensleigh in imagery of hacked limbs and scarlet…
Whiplash and Mercies silence thick as her stewsfilled my grandmother’s housebut for the cars on 15 on wet nightsclose, hissing toward Picatinnyblack Buicks, big black Packardsheavy as her lifewide whitewalls spinningon two-lane asphaltbefore the interstatesliced throughtable in her living rooma glut of snaps of Jim and JackHoward Frank Velma RuthGladys Leo Leroy Patthe lot of…
More Legal by the Minute, More Difficult to Fire photo of a rightist with gun, FB 2016, pistol pointed right at camera barrel practically screwing the lensbright silver halo at the business endthe moment the flash went off:………………………………. lightning! leaddressed in camouflage he was neat.beard.militarish. intending to be a threat maybe pretendingto be a threat…
Antony —I imagine you still playing You said to me, unclejim teach me guitar, and what little I knew I didYou took it and flew, a musical id, and the places you flew, the music that slid from fingers to strings was by god a grace bridge, the kind walked on in skies where geese…
Earthy. Religious scripts: Vedas, Gospels, Surahs, Qurans, Hadiths, Bibles, Torahs are tools like any others which may be used to trip or lift Not divine in this, but practical as axes, shovels, guns and drones or verbal tricksand as earthy as earth's flora and its fauna. Jim Culleny11/6/16
Wovoka (named Jack Wilson in English), a Northern Paiute, dreamedhe was taken to the spirit world and saw all Native Americans beingtaken up into the sky and the Earth opening up to swallow all Whites and to revert back to its natural state. He claimed that he was shown that by dancing the round-dance continuously,…
Learn That First I've wondered if dawn is like birth and dusk like death and if we're given these metaphors to pique our curiosity as if to say nothing in this world is real. You are so naive, you think this is a dream? Yes, these are shadows. Socrates said as much in the agora…
Then If it were thenI’d be seated on the step of the well house gazing at peach tree buds and the tales they toldof waiting, swelling, beinglistening with the lake at my back down and through the steep slope of woods across the street. I’d see its gleaming surface spark through voids of oaks and…
TV, Bronx News 6/30/17 Gun again.In this case a pissed-offformer employeewith a not-so-extraordinarysense of personal privilege to take life by right, which in the American zeitgeisthas become popular asan act of self expression affordedby liberty through an amendment to law lucrative to private sector arms interestswho live by death through means of tiny explosionsof sulfur…
Blots In inkwell times when quills were used (ends of sharpened feathers splitwhich above a writer's work twitchedas when a bird would scratch an itch)we scratched our hieroglyphs in night-black licks pausing intermittently to dip the split quill's endinto wells candlelit in nights as black as pitch We coaxed from shades what they might think.We…
Dilemma take the dilemma of the moon:two horns one night, tomorrowa small coin in a vast thoughtsimple as circle things passwhich is small consolationif they forever return as two horns mercilessly at opposite cornersof a skewed smile. Jim Culleny3/3/17
Beginning I’m thinking of cartoons that say the end is nigh on a sign held by a guy on a corner, rag coat, hunched, forlorn, whose years went south, didn’t pan out as he thought they would when he was a boy, the way they should’ve but never made it over a midlife hump when…
The Free Exercise of At its center is a tree which wraps the garden in its entirety The roots of it run deep— some say to a molten core while some insist they exit the other sideto suck juices from a Southern Cross and that its sweet and sour blooms on this respiring side of…