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
Justicia fickle thing with scales she’s blind sometimes, but often lifts her blindfold just enough to appraise a man’s cache of melanin, holes in shoes, shuffle in gate, accent, religious state and what he owns of cars and houses: she aligns her scales with power’s weight under which she also slouches in this ruse, Justicia, with a…
Little Miracles 5 …. —Yin Yang Lamps lamps yin and yang I celebrate your balancing! dark and light you shine from faux bronze fluted stands you do not so much vacillate you do a soloduo thing you manage your blaze and shadowing concurrently. you palpitate. from colluding upsidedown bell-like shades you radiate your lifelong itch…
Little Miracles 1 —Lamp I take you for granted you, your bulb and switch in your corner always willing to shed light upon a page or face when dark like tar is pitch Jim Culleny 9/1/18 Drawing by J.C. Lamp, 1997
Little Miracles 3: A Quantum Angel Spinning-0ff Particles I call you Quantum Angel because you’re so unbelievable not even physicists can pin you down, the way you flit through atoms you must have wings, the way you punk time your wings must be turbocharged, the way you fling particles we can’t keep up— where do…
Little Miracles 2: —Cloudmaker you, generator of clouds, are indispensable. you fling them up as if they were mere vapor your creativity is unsurpassed much like cloud yourself you may be dark or bright free and light or stretched like a cowl under stars, in daylight white grey saffron pink at night you draw curtains…
Birthday 77 ………… —next morning time’s getting blurry out there it’s like trying to snap a bullet train with an old kodak, like trying to catch the wind as one songwriter said. time is a jet plane it moves too fast said another, there’s no end to metaphor but lousy imagination, no end, but the…
Global Warming Facts For the Obtuse . 1 if I’m standing in a house engulfed in flames it can still be 10 below in the freezer for a while . 2 if it’s 10 below in New England in December but the mean temperature of the planet continues to rise it means that in New England…
Driver’s License Renewal Photo . I look, and first I think, Whoa, You look like the father of a 49-year old then think, Whoa, you are the father of a 49-year-old . Then I think, Whoa, You look like somebody’s grandpa then think, Whoa, You are somebody’s grandpa . Then I think, Whoa You look like somebody’s great-grandpa then think, Whoa, You…
Shohola Orchard I’m planting an orchard in Shohola –a river runs through there and the light is good for apples and other living things The place is filled with riches: eagles fly overhead on thermals preying, rafters happen by laughing, waving We have a boat I can use to row out and, like a Tahitian gentleman,…
Brevity I need a good poem lifespan-short, one I can shoe-horn between instants which in that pinch says so much I’ll understand long and short by the depth of calluses they leave on my brain but it’s not happening I’m already up to nine lines so it’s too late for brevity what I’d like is…
9-Lived Cat .where are you …on the willow-hung swing …in a goldfield of grass where …in the hemlock …straddling the branch just below the top …hands sticky with sap where, where …sitting on the well-house step …with the lake at your back …remembering a future …of victory or collapse where …on the topside deck above the…
“…shimmering through the leaves and out beyond the black lines of her neighbors’ chimney pots were the stars, beacons whose light left them long before there were eyes on this planet to receive it…” …………………………………………….. — archeologist Jacquetta Hawkes Tripping on Curbs we who live in deep space and trip on curbs looking up at stars…
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…