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
Twilight You waken with Uneasewho’d slept quietly beside you until the moment you had stirred Perhaps a tree had brushed a windowmaybe an attic squirrel had been perturbed,just as shadows begin moving when darkness is disturbed Unease upsets your mindwheelthe moment eyelids partwhich sets your mindwheel turning,working, opening the harbor gates of daylightto the terrifying…
Segue. in shifts from bright to dim there is no edge, no interim, as also none exists from wide to slim . the sun comes up in orange blaze night evaporates in such displayslines are indiscernible in nights to days . when life from bud to apple goes and succulence and color grows earth is…
Only in myth is death an illusion,but there’s beauty in hopeand hope in mythand myth in true profusion…………….. —Angela DiSperanza.Grief to Myth When they came to the tomb’s stoneit was set aside as if the occupant they’d loved had gone to breakfast with friendsleaving a folded sheet for them and some linen strips or notand,…
Standing at the East End of a PatioSeeing a Mountain and a Moon I have no ears for moonsnor eyes for the snapping of limbs against each other in the windthese come to me piecemeal by different sensesto be assembled in a dark placeinto a dream of moonlit-windy-nightwhere all up sides are glazed in silverwhile…
Scientists are claiming a stunning discovery in their quest to fully understand gravity.They have observed (gravitational waves) the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth. —BBC, 2/11/16 Gravitational Waves when I entered your orbitand you swept into mineI gave a gravitational wavewhich you returned…
A Revolution of Tenderness The pope suggests love in his“Revolution of Tenderness and Love,”and though popes have been on the wrong side of love,this one, this Francis, is right But a revolution of tendernesswhich goes against the zeitgeist grainto be rapacious is the Marianas Trenchof dashed hopes and, therefore,the drowning place of dreams.This is what…
The Milky Way, is destined someday to collide with the next-nearest spiral galaxy, in the direction of the constellation Andromeda. When they collide, our sun will likely be flung into a new region of galactic space. But when is that someday? ……………………………………………………………….. —EarthSky.org. When Andromeda and the Milky Way Collide. the night sky now is…
Frogs Watching Worm TV A bunch of frogs gather to watch a video about worms on a cell phone… Posted by Daily Picks and Flicks on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 . Like Frogs.we congregatelike frogs before a video of foodpiling on— poking, jabbing, jumpingat the mysterious fabric of reality. Jim Culleny2/3/16..
… Solar Filaments the sun's intense but placidteasing this morning’s fog from the river,at least from this vantage, sitting as we areat a perfect distance from its orange fireboxsafe from its arcing solar filaments,the eruptions which suddenly uncoil like snakesand would reduce me to cinderswith their dragon breath if not forcertain equations like those that…
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. . WWBS? What Would Buddha Say, I thought, of all that flows from lips of wealthy oafs who claim to know the shortcuts on the highway to nirvana? I’d guess he’d sit in stillness, smile un-perplexed, knowing discontent and bile…
How could something so beautiful not be right —Margaret Wertheim, on Einstein’s equations……………….. for his General Theory of Relativity The elegance of the simplest things makes them right. The shape of a smooth stone cannot be argued against —one touch is testimony of its rightness. Its small heft says, I'm here. Its mass, snapped by…
Aging Face With mirrors the aging face became personal.It hung before only on the heads of others,but with realization that the still surfaceof a pond returned the image of the seer,when polished metals revealed a clear and troubling truth,when a silver-backed square of glassserved up serial images of hard fact so precisely denial was impossible,…
..Fundamental Misunderstanding — thoughts on Charlie Hebdo, and Kenya and Beirut …and Paris everything ever written or saideverything drawn or played or sungevery headline that cried or bledevery fresco, every poemeverything wrung from our cranial spongeevery inky insult flungevery instrument ever madeevery expletive blasted from lungsevery face on a canvas hungevery righteous canto prayed…. that…
October. when the night chorus ends its cricketed whine (gone overnight when first frost came) a new silence blends with pitch of pine and barks of trees ………………………… what remains when heat departs and dark descends is a resonate wake of love in heads of echo memories that will too be shed . Jim Culleny…
.Digging Potatoes with the Young ……….. — for George and Dacy last week I dug potatoeswith the young—granddaughter and son.I showed them how to sink the forkin ground a bit away from desiccated tuber stalksby leaning their slight weight in to force it downthen leveraging tines by length of haftto bring the harvest slowly from…
Gong and Pennywhistle.you can play a cheap pennywhistle or beat on a big gold gongdown here on earth in the soft grass or stinging thistlesnobody stays here for long those up on highand those way down lowbreath the same bitter airwe’ll just have to see how it goes you can bring down the house with…
Key .dangling from a ring my finger hookedand drew from a jean pocketis a burnished brass key warn smoothfrom the ten thousand timesI put it to this lock and turnedto hear the delicious clickof entering home,the place filled withyou. by Jim Culleny9/18/15
Football the sheer brilliance of this game’s hook amazes me— it’s an homage to collision,a demo derby of organs and bones,of fans psyched to see some player’snear-death experience, a feint gameof fine footwork leading tovictory through the skill to maimall underlain with clever strategiesand agile trickersbacked by large men and place kickers,a mashup of history,current…
. COLLECTING FIREFLIES I’m afraidI don’t understandthe death part of lifealthough at my ageyou might think I might,and not necessarilythe last death-partbut the everyday bits of itthat constantly intrudeThe only thing I can thinkto make sense of itis that its shadowover each tendernessmakes each tendernessmore rich and poignant,as if tenderness werethe only point of lightin…
Bidding Adieu. gimme a new piece of the big Mysterium —the words had barely left his lips when he died again in cognate delirium choking on the language of things clues science is a big Imperiumreligion is too but one (at least) gives credit to what the other calls g-o-d for having offered to all:…