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
Birds on a wire are made a melody Synchronous the universe is synchronousits beauties overlaptunes are made of birds on wiresLeonard Cohen taught us thatand now another gives this song to us nature plays its songs for usits riffs are made of daysits melodies are made of suns and moons,of particles and wavesthat are each,…
“Did you like your father,” my friend asked? The Tongues of His Black Boots Say as my father sleeps the world goes onhis black boots are by the doorhe left them there unlacedthe right run down at the heelthe left toe scuffedhis blue shirt hangs on a hookwrinkled below the belt linewhere every morningits tails…
“Faith is a fine invention…”…. ……… —Emily Dickinson, 56 Different Choice faith is a fine invention,a spade to shovel doubt awayand bury apprehension,keeping disbelief at bayit sidelines skepticism,confining incredulity to a boxit becomes a soothing salveor cell with locks faith may boost the probabilityof inattention and final answersdiscounting anything that challenges its endsso that, faithfully,…
Who's Urizen In William’s crisp mandala Urizen asymmetrically stoops Laying duality on the world, cleaving philosophers’ minds, inspiring theologians to settle scores, he undoes the unity of chaos splitting it to bits like chips to feed the dogs of wars Reaching down, this buff, man-like self curiously in his prime with old head coiffed white…
Posterity: ………… all that follows every generation since Oldowan man chipped obsidian and flintto make a stone ax to lay open the skull of an adversaryfor food or turf, honing technique until at this end he’s chipped them into ICBMs the inner stuff of blind surgethe inclination of instinct down a slippery slope …………the popped…
Un About snow glittered to the wavelength of a streetlamp on swells and bellies of the yard slopedown across a white savannah from asphalt to nirvana at a window I stood looking out forever in a momentin today or yesterday or mañanaenmeshed, engaged, rapt and un about senseless to the dialogic loop ever playing in…
What God Says I place before you a bowl of evidencebut will never make you eat Chance is what you’re up against,and the only is of me you’ll meet You can pray until your tongue expiresand never know my heart’s desire I roll the future out mysteriously,you trace my trail of crumbs through mires You…
Tiny Megalomaniacs.being goodyou take responsibility for everythingand credit for nothing,otherwise you’re sliding downthe slippery slope at an accelerating clipuntil you’re taking credit for everythingand responsibility for zip just a short slip down that slopeyou’ve already sloughed goodnessmany times like snake skinfor the sake of some small gainsome little leverage, some edge, some inelbowing out some…
Say Something Obvious The geometry of moonlight is triangularIts pallid glow is whole, homogeneous and crisp,never granular. Moon, mating with Suncries out like a bell, her rings are ecstatic and annular Under a condensing cloud you’ll be singing in the rainif you carry a tune while following your blissIf it falls upon the skin of…
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out…………….. —Robert Frost Safe I'm safeI've locked myself inYou're with me and safe too Through the barred window of this boxthe world has changed, grown more lovely I savor its barred beauty moreas I recall it close at hand…
Picking the World Apart When Lao Tzu(or the composite of poets grouped under his name)talked of Tao, The Way, he said, “If you talk about it, it’s not Tao.If you name it, it’s something else” I don’t think he was being metaphysical He suggested something practical which,if taken at face value, ought to be paid…
Show Moon look out your window the moon is hugebut not bigger-than-life, smaller than thatthough big enough to make life take a look,to admire its yellow flatness with hint of rougeupheld in a mosh-pit of trees, their naked limbsa dark mesh across a field upon a sky of blue-grey steelwhich, as long as nights last…
“And in November 2012, Nature published a commentary by financier and environmental philanthropist Jeremy Grantham urging scientists to join this tradition and 'be arrested if necessary', because climate change 'is not only the crisis of your lives – it is also the crisis of our species’ existence' .”.Who'd Ruin That don't say we can't keep…
PunctuationPeriod— With this almost inconspicuous dot I wrap things up.Bring all pleasures to an end. Call it off.There’s a tiny tidiness to it, but the muscle ofcessation too —it can stop a truck. Question Mark— With this sinuous hook I pop a questionwhenever I want to reach outside the box I’m in:Why God, for instance?Or…
Falling . Falling's weightlessness is a troubled oneIt's not like the airtime of up-drafting hawksor homosapient gliders hung on wires undersilk billows out of their elementsnubbing gravity putting on airs,nor like the honking camaraderieof southbound geese chasing solar flares To know that speeding massin collusion with collision brings bereavementin worlds of muscle blood and boneis…
Getting to Know You.I’m getting to know you who camewith the first Archaeon’s spark Everything was new then, even you, youparenthetical tail of vital events, youold telegraphic protoplasmic stop, youcallous caboose bringing up the rear of trainsof eloquent clauses, fertile words,grunts and final remains, yousmall but lethal punctualtional dot You came on the scene with…
Leaving gust air once here goes to fill a vacuum there dusk the sun no more, is behind mañana’s door I can’t recall my last glimpse of youyou wentimagination is your wake and here comes Go again blazing her trail of tears while Gone is close behindsweeping footprints with a green pine bough from Going’s…
Making a Home . What I think over and over eventually I do I’ve been training body all along to dance the cantos of my thoughts, how can it not do what it learns? Innocence seeps away through the interstices of neglect— if I have not built a room to house a pure idea it…
at one ment —Yom Kippur, 2013 To find the means to a mendTo try a new take to forsake a mistakeTo unfold the past and straighten its bendTo un-muddy a pool and make it clearTo lift the flat rock of our self and let the sun do its workTo yank the inside out and give…
“Many (ancient) life forms are so hard to categorize that (scientists) call these organisms the ‘Problematica.’” —from: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, by Annalee Newitz Other Problematica.Here we are, never still, casting linesupstream like fly fishers toward sourcesteeming with what came firsthooking what we can, reeling it inholding it…