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
Built by Thought all that we are arises with our thoughts,the Dhammapada says, with our thoughts we make the world ………. one, tour the foundation………. scraping down it’s roughness………. with the edge of a hammer head………. dissing the mason who left behind a lumpy job………. who forgot what a trowel is for………. who was halfway…
Amethyst—Puerto Rico, 1960 San Juan past the stone north walls of Morro shanty roofs slide to the sea white below beyond breakers the sea spreads bluegreen north to New York …… strewn across my bed the moon …… through a window …… lies across the sheets like a lover the ship on rippleless lavenderglass swells…
That's It I’d mowed and cut and weeded tips of fingers inked with earth I’d heard our cardinal calling I’d heard our engines down the valley groaning coming up, distant, moaning hands between dry stems of garlic moving, like my mother kneeling, devout, but not in church I’d yanked contentious weeds, insisting, grabbing, pulling —this…
Sleep Between twilight and dawn a breach in something The world stops, but for barely intelligible flashbackswhich Dylan wrote songs about, as many poets have episodes of turns on earth in a collapse of reason with juxtapositions that delightor rip the fabric of everyday distraction In that space Nothing mounts his voida cowboy on a…
Composting.this wonderstuff of natural declination that'll grow my beets & beans and other rations browner than the mere idea: good earth archetypical as second life and virgin birth more promising than the phantom wealth of nations more essential than human beings of highest stations shoveling this wonderstuff into my wagon sifting it through hardware cloth…
East-facing Windows this morning our bed is ablaze in wanton light the sun hammers our windows rimmed by zero wide and open unrestrained by nada it’s really something nothing spoken even oceans are more miniscule than this dawning sea immense and single that starts the day with a silent gong no thought breaks its breakers…
fireflies.every time a new intersection’s builtaround meit winds up bristling with cameras omniscient light poles sprouta cornucopia of lenses spills out a thousand robot retinasrecording everyday ephemera the little things we do in carswe might not want the world to know about all snagged, digitized and set in a binary log for some bureaucratic loutto…
”Civilization” is the soothing notion that, in it, naturalcallousness has been successfully quarantined. …………………………………………. —Roshi Bob. Civilization.A cat on the pillow of a couch, on the point of a spear, looks out through windows facing south with the fierce frustration of an indoor cat who preys through glass. The squalor of first spring just after…
—on the occasion of an unexpected email from an old friend who'd abruptly withdrawn from conversation some years earlier without explanation Rapprochement Just wondering if worlds seen from a distancereally are smaller than they are.Could it be that when we sleepthe world we leave goes on without us.Maybe you remember the old dayswhen greenhorns multiplied…
Bibliophile They say Hitler housed 16,000 booksin Berlin and Obersalzburg—his dark jewels In Obersalzburg and Berlinhis books did nothing for his soulbut drag it through the muck of his mindso that in the end he became as much a victimof his own immurement as Fortunatodid of Montresor in Amontillado Predisposed, he heaped word upon wordbuilding…
The Buddha’s doctrine is thus proven:nothing in this world is created.……………. —(Octavio Paz, per Dharmakirti) Same DifferenceNothing in this world is created,said Buddha looking into a lotus bowl Nothing is created In this lotus filled to the brimis nothing which has been created Nothing is created From the bottom of this lotus brimming with nothingbut…
Burning Bush At twenty I danced the tops of walls Najinsky of the double top plate bent in-two like an onion shoot unbending up through an earthen gate lifting sticks to be put in place nailing their tails held against my boot walking the wires of gravity’s net as a spider commands the filament web…
3 Small Poems A Good Poet's Boots a good poet's subversive—not to the point of blood in the streets…………………………. necessarily but to the point of burrowing beneathhis garden of conceits like an insistent voleand killing those weeds at their roots everyone in this waycan walk in a good poet’s boots ~~Cabin Fever besides the Biblethere…
That's All She Wrote There sits my selfnear a window in the sunits feet up on a sill There, beside the begoniawhose rose-tinged leaves are satin,succulent and still then, as now, taking down and making up the tale of itself,a concocting troubadour in sight of a star above a pine,past noon remembering,telling the story of…
Who made you? ,,,…………….,, God. What else did God make? …… God made all things.Why did God make you and all things?………………. —Catholic Catechism for Small Children Catechism God made the worldas much an open seweras a blazing emeraldin space Why did godmake the worldwhirl, was itgrace? And why me,part darkpart bright Why did godconcoct…
Actions always planned are never completed.……………………… —Democritus Carpenter's Shoes Yesterday I told myself I’d finish on Sundaythe project I started two years agobut I can never trust myself to carry throughwhen it comes to carpentry, soI swore an oath this time and pricked my thumband smeared a blood spot on my forehead like a tilak,faced…
who gets the thing that makes you tick The world goes round. One dayyou find someone who knows—who gets the thing that makes you tickgets it right and gets it quick No words can tell the joy in thisYou might as well be mute before a fire,rapt in its flame— Enjoy its heatListen to its…
Water Snapping Off Your Skin That water snapping off your skinin a shower its warmth is the same energystoked in the sunIts stoker is coy and cruel behindthe mask of creation behind a bright sunrise a fierce fire in his fist Is the one doing and undoingdamning or undamningburning and unburningThis fire was never begun…
For insulting the Quran, “'Thousands of peopledragged a Pakistani man … from a police station …(and) beat him to death,' police said Wednesday.”Insulting Books Is it even possibleto insult a book? Has it a soul within its leavesa heart that beatsan eye that winksa cord running through its spinedescending from a thing that thinks? Is…
Lolla Rossa in a field behind our houseLolla Rossa transfigured in morning lightbecomes at the instant a groundhog just on haunches dropsand scuttles under the shed becomesthe very lightthat shaped her— becomes the very particles or waves(as the truth may beor both) which transcendentallyshow themselvesto us herein this roomand out therefifty feet down the slope…