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
///Past PrimeJim Culleny Knowing I once could whiptwo 2 by 12 by 12s to shoulder heightfrom a ground-level stackwithout ripping a ligament; or haul two sheets of drywallat a time across a room alonewithout reaching for the liniment, I’m pissed at being humbledby a mere rock-salt sackI strain to lift and lug and spread so…
//Black Sunday ShoesJim Culleny Grandpa was stiff and starkas the handle of an old world hoe but grandmother must have had her dreams……………………..At a window in a stuffed chair she satfingering a rosary gazing down Roessler murmuring Hail Mary’s through the pane bead by bead……………………..At other times in that chairshe stroked her long greyblack hair…
///House of an Evil JinJim Culleny Smoke snakes from house roofsin lazy loops of loose thought as idle as the wisps of dreamerswho burn to know why god has wrought I drive by with windows openthe smell of char comes drifting in It's more like March than Januaryso odd the way this year begins Malingering…
///Where Buddha WasJim Culleny I thumb down the pile of books: Paper Dance, 55 Latin Poets Wislawa Szymborska, PoemsNew and Collected Poetry Like Bread (maybe the waymy mother made), Poets of thePolitical ImaginationAnd Billy Collins Sailing Alone Around theRoomwhich is pretty much what we all do to a great extent until, at the bottom: Precise…
////../ Kneedeep as LeavesJim CullenyToday, in a java shopamong caffeinators, wired, Ireceived a poem from a friendwhom I've known sinceit didn't seem importantto understand friendship But now I doand appreciate his calling me into the world of this poem(which is not his, but hisanyway because he saw some truth in itand supposed thatI might see…
///Pythagoras and me @ 2 amJim Culleny I could be up all nightwithout a single line to write;………………………I might be ass-in-chair till 1st lighteyes propped with toothpicks.………………………Open, I might sit with digitspoised over a keyboard………………………like condors on thermalsscanning the earth for a bite ……………………… the desert page dry and white. I might even catch some…
///The HunterJim Culleny I hike up a hill at a clip just to keep this heart alive. The Hunter’s over my left shoulder with arms raised, always in his almost-never-ending black place in the sky surrounded by blazing stars in utter space. Skirting single Cheryl’s I wonder again, what is it she does.In summer her…
//Dear Joe The Plumber, In E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Emma Goldman explains to character Evelyn Nesbit why Evelyn (having become recently newsworthy) has become such a celebrity:“I am often asked the question,” says Emma, “how can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.…
///Bread, House, Salt, God —the family of simple monosyllabic words.–from Another Country, a memoir by Adam Zagajewski; Bread House Salt GodJim Culleny The tsunami scent of yeast flooded our housein the mornings my mother baked bread. Up through floorboards it came;up the stairwell. It spreadstirring our dreamselves awake. Baked bread A bell for the nose,…
///Two DeathsJim Culleny 1. Mirror Under cover of light the moon disappears;goes just like that, following my mother;travelling not by casket, but insteadby memory and dream, alikeas death and birth, so alike there’s just this mirror between them. 2. Da’s Marker In a cemetery overlooking what used to be a lakemy father’s stone’s a tiny…
/// Death is the least we have to fear.We are all in the hands of God,Whatever happens happens by His Will. —Attention Please, by Peter Porter Until the Sacred Cows Come HomeJim Culleny Vishnu reclines and sleeps dreaming up the world. He lounges upon a coiled snake in the image of…
///What is Mind? No matter. What is Matter? Never mind.–Bishop Berkley A Meating of MindJim Culleny If my braindoes not tell my arm what to donothing much will happen.Without a brain my arm isnot much smarter thana leg of lamb In fact, meatwithout mind is never going to get much done, whilemind without meatwouldn’t have…
///Don Q. in Mahattan–Biting the dust of ’01 Jim Culleny Dining in Soho alone, a manserved by a girl with lip studs, nose ring,and serpent tattoo uncoilingfrom deep cleavage,sees the new man of La Mancha,in dim light across the room,seated with his back to the street: He topples a pepper mill with his forkgesturing to…
///From the Indictment and Abjuration of 1633: “Whereas you, Galileo, son of Vincenzio Galilei … were denounced in 1615, to this Holy Office, for holding as true a false doctrine … namely, that the sun is immovable in the center of the world, and the earth moves … We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you…
///Humor and LightJim Culleny Even in gloomyshuttered rooms one beammanaging an invasionthrough impossible slitsreaches to whereshadows rule one joke, a laughone light remembranceand dis-ease for an instantdisappears Punch lines and photonscomedians and brilliant sunstake us as close to godas anyone need be //
///CommunicationJim Culleny A short-haired yellow muttstanding at the side of the roadwearing a day-glo orange scarf around his neckso as not to get whackedsteps boldly out as I approachas if to test for interspecies respect. I slow and stop, roll my window down, and bark, “Cool scarf.” He looks me in the eyeturns on his…
///Girl on Trapeze—Vignette through a windshieldJim Culleny……………………………………..Young chick at a curb waiting for a green. It comes, she goes head downchecking out the cut of her jeans:how they lay across her shoes;the way the inseams hug her firm thighs;the fine, faded blues. Sweet on self, she imagines an approaching guysees what she eyes: sees himself…
///“I don’t think I ever was a child.” –Coleman Hawkins, top sax jazzman Jazzman Said I don’t think I ever was a child Was I a child?I don’t think so If I ever was a childI’d know. …I don’teven know, Jazzman said,if a child ever was Child, Jazzman said, I don’t just thinkI play jazz…
/// Unworthy GuideJim Culleny ……….. This is the fabulous story of Heracleitus, the philosopher of Flux This is the very short version, in which super-misanthropic Heracleitus, who has shunned the family of Man, returns to the city from years in the woods a very sick man with bleak prospects. He returns to find a cure…
///The Pool of Buddha’s EyesJim Culleny The asphalt of the walk to the door is blackbut not as dark as the silence of the concrete Buddha on the porchas I climb the steps to work. The Buddha sits center on the top stepwith downcast eyes, a nascent nest in his hands, eyeing bits of straw…