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
Who Spoke First? who knows from where the echoes come, who knows who forms the echoes? if, in a canyon, I speak loudly enough that echoes come, I might think it’s me, I am the maker of echoes, I belch a series of wave forms toward a mirror of cliff and hear myself return on…
Making Way —Narragansett Bay —1960, first time out We part from pier slow as disengaging lovers one landlocked, the other a floater who won’t be kept at bay The diminishing dock slides back, its bollards and planks deploy to some other place not here —to a distancing otherworld The tether breaks as stern-first we pass…
A Sprawl of Cemeteries Blood for blood is in our bones, the bass line of a ceaseless requiem. Justice screams carpe diem, but none of the dead are soothed as the living gloat and hoot, or wail Why did it have to be her, or him? Satisfaction’s not been found in the pages of our “Good Books”.…
Terri Amig
Two young men greeted a new crew member on a ship’s quarterdeck 60 years ago and, in a matter of weeks, by simple challenge, introduced this then 18 year-old who’d never really read a book through to the lives that can be found in them.… —Thank you Anthony Gaeta and Edmund Budde for your life-altering input.…
Schrödinger’s Cat . I’m in a box in two states at once, dead and alive —what am I Schrödinger’s cat sniffing out mice nose to the sky? I hear the high art of a sparrow sound, I catch a honeysuckle’s scent in a mire of duplicity or worse, my neurons spell disparities in verse which…
—on the song, Twelve Days of Christmas; words here: https://genius.com/Christmas-songs-the-twelve-days-of… ________________________________________ Twelve Days of Christmas and Other Mysteries What does it mean exactly, the chronic return of a partridge, which, swaddled in melody, follows an accumulated bullet list of things my true love gave to me —what must I have missed? — We start with…
Fundamental Disunderstanding ….—thoughts on Oct. 7th and Gaza everything ever written or said everything drawn or played or sung every headline that cried or bled every fresco, every poem everything wrung from our cranial sponge every inky insult flung every bomb that leveled a home ….and left a child to fend alone every instrument ever…
No Joke Regarding quantum chance, why (or more simply) does the world exist, and if it does, is it funny? There might just as well be nothing instead of the risible sun which makes me laugh when it comes up coincidentally with the punch line of a joke that also could never have existed had…
“It was only when my father died in 2016 that this deep truth of human existence hit me: there are two basic categories of people, the living and the dead, and the members of both categories are equally people. Some people are dead people, in other words.” —Justin Smith-Ruiu, from 3 Quarks Daily Knot There are days…
—Two poems separated by 5 years have come together
Celtic Knot maybe you think I do not know maybe you think I could not be surely I’m not where I go surely I am here with thee but maybe moon is nothing old maybe sun is never new perhaps all stories have been one maybe there’s no such thing as through could be everything is here…