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
Having Coffee i’m having coffee i’m dreaming I’m having coffee with Whistler’s mother i’m out of the frame to the left meeting her gaze i’m scratching a knuckle with my nose i’m not listening to my wife while gazing out a window i’m imagining our small distant sun rising over the horizon of Neptune i’m having coffee —paper…
Uroboros new year, end day of a beginning, two limits of an endless rope, sunup/sundown, the day we split infinity that lazy 8 napping on its side as time goes by, the day we draw a deep breath in belief that its undulant line may really be broken regardless of the will of a universe…
Temporal Christmas the verge of something new— solstice, sunrise, a comet coming through, sometimes it seems that angels tend, stars align, low meets high—- even ass and oxen gain a sense that mutual otherness has been pretense, a tale begins that glorifies the plain, low things are magnified: a snowball rolls through time, gathers rituals, books, saints, gains velocity, and multitudes…
Gabriel’s Mad Ave. Apocalyptic Horn …. “I’m still dwelling on how ironic all the feverish proclamations of capitalism …. are going to look someday.” —Justin E. H. Smith, Philosopher I’m through with dumpster dinners at the corner of Wall Street and New I’m so unsold by the Coke sign’s faded blush that thrusts from desiccated…
Woke up, fell out of bed, Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, And looking up I noticed (it) was late ………………—John Lennon, A Day in the Life Mystical Fun Jim Culleny 9/14/16
A Question of Necessity “Can you tell me a certain thing that is a moral fact?” is a specious question because the fact of the thing exists as something essential to the survival of homo sapiens in creating civilization, though civilization does not always live up to the necessity of its essential thing.(the root of what…
“Facts are surprisingly delible things.” ………….— Bill Bryson, author “Trump won.” ……….…— Fox Skews Facts Are Delible facts are not indelible after all— imagine that now U S headspace is one of delibility, if such a word exists —but of course it may, nothing moors every word to dictionaries: fresh definition embraced, case closed. now…
Drinking It All In a long way up Bray Road past the point where the first of two small brooks cross beneath it came to me in a new way that you and I are still breathing four decades after we met at the threshold of the unknown, the part that comes after now, and…
Walking overlooking a river rife with history that runs along the bottom of an ancient gorge between two mountains autumn rusts. in yellows, russets, remnant greens, drapes of leaves cascade down their opposing slopes liquid as runoff, colors sluiced into the wide wet rush of that streaming source of being boiling white over rocks tumbling…
Nothing But Light reflections stutter in the picture plane as if Vincent were still alive dragging oils across canvas in French light inhaling the color of things expiring his incandescent translations in spectacular conjugations of frequencies setting fire to a field with crows turning night into pinwheels, vibrations underpinning everything in sight nothing still but…
Show Moon look out your window, the moon is huge! though not bigger than life, smaller than that but big enough to have life take a look and admire a midnight sun with hint of rouge upheld in a mosh-pit of trees bare limbs a dark mesh beyond a field upon a sky of blue-grey…
Reply to Ricardo who wrote: How U b? .I b well enough. work’s fairly regular— ’bout 4-5 hours a day at regular pay, plus a couple of side jobs drawing, lucky to have work chug chug keep my hand in the writing game: blogs, two local paper gigs shooting my mouth off at greedy vampire windmills sucking…
Looking Up the horizon circle, past which I can see no further in any direction other than up, hems me in, but looking up I can see forever or as far as lightspeed allows or until more time passes or, more truly, until now shifts again, but by then I will have passed, whatever that…
Galleon America the complexity of your crossed purposes, beauty and war, grace and wastefulness, you rest solidly at sea upon a liquid without yet dropping through, a steel log with algorithmic spurs hollow inside of rust and rot, a contradiction, weighty and weightless, floating white swan, Earth burns, black pawns, Jesus weeps, Mars is gloating…
Too Thin to Spawn an Echo from here the atmosphere is space so vast its depth’s enough to spawn an echo, but seen from the moon imagine a somewhat fat elastic band stretched round a blue ball, or slim mist of sweat evaporating from the crown of a head still clear enough to spawn an…
Where Buddha Is I thumb down the stack of books: Paper Dance—55 Latin Poets Poetry Like Bread (full as loaves my mother made) subtitled Poets of the Political Imagination and here’s Billy Collins Sailing Alone Around the Room—which is pretty much what we all do to a great extent until, at the bottom: Precise V-5…
Sacrificial Goat everything unknown snaps to light upon awakening in bed, supine, sun-given day ignites a fire, blankets burn, mind’s the filament of a lamp upon awakening stupidity tumbles down a sheer of chance, small thoughts plunge, they start an avalanche, the ground gives way beneath our feet upon awakening light ricochets from every wall, blind see,…
Quantum Angel I call you Quantum Angel because you’re so unbelievable not even physicists can pin you down the way you flit through atoms you must have wings the way you punk time your wings must be turbocharged the way you fling particles we can’t keep up where do you get so many tiny spinning…
Six years ago at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, I was standing under sculptor, Xu Bing’s, two Phoenixes. The cathedral is huge and beautiful and so were the artist’s sculptures. Our friend, Bill, who is a warm, personable, and very knowledgeable docent at the cathedral had suggested to my wife and me …
…..“Time was so huge then. …… It could not fail.” …….. —from a poem by Nils Peterson When Time Was Huge that’s the exquisite difference between then and now— the space in time, the beautiful duration of it, its roominess; its amplitude was great enough to contain many dreams, multitudes —today time is crimped in cramps of years…