BULLETIN # 10 (May / Mai 2003)

1 - Introduction

The end of the academic year brings with it a new flood of submissions. Among them, Sascha Akhtar, whose work we couldn’t resist sharing right away in the bulletin—it literally blew us away. Annetna Nepo II is ready, impressive, but, alas, we’re still working on funding issues... One way or another, it will soon be available, we promise. In next month’s bulletin: the last part of “Bilingualism and Gun Control”, information on summer poetry events in Europe and North America (send us information on any you hear of!), and more...

Depuis quelques semaines (depuis la fin de l’année scolaire: coïncidence inattendue), nous avons reçu beaucoup de poèmes d’auteurs nouveaux. Parmi eux, Sascha Akhtar. Trop impatients pour attendre la parution de notre prochain numéro pour vous la faire connaître, c’est à ses poésies que nous consacrons ce bulletin—ses poésies nous ont laissé bouche bée. Le deuxième numéro d’Annetna Nepo est prêt, il est impressionant mais, hélas, nous butons toujours sur l’épineuse question du financement... Pourtant —vaille que vaille— nous parviendrons bientôt à le rendre disponible, c’est juré! Dans le prochain bulletin: la dernière partie de “La langue du fusilier”, et nous ferons également le point sur les festivals littéraires et autres événements du même genre qui auront lieu cet été (n’hésitez pas à nous faire part de ceux que vous aimeriez conseiller à d’autres), &c.

Phillip John Usher and R. Richard Wojewodzki

2 - Four poems by / Quatre poèmes de Sascha Akhtar

CATHEXIS 1:1

Summonare, agente con Diable
summoneo l'arbre de cyprés
stationnaire. Summonare
summoneo meus argentum
dens effulsi dans la boue
levo les rides
sur mon front
summonare ha summonare ha summonare

On a summers day, a sundowner
slays his friend the stinkbug
ah you malefic member
ah you maraud abroad
ah mayhem merry merry
doth make summoner
summon me some are
stars some are other
mollusks.

A tiny calipygian char
smoking a chibouk
in the mosque
will do nicely
and ven we dance
the chaconne be
sure it will be remembered
not pro bono
cut a line cut
a lust off like a limb of
Giacometti in a giggle boat
ghost
in the gibbet hole why
ghost in the crinoline
chaw roast conifer toast
fit for sin to shrive in
gew-gaws and gill slits
on a whim yet ho! sour
soubrette no need to
grease your muffin tin
with cerumen
chancre or chancroid

je tu? je tu? je et tu?

Hispid claw; angels gawk,
graze in dismay holy
shits come what may
grace amazing jugs
of camphor vurds flail
giaours ail at the seams
of contusion sortilege in
praxis or sodomy
unmistakable

Clew of Theseus sedated
from the hip bilabial trip
crypt cringe biggity biggity
not to be outdone that bitch
inflection shoot the tube
summonare! sorcier!
billabong all in one

Cut-throat heresy hinges
hypopnea hinges ectoplasm
hinges hinge on hinges hinge
on everything hinged on one
nostrum bigos for supper none
succotash gin larder in a barouche

Anastasia! rides for the debridement
oh sweet morphine debouchure
with Gideons and Gorgons she
go-no-go esta von solo unreposed
progenator of Spoonerisms and other

frangible mercenaries.

CATHEXIS 2:1

Esta con dios
eras enclaved in
endbrain, bowl a rope
smote on the entresol
of hate and concupisence for
embryos in toboggans
slayed in jars of regulis regulis
fossil slumgullion awaits
wicked catsup way waste
a perfectly good imbroglio
berate beat a wake 'em snake 'em
the journeyman knows
the cataclysm concedes
to deviate
anon
I come

On smazy rimmed
spectacles chalix of Frangelika
and bad taste in mouth
aura unhand the swine
he's all not quite
divine three pronged
shift lakes hemorrhage
slumber hangs a rose over
the cobblestones to mark
the secrecy of this hour.

Camarilla of dastardly mutts
ensconced faithfully, you be
wary conceal visage folds
into prayer prostate the gland
not related to anile infractions
of veni vidi veci caramel supine
langour mold on haggis delicious
votto soce blue me you are
the eantiomorph I the ante

Singe the shoe she crows
enciente who who who
gesture in the gulch falls
short of the bravest gross
echanté le plaisir est
toujours a moi. A case of
mismanaged ideé fixeé
in the gallows bellows on
bellows bellow on Bella
the sage revives her ridden
hatch gets goiter got saunter
up to the minx and ask her a
favor for old time's
sat on a mat his wife could eat no
and that was bother! bother!
bother!

grind the stones to sand
and fill with ambergris
the livid cheeks surprise
no other but you scab
the wrist braid the suture
a loving embrace spits
ambeer on more of the same
and grist and grits
and free grub for all

eh Effendi!
Effendi the gall, the -knock-
me- down -with- a - feather you
employ Effendi the executrix
consumes your shine she sells
crooks her lithium smile
gracile child of a child of a,
you are manqué
gonzo Rhadamanthus!

hold up the blood-stained sheet
to her materfamilias who
would have taught it so-and-such
and so many agile rows docile
caboodles and caboodles of
foreskins laid to wage a sobriquet
quiet sorbet of mange and misery
commensurate with lathe return no
request no balk at the
stakes and stones will speak
volumes to you who grates
gawks regurgitates at green land
fills. William my son, father
my budgerie still lives
equate nothing with frugal
hegemony too late its never
well I never! commiserate amour
no not yeasty cakes ale brewed
by the breath of shy lionesses
hot for the pride bites
it's own head and we laugh it
off nudge nudge nefarious
purpose screened into place
forfeit at the angle of yaw
see all the way through
to the mist and catarrh

Gilded gates awaken Eros
flown the coop born to
swoop off talipots in Thatta
tender icicles a shoe-in
at the races bet your bottom
collar a codge of miserable
oboe players will befriend
the man-o'-war

Imogen lays awake planning
the feint parry thrust
of the ne'er-do-well.

to do a number with you
in the throes of
egregious limp ice-cream
cones for a spell manic
aspen seeds fill my coat
with nap hoodwink
a dinky predicate factor
in factor out a genus remote
indication crumb undone
Bella accrues the gain lofty
shiny fourchettes for the groom
to stab his fingers in a game
on the kitchen table
only an oblong converges
and we give it nothing

tangible.

CATHEXIS 2:2

shoe a slumber
await shoe a
suffocate burgess
not too late for you
in cowlick and cowls
your presence at the throne
singe the singe the
beginning of the end
like wax and a frozen
fondue fantasy philanders
at the windy tower.

immersion not emulsion
constantinople and a gerbil
holding hands and whiskers.

 

 

ABACUS

On the most exalted throne in the world,
nothing but your arse - Montaigne

a whole lot of prattle
and beef, the suckling
it were let to reign terror
on the supper table it were
the funniest little black ting
you ever sat eyes on
and what a howlin'
and what a moanin'
cooms from the deaf
dalmation not a dog
but a right cow it were
a-twirlin' that's tail
till we's be right dizzy
plenty of work to go
a-roamin' in the streets
for idle hands there be
no use pretendin' to be
afeard mawther
curly hair be the death
of virtue
the time is gettin'
oover for you
if you hain't guessed
by now oo yer fader is
then ya ne'er will it
right lies in his eyes
melancholia in his spleen
frail fancy he's a-ridin'
his hobby towards you
that as gonned you life
me pale wee iele

kred-dhe put you
them there corsets on
and bustle Queen Mab
and the laidley worm
will come a-knockin'
eft soons for the St.Vitus'
dance of the crow moon.

Mind your humours now
be pure and clean
don't want no mud-bloods
there just the phrenzied
the mad and mean.

silly puss
sluts are loathesome to the fairies

3 - Sascha Akhtar (Biography / Biographie)

Sascha Akhtar likes to tell of how she carries her grandfather's takhulus which translated from Urdu literally means "poet-title". He was given this as a young boy of 17 in a tiny village in Pakistan. He is now well in his 70's and all his children and grandchildren carry this pen name since he ditched his real name (b.t.w. for the curious it means star, omen,augury,ensign,angel; apparently all at once.) Sascha has not been back to Pakistan in three years, but would like to.She left at 18 to attend That Infamous College made so by Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt and has now been living in the U.S for eight years and since wer'e on a roll with the number 8, she also wrote her first poem at the age of 8, titled O Lord I thank Thee (?); this is a secret. She used to read dictionaries as a child- this is still going on. Every member of her family knows The Walrus and the Carpenter by heart, and she grew up having random lines from it , Fawlty Towers and Shakespeare thrown around at every occasion. Needless to say she knew every episode of Fawlty Towers, and The Walrus and The Carpenter by rote, by the time she was four, and Shakespeare appeared to be a member of the family. She thinks this has a lot to do with her poetry. And perhaps being raised by a Brit-Pak family of writers. Grandad writes in Urdu and has published four books in Pakistan. Sascha writes in tongues and has one semi-self-published book Golum(i.e. printed, stapled and given out upon request), and one The Grimoire of Grimalkin seemingly to be published soon. She would like to thank Bernadette Mayer for existing. Sascha's mother lives in Perth, Australia, with her Austrian husband. Ms.Akhtar's uncle lives in New Zealand. Her other uncle in Abu Dhabi. Her sisters in Tasmania. Her father somewhere in The Netherlands. The Grandparents are still in Pakistan with her aunt, and Ms.Akhtar is currently in Vermont with her husband, who is Korean - but they might be moving to London.

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