Edited by / Giorgia Pavlidou
Jim Cardenas is a filmmaker and visual artist from Los Angeles, CA. He has been published in Entropy and other journals and is the author of chapbooks entitled “Sun Buildings”, and his latest, “I and the Parking lot are One”. He is currently working on a third to be entitled “A Ride Up the 13th Floor Elevator”. He is the director of two mini documentaries “Yes to Ether” and “EquinoxiO”, which are portraits of border poets Anthony Seidman and Jorge Ortega.
The Messengers–after hours
Two ministering angels followed him to his
car casting long shadows across the lot
-back and forth they argued;
“be present when crickets are present” to
the water in the well, what is he to the
gentleness of Hillel?
He paused to light a cigarette, turned
around and struck a match off the left ones
face. “Look, I told you guys not follow
me on my bowling night. Now beat it, I
gotta meet some dame.- there she is!”
A woman covered in hieroglyphs emerged
smacking gum, 11:11 on the dot…
***January 2021
An Algorithm of Dogs Running through Concrete
Euclid of Alexandria executed his
flowcharts (like horses)
over boulders down the Pierian stream.
Arabic mathematicians
posited their cryptograms
to spit out their lambda calculus
based on the smallest letters of two
alphabets
What goes into calculating the receipt for
a Big Mac and fries, or, of the ten miles
your wife drove after work to purchase
hair dye?
With visions of a homeless Archimedes
drawing out conic sections in front of a
Starbucks swimming through our
collective heads, I now stand with giant
cardboard scissors and humbly dedicate
this new tent in the School of Athens.
***January 2021
Providence or atoms. And all the arguments for seeing the world as a city
-Marcus Aurelius
If spirit is air,
then we are swimmers
Gently falleth the leaves
and rise up
to the small plane from below
Gimme some truth
here on the backroads of the engine block
turbulence from within
touch your pillowcase dear for it too
will be gone
The pilot makes a dictionary entry: death- birth without a mother
and asks for clearance to land on the 101 freeway
***January 2021
Sediment (in name only)
It was a long time coming
but later that night
the Cambrian fossil had left his bags outside and drove off without
them
-the sun, the earth and the moon
(entered with toothpicks into consuming nether regions
of public restaurants) deposited their wares like watches onto
subsiding feathered beds of the eternal
and washed their hands
of the whole thing.
***December 2020
Woman woven out of a triangle of nerves
A passenger on a train looks back on 1990
to wrap his head around the passing heaven
The Universe of Smiling Pu-Tai
this gigantic atom
of sand
is ripped open and
cries
Oh, tears of paradoxical ocean
head of a woman
The Pipes of Pan play for your unborn children to
run on the beach
***January 2021
Second Sermon to the Birds
Multiply in sound around sandaled feet, for this is the morning of the fifth day. This sidewalk show is now hallowed ground, this empty parking lot exposed by the fishbasket of retreating seas is a fertile virgin in heat. Park your ’67 Barracuda in the right spot and roll down your windows for a ringside seat to the birth of pollen
***November 2020
Between Ethanol and Regular
and other visions
of paradise
Oh, darling beehive,
cursed witch
Siamese twin artists sketch your face
-they control the moon
Zelda in a martini glass
***January 2021
Deeply Felt River
-on observing Anthony Seidman smoke a
Mexican cigarette
Taking in the great expanse
of the sky
The poet could still hear the yelping of
mating cats
and imagine the dogs
of Juarez, Mexico
being summoned to fill this alleyway
with barks
***November2020
Beyond what is done or not done
If a man places a gulf
Before his spirit and
The immeasurable
According to some rattlesnakes
He is alone
Elements not in union
But with inner events at the center of his
soul- playing like music, his light burning
like brass under the Sun
While the old skin knows harmonies like it
knows thunder
Still, rumors persist of a moon behind the
moon
SULΦUR 