LUMMOX magazine Returns

Many years ago, Lummox Press published a small monthly magazine called the Lummox Journal. It lasted for over 100 issues. Now, after six long years of silence, a new magazine rises up from the ashes…and unlike the old Lummox Journal, this monster will come out once a year, with at least 100 pages  and will be an 8 X 10 inch, perfect bound beast called LUMMOX. It will contain interviews, essays, articles, reviews, artwork, ads and poetry…lots of poetry.
I’m aiming for a Nov. publication date.

The theme of this first issue will be “Favorites”. Anyone interested in submitting, can send 3-5 of their favorite poems (previously published work is okay, just indicate where), no longer than 80 lines, plus a short 3-5 line bio and a mailing address. If you are interested in submitting an essay or article, please pitch the idea first. Artwork must be “camera ready” and “gray scale” (not in color). Poets receive a 20% discount on any ads. Please contact me with for sizes and prices. All submissions must be made before Sept. 1, 2012.

I have three interviews planned, but am always interested in new ideas. Another planned feature will be “Guest Editors” who will introduce 2 – 3 poems by 8-10 poets. I already have several Guest Editors signed up (one is in Nigeria)! So, if you are interested in becoming a GE, let me know.

I’m offering a pre-publication subscription of $20 (USA) & $30 (World) for the first issue. It will retail for $30 a year, plus shipping. Visit the following link for details.  Click here.

I look forward to receiving your submissions and/or ideas. Send to poetraindog@gmail.com or

LUMMOX c/o PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733

RD Armstrong

LUMMOX

Two Poems by Doug Draime

Teenage Angst

When I started writing
at around 15  if anyone
would have told me

that I’d still be at this
crazy-ass shit  as an old man

I would have found
my grandfather’s shiny
Remington 12 gauge

in the dilapidated barn
behind the house

and blown a hole
in them as huge as
Balzak’s belly

as long and jagged
as Whitman’s bread
as deep as

Finnegan’s Wake

Their blood and guts and
liver and bone

spewing out all over the
backyard and garden

The 9 wild cats that lived
in the barn

would have had a feast

If anyone would have
told me that

I would have murdered
more people than

Charles Starkweather

remember him?

_______________

Growing More Famous Everyday
Where Fame Is Like A Ghost Moth

He writes about the same bar he
has been drinking in every night  for years

And the same factory he’s worked
in for nearly as long.

At break time he sits in his car in the parking lot
writing poems about the people he sees
coming and going.

It is all he knows, the shitty job, the
drunk, horny women at the bar, that
he’s occasionally able to score, and detail
their sad lives in his poems.

The magazines love his work, call him
the new Bukowski, and publish those
ticky-tacky gems, one indistinguishable
from the next or the last.

He has something going, he’s in his zone,
his perfect comfort zone, like the magazines
that publish him, and think he’s the new
Bukowski, all of which, is awful damn depressing.

Three Poems by A.D. Winans

POEM FOR MY MOTHER

My mother’s eyes stare at me
Like a wounded doe
Staring into a rifle scope

Her smile fades
Like watercolors from
A worn canvass

The months grow antlers
The year’s fangs
Time a barbed wire fence
Tears at my soul

The shadow of my ancestors
Stalks my dreams
Like an aging warrior
Tracking game
My mother’s eyes smoldering
Like hot ashes
In a Hiroshima graveyard

____________

 

FOR LADY LYNNE

New York days and nights
Lodged in the back of my skull
Like tiny splinters beneath
A hangnail
My mind stoned
Like Merlin the Magician
On a starless night
Lost in a whirlwind of lust
That comes and goes
Like a fevered dream
My words empty as a tramp’s pocket
As you allow me to probe
The lining of your soul
As we make it one last time
To the music of a thousand crickets
Rubbing their hind-legs in applause

____________

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

She was like a gunslinger of old
Quick on the draw
A master at mind games
Sitting in the garden growing flowers
Playing he loves me he loves me not
And I should have known it was over
When she sent me an e-mail sayig
“Beware of Scorpio’s
They will bite you in the ass
Every time

When you’re young
A female smile can get you hard
When you get older that same smile
Can be like walking the last mile
And you know it’s time to move on
When you begin to feel
Like the words to a bad song
The betrayal not the reason
But the last straw
She of loveless love letters
That lay on the page
Like a corpse on a slab
At the morgue

THE BEAT MEMIOR with MARC OLMSTED

GINSBERG ON BROADWAY by MARC OLMSTED

In San Francisco, November 1981, Ginsberg was going to read at On Broadway in North Beach, (directly above the legendary punk club, Mabuhay Gardens) and invited my New Wave band The Job to back him up.  Gregory Corso was also on the bill.  Bob Kaufman, the black poet of the North Beach bar Dagon poem recitation of my “first date” with Allen some years prior, had come along with Gregory.  Kaufman shuffled about like an electroshock causality, barely speaking.  Kaufman was badly beaten by the police years earlier and may have suffered some brain damage as a result.  By all accounts he was functioning normally until the police roust.

We all met backstage and Corso was cantankerous, “You young rock & rollers are just in it for the gold.”  I thought to myself, “If we are, I’ve yet to see it.”  I was splitting $90.00 between 5 band members, albeit more money than we usually saw.  He thought my friend Paul Stiver was a “Rolling Stone [magazine] shmuck,” as we stood back stage with the girl interviewer who shrank into the corner during this tirade.  I worried that Gregory might do anything, wander onstage, disrupt the band etc. Allen agreed this could very well happen with Gregory, but it would be alright.  I only half-got this “crazy wisdom” teaching, but I accepted it.  And Gregory behaved himself (special thanks to Richard Modiano’s journal in getting the details of this memory correct).

Allen told the band last minute that we could go on after his reading and play a few songs.  I had gotten completely soused (as opposed to functionally soused) thinking I was done for the night.  On top of that, the drummer had wandered away, clearly bored with the poetry.  He was found downstairs in the Mab.  At one point I was rushing down those stairs to run into Michael McClure walking up – he paid me a compliment about the band and I thanked him but told him I had to find the drummer pronto.  McClure frowned that I didn’t stop to chat – I had apparently fucked up with him yet again.

When we opened with a song I was so drunk that I forgot the lyrics.  I could only make up phonetic noises with vowels and consonants.  No one noticed.  After Allen and Gregory left, the energy of the remaining mob was barely containable anyway.  We did 3 or 4 songs and begged off.  While Richard watched the pre-show with Paul and the show itself and the final aftermath, Paul told him, “this would make a great Robert Altman film.”

____________

Allen Ginsberg said “MARC OLMSTED inherited Burroughs’ scientific nerve & Kerouac’s movie-minded line nailed down with gold eyebeam in San Francisco.” Olmsted has appeared in CITY LIGHTS JOURNAL, NEW DIRECTIONS IN PROSE & POETRY, OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN POETRY, SIGNS OF LIFE (a Manic D Press anthology), PROCESSED WORLD, Flesh Eater Chris D’s BONGO CHALICE, BLUE SATELLITE and a variety of small presses. His work includes two books, MILKY DESIRE (Subterranean Press, 1991) and RÉSUMÉ (Inevitable Press, 1998).

THE BEAT MEMIOR with MARC OLMSTED

GINSBERG ON BROADWAY by MARC OLMSTED

In San Francisco, November 1981, Ginsberg was going to read at On Broadway in North Beach, (directly above the legendary punk club, Mabuhay Gardens) and invited my New Wave band The Job to back him up.  Gregory Corso was also on the bill.  Bob Kaufman, the black poet of the North Beach bar Dagon poem recitation of my “first date” with Allen some years prior, had come along with Gregory.  Kaufman shuffled about like an electroshock causality, barely speaking.  Kaufman was badly beaten by the police years earlier and may have suffered some brain damage as a result.  By all accounts he was functioning normally until the police roust.

We all met backstage and Corso was cantankerous, “You young rock & rollers are just in it for the gold.”  I thought to myself, “If we are, I’ve yet to see it.”  I was splitting $90.00 between 5 band members, albeit more money than we usually saw.  He thought my friend Paul Stiver was a “Rolling Stone [magazine] shmuck,” as we stood back stage with the girl interviewer who shrank into the corner during this tirade.  I worried that Gregory might do anything, wander onstage, disrupt the band etc. Allen agreed this could very well happen with Gregory, but it would be alright.  I only half-got this “crazy wisdom” teaching, but I accepted it.  And Gregory behaved himself (special thanks to Richard Modiano’s journal in getting the details of this memory correct).

Allen told the band last minute that we could go on after his reading and play a few songs.  I had gotten completely soused (as opposed to functionally soused) thinking I was done for the night.  On top of that, the drummer had wandered away, clearly bored with the poetry.  He was found downstairs in the Mab.  At one point I was rushing down those stairs to run into Michael McClure walking up – he paid me a compliment about the band and I thanked him but told him I had to find the drummer pronto.  McClure frowned that I didn’t stop to chat – I had apparently fucked up with him yet again.

When we opened with a song I was so drunk that I forgot the lyrics.  I could only make up phonetic noises with vowels and consonants.  No one noticed.  After Allen and Gregory left, the energy of the remaining mob was barely containable anyway.  We did 3 or 4 songs and begged off.  While Richard watched the pre-show with Paul and the show itself and the final aftermath, Paul told him, “this would make a great Robert Altman film.”

____________

Allen Ginsberg said “MARC OLMSTED inherited Burroughs’ scientific nerve & Kerouac’s movie-minded line nailed down with gold eyebeam in San Francisco.” Olmsted has appeared in CITY LIGHTS JOURNAL, NEW DIRECTIONS IN PROSE & POETRY, OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN POETRY, SIGNS OF LIFE (a Manic D Press anthology), PROCESSED WORLD, Flesh Eater Chris D’s BONGO CHALICE, BLUE SATELLITE and a variety of small presses. His work includes two books, MILKY DESIRE (Subterranean Press, 1991) and RÉSUMÉ (Inevitable Press, 1998).

Birdbrain by Allen Ginsberg with Marc Olmsted and the Job

From the above account–This is pure Ginsberg–November 1981

Click Here to listen

THE EYELESS NIGHT WILL ROB YOU OF YOUR ROAD by Charles Plymell

Jewels of nature are no longer found along the
roadside, no scraps of tin from ancient tinker man
they buried now by the tossed Budweiser can
and  reflective shards of bottle moonlight glint
distant bulb kitchen light alone on prairie sod
like a lantern flicker in the corner of the night.

Rusty diner neon signs gone with waitress love
an apron in roadside rubble cactus blossom rot
lost kiss against numb thruway battered cheek
the gas attendant gone, the sunflowers tip their
heads to sundown and pack the night mysteries
of the universe so tight a flirt of coffee cup drips.

No thought given void and matter if truth did beckon
words stuck to vipers tongues ready to strike if
banned from new vocabularies of the smart phone.

The denver sandwich now the western omelet
and menus the extent of word consciousness
of dead walking in human form ghostly rhythms
of the earth leaking like contents of a broken jar
one thing no longer illuminates another dead end.

Two Poems by William Taylor Jr.

If There Must

If there must be an afterlife let mine
be a little bar in San Francisco
somewhere near the ocean
an endless grey sky stretching
out over everything
dim lights
and a soft rain falling
with grand windows to watch it through
a bartender with a knowing smile
leaning to fill my glass
a jukebox with all the right songs
and endless credits
to the left of me sits a blowsy blonde
with enormous laughter
and to the right an old man
with shining eyes of kindness
and stories to tell of days long passed
and we will talk
if we want to talk
or just be quiet and listen to the rain
time is obsolete
and there’s no place anyone ever
has to be and maybe an old dog
the color of gold
asleep in the corner
and people could smoke if they wanted to
I wouldn’t
mind.

____________

The Woman in the Building

The woman in the building
next to mine
has big sad eyes
and a pretty mouth
that never smiles.

Her long black hair
is streaked with silver grey.

She looks a bit like Patti Smith
and smokes many cigarettes.

I see her on the sidewalk,
in the Goodwill

and at the corner liquor store.

She never meets my eye.

She’s always alone
and moves is if
through water,

not quite of this world.

I like to imagine her
a poet,

someone with stories to tell.

More likely she’s just
another sad lady

who never smiles
and doesn’t care

that I’ll never tell her
how I like her face.

Two Poems by Cassandra Dallett

I was the girl they whispered about

big as I was
I still felt the brush of crumpled paper and orange peels
bounce off my  shoulders on the school bus.
Me stubbornly staring Dad’s Chevy skully
out the window
When I got up the nerve
to look back everything went blurry a swirl of pale faces
like the girls in the Carrie locker room
I’d wonder if I was just paranoid.

By High school being whispered about was a challenge
each day  I’d confront them
more outrageous
Hair chopped ragged with sewing scissors
dresses made from pillowcases armholes cut
near the top by my Sponge Bob shoulders
the bottom grazing my crotch
thick thighs pushing it up
unsure how much I was actually showing
daring them
in their Izods, Levis, and shit kickers
to look
to say anything
so they whispered, snickered always seemed to already know
who I’d gotten drunk and fucked at the party.
Art teachers loved me I made earrings from Barbie accessories
collaged crazy things and liked spray paint.
Other teachers grew nervous
I was too serious too fidgety
A scribble of writing on a wrinkled paper
C- at best.

On Haight Street they still whispered
the girlfriends,
hated me
I only hung around dudes
to be around testosterone drinking and fighting
got my combat boots twisted behind my ears
by young punks in alleys
they laughed and whispered
but none of them
wanted to fight me.

____________

Barn Razing

My first kiss
Tommy Toflin
in the hay loft
till dawns light striped
through cracks
and knot holes
in wide boards.
Hay is not fun to roll in
it scratches flesh red-raw
leaves your skin burning long after.
Tommy was a terrible kisser
drooled down my chin
his fingers gynecological
in their probing.

The barn made me nervous
with my fear of spiders speckled grey sacks
and the ladder to get up there
three stories straight up
gave me vertigo.
Swinging  my leg over the edge
to step on to the loft
caused hours of anxiety.

Within its  tall, tall sliding doors
a rusty tractor and combine
sheep coming in and out chewing stupidly
I learned to milk goats here
to get grain from a  silo
cut open fresh bales.

Stored my furniture
between coastal moves
Till it burned to the ground
the volunteer fire department hose
too late and too small for the blaze.

After it was gone
leaving only a smoldered black square
Mom found pictures of the barn raising
looking a hundred years old
I was too young to remember.
In black and white,  long haired
t shirted hippies
holding beer bottles and hammers
in happy, industrious chaos.

Last Chance Motel by DB Cox

A rundown motel clings to the shoulders of a narrow highway. A blinking neon sign shoots holes through the middle of a Mississippi night. Enfolded in the semidarkness of a lamp lit room, a young man leans over a table etching straight-razor phrases into the pages of a motel notepad.

Mind overturned and burning somewhere near Kamdesh, Afghanistan. Lost. Can’t find his way home. Past the possibility of finding things to count on: like the orbit of the earth around the sun—like moon-swung oceans guided by gravity’s hands—like a lucky star to steer his feet past lonely streets that lead to places like this Last Chance Motel—where he sits with pen in hand, a pistol on the table, and a bible in every room.

Available at Amazon