Bruce Roberts reviews Karl Schonborn’s Cleft Heart, Chasing Normal

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Cleft Heart, Chasing Normal

by Karl Schonborn

review by Bruce Roberts

cleft-heart-cover

Cleft Heart, by Karl Schonborn, is a multifaceted memoir, covering his life in great detail, from birth to adulthood. In the process, several different themes interweave to create the whole of Schonborn’s experience growing up in the 1960s.

The main theme, which underlies all the others, is that he was born with a severe cleft palate. The resulting heroism of his parents—especially his mom—in dealing with doctors and hospitals and operations for decades to fix this problem, is amazing. And since memoirs are written in first person, readers also learn of the mental stress all this put on him, and how well he coped, how well he made decisions—even as a kid—to deal with the bullying from others, and the intense frustration from knowing he looked different.

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Elizabeth Hughes’ Book Periscope

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Don’t Look Back

a novel by Rita D’Orazio

dontlookbackcover

Don’t Look Back is a very good novel that begins in the late 1960’s. It is about Katerina Balducci, who grows up in a very dysfunctional family in New York. She has a 15 year-old sister, Simona, and a 13 year-old brother, Tony. She has a love/hate relationship with her mother and a loving relationship with her father and Zia Adrianna. She loves the Beach Boys and fashion. She is feisty and lovable. The story is both funny and tragic. When tragedy strikes, Katerina stays strong and is an inspiration to her sister. The story flows very well and will keep you on the edge of your seat page after page. I really enjoyed reading it and look forward to the sequel. The story is geared toward older teens and young adults, however, anyone would enjoy it. I love the book and am long past the young adult age! So, grab a cup of tea, sit down, read Don’t Look Back and enjoy!

Read Liz Hughes’ thoughts on more books below.

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Poetry from Jenny Williamson

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Mostly Water

From a womb of seawater we glide to earth

On a river of salt and blood. In life

A river of salt and blood encircles our hearts

And the moon speaks to our bones.

Our bones pass from the earth and are gone, but the water stays.

When I die let me climb the veins of an oak tree

From the veins of an oak tree let me pass into air, into cloud

Let me fall over cities and towns

Over rivers and streams let me thrash in the rapids

In a clear glass bottle let me cultivate stillness

Let the eye of the sun find a clear glass bottle

Let it turn me into a pillar of light.

Jenny Williamson’s writing has been featured in 24Mag, Wild River Review, Poetic Voices, and in Philadelphia’s Writing Aloud series.  She has also received recognition from the Academy of American Poets and NPR’s Young Poets Series.

Poetry from Kenyatta Jean-Paul Garcia

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Leapt

“Two teardrops floating down the river”

Whisperin’ Bill Anderson

Having no need for discussion

but enjoying a conversation

God told Lucifer

about plans for Adam

As cheeks puffed up

Lucifer leapt

Went down chasing nostalgia

before it

-they-

hit the river

to be lost

forever.

Tears fall faster than angels do

and as the dawn breeze cut across

the land and Adam arose,

the garden found

water for thirsty seed.

Lucifer, in luck,

caught a couple

straggling drops

before Eden did

Holding tight to them

all heat gone

from hands

crystallized,

tucked them

down below

in mimicry of man.

The tree grew

and shape was changed momentarily

but most of all,

the imitation of the envied

remained

As further the spiral was assembled

As first Cain and Abel

then the others arrived

Until even the inner sanctum

of melancholy was invaded,

traversed,

and Dante caught glimpse

of much treasured tears

icy

below the waist

so maybe God

wouldn’t know

the difference between hate and hiding

So maybe the commonality

of want and wait

could be kept secret.

Should Want For

There goes again

the pass over

Where’s all this time to waste

as again given reprieve

for

from

what?

Shame spins webs

honest

and devoid

of ancient tricksters

In the silk of spidery ropes

of arachnid

highways

are words

threaded

Are spells to be cast

and curses broken

Should want for touch

be disobeyed

if missing, the gone-away

could keep back hands

to bring the fool further along the journey.

Together

Together remaining where occurrences can

undisturbed by air

Thought unexpressed for fear of suffocation

Fingers crossed behind back

differ from those brought into view

If on a winter’s night

travelers come upon

coral wound through

commercial, residential

districts

symbiosis will be best understood

Swimming by — of arms interlocked

against

quieting breeze.

Ideas away from exposure

may be preserved

but age becomes

time lost.

The squid’s ink

has been left runny

alongside where

pedestrians walk.

Following is a chore.

Form changes

Together maps –

isolates.

Kenyatta Jean-Paul Garcia is the editor of ALTPOETICS and author of Yawning on the Sands, This Sentimental Education and What Do the Evergreens Know of Pining. After growing up in Brooklyn, NY, upstate has become home and is where the past few years were spent cooking and getting a degree in linguistics. More work can found at kjpgarcia.wordpress.com.

Synchronized Chaos March 2014 – Processing Change

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The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
— Isaac Asimov

March 2014’s issue of Synchronized Chaos tackles change, in different aspects and forms.

As this month’s writers remind us, not all changes are positive, voluntary, or desired.

G.X. Chen’s novel Forget Me Not: A Love Story Of The East, reviewed here by Fran Laniado, illustrates the turmoil and repression of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Her novel poses the question of how and whether we can preserve our relationships and sense of self, as well as our lives, in the face of institutions determined to alter and redefine us.

The recent book and movie The Monuments Men, as reviewed by Bruce Roberts, showcases the work of a special crew tasked during World War II with the retrieval and protection of historical artifacts Hitler intended to destroy. National governments deemed culture important enough to risk lives to save, on behalf of future generations. Or because those instances of beauty, decency, and creative thought reminded them of what they were fighting to preserve.

Christopher Bernard points to the magnitude of the destruction greed and materialism can wreak on the planet and its inhabitants. In his poem, no species survives the violence we inflict, to relieve not our anger, but our boredom. This social critique itself becomes the means through which anything can be preserved.

In a much less serious vein, Kimi Little’s short story “The Three Billy Pigs Gruff” presents clever animals who outwit the larger forces threatening them, as ‘personified’ by a big, bad wolf. The pigs wish to improve their lives by building larger houses across the river, and so work together to be able to make this change.

Anita Cox’ sensual novel The Beginning, reviewed here by Sarah Melton, depicts a young woman figuring herself out after a divorce. No one would compare her to a genocide or eco-cide survivor, but she, also, takes action and makes choices when life confronts her with unplanned circumstances.

Tunisian writer Ali Znaidi offers up a study in contrasts, presenting a lively desert next to a depiction of nothingness. Unlike the common view of the desert as barren, he portrays a landscape full of all sorts of life, perhaps stronger due to their struggle to survive in the harsh environment.

Znaidi’s final poem reminds readers that people often carry within them a multitude of contradictions. When we, ourselves, are complex, it seems improbable to expect consistency and stability from the external environment.

Tony Longshanks le Tigre’s poem relates a childhood experience of visiting a natural history museum, and the wonder engendered by fossils and remnants of extinct animals. Life, in some form or another, has survived and adapted through so many cataclysmic events, so perhaps strength and resilience are part of our natures.

Ryan Hodge’s science fiction book Wounded Worlds: Nihil Novum, reviewed by Elizabeth Hughes in her monthly Book Periscope column, explores the various responses societies and individuals may have to the clash of interplanetary civilizations. Some choose to go to war against invading aliens, others simply become defeated, while others seek to adapt.

Changing oneself, or becoming flexible, in the face of new circumstances does not have to represent surrender or weakness. At times, the strategy may empower people to survive while preserving as much as possible of what they most value.

Walter Jack Savage contributes some colorful, complex artwork to this confluence of ruminations on revolution, survival, preservation and evolution.

While some changes are unpleasant and forced on us, others can be launching pads for creativity and new hope. We wish you a pleasant read through the thought and imagination reflected in this month’s issue.

Announcement: For those in or near the San Francisco Bay Area, our magazine’s spring reception will take place the evening of Thursday, March 6th, 6-9 pm at SF’s Cafe Boheme, 3318 24th st. in the Mission District. All welcome, please feel free to bring writing to share, books to sell, artwork to show off, or requests for partners, coauthors, volunteers, editors etc. We will hear book excerpts from guest readers Charles Ayres (Impossibly Glamorous), Joe Klingler (Mash Up and RATS), and Ryan Hodge (Wounded Worlds) as well as learn about how to virtually mentor writers in Afghanistan, from a guest speaker from the Afghan Women’s Writing Project (http://www.awwproject.org)

At First, No One ListenedWalter Savage’s At First, No One Listened

Poetry from Christopher Bernard

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The Disappearance of the Flies

By Christopher Bernard

 

      “Did I ever tell why I no longer call myself a humanist?”
                          —Overheard at a climatology conference 

So, the word’s finally out:

 

I am the world’s Caesar,
and you are my Christians.

 

Not that I hate you absolutely—

on the contrary, for the most part

I enjoy you;

 

those of you I cannot eat

or flog into subservience,

to help me, or amuse me, or decorate my

upscale live-work high-end design space

now, or by no later than the end of next quarter,

 

are just in the way,

 

as I thrust ahead

 

to glory, to a sweet, psychotic power,

and a suffocating wealth

built on the dependable human delight

in the enchanted moment of acquisition.

 

I’ve got you,

 

I’ve got the world.

 

It is no longer God’s or nature’s;

 

it is mine,

 

I own you,

 

I who hate to have and love to get.

 

There was once a despot

whose footsteps bloodied his time.

After he had conquered the world,

bored with his possessions,

he decided to destroy them:

slaughtered his slaves, his women, his sycophants,

sent his soldiers to the ends of his empire

to pillage and sack it, out of boredom and rage

that he had no more worlds to conquer.

He burned his own palaces to the ground.

 

In a crazy drunk one night,

he broke his neck in a ditch.

The peasants crept up to his small, pale body,

the body that had conquered the world,

and watched the flies flickering above it.

 

Today there were no peasants.

There were no flies.

____

 

Christopher Bernard is a poet, novelist, essayist, photographer and filmmaker living in San Francisco. He is author of the novel A Spy in the Ruins,The Rose Shipwreck: Poems and Photographs, and a collection of stories, In the American Night. He is also co-editor of the webzine Caveat Lector.