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
—the family of simple, monosyllabic words. –Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty Bread House Salt God The tsunami smell of yeast inundated our house the mornings our mother baked bread, up through floorboards it came, up the stairwell it spread stirring our dreamselves alive, fresh loaves, bells for the…
Odder Still As odd as it is that the moon comes up behind the inelegant tree behind our house over the dark mountain —grey white and silver-dollar like, a night eye weeping silver— it’s odder still to think of a moon that never was …………………………….. As odd as spring seems, fresh and crisp as the salad…
I’ve looked at Hair from Both Sides Now I once had hair dark-brown and cumulous Now more like cirrus-wisps, things are getting serious: gone from dark and voluminous it’ll soon be dissapearious As I contemplate my pate I’m thinking life’s mysterious As I contemplate my fate I’m thinking life is spurious Jim Culleny 7/6/18 Enjoying the…
“In every myth something human speaks, it’s characters are interchangeable, what’s essential is the underlying truth regardless of cultural or theological details.” ……………………………………………. —Roshi Bob Woman at the Well She saw him there, there was no doubt about the knowing look in his eye, she’d come to draw water because her bucket was dry He…
Womb of Being Here I am, in it, curled as you are, as all are who breathe. I found myself here, not by my choice but by that of something other. So, I’m here wondering how you interpret the mystery of it —not its biology, but the phenomenology of it, the cloud of meanings of its textures…
Architecture and Light what would architecture be without light, or light without architecture, man-made or that which has emerged over eons: incredible trellises of trees, their intricate frames of chiaroscuro on light-slanted walks under shifting limbs while leaves flash and flutter through the architecture of the light within skulls: synapse nets of Rorschach blots, their…
Understanding of Unity Among All Living Things We arrive dumb as stumps, wailing as if we already knew the inevitability of outcomes Why did we not laugh instead, foreseeing joy, or simply remain mute in the moment, suggesting sudden premonition—> the instant awareness that life would bring both understanding and awareness, all provoked by the…
Until the Night Drops .. ,,,,,,,—written as a song (link below) ‘ Fog lifting off of the river Frogs in a chorus of croaks Moon lit up —just a sliver A fire that the unknown has stoked ‘ Chuck Berry singing Johnny be Good his guitar lighting fires in our heads greenhorns working out would-could-should fresh ones a…
…. Ménage à trois Isn’t it a miracle that three atoms have combined in electric love to become that fluid substance that bears boats and wrecks ships, that fills bays that breed and protect life, that sustains it, the essential stuff of bodies and minds, the billows of overhead mist that rain and surge through…
Constellations Who will herd the creatures of the constellations across the prairies of the night sky if we disappear like dinosaurs into the mists of archaeology? Who will name them? Who’ll call them Crab and Bear, minor or major? Who’ll domesticate The Lesser Dog, The Little Horse, The Wolf ? Who would think to inscribe imaginary lines between anonymous outposts…
The Cardelaveo Abyss Without you would be the Cardelaveo Abyss which is no place I know or which even exists unless by coincidence because I just made it up to convey the vast emptiness I would know without you Awakening in a 2 a.m. funk what I was doing up was being down, not in…
As the Minute Clicks a new night and cool —unlike June in Jersey when I was green but June anyway anyway it comes it’s June it’s June regardless of you June then June now mid-evening 8:30 by the clock —the night dark almost in the window the sky glows grey behind silhouetted trees slate-skin clouds…
Gong and Pennywhistle You can play a cheap tin pennywhistle or beat on a big gold gong. Down here on earth in the soft grass or stinging thistles nobody stays here for long —nobody stays here for long, those up on high and those way down low breathe the same bitter air, we’ll just have…
Burning Bush At twenty I danced the tops of walls— Nijinsky of the double top plate bent in-two like an onion shoot unbending up through an earthen gate, lifting sticks to be put in place, nailing their tails held against my boot, walking the wires of gravity’s net as a spider commands its filament web…
Lucky Again Yesterday today might never have come but I’m lucky again It did and here you are my bulwark against a lone sea. In the garden you began years ago in our plot of sand where little grew but wild strawberries close to the ground, their tendrils groping dry earth, we now have hibiscus…
Current Tally: I’m out here stacking days as if it were a sport, I’m up to twenty thousand six hundred eight. I sweat memory. I’ve taken off my shirt, I’m feeling great, but as I stack them up time is growing short. I tally what till now I’ve done. Not far from a stack of stones…
Another Piece of Eternity I’m peeling back a page reading a new day by the light of a new sun. Mom died years ago, or was it yesterday? I once read something similar by Camus but was too new to understand that time bleeds, its dyes are not fast but run between years and sometimes…
Driver’s License Renewal Photo I take a look and first think, whoa! you look like the father of a 50-year old,then think, whoa! you are the father of a 50-year old,then think, whoa! you look like somebody’s grandpa,then think, whoa! you are somebody’s grandpa,then think, whoa! you look like somebody’s great-grandpa,then think, whoa! you are…
Fugitive Big brown bison walks the white line of a two-lane, black eyes scanning for a sign. Regarding asphalt he wonders what happened to the grass. How did this black ribbon come to bisect my meadow between talus and hundred-foot pines, and where are the columbine? He asks no one in particular because not even…
Einstein & Etta James I’m fourteen when Einstein is in Princeton He’s old & heading out of breath as I am fresh and new at breathing in some But there the landscapes of the space between our ears divides Al used levers of his mind for lifting mass in time, while mine took to bass…