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
Having Coffee i’m having coffee i’m dreaming I’m having coffee with Whistler’s mother i’m scratching a knuckle with my nose i’m not listening to my wife while gazing out a window i’m imagining our small distant sun rising over the horizon of Neptune i’m having coffee, paper cup with a heat sleeve i’m playing with…
“The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now scientists say they are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast in a revised form, through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering.” — Hannah Devlin inThe Guardian Lazarus If the wooly mammoth becomes the new Lazarusreborn from an ice sarcophagusdoes it mean…
Things We Learn Things come to usout of nowhere they come Surfers riding waves we learn the nuances of gravityits center-of, its bonding property,its Gs, its fatal promise, we learnhow to stand erect and, for the most part, stay that waylearn how to take a fallhow to shuck and jive through sticky momentsthrough disequilibrium to…
On particle “action at a distance”: “…if particles have definite states even when no one is looking (a concept known as realism) and if indeed no signal travels faster than light (locality)… (and, as has) recently been discovered … you can keep locality and realism by giving up just a little bit of freedom.” This…
..[Listen below] Pattern Language I take the sidewalk a step at a time, shards of its exposed aggregate form archipelagos, and there’s Jesus in a cloud, or is it Lao Tzu explaining Is without a word Deep clefts in the bark of a tree just passed define the humps of Appalachians. I saw Scranton…
“All humans are genetically 99.9 per cent identical.” —Roger Highfield, Science Editor Great Wall, Tremendous Wall.Something there is that doesn’t love a wall one poet said imagining friendly neighbors working their way along that which stood between, resetting fallen gneiss and granite loaves and balls that had fallen to each to keep their wall intactwhile…
Once Upon a Spacetime — to P. on our 40th anniv. . . . . . .A couple of hours before twilighta gibbous moon rose in the eastover the serpentine spine of the mountaina bright hole in a bluegrey scrim,just there without reason,as uncomplicated and expectedas a shard of granite on the slope of a…
The past is inevitable. …………—Delmore Schwartz, Poet Hadn’t Thought of it Like That Though likely, tomorrow is not set This day’s loose ends twist in the wind like kite tails jerked in blue at the end of present’s string becoming codas no one can sing— the future’s not something on which you should bet Only…
Love Kitchen —Mary Mraz Culleny, 12/8/17-3/2/03 The tsunami scent 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 nose their toll sent sleep from somnolent heads I’d written that thinking of her floured hands,sifting,…
In Books when words make love sentences are bornthe world’s heft is changed by the weight of nouns,the hesitations of hyphens and commas, like the space between breaths, tell the rhythm of what’s new and what’s been, the dead stops of periods spell the end of what a breath holds,adjectives, like the blood blush of…
Darwin's Surf…. —ode to cells Before metaphorical allusionswe are warm and wet.Seas surge within us. In little cytoplasmic bays, tiny ships of golgi moornear lysosome cays enclosed by permeable breakwater membranes that all rise and fall with nucleo tidesin ebbs and flows through generationsrendering noses pug or aquilineand eyes skybright or in colors of loam;…
Death of NGC 2440 although you are distant distant distant I can see by your last aura against a black further distance, the most distant distance… I can see by your billowing halo of expanding gasses fluffed like god’s pillow that you are ruled by laws that also rule terrestrial things I see the colors…
“(Swifts) feed in the air, they mate in the air, they get nest material in the air. They can land on nest boxes, branches, or houses, but they can't really land on the ground.”— Researcher Susanne Åkesson Swift I’ve been airborne since Augustus layed the footings of the Roman Peace ……—in that alone I flew…
Of Enlightenment clicking buttons of a remote I dream of enlightenmentof crammed refugees in boats I dream in flickering glow of screens I dream of enlightenmentof history that still careens I dream hearing sirens in the dark I dream of enlightenmentof popping guns in parks I dream seeing new corpses in the street I dream…
Many Diamonds if I were to cross this bridge a thousand times no— I’ve crossed this bridge a thousand times along the length of its steel lattice rail through which my small daughter wanting to look down at small-town icebergs sailing in the swift spring surge had stuck her head, turned it just so, and…
Don W. in Manhattan —eating the dust of 2001 Dining in Soho alone, a manserved by a girl with lip studs, nose ring, and serpent tattoo uncoilingfrom deep cleavage,sees the new man of La Mancha, in dim light across the room,seated with his back to the street: This new La Mancha mantopples a pepper mill…
Now the bricks lay on Grand StreetWhere the neon madmen climbThey all fall there so perfectlyIt all seems so well timed……………….. —Bob Dylan. Wabi-sabi upon first hearing I knew the perfectionDylan wove that verse around(as if anything on earth could be so flawlessas to deserve the divinity of that word)which says:…………………could be here nowand so…
I Hold Things Up As a carpenter I learned, before you can leverage things apartyou have to find purchase. You have to have a place where a pry-barcan be slipped in or driven with a hammer to separate.That being done, whether by violent or pursuasive means,when two factions have been splitthey're easier to manipulate. These…
Asamprajanya I’m in the weeds on my knees pawing dark earth looking for my squash among prolific opportunist grasses and broad-leafed virtuosos at finding sustenance in the garden of a part-time farmer— finding advantage in his jammed schedule, in life’s necessary distractions and precious irrelevancies, his asamprajanya On knees I sweat under an indifferent sun…
“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” —Miles Davis Next Note There are no bad notes if you’re open, cool and quick there’ll be a next note: first rung on a ladder from a ditch new rudder of a boat you'll sail to…