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
October. when the night chorus ends its cricketed whine (gone overnight when first frost came) a new silence blends with pitch of pine and barks of trees ………………………… what remains when heat departs and dark descends is a resonate wake of love in heads of echo memories that will too be shed . Jim Culleny…
.Digging Potatoes with the Young ……….. — for George and Dacy last week I dug potatoeswith the young—granddaughter and son.I showed them how to sink the forkin ground a bit away from desiccated tuber stalksby leaning their slight weight in to force it downthen leveraging tines by length of haftto bring the harvest slowly from…
Gong and Pennywhistle.you can play a cheap pennywhistle or beat on a big gold gongdown here on earth in the soft grass or stinging thistlesnobody stays here for long those up on highand those way down lowbreath the same bitter airwe’ll just have to see how it goes you can bring down the house with…
Key .dangling from a ring my finger hookedand drew from a jean pocketis a burnished brass key warn smoothfrom the ten thousand timesI put it to this lock and turnedto hear the delicious clickof entering home,the place filled withyou. by Jim Culleny9/18/15
Football the sheer brilliance of this game’s hook amazes me— it’s an homage to collision,a demo derby of organs and bones,of fans psyched to see some player’snear-death experience, a feint gameof fine footwork leading tovictory through the skill to maimall underlain with clever strategiesand agile trickersbacked by large men and place kickers,a mashup of history,current…
. COLLECTING FIREFLIES I’m afraidI don’t understandthe death part of lifealthough at my ageyou might think I might,and not necessarilythe last death-partbut the everyday bits of itthat constantly intrudeThe only thing I can thinkto make sense of itis that its shadowover each tendernessmakes each tendernessmore rich and poignant,as if tenderness werethe only point of lightin…
Bidding Adieu. gimme a new piece of the big Mysterium —the words had barely left his lips when he died again in cognate delirium choking on the language of things clues science is a big Imperiumreligion is too but one (at least) gives credit to what the other calls g-o-d for having offered to all:…
Struck With Rust. from a chair close by the hydrangea in white, and a wheelbarrow old and purely struck with rust, the hydrangea’s lace planets in close galaxies of three-petal poems, the barrow’s hard, black tire and load of pulled weeds which, until the other day, into life were thrust now busted, heaped in a…
If you talk about it, it’s not TaoIf you name it, it’s something else What can’t be named is eternalNaming splits the eternal to smithereens Not tangled in desire you embrace the unknownTangled in desire you see only what you want But the unknown and what you wanthave one source. Call it no place No…
. . . . . . . . . The Horses of Chauvet the horses of Chauvet lope through a caveeloquently old and new true and lush as the love and lustour progenitors knew and craved. by Jim Culleny6/28/15.Chauvet Cave > >
““The best evidence we have suggests that early Earth was completely covered by oceans…(but) if you link two amino acids together to make a protein, you have to remove water.” And that would have been impossible if the amino acids were immersed in an ocean. Life needed some land—literally a beachhead—to get started.” —Tim Folger…
In the beginning was Ignorance, which, after seven days of metastization, took no rest, not even a nap, and saw that it was good —or, if not 'good', at least very effective.”……………………………………. —Fascist Bible 1:1 Yankee Disenlightenment it was once considered not good not to know to know nothing to be willfully stupid yet not…
right here put down the guitar andpuddled a cord at the base of the microphone standjust after there’d been music right here at hand. is it always here at hand?. just yesterdayin a field behind my housethe sun hove into view againas if it would never burn out Jim Culleny5/20/15
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” —Carl Sagan on a photo taken of Earth by Voyager 1 as it left our solar system. Pale Blue Dot pale…
Am I my brother’s keeper?…………… —Genesis 4:9 Not Abel At first I was able, then I was not Abel,I’d walked with Cain. I was battered off my feet—but before? Before I became a name of biblical proportionsI just tended sheep, then suddenlymy lambs stood bleating as I lay bleeding The world had changed. No longer…
Any Street On a streetany streetpick oneodds area tastea scenta touchare enoughto make onepray.. On a streetany streetpick oneodds arean unknowngod’sabsent taste& scent& touchareenoughto killone. On a streetany streetpick oneodds arethe loveyou knowistouch-me-enoughto-make-me-pray. On a streetany streetpick oneodds arewhyswhatswhens&thereforesare pointlessin love. by Jim Culleny3/23/12
I’m still dwelling on how ironic all the feverish proclamationsof capitalism are going to look someday.…………………… —Justin E.H. Smith Gabriel’s Mad Ave. Apocalyptic Horn I’m through with dumpster dinnersat the corner of Wall Street and New I’m so unsold by the Coke sign’s faded blushthat thrusts from desiccated dollar dunes—an embarrassment a crass embellishmentstuffed in…
Pi pi is perfection with a loose end three point 1 four and so onwithout pattern or closure the precision of a mandaladrawn by a drunk on two martinis not scribing wholeness merelybut thinking odd numbers spouting them while rambling homedisheveled, irrational, unseemly as the similar square root of 2at the point of life and…
Dis Hate Taste Kiss Mind is what the brain does.…………………… —Marvin Minsky. ………. imagine this: this morning was so cold I thought, frostbiteand a vision (gloves) occurred if I hadn’t thought coldmy hands may just as well have feltthey were in Aruba, and gloves absurd ………. then the wind hissed..being mindful isthe best way to…
The Slim Hope of Ponce de León. best of all seeming impossibilities, of all the unlikelihoods at the heart of utopias, is the slim hope of Ponce de León (the golden nut of Eden’s treeto hoard and hold and keep alive,like the fire-tenders of prehistory,an ember no matter how smallof coals hot and red of…