The monstrously fabulous
tripartite webzine    

Editor: Paul Stevens
Co-editor: Peter Bloxsom
Artist/photographer: Patricia Wallace Jones

FROM THIS ISSUE...

Already we know the ships of taut grey canvas
will have gone by then —  for plainly the future
   parleys with us as it likes,
   the steamship smoke smarting our eyes.
   —Alan Gould, “A Timeshot, Joseph Conrad In Picture”

...no other contemporary poet has so successfully conveyed the mysterious interconnectedness of all times and places, embodied by those metaphorical ships (ourselves) passing in the night:
   —  Steven McInerney on Alan Gould

Later, wrapped in that same bearskin,
she showed me waterfalls, cirques, fjords,
the aurora borealis.
When I inquired about flights out, she turned evasive.
“All one’s guilts and losses,” she replied,
“hug one for life
as the villages of Iceland hug their thermal springs.”
    — John Drexel, “Iceland”

Old lovers promenade the beach,
bare feet, hands held, they pace the last
of what is theirs. No need for speech,
They walk united by their past. 
    — Janet Kenny, “Last Dance”

Oh where did it come from, that web of sound
But the glimmer of grass, the red hair shaken down,
Oh where did it go to, that sweep of the strings
But a hand swinging free, as a swallow tests wings?
   — Alison Brackenbury, “Album”

Peering at prairie grass, I fail to find
The tracks laid down when history passed this way.
What if those marks are figments (like that line
In Casablanca Bogart doesn’t say),
Ghost imprints on collective memory,
   — Chris O’Carroll, “Santa Fe Trail, Kansas”

The rush-hour traffic seemed, as one, to brake,
arrested by their legs and arms entwined,
or by this knowledge: all their deaths would take
was one car passing on the inside, blind.
   — Anna Evans, “Dangerous Liaison”


Please look in on The Chimaera’s disreputable parent,
  The Shit Creek Review,
and also visit these other zines in which the editors have a hand:  
  The Flea
  14 by 14 


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The Chimaera is an online miscellany of poetry and prose. Welcome to our seventh issue. Our Feature Theme this time is Voyages and Quests. Our Spotlight Author in this issue is Australian poet and fiction writer Alan Gould. For more about the content, see the Editorial page.


Recorded readings accompany some of the poems. A page with one or more voice recordings is marked with a speaker icon in the menus. We hope the voice recordings add extra interest. To play the sound recording (Flash required), use the player controls following the title or end of the poem.

Comments or suggestions? Please see our Feedback page.

The Chimaera’s staff will be taking a break for the rest of this year. Meanwhile we are closed for submissions. More details on our Editorial page.
 
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