NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

THORNY LOCUST is a beautifully produced poetry magazine: a real credit to its 'Editor-& Artistic Director' Silvia Kofler. From the understated card cover (artwork by Shaun Friesen) to the quality of the paper, THORNY LOCUST, containing 25 poems by 23 poets spread nicely out over 28 spacious pages, smacks of professionalism from the word go. And given that it doesn't appear to be in receipt of any form of state funding, or to be connected to an academic institution - as many of the better American magazines are - editors everywhere could probably learn a thing or two by taking a look at it.

The other thing I liked about THORNY LOCUST was that, reading through it, I got the feeling that; far from existing in some vague small-press netherworld; it is a magazine with a very definite connection to a particular geographical location i.e. that huge chunk of the United States wedged between New York and Philadelphia on the North Atlantic east and Seattle and San Francisco on the Pacific west. All of the poets in this issue are resident in the USA coming,for the most part, from places such as Missouri, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.

Several of the poems are either about the natural landscape or make use of that landscape's metaphorical possibilities such as William Boden's WINDLESS DUSK

	During the copper
	light of winter in Florida
	when everyone watches
	the sun shimmer
	towards the water, turn away
	and find trees to face.
	This is the shade of green
	that got Monet and Pissarro
	out of bed every morning
	when Frenchmen thirty years
	younger looked for help.
	Wait.
	The sun will pull
	in its glamour
	for another day
	and then, listen:
	this is the sound
	Beethoven missed most.
	You can hear it
	in his late sonatas,
	the final few birds of the day
	with their farewells
	and the longing,
	all the longing.

Of course, I'm sure that, if this poem described a landscape more familiar to me, such as that of, say, the west coast of Ireland, then my attitude would probably be more critical. Landscape/nature poetry undoubtedly suffers because readers who actually know the landscape in question (i.e. the locals) almost inevitably grow tired hearing the same leaves on the same trees by the same sea being described over and over again. It also suffers though, because much of it tends to be rather cliched and lazy. Generally speaking, this doesn't apply to the poems published here, most having at least something to like about them, even if, in the case of one or two of the weaker ones, it's just a line here, a phrase there.

However, there is more to THORNY LOCUST than pastoral poetry from middle America. In her editorial Silvia Kofler says:

In this issue writers embrace stark wintery emotions-from self-mutilation to the apprehension of those in cardiac rehabilitation.

	The neighbors have seen her
	waving at dead squirrels,
	sometimes running out the
	front door naked, screaming
	through holes in the night air.

	She believes that if she takes
	her needful medication,
	the children crying in her
	empty womb will stop proclaiming
	how much they love her.

	Eating nothing but Moon Pies,
	she goes to mass on Saturday night,
	where she sits by herself
	and chants the Rosary,
	picking her face until it bleeds.

	With a typewriter, she broke the noses of two broad men her first day
	their cartilage exploded like wet red fire-crackers
	They laughed about it later, over beers,
	"I'd still fuck her," they said.

John Grey's WALL OF DEATH stood out:

	...I was old enough to know
	that one slip
	and all the centrifugal force in the world
	couldn't stop that Harley
	crashing to the floor
	in fiery celebration of the name
	that throbbed in neon above us...

Thomas Robert Barnes' ROCK WITH TREES:

	Who slings beached whale back at the sea
	to nullify her sick suicide?
	Was it you or some writer
	with a taste for melancholy?
 
	Belfast is just up the road.
	You could smell the salt 
	if it wasn't for the cold
	sting in your nose, the drool.
 
	Your body chose to emulate maple.
	For years you cull the blood
	That even you cannot bring yourself to eat.
	But paint? That's different...

Suzanne Rindell's BREAKFAST FOR THE BANISHED:

	Later the raucous belly groan of the
	Refrigerator's ice-maker will
	Make me jump
	Make me remember I am 
	Alone.
 
	A friend once told me orthodox Jews
	Sent their women away during menstruation; banished
	To be purified.
	Then one day her mother went to the store
	For a box of tampons and never
	Returned.
 
	All this over eggs...

Some misses, but THORNY LOCUST is worth checking out.

       I steal into cold
       listening
       to the slip of water
       about my feet
       the brush of wind in reeds
       the crackle of starlight

                              November leaves
       yellowing the lawns in fresh
       cascades spell slow change.

                       Morphine
       slew ego. I was a parsonage
       without a parson, a jukebox mausoleum.
       Later I reintroduced myself to
       myself. Long time no see. There
       are still hard feelings between us.

               I drag it
       along darkened corners,
       under burned-out streetlights
       where the ground has shifted
       and the sidewalks are uneven

	Empty miles along the road, empty hearts, empty lives. 
	Suitcases on the bed. Hers was full of kitchen knifes.

Naturally some of the work is locally focussed but transcends parochialism. Braver is Barbara DeCesare's THE VASECTOMY CARTOON FAMILY which tackles a potentially embarrassing subject in a straightforward and sympathetic way.

The occasional line drawings are idiosyncratic but with a naive charm and increase the attractiveness of this production.