Poetry and Poetics

Mudlark
An Electronic Journal
of Poetry & Poetics

Never in and never out of print...



Mudlark Posters | Alison Townsend

Sarah Gridley | Nina Lindsay
Francine Marie Tolf | Erin Lambert
Oliver Rice | Christina Kallery


Mudlark No. 37 (2008)
John Allman | from Older Than Our Fathers

Mudlark No. 36 (2008) Peter Waldor | Leg Paint

Mudlark No. 35 (2008) Charles Freeland
The Case of the Danish King Halfdene

Mudlark No. 34 (2007)
Donald Wellman | Baroque Threads

Mudlark No. 33 (2007)
Susan Kelly-DeWitt | Cassiopeia
Above the Banyan Tree

Mudlark No. 32 (2007)
Laura McCullough | Elephant Anger

Mudlark No. 31 (2006)
John Allman | Lowcountry

Mudlark No. 30 (2006)
Mike Smith | Anagrams of America

Mudlark No. 29 (2005)
Dawn Tefft | Field Trip to My Mother
and Other Exotic Locations

Mudlark No. 28 (2005)
Brian Clements | Use Cases

Mudlark No. 27 (2005)
María Lojo, trans. Brett Alan Sanders
Knocking at the Doors of Heaven

Mudlark No. 26 (2004)
Kip Knott | Whisper Gallery

Mudlark No. 25 (2004)
Ruth Daigon | Time Means Nothing At All

Mudlark No. 24 (2004)
Michael Ruby | First Names

Mudlark No. 23 (2003)
Garin Cycholl | Disruptive Cinema

Mudlark No. 22 (2003)
Jeffrey Little | Biography
As In Syntax: The Babble Poems

Mudlark No. 21 (2002)
R. D. Girard | The Price of Water in Los Angeles

Mudlark No. 20 (2002)
Chris Semansky | André Breton
Works the Crisis Prevention Hotline

Mudlark No. 19 (2002)
John Kinsella, Tracy Ryan, Steve Chinna
Smith Street (Between Heaven and Hell)

Mudlark No. 18 (2001)
James Brook | Weather and Repetition

Mudlark No. 17 (2001)
Robert Gregory | Clouds & Green Police

Mudlark No. 16 (2001)
Stuart Lishan | from Body Tapestries

Mudlark No. 15 (2000)
Jeffrey Little | crayola in arcana

Mudlark No. 14 (2000)
Sarah Law | The Baptism of the Neophytes

Mudlark No. 13 (2000)
Edward Harkness | A Note to My Sons

Mudlark No. 12 (1999)
Martin Bennett
At a Shift of Points the Chorus Switches

Mudlark No. 11 (1999)
Richard von Sturmer | Blue Cliff Verses

Mudlark No. 10 (1998)
Diane Wald | Improvisations
on Titles of Works by Jean Dubuffet

Mudlark No. 9 (1998)
Andrew Schelling | The Road to Ocosingo

Mudlark No. 8 (1998)
Sheila E. Murphy
A Sound the Mobile Makes in Wind

Mudlark No. 7 (1997)
Mike O'Connor | Only a Friend Can Know:
Poems and Translations from the Chinese

Mudlark No. 6 (1997)
Henry Gould | Island Road

Mudlark No. 5 (1997)
Joe Ahearn | Five Fictions

Mudlark No. 4 (1996)
Van K. Brock | A Conversation
with Martin Heidegger (English original)
Josef Pesch (German translation)

Mudlark No. 3 (1996)
Gerald Fleming | Ars Poetica

Mudlark No. 2 (1996)
Frances Driscoll | The Rape Poems

Mudlark No. 1 (1995)
David Swoyer | Twelve of One
Valerie Anthony | A Dozen of the Other

Mudlark No. 37 (2008)
from Older Than Our Fathers
Poems by John Allman
Author’s Note: These poems are from a collection that is a meditation on history and time in an autobiographical framework of fathers and sons, in eight parts, covering a period from 1912 to the present. Parts 1, 3, 5 and 7 consist of sequences of decasyllabic unrhymed sonnets in the voices of sons and fathers. The other sections contain longer poems, some of which are included here from Parts 2, 4, 6 and 8. The poem “And Then The Darkness,” which appears in Part 4 of the book, is here included as the last poem among those selected from Part 8.

Older Than Our Fathers, when completed, will be John Allman’s eighth book of poems. His recent collections of poetry include Lowcountry (2007) (from which a Mudlark chapbook was selected) and Loew’s Triboro (2004), published by New Directions, which has done most of his books, including Descending Fire & Other Stories (1994). He has recently completed his second collection of stories, A Fine Romance, stories from which have appeared in the online journals Blackbird and Storyglossia, as well as Michigan Quarterly Review. Poems from Older Than Our Fathers have been published in New York Quarterly, Hotel Amerika and Ashville Poetry Review.

from Part 2
In The First Place
But a name stuttering on the page, a changeable
son looking for his American skin, the untattooed
blank beginning,
the world a small stateroom on a ship
churning its wake in a harbor
flecked with debris and spiteful
ash,
world a small kitchen with fleeing
cockroaches, chipped enamel table and
silverware drawer clashing into the night,

world a theater with dusty drapes
and backstage noise,

world the space between the clasped hands
of a man and woman looking out at the river—

in that space the heat of bodies, a fretful
chronicle to be made
where bird and window collide,
the flight toward the invisible
the soul’s confusion in going back—
until in old age,
far south of that city, you see the draped moss
on live oaks,
hear sea crows caw in palmettos
lining a beach,
and now you inhale the odor of a lagoon,
at night the sour lower level,
now you feel a
tidal pull in the small recesses behind a glance,
the wrinkling
song of a dry day in a strong sun
where history accuses,
history desires,
history forgives.
John Allman | Mudlark No. 37