SURROUNDS

The door of the left arm's eyelash nose and shoulder wisp the sigh of the right leg

Wrinkled loonies edge up from the crater 'neath a silver fish whose coal purple edge sets navel and breast 'gainst widge pugs


(text created through an imaginative reverie associating objects in the room with internal body states and subjective impressions)

PORTLAND SURREALIST GROUP DISSOLVES

The Portland Surrealist Group, founded in August 2001, dissolved on January 14th, 2008. Due to various internal situations we were unable to maintain a level of collective activity that was consistent over time, and this led to Brandon Freels resigning on January 13th. After further discussion FN Brill and I decided to disband the group. Much of the material that has been published at the Flying Stone blog and elsewhere will be printed and made available later this year.

I want to thank those who came to our meetings or pursued projects or friendships with us during these years (although such a list could never be complete): Victoria Garcia, Kaylene Chassie, Trillium, Rain, Ron, Dave, Chris Beavers, Paul Portugee, Sarah Frances, Andrew Daily, Christopher Gray, Trevor Blake, Anthony Leskov, Dave Negation, the Portland IWW, the Red and Black Cafe, the 411 Collective, the Portland Vadding Collective, Fifth Estate Magazine, Eberhardt Press, Doug Lain, Karl Lind, Apio Ludicrous, Ron Sakolsky, James Koehnline, Laura Corsiglia, Eric Bragg, Dale Houstman, Parry Harnden, Kevin Sampsell, Barrett John Erickson, Johannes and Anna Bergmark, Thom Burns, Nova Dawn, Tim Iserman, various cafe dwellers, passers-by, and other groups and individuals who wrote letters, sent books or showed support from the international surrealist community, especially the groups in Chicago, Stockholm, Leeds, London, and Rio de la Plata. Thanks to Zazie for hosting our first website.

The members of this nucleus will carry on surrealist pursuits in their own way. I may sponsor open meetings based on collective creation, reading circles, and experiments in the street in hopes of sparking a new group activity. Also, sound experiments with Qkcofse are providing an element of improvisation and collaboration that's in the spirit of surrealism, so those will continue.

M.K. Shibek

STRING GLASS ECHO

Without a shrug of bushes intent on rousing the string
You'll be a whisper in an engine room's glass echo

Without a parcel of ice-faced bunnies
Taken from the shelled ribbon plant
You'll be a frozen rose in the noon's telescope