CATATONICALLY SPEAKING

BY ALISON ROSS



A painting like Gods of The Modern World by Jose Clemente Orozco dizzily disorients me. Such art not only transcends cramped cosmic confines, but it seems to emanate from another dimension altogether. The painting is of this world yet so far beyond it, it’s staggering.

Clockwise Cat was conceived as a vehicle for creative pieces that in some way capture a sense of “timely timelessness”: Poetry, fiction, art, and non-fiction that treat themes that have haunted humankind since time immemorial, and which will continue to permeate our lives indefinitely. The Cat indulges in artistic works that creatively exploit language and ideas - the pieces are concerned with the here and now, and yet they are also foward-looking, preoccupied with imposing their own idiosyncratic imprint onto the universe, rather than simply perpetuating the bland tenets of tradition.

For the inaugural issue of Clockwise Cat, we feature some interesting, entertaining, and enlightening works that reach toward infinity, as it were. We showcase stories concerned with the horrors of war, terrorism and socio-political sabatoge, and we also feature fiction that treats less hefty themes and more intimate, quotidian matters in unusual ways. We delight in deliciously surrealistic poetry that taunts us with playful imagery, poems that whimsically toy with semantics, syntax, and concepts, and art pieces that highlight our shared experiences in thoughtful, progressive ways. There is also a music review and an essay which both center on works that persistently push the boundaries of accepted taste. And there is a rant, sumptuous rant, that deals with universal issues that cut across the borders of time.

And, of course, there is humor. Not enough of it, I’m afraid, but it does exist in small doses in this issue - some of it overt, and some more covert. Humor is rebellion against the oppressively stale and staid. We need more humor and satire in this world, and I invite you to submit your pieces laden with levity and sardonic subversion for the next issue. The idea is for Clockwise Cat to become a showcase for the unusual and uninhibited and even unhinged, and humor is inevitably the leader of that parade.

In the title poem of her book, The Stone of Language (West End Press 2004), Anya Achtenberg writes, “Under this sky of anger and song and darkness that drenches us with whispers of the old songs, I am calling out, finally knowing that no one may answer, I may go back into time with my whole soul inside my body joined to none other, lingering, searching for the other side of the mirror, falling through oceans, living in the sky.”

May we all discover the mirror’s flipside, tumble through oceans, and dwell inside the sky.