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Alicubi
Edited by Martin Downs
Reviewed by Ingrid Woodrow

	Alicubi Edited by Martin Downs martin@alicubi.com

Alicubi has undergone a radical redesign since its first issue went online. This, editor Martin Downs tells us, is a result of his acknowledgment that his own Web design skills were not up to the task. For this, the second issue, he has enlisted the services of one Zara Steinman, who has done a great job with a classy, understated design in muted shades of green.

I was a bit taken aback when I clicked on one of the navigational buttons located at the base of the contents page – alongside "Letter From the Editor," "Submission Guidelines" and "Advertise with Us" was "The Silver Trumpet." I clicked on the latter, thinking it was a snazzy name for the music review section, to find that it took me to Amazon.com, and a copy of the editor's recent kid's book, The Silver Trumpet, appeared for my inspection. Blatant self-promotion aside, Downs has assembled an impressive range of talent for this issue of Alicubi (which, incidentally, apparently receives over 150 hits an hour on a good day).

The verse section starts off with Jennifer Bonafiglio's "How To Crucify A Woman," which reminded me of a quote from a recent book on experimental women's fiction called Resurgent (edited by Lou Norton and Camille Robinson): "This is writing that swings out over a chasm, that spits." I loved this poem and immediately printed out a copy. I did the same thing with New Zealand poet Christina Conrad's brilliant poem, 'The Spot Healer':

I have been given a young umbrella tree
she hath a white twisted trunk
in a configuration

of
3
She doth dwell outside my door
each morn
I touch her spots
I have become the spot healer
tho
my
spots
remain
nesting in souls shade
I cannot remove them

Conrad is also this issue's featured artist, so there is an interview, an article, and a gallery of her paintings. Billy Marshall Stoneking does his best to talk them up in his article - "artistically, Conrad is the consummate savage," but the pictures didn't move me like the poems did. Still, I enjoyed the interview with Conrad, conducted using the messaging program PeopleLink and described by interviewer Martin Downs as an experience similar to "speaking to some goofy spirit through a ouija board." New Zealand's "outlaw" poet tells us that she spent most of her early childhood "walking round and round an iron clothesline. The wind hurt my arms." She also believes that New Zealand has a "young, verdant body, like the beginning of the world, but it has a very undeveloped mental body." Interesting, quirky stuff.

The verse section also includes Natalie Dupont's "Moments of Surrender":

He twirled her
into Glenn Miller's mood. She stumbled,
dance feet new under her knees
or was it his smile that tripped her?
"I got ya," he said.
Little did he know
how true.

Then there's Duane Locke's poem "Joy," in which he informs us that "Joy lives in an orange tent/ Pitched in a graveyard," and I also liked Sheree R. Thomas' "Cusco," about a place where:

women pull back black shining hair from
burnished foreheads as smooth as
polished stones.

The editor also provides us with an article about toilets in which he discusses the pros and cons of public versus private toilets, tracing the history of the toilet from a literal (converted) water closet to its present-day incarnation. And this: "Keeping a bathroom...as clean and attractive as any other room in one's house [...] is a wretched chore. I find that I have to be naked to do it." Thanks for sharing, Martin.

Merchant mariner Darmin T. Snow provides a (literally, as well as figuratively) black fairy-tale about a hen who lives in a shack on top of a hill, sustained only by an old tree that yields a single black plum. I also liked Joshua Fisher's "The Sarcasm Game":

Every time we say goodbye on the telephone, I say curtly, "Bye," and Short mimics curtly, "Bye." And I wait, and I listen for the click of the telephone being put down. The click like a smack on the face, or like a grip on my arm that leaves a bruise.

This work, like the journal itself, is memorable for its words and imagery. Alicubi is an elegant, inspirational journal that has the potential to maintain a strong following.

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Ingrid Woodrow is a writer based in Brisbane, Australia. Her first novel, Goddess and the Galaxy Boy, will be published in early 2001. She is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland and working on a new novel.She is also the founding editor of the online writing journal Mangrove, which is listed as a "Site of National Significance" in the National Library of Australia's PANDORA archive.

Further information and samples of her work can be obtained by visiting www.uq.edu.au/~eniwoodr