At the risk of offending our other issues, I’ll admit that Conduit #6 is one of my favorites. Not
only was it our first perfect-bound edition, but “Drunk Genius” featured poems
by Russell Edson, an interview with Terence McKenna, and our first and only prize
winning poem, “Mister Hymen” by Terri Ford.
It was our first and only because of the generosity and then
the untimely death of Saul Astor. As much as we wanted to continue the prize on
an annual basis, we couldn’t without his kind help, so Terri Ford stands alone
atop our
“Mister Hymen,” which can be found in Ford’s book Hams beneath the Firmament, charmed and amazed us, and, although
the competition was stiff, our choice was easy.
The case of the triumphant Miss Ford illustrates the it’s-a-small-world
phenomenon, which is one of the windfalls of being an editor. We’re all
familiar with this minor miracle of chance, where one meets another and both
know a third and through one another other lovely people are introduced. And so
by some strange coincidence Terri Ford knew the nephew of Scott Bruno, our art
director at that time.
A year later while visiting Scott in
we arranged to meet Terri, our champion, for dinner. She brought along the
nephew and another friend, whose contact information I would later forward to
his future publisher. We had a wonderful conversation over mulligatawny and
lamb vindaloo and thus began a friendship.
The next day we had the pleasure of
seeing Terri read her poems to a high school class. This included the
breathtaking image of Miss Ford throwing over-sized granny panties into a crowd
of shrieking teenage boys. And so it goes; without Saul Astor and “Mister
Hymen” none of this would have come to pass.
— William Waltz
Mister Hymen
Relent, says he with his cigarillos, his
splintered windshield.
You fain think
he’s neat, is boss, is mustang,
yup. When he covers
your north
with kisses, oho
the hymen
hies, bucolic inland
you’re tossing
edelweiss, unmown and springing. This thump
and wag hath no repose &
when, how soon, he’s
dying (says) —So
you, as
foreordained, give in. What he broke’s
not glass, but a low grief, volcanic
and inactive years.
See him run. All
of the villagers run
from heat, and you spread,
spread.
— Terri Ford