Sunday, May 19, 2013

Predictors

Today we went shopping for boots
that may never be broken in
much less worn out. Too much reality
and our thoughts go to whimsy: a sudden desire
to learn the guitar, ideas for sculpting topiary,
choosing swatches for curtains
built to last. There’s the conviction
that once committed to a big project
the time we need to complete it
will unroll like fresh turf under our feet.
Who knows how long that grass will grow?
Medicine men may tamp it down with the old softshoe --
you can’t guarantee they won’t --
but one of them, wrung out with apologies,
will surely return with your next last chance
and the explanation that rescue works best
under a dark sky getting darker
the forecast filling with rain.


-This is from Cheryl's cancer sequence, LIVE THROUGH THIS, now in progress.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Mother

This lovely lady is ours, painted by Janet. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Likeability in Fiction

PW asks the question. Claire Messud answers:
Q: I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.

A: For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t “is this a potential friend for me?” but “is this character alive?”
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/56848-an-unseemly-emotion-pw-talks-with-claire-messud.html

Thursday, April 25, 2013

See This

Janet's got a piece in it.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Another for NaPo




 BROWSE

 She clatters through the back door
scowls at the librarian’s puckered shush,
scrapes chair to table, grabs a book
that falls open to text ticked and bracketed
by anonymous hands. She clucks softly,
angles the spine away from policing eyes,
searches each margin as if she had struck
the marks first, worried that some point
might be missed if not underscored yellow.  

The girl sees impressions of her fingers
on the pages, hard evidence that books
are changed by readers they change.
She slaps covers closed, slides the volume
into the shelves and walks away empty-
handed, reverent, her mind roaring open. 

(first appeared in Snakeskin)

Saturday, April 06, 2013

The Sisters Celebrate Poetry Month





Desire by shivasarms43
Desire 


Dusk


There’s the daylight in ruins,
and you here willing to be ruined too,
willing night to crawl across a city
full of men wanting to ruin you.
Here comes one now, ripe
with appetite and impulse,
without a clue of what it will take
to pull you out
of these details drowning
in orange and blue,
and into his own picture --
but you’re clear on that too,
transparent with buttercup hope
that this time will be different,
that this one will know how to see you.

(first appeared in Blood Lotus)


Undertow
 


On the way down,
she sees what
blue swells
and whitecaps
are not: not fists
of diamonds,
nor rocking hips,
not rippling

limbs tossing up fish
nor are they
sorry
for the depths
to which
they have plunged her

drowning ship.
 
(first appeared in Up The Staircase)
 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

Friday, April 05, 2013

Disconnect

Disconnect by shivasarms43
Disconnect, on Flickr.


mother forgets “church”
and a hush smothers us.

in her brain’s atrium
a processional of tangles
son brother husband father.

Where’s the church and where’s the steeple?
she wanders empty-eyed
from the basilica    to the transept of the cross
all dressed up since 2 AM.

(PANK7)


Wednesday, March 27, 2013

2057

from Olivia Eden Publishing comes Kimberly Copeland's new book of poetry 2057

Ms. Copeland is a prolifically published Chicagoland poet, digital artist and Pushcart nominee. K.R. has acted in an editorial capacity for online venues such as Unlikely 2.0., Stirring, Worm and is currently the assistant art editor at The Centrifugal Eye.Janet is pleased that she chose her painting for the cover.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Sein und Werden


Janet has a painting in the new 'Sein und Werden' Thanks to Rachel Kendall. The theme is Exquisite Corpse, and this is from the publisher's manifesto:
The title comes from the Expressionist concept of Sein und Werden - 'being and becoming', the notion that we are born as nothing and only through experience do we become who we are (an idea shared with Sartre in his work 'Being and Nothingness'). Using certain techniques of cinematography to create lengthened shadows, twisted stairways and a distorted mise-en-scène, the Expressionists were able to depict a nightmare world that would later influence a number of other cinematic developments, such as film noir, aswell as leading artistic movements. One such group who owed much of their technique to Expressionism were the Surrealists, who played with these concepts to create bizarre images of the subconscious, making use of dreams and automatic writing. The goal of 'Sein und Werden' is to present works that evoke the spirit of the Expressionist, Existentialist and Surrealist movements within a modern context, which I like to call 'Werdenism'.