PUBLISHED!

I'm so pleased to announce that my poem "Divination as a Means of Finding a Way Back" has been PUBLISHED! So so so many thanks to the wonderful staff at Alliterati!

If you're interested in reading the piece, or seeing some of the other WONDERFUL visual and lit pieces that have been included, take a peek at the emag version:

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

PS. This week's music:

Bogota

This piece was inspired by the lovely Natalie Royal's song, Chimbote.

monachopsis
n. the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your society as a seal on a beach—lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.
(For similar words, see this page:http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/)

As you notice, I took some inspiration from the definition ;) I'm planning on recording myself reading this, because when I write in Spanish, I write for the sound. The problem with writing in Spanish, is I'm really trying to write for native Spanish speakers, so I'm trying to make use of all the possible meanings of the words I've chosen, if that makes sense. I suggest that those of you who don't understand Spanish look at the original and the translated version together.

"Santa Fé de Bogotá"

Simón Bolívar found you como una Flor de Mayo.

I know that in your swelling city heart
you long por el mar, por la sal del mar,

but instead you straddle the roads,
hunker down over your landscape and breathe
your car fumes, inspiras las fumas como sombres,
espiras tranquilidad inquieta.

Colombia, madre, you have become
bloated in your old age, have grown your
ankles, pálidos e inflamados;

you should have been a sea lion,
morena y rapida y a la cresta como la espuma.

Mi alma, I will bring you the sea salt to run through your hair,
diamonds with which to crown your sea-mane.

~~~

Simón Bolívar found you like an orchid.

I know that in your swelling city heart
you long for the sea, for the salt of the sea,

but instead you straddle the roads,
hunker down over your landscape and breathe
your car fumes, you breathe the smoke like shadows,
breathe calm restlessly.

Colombia, mother, you have become
bloated in your old age, have grown your
ankles, pale and swollen;

you should have been a sea lion,
brown and quick and cresting like the sea foam.

My soul, I will bring you the sea salt to run through your hair,
diamonds with which to crown your sea-mane.

Hinduism

Feels like AGES since I've written anything. Played around with style a bit, so I don't feel COMPLETELY lazy about this piece.

Composed during Ara Batur by Sigur Ros
Imagery inspired by this gorgeousness:

Firestarter

I know I didn't mention much Hinduism, but...there's a kind of wistfulness for Shiva here that I'll claim counts ;)

I should add:
Pyrokenesis is the psychic ability to create and manipulate fire (essentially).
Spirography was a toy I had as a kid - you used little interlocking gears to make cool designs with your pen.

"Spirography and the Gift of Pyrokenesis"

Already I feel stiffened,
wrapped-round with my wedding-bangles—
circumscribed, a horror amidst spirographs,
the ballpoint-pen circles that have transcended themselves
into curling picture frames or paper cages.

In my gown I am become a pillar,
I have not tasted curried air,

but already a river will still my tastebuds,
the mirror into which I shall be sunk, prow-like,
with the ship,

and the curling pen-lines that drift in my eyes
prepare the currents that will wash over me
and make of me nothing.

Shiva I would rather be—
would that I could pour my flaming heart
over my ashen and lace body,
leave its embers in the grass like seeds;

I would go up in smoke, no Helen for Troy,
only gasps making their own way for
Calcutta.  

Voodoo

I dunno how I feel about this one. I was feeling the pine trees, but I also wanted to write something for the topic "voodoo," which I've written into a lot of poems, but which I haven't had as the main sort of "theme."

Comments appreciated!

"Totems and Godhood"

i. Confronting giants.

I take the pine tree as my totem,
learn to love the nakedness of its nether-regions
and its northerly fibers stretched and waiting
for the weft to its warp.

Girlhood is still a part of me as the
learning what I am. In the end,
I haven't climbed a tree in a long time;
I am small, and scared, and ringed round with walls,
and I beg the moon to teach me
to use my pine trees as a ladder.

ii. Young love.

You, sir—
you are pine chips, and I carry you
like a fetish in my mind.

You are a vampiric sweetness
to suck the breath from my body:
unknowing, the feeling of yearning;
I am fibrous—celery stalk,
pale and clutching my thread self together.

iii. Transmogrification.

Watch as I become a giraffe,
stretch until my bones
will not bend to let me drink.

With age I become a god,
brittle-boned and cackling; with age
the osteoporosis will leech my fibers dry
and my pine sap blood will freeze in my chest
to keep me warm in winter.

My fingers—blue-green and spindly,
and though never-married my insides
are ringed-round with bands.
And I'll settle down with a cuppa,
tinged with the whisky my grandmother loved so much.

iv. The autumn comes to lead me home.

With no god to forgive me my ghosts,
I sink down into November brown,
and let the wood-rot take my roots. 

Divination

Wow, I just realized I was a LITTLE late on posting this one. It was written for a lit-mag theme of "Tabula Rasa," and received recognition on the art site I belong to! :) I'll probably update when I hear back on whether this has been accepted to the journal or not.

I'm not sure the piece is evocative enough or flows well. All comments most welcome!

"I Have No Names of All My Teacup Babes"

I feel always like I am starting over.

As a magpie I gather trinkets under my pillow,
bay leaves and bags of herbs to bring the next lover to me,
to call the next dream-face forward—a picture
painted in the tea leaves.

But truth be told the start-again
is never clean, is never gentle,
and the sweat of all that labour
is a fire on my skin, telling me
I will never resist its wind-cry.

The moon comes when I call, to help me;
midwife, she is, and she carries into being my new selves
like the babes they are, teaches them to
fill long footsteps like hers.

Truth be told, I tire of the destiny
I was given once—I am a teacup,
and I cling close to my china womb,
to my cup tipped over, upset
by careless elbows.

I imagine Mother Moon climbing her way back to me
on the backs of pine trees, sweeping across the Appalachians.

South by Southwest

For this topic, I couldn't help thinking of the wind, somehow. The wind and the Grand Canyon.

Written for a Halloween contest! I'd love any and all comments ;)

"A Kiss for a Ghost, Not Given"

I remember the bar in Ocracoke,
the chill that came like a wind from the Southwest
as he told me where he was from.

There was a moment when he looked me in the eye
and I could see my walk
one morning along the southern edge of the Canyon,
my hurried scramble from the oracle-birds
that had guided my steps

—and a moment of realization in the car
when I had rejected him, and, heading for the highway,
found my eyes searching the rearview mirror,
hoping not to meet his gaze.

Flightless Bird, American Mouth

I challenged myself for this piece by following a prompt that asked me to compose a poem backwards. This poem was quite a challenge. Ultimately the way I did it was write a poem, then reconstruct it roughly backwards (though I've obviously taken some license with the phrasing so that it makes SOME sense when read this way).

I'd REALLY love some critique on the piece:
1) Title - I've tried to come up with a title that signals to the reader that the chronology of the piece is backwards, but I'm not sure I've managed it. All advice to this effect would be IMMENSELY helpful.
2) How much sense does the piece make as it is? Do you like it as is, or does it still feel like it should take place in the other direction?
3) Punctuation: Do you like it? Does it work?

"End to Beginning, Lived Life"

Christ.)

to the dying of the light
and to Hades to pay my respects
my solemn flightless way
make I ,Ophelia and Virginia Woolf

.the sea to the lifeblood
mountain stream ,followed I the path
that burnt had been ,cold and clean

,to Georgia ,lonely and looking
at my own wingless bird-back
,bore I myself as a pilgrim

.(shuffle I may my Merlin feet
,but never still will I be