MAY 2013

FEATURED POET: Lucia Gazzino was born in Udine (Friuli, Italy) in 1959 and has been a poet since she was a teenager. A teacher of creative writing, she translates history and poetry, and writes both in Italian and in Friulian (her mother tongue). In 2005, Marimbo Press published The New Youth, her translation of a selection of Friulian poems by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and in 2010 she was one of the ten translators of In Danger: a Pasolini Anthology, published by City Lights Books. She also translated The Kid’s Way, an anthology of Tibetan poems. Her poems have appeared in various anthologies of Italian poetry and have been translated into German, English, Welsh, and Slovenian. Her books include Fiori di Papiro, La cjase des Cjartis, Alter Mundus, and Babel oms, feminis e cantonîrs. Her poetic DVD is called Viaggiatori senza Valigia. She lives in the Friulian countryside.  Check out her new book at Pleasure Boat Studio


In cerca di un addio

Per tutte le volte
che non riuscivi a dire
“ti amo”
l’ho detto io per te
più forte del silenzio della notte.
Per tutte le volte
che la tua mano
non riusciva a sfiorare il mio seno
ho sfiorato il tuo viso
con delicata brezza di settembre
Per tutte le volte
che non riesci ad andartene
allontano i miei passi
trattenendo il respiro
per non trattenerti in me
Per tutte le volte
che non riesci a tornare
avvicino il mio viso
al tuo riflesso
sul vetro del tempo.


(Translated by Michael Daley)
Looking for Goodbye 

For all those times
you couldn’t say
“ti amo,”
I’ve said it for you
stronger than midnight stillness.
For all those times
your hand couldn’t
graze my breast,
I’ve touched your face
with the delicate breeze of September.
For all those times
you don’t go away,
I scurry away
hold my breath
so as not to hold you within me.
For all those times
you can’t return,
I put my face
on your reflection
in the pane of time.

Niente più lacrime
Non piangere amore
mentre guardi la pioggia
che lava la paura
rifuggi pensieri
cancella un futuro incerto
Non piangere più
raccogli lacrime in mani
diafane
e fanne dono a questa vita

(Translated by Michael Daley)
No More Tears

No teary love.
While you watch rain
wash over fear
and refuse to think,
it shuts out a debatable future.
No more weeping—
catch handfuls
of diaphanous tears
and make of them
a gift to this life.

WRITE YOUR OWN POEM:

Pollen on the Breath of Whippoorwills

Near the inlet
where we fished,
ran the beach and found
the white gardenia
to float in the glazed
bowl from pottery class.

-Denise Calvetti Michaels

Florentine Italian became the network language for all, but regional dialects are still spoken.  Lucia translates.  Denise' mother speaks her regional dialect.  So what region are you from?  How do you distill that into a poem?  Take a shot.  Write it in a blog.  Write it in the vapor of your shower.  Look around and find the details.  Molto grazie, eh!

April, 2013

FEATURED POET: Carol Alexander is a writer and editor in the field of educational publishing. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Bluestem, Canary, The Commonline, Chiron Review, Earthspeak, Eunoia Review, Ilya's Honey, Mobius, Northwind Magazine, Numinous, Red Fez, Red River Review, OVS, Poetrybay, Poetry Quarterly, The New Verse News, and Sugar Mule. New work is scheduled to appear in Poetica and the Mad Hatter's Review. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies Broken Circles, Joy Interrupted, The Storm is Coming, Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, and Surrounded: Living with Islands. Alexander was the Poetry Finalist in the Warriors Alliance Poetry Competition for "Rewind" and received Honorable Mention in NPR poetry contest judged by Tracy K. Smith for "Port Arthur Girl." Her poem "The Penalty" was nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize. Alexander lives in New York City with her family.

Rose Lake

In the midst of winter

when the wooden gate, suffering disrepair,

hung slovenly from its post

and a bleak wind blew through the house

with its lone gable, like an afterthought,

a folly or a remnant, a failure of vision,

deserting, derelict of duty, we fled into the marsh

and made something festive of the muck and chill.

Those nesting boxes on their flimsy posts--

a reminder of the isolation, the singularity

of that sweet pursuit of endless repetition

multiplying species upon species--

stood out from the sunken marsh,

the only trace of human endeavor.

You let me hold the binoculars.

Herons stalked among the sedge

and patience was rewarded

by a glimpse of frowsty head and beak.

Massasauga snake glided in the reek,

its tiny elliptical pupil winking like

an allegory we ignored, deliberately,

until we saw the gravid female,

drinking the last rays of refracted light,

its skin giving nothing off 

of self-absorbed darkness.

Was there a snake?

Yes.

Was there a garden?

Define your terms.

There was, in fact,

she of the woozy, riven heart,

vs. she of the cold hearth.

There was, like an afterthought,

a child grown surfeited

on the cloying fumes of gasoline,

curled in the front seat,

awaiting the verdict

under a white menace of sky.

When she begged you to bring the snake

back to the marsh you did it,

turning the car east and traveling over

thirty miles of December road

with little light  to steer by,

rutted roads passing horse barns

and fields where nothing much grew,

miles past the town limits

and the dim glow of scattered bungalows

and all-night package stores.

We skidded twice in the first gusts of rain,

rain that sent wheels into ditches rapidly glazed

as the temperature dropped in panic.

Twice we missed the turnoff to Rose Lake,

where we‘d found those beauties,

but where would you find a sign  at night

on such a willful, wandering road?

Round and round you went

on that crazy ride, then stopped for your drink

while I counted the stars and stopped my ears

against the slamming of doors and the throaty laughter

of men arming themselves against the night.

You were drinking to something or in farewell to something.

                                    .   .  

And then we came back to it, to Rose Lake,

and freed the venomous thing into the marsh,

then stood for eons in that purifying cold

knowing there was not and could not be a sign.

A miserable crossroads of a night, yet,

conceivably, there was some wisdom in it, after all.

-Carol Alexander

Ouija Board

Put it away: the dead have better things to do. They will not tell you how or when to love, though April, with its tender tear-washed leaves, might be as good a time as any.  Put it away. Under the hill where stacks of loved ones lie, strong roots draw on rich alluvial soil, yellowed bone collapses, feeding layered earth; white-throat birds make wistful our salty picnic on the grass. We like to dine where once we said goodbye, flinging crumbs to the pennycress mincing up through red topsoil.

Put the board away. It will not tell you how to lay a bet or when to cut and run or pick the trumpeting chanterelles for mouthy salad on this crapshoot of a day. I’ve plated glittering tropes for you: mackerel sky, wave of grass, pickled plum of woe.  What can gimcrack wood and trembling hand reveal that introspection can’t anneal? I’ve made strawberry pie and scone, wrapped them in a napkin only slightly worn. There were three weevils in the flour and those I simply flicked, flicked away.

Why inquire after grief that is to come? A friend once walked me through the graves, smiling as she witnessed mother, father, brother taken somewhat before his time. What time was that, I did not say, the mushrooms rioting near the stones. Some like them for an earthy metaphor, some eat them with a dish of bitter greens. We sat them on your dime store Ouija board and seasoned them with tears. The chanterelles and plain pine board in the end agreed: Live, you sore fools, live.

-Carol Alexander

WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS WRITING PROJECT

(High school poet)

Peaches

Someone once smiled and told me:

"You're a peach."

See, in my head, I knew

That the man who had

Just referred to me as a fruit

Was complimenting me,

Calling me sweet, tender.

But the only way I saw it,

I realized he was telling me that I was easily bruised.

- Andrea

Insomnia

You watched the moon

Fall behind the hills

And as the sun became present

Your head fell

Into your open, inviting palms.

Your eyelids were so heavy

You swore they could

Crust the planet.

But as soon as your 

Body collapsed into that bed,

You were as awake

As you were when 

The sun sank to the ground.

- Andrea

WRITE YOUR POEM

In ancient China, you wrote poems on silk for a court procession or in the sand for a Buddhist meditation.  Before moveable type poems were sung by minstrels.  After Blake or even e.e. cummings poets poems were replicated on reams and reams of vellum and paper.  Now a poet like Billy Collins can sell out like the latest boy band from L.A.  So what motivates your poem?  Cyberspace has the same illusions of Buddhist sand.

With all of them it always boils down to craft.  From where you are what steps are you taking to improve your craft.  From any angle attention to the word is the deal.  Just sit down and write.  Stand up and dance.  Make sure to create. 

March, 2013

FEATURED POET: Denis Mair:   In a suburb outside of all ring roads, so far from the capital it's in another province, fortune allows him to walk where houses are now planted, yet memory of turnips here is fresher than of orange groves elsewhere. Swaths of gentrification happened here with help of one-time payments, which even now are being gambled away over mahjong tables. He only knows this from the newspaper. As a matter of fact, his whole view of the world is imaginary, mostly mediated by signs, and sometimes he finds this amazing. He holes up in Gloaming Studio, waxing commentarial over gnarly symbols, but only as a hobby. When ridiculous words occur to him, he misses how his daughter would have laughed, but she is hitched to a native up Alaska way. On a gradient of freshness, he remembers clear lungfuls of L.A. air. Blessedly his orbit takes him at times to an inn in Shangrila, once even to a "Frozen Waterfall Festival and Cultural Conference." He has been allowed to spend whole days in company with the congenitally kind, and these same literati send him projects down an intermittent pipeline. His proudest prize is a goblet won on Poets and Painters Day at the local artists' village, for poems translated by a friend.

廢品店

     伊沙

 廢品店的生鐵
沈默地瞅著四周
剛剛被賣掉
經一個小崽子之手
被廉價地出賣
比人的骨骼還要堅硬的
生鐵 咽不下這口氣啊
今晚 倉庫頂上的月亮很高
他還沒有學會逃跑
只有沈默地等待
進一步地出賣
或者熔爐
或者有賊閃現
而此刻他已行動
一截生鐵渴望像一條蛇
那樣爬行
他艱難地爬向路口
當看倉庫的老頭出現時
他要瘋狂地撲上去
像蛇撲向
冬天的捕蛇者


THE REFUSE DEPOT

 

           by Yi Sha

 

Iron bar at the refuse depot

Peering about in silence

Was sold a little while ago

Unloaded by some punk

At a cheap price.

Iron bar is harder than human bones:

It can’t get over being slighted this way.

Moon high tonight over the warehouse,

Iron bar ignorant of escape

Only waits in silence

Waits to be sold more cheaply

Or thrown in a furnace,

Or maybe a thief sneaks in.

This is when it leaps into action,

Iron bar longs to crawl

The way a snake does,

Shakily it crawls to the intersection

Where the old warehouse guard appears.

It wants to strike

Pounce on him crazily

The way a snake wants to pounce on the handler

Who caught it in winter.

 

      Tr. by Denis Mair

WRITE YOUR POEM: 

Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat...they never tell you when to stop on those shampoo bottles.  With the powerful use of repetition, how does it function in your poem?  Like a gong in the distance?  Some Western poetic structures have it cleverly woven into the form, like threads in fine embroidery.  For some poems it is on key word that ends up as a punchline.  As you kick ideas around see what you need and what you can delete.  In any case, rinse and repeat, I mean write and repeat, write and repeat...

February , 2013

FEATURED POET: Rachelle Linda Escamilla is the winner of multiple poetry awards including: The Academy of American Poets, The Dorritt Sibley Poetry Prize, and The James Phelan Literary Awards. She has an MFA in Poetry from The University of Pittsburgh and is a founding member of The Poets and Writers Coalition of SJSU. Her poetry can be found at Cave Moon Press, Hinchas de Poesia, A Joint Called Pauline, La Bloga, Occupoetry, The Villiage Pariah, 580 Split, 99poemsforthe99percent, Two Thirds North: An International Anthology, and Shadowed, Unheard Voices an Anthology of Women. She lives Guangzhou, China where she is faculty for the Creative Writing program in the School of Foreign Languages at Sun Yat-sen University.

CALIFORNIA HWY

Driving the 101, her brother stations his chin just

above the locked, quarter high window. Flustered

with his height, the thin of his neck crinkles pushing

his face into a scowl as they round the bend.

The sideways of San Jose blur against his inky

eyes his mud skin. She pulls away from the speedway

behind a train of cars, a pool of police and people.

Here, slammed not two feet from the tires of traffic

heads, dark hair melting into the asphalt curls

sizzled straight on this July day. Her brother’s hands

ball. They pass the primered Hondas, the dust colored

Toyotas. They pass the moms and sons, all brown

faces seeding the asphalt. Arms zip-tied behind backs,

her brother’s fingers number the bodies, practicing

arithmetic.

PEOPLE OCEAN

How do you write People Ocean my students ask

what is the word in English?  I say I have no clue.

Babylon takes the stage and says its when the world

around you moves in waves and the bodies beside

you sway and you are part of it too.

I was in a gulf of people at the Macau Immigration station.

In the Foreigner Queue there were multi colored faces,

hair and dress an equally distributed rainbow

like a PBS afternoon special,

but over the cement precipice

a mass of black hair and sand colored faces

lurch as the officers steady the gates

at the swell of uniform hair

and women tottering on coral feet. 

Lotus Dream by Christina Michaels Tremblay

WRITE YOUR POEM

Delayed on the Szechuan Road
                        Chang Yueh

A traveler races the sun and moon
coming and going according to plan
but autumn wind doesn't wait
it reaches Loyang before me

So as you race the moon in our global village what autumn winds do you chase?  It is easy to scurry and forget that the scraps of paper you use for your poems hold import.  They hold value to those most important.  Don't forget to write.

JANUARY 2013

FEATURED POET: Joan Gelfand’s poetry, fiction, reviews, essays and letters have appeared in national and international anthologies and literary journals including Rattle, Kalliope, The Toronto Quarterly, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the newversenews, and The MacGuffin. Joan teaches for California Poets in the Schools, is the Fiction Editor for Zeek Magazine and the Past President of the Women’s National Book Association. Joan blogs for the Huffington Post. Her books are: A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams (SF Bay Press, 2009). Here & Abroad, a chapbook of short fiction (winner of the 2010 Cervena Barva Fiction Award) and Seeking Center, (Two Bridges Press, 2006). Transported, a spoken word CD with original music can be found on itunes & reverbnation.com http://joangelfand.com

RUSSIAN RIVER WATERSHED

Russian River floods then trickles
Rushes, ebbs sprung free
From Mayacamas
Through ashen haze
Flows west, always west.

Until the day word spreads:
Volcanic soil makes for very good grapes.
And, the best news of all? Sells
Higher than Pink Ladies, Braeburns,
Gravensteins, Warren, or Taylor’s Gold.

Vineyards.

Trees pulled as fast as oil spilled
From southern deserts,
As violently as veins were mined.
Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc
Replace apple’s knobby arms, the shady glen

Who’s to sip this pricey lode?

Blue black oak-studded hills fade
Replaced by purple grapes hanging ripe
Scatter them. They matter to birds
And children and all of us
Craving sustenance.

Joan Gelfand

FALLEN LEAF LAKE

Wind whispers through Bishop pines

in secret sun dappled spot

We lie surrounded by pennyroyal and dust.

Sap drips in dark rivulets

I take your hand, seek your lips.

We are alone but for the sound of

Pine needles drifting to the forest floor.

Lake water laps licks at the shore

Melted glacier cools

The heat of high summer.

Waves break.

A breeze spins

Circles around us.

The sky: cloudless

High altitude blue

Fire/air/earth/water converge.

Earthy scents

Sierra in July.

Joan Gelfand

WRITE YOUR POEM 

Layer upon layer on the alabaster terrace
I tell the boy to sweep them up in vain
just as the sun takes them all away
the full moon brings them back again

Su Shih (Translated by Red Pine)

So what types of rituals never seem to end, and yet define the permanent parts of our lives?  For some reasons these elements become the porcelain memories that we place into words.  Write a poem.  Draw a picture.  Andrew Wyeth, an American Realist, used to let sketches valued in the tens of thousands of dollars lay scattered on his floor for the dogs to walk in.  He had to get it right.  One portrait was a gift for one of his models, a poor farmer.  The poor farmer recycled a frame and tore the painting to fit the frame.  Wyeth loved it and didn't see his work as holy.  He just worked to get his corner of the world right.   What inspires you to get your corner of the world represented- right?

DECEMBER 2012

FEATURED POET: Changming Yuan, 4-time Pushcart nominee and author of Allen Qing Yuan, holds a PhD in English, teaches independently, and edits Poetry Pacific in Vancouver. Yuan's poetry appears in 619 literary publications across 23 countries, including Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Cave Moon, Cortland Review, Exquisite Corpse, Hawaii Review, PANK and World Literature Today.  Poetry submissions welcome at poetrypacific.blogspot.ca

et cetera

we, yuan ii, by the grace

of god, emperor and autocrat of

all english words, king of dreamland

grand duke of assonance and

consonance, author of

allen qing yuan, architect of

george lai yuan, last scribbler of

poetic lines, et cetera et cetera

et cetera et cetera etc

herein proclaim ourselves as no extra ordinary line

but a yellow-skined ellipsis

H: For Hengxiang Liao

inspired by a fence in hell

you were invented long ago

to connect every human

for a tall ladder of hope

that we can stand high

against the blue horizon

like the Babel Tower growing to reach Him

where I can find a home in the fame hall

where I can settle my soul in heaven

8: Sudden Fortune/Prosperity/Power/Sacrifice

first, a curved 1 from Indians

then, it was twisted until it became an S

ready to seduce, re-presenting itself like a 5

before the Arabs connected

her two closed circles

piling them one above the other

as if to round up

all sudden Chinese fortunes

WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS WRITING PROJECT:
Look at them on: What kids can do

We're still writing and publishing student work.  Students wrote letters to judges last month.  More poetry is on the way

WRITE YOUR POEM:
What do you do to jump start your motivation?  Jumping jacks?  Whatever keeps you in the habit of creating, make it simple and attend to it every day.  Tend the poems like seedlings.  The seasons change.  The moments will come again, even when it seems you are writing in the snow. Peter Guber tells a story of Zhang Huan, a performance artist who collects ash around the temple and then packs it into a mold.  When the mold gives way the sculpture stands five seconds at best before it is blown away by the wind.  Poems stand for those five seconds, and somehow that is why they start to endure.  Make sure to keep writing.  

November 2012

FEATURED POET:

Esther Altshul Helfgott is a nonfiction writer and poet with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington. Her work appears in American Imago: Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences, the Journal of Poetry Therapy, Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature, The American Psychoanalyst, Drash: Northwest Mosaic, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer's Disease, The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Review, Floating Bridge Review, HistoryLink, Pontoon, Raven Chronicles, The Seattle P.I., FragLit & elsewhere. Her chapbook, The Homeless One: a poem in many voices (Kota, 2000) is a poetic docu-drama about homelessness & schizophrenia. Esther is a 2010 Jack Straw poet.  Find her at:
http://www.estherhelfgott.com/

Reading with Alzheimer's

Sprawled out
in the recliner
wearing
a tie-dyed shirt
the kids
gave him,
a Middle Eastern
yarmulke
on his head,
he holds
a book of stories
in his hands,
turns
the pages
as he always did:
carefully,
respectfully,
leaning, learning
words the brain loses
before he under-

stands.

10/29/05, 3 am

As I Sit In Class

 

I think of him
wanting
to come home,
how I pinned
my business card
to his undershirt.
On the back
I wrote:
You're in Adult Day Care.
I'm going to class.
I'll pick you up
at 1:30 p.m.He reads the words
with me. I kiss him
goodbye,
give the nurse
a plastic baggie
filled with tylenol
and a just-in-case Ativan.
In class,
Jeanne, Mary
and I
write
and talk
about writing.
We read Bill Stafford's
What's In My Journal
while my first cell phone
sits unringing
but ready
on the desk by the door.

11/4/05, 8:45 pm

WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS WRITING PROJECT:
Look at them on: What kids can do

We're still writing and publishing student work.  Amber Ortiz, an alumni of the project presented her book at Heritage University last month.  More to come.

WRITE YOUR POEM:
What if you saved your Halloween costume, put it on now and wrote a poem in the costume? Maybe read your favorite poem?  What associations change?...just make sure not to go to public...never know what will happen with a poet in disguise...write, dance, find your way to take those minutes and create.  Let us know what you think