I mentioned a few weeks ago that there’s an upcoming theatre performance called Patterns that I’m excited to see when it opens in a couple more weeks. There’s a poem on The New Stage website that I liked and wanted to share:
Patterns Play … Poem
Tag Archives: writing
Found Poetry / Magazine Art
Lately I’ve been engaging in a fun creative practice. I receive magazines in the mail and what I do is take each one, deconstruct it by pulling out the images and words that call out to me and then re-assemble those into a piece of “found poetry” with images. Each piece comes from one magazine. A sort of deconstructed summary of what I was inspired by in that one piece at one point in time.
The Soul Tells A Story (Favorite Excerpts)
by Vinita Hampton Wright. Below are my favorite pages.
USC Bookfest
When we were down in LA for my birthday weekend (to camp on Channel Islands) it was the time for the annual USC Bookfest, one of the largest literary festivals anywhere. We decided to spend a day there, where we listened to an interview and some poetry, visited lots of booths, bought some books on sale, added our hand to some art and ate out of the food trucks.
Making a Book
We went to a booth where we made our own little book. First we wrote a paragraph based on a prompt. Then several copies were made and added to a pile on a table. Then we were able to pick four other people’s on the table to create our story, which we pinned into a book. I had my boyfriend and sister help me with all the parts. It was fun 
Flashback: My 2009 Site
Last month I looked at My 2007 professional website using Wayback Machine. Today let’s look at what had transformed into by 2009.
What Was Your First Love?
When my mom and I were at the Disney Museum I saw this quote I loved:
And I thought of it again when we came across this outdoor art display of “first loves” because my eye immediately landed on the Nancy Drew answer (which was one of my favorite childhood reads):
But of course there were plenty of other answers in this art project as well:
What was your first love?
Women’s Visionary Fiction, Poetry and Film
I was recently looking through the courses that are offered in the Women’s Spirituality degree program at my school (CIIS). There are three related courses offered related to the power of women in the arts. I thought I’d share some of the names of the creative, spiritual women and their works that are highlighted in those course descriptions.
Women’s Visionary Fiction
- Isabel Allende
- Mary Mackey
- Ella Deloria
- Maxine Hong Kingston
I’ve read some of Allende’s work and love it and want to read more, including her newest book Ripper: A Novel
Women’s Visionary Poetry
3 More Pieces of Past Poetry
Yesterday I shared a poetry fragment from a found but forgotten notebook. Here are three more unedited, unnamed pieces from that same time:
Piece 1
Strawberry Crush
Half drunk by the bedside
As she begins to crush strawberries between her thighs
Orange cat insults master
Bringing natural actions into constructed domain
Music dances across the room
The creepy man had said to her,
“if that’s music tattooed on your leg your boyfriend could learn to play guitar across your thigh”
And though he’s not, her boyfriend that is,
the friendly boy’s guitar notes
skitter along her legs
And his apologies for the simplicity of his creation seem ludicrous for their complexity
He confesses that he no longer even wants her in his bed
And she laughs at this because now she no longer wants to fight being there
It’s all a game and the climax would be anti-climactic now
The build-up from the pressure of the chase and run is the point
Like playing Russian roulette,
Sitting for hours with the gun in your mouth,
thoughts teasing through your busy head and then blast!
And you’re still there
gun in hand in mouth
Realization of empty chamber seeping in
And now what? Nothingness.
Life continues to on
Never as intense as it was before the game’s outcome was learned
She doesn’t want to know how they end
So she runs from pursuit
Vanity drips down her spine
And she arches her back from the coolness of it
Alarm bell rings and she wants to tickle him into morning
Says instead, “it’s time to leave” with a groan
And his not yet sends her to the couch to write the sun up
She sits on wooden staircase to watch Venus rise in the East
She finds faces in the bluegrey clouds of early morning
Sitting behind her, he eyes the cloud she calls a lizard and censors her ideas
Rooster crows and rabbit runs away
This is their existence
Piece 2
Poetry Fragments from the Past
Going through old papers I found this …
eyes stare at eyes stare at eyes stare at eyes
thinking that if I stared at you intensely enough,
I could see through me
Blue wraps its way around the night,
winding skin around skin around skin around kiss
moments magically touched by motion
desire devours days
and I stare at you, eyes closed
I watch you and can’t see me
except for those brief seconds when all I see in you is in me
Interconnection interfaced around interlocked bodies
You sleep and I dream you into existence
When you close your eyes I watch you awaken
And when you wake I dream that you are sleeping inside of me
I dream every breath I take is your heartbeat
And every heartbeat I feel is you breathing
Emotions wrap their way around intentions
I wanted to detach until your detachment drew me in
Eyes stare at eyes stare at eyes stare at eyes
Are we seeing anything?
Poetry Scrap
I photographed this on a wall somewhere but failed to write down the source and now I can’t figure out where it might have come from. Pretty though …
