Arlene Biala This is how you see me, the space in which to place me. ~ Layli Long Soldier ~ ekphrastic poem based on Victor Cartagena's "Labor Tea" sitting here on the floor trying to conjure you up like reading tea leaves in a cup, i am looking for signs you are one of a thousand shrouded faces strung up on a tree are you thirsty for clarity? are you steeped in grief? i want someone to tell you sweet things. i look for you where summer lasts forever. your throat and your skin are parched, brittle angel. you used to smile all the time, so it's difficult to recognize you. "i didn't realize tea had its labor issues like coffee and chocolate," says the lady to her friend and they quickly move on. with the individual tea bag, the measuring of you has been done for us. with the individual tea bag, the disposal of your remains is easy. you are stacked thickly, abandoned after the withering stage. the necessary fermentation takes place. how brutal, how beautiful to slip me into new skin, you whisper. to get your gaze on. to stay awhile. passport photos in tea bags like toe tags. tag. you're it. words fail me. i want someone to tell me sweet things. but that's none of my business. Originally published in More Good Talk: Poems from the Poets Laureate of Santa Clara County, July 2017. |
So we travel on earth seeking the terrain of Poetry, walking through wilderness and empty landscape or visiting those ancient sites like Dholavira in far-western Gujarat, or Mykenai in the Greek Peloponnese, or the Arawak campsite on eastern Carriacou in the Grenadine Windward Isles, pursuing that authenticity of experience in a form of antique material reality...
These are places, strange and vague situations where death is manifold and thoroughly extant to the careful eye. There are women’s bangles made of shell to be picked up from the saline dust or small copper beads and thin chert blades, or tiny obsidian arrow-heads that can be unhidden and disclosed beneath those bloody grey walls about the Lion Gate, or beautiful indented potsherds and ceramic fragments at the waterline where the Atlantic rolls out its long blue visceral waves...
Kevin McGrath 🐚Yoga of Poetry
“Dare to live the life you have dreamed."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What began as a series of literary salons and writing workshops is now a worldwide circle of literary & fine artists who believe that words, art, and music act as a transcendent bridge, and allow us to create the lives we have imagined. Poets and Dreamers Literary Circle and the Poets and Dreamers Literary & Fine Arts Journal exist as opportunities for authors and artists to actualize themselves through collaboration and the circulation of literary and fine arts.
"Remember...the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you."
~ Rumi
|
Receive the Poets and Dreamers Literary Journal
|
Contact Us |