Porkbelly Press 07.11.17

Porkbelly Press has just published a new chapbook, MEXICAMERICANA, (poetry) by Eloisa Amezcua, and I'm super excited to say my work is on the cover! The incomparable and very industrious Nicci Mechler runs Porkbelly Press, a small independent chapbook press in Cincinnati, Ohio. Besides her jobs as editor, designer, and artist for the chapbook, she does about a thousand other things, all while continously producing a steady stream of gorgeous etchings and other artworks. Her blog bio starts off like this:

"Nicci is a graduate of Northern Kentucky University (BFA Studio Art, Masters in English). Between research, novel revisions, poetic alchemy, reading, retreats, and caring for roomies, rescue dogs, and rescue kitties, she makes art, edits the literary magazine Sugared Water, and runs Porkbelly Press (a micro press in Cincinnati, OH). She is also the editor and maker of several zines, including the body image zine LMLMB.

I was very honored when she asked if she could use my work on the cover, and it really does look wonderful. I have no idea how she manages to get all this stuff done. Here, you can read an excerpt from Eloisa Amezcua's beautiful poetry; you can buy a copy of this handbound chapbook, MEXICAMERICANA, here.

Weekly Quick Collage: Meditation

Meditation

mixed media collage, 6 x 4 inches

Allow

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes

By: Danna Faulds

Weekly Quick Collage: Golden Day

Golden Day

collage, 4 x 6 inches

“I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.”
― Mary Oliver



“I do not live happily or comfortably
With the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all about computers,
The news is all about bombs and blood.
This morning, in the fresh field,
I came upon a hidden nest.
It held four warm, speckled eggs.
I touched them.
Then went away softly,
Having felt something more wonderful
Than all the electricity of New York City.”
― Mary Oliver; Evidence: Poems

Weekly Quick Collage: Expansion of Dreams

Expansion of Dreams

Rambling around the internet one night, I found this poem by Stanley Kunitz, and thought I'd take this opportunity to share it with you. I hope you like it.

The Science of the Night
by Stanley Kunitz

I touch you in the night, whose gift was you,
My careless sprawler,
And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused,
That have become the land of your self-strangeness.

What long seduction of the bone has led you
Down the imploring roads I cannot take
Into the arms of ghosts I never knew,
Leaving my manhood on a rumpled field
To guard you where you lie so deep
In absent-mindedness,
Caught in the calcium snows of sleep?

And even should I track you to your birth
Through all the cities of your mortal trial,
As in my jealous thought I try to do,
You would escape me--from the brink of earth
Take off to where the lawless auroras run,
You with your wild and metaphysic heart.

My touch is on you, who are light-years gone.

We are not souls but systems, and we move
In clouds of our unknowing
 like great nebulae.

Our very motives swirl and have their start
With father lion and with mother crab.

Dreamer, my own lost rib,
Whose planetary dust is blowing
Past archipelagoes of myth and light
What far Magellans are you mistress of
To whom you speed the pleasure of your art?
As through a glass that magnifies my loss
I see the lines of your spectrum shifting red,
The universe expanding, thinning out,
Our worlds flying, oh flying, fast apart.


From hooded powers and from abstract flight
I summon you, your person and your pride.

Fall to me now from outer space,
Still fastened desperately to my side;
Through gulfs of streaming air
Bring me the mornings of the milky ways
Down to my threshold in your drowsy eyes;
And by the virtue of your honeyed word
Restore the liquid language of the moon,
That in gold mines of secrecy you delve.

Awake!
 My whirling hands stay at the noon,
Each cell within my body holds a heart
And all my hearts in unison strike twelve.

Glimpses

Glimpses

ingredients: vintage book cover and spine; monotypes, ephemera, ribbon, stitching                 7.5 x 9.5 inches

I seem to remember
bright flashes
of clarity
I could almost touch
before they dissolved
tantalizing
ephemeral
pieces
of a forgotten dream
moving through time
then vanished

For Emma

For Emma

ingredients: vintage book cover, vintage lace, vintage book pages and ephemera, Derwent watercolor pencils, stitching

I found this written in a 100 year-old book:

Remember me when death shall close

These eyelids in their last repose

And when the wind doth gently wave

The grass that grows upon my grave

                                                   Emma K

I have no idea who Emma K. was, or what prompted her to pencil these words onto a page of this book.  But I tried to imagine her, anyway, and what she might have been like.  Maybe she loved butterflies, and lace.  Maybe she loved to sew.  Perhaps she read a book with a bitter-sweet ending, and it got her thinking.  She wanted to be remembered.  And so I made this for her, a girl I never knew, so we'll remember.

I've Looked at Clouds...

I spend a lot of time looking at the sky.  I guess you could say I'm a sky watcher- or perhaps more accurately, a cloud watcher.  No, I don't mean the game where you try to find shapes in the clouds.   I like the clouds just for themselves.  My kids used to yell at me for watching the clouds while I was driving, which, I admit, is not a very good idea.  But I just can't help it; it's like a whole other world up there, one that changes constantly. The quality of light, the movement, the colors...it fascinates me.  It's difficult to put into words, and I'm more of a "picture is worth a thousand words" kind of girl, anyway.  So, here are my pictures, along with some words I did not write.

Low-Anchored Cloud

Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields!

Henry David Thoreau 

[exerpt from] THE CLOUD   By Percy Shelly:

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

 [exerpt from] THE CLOUD   By Percy Shelly:

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky:
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, --
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise, and unbuild it again. 

Wow, I didn't realize I had so many photos of clouds until i started getting them together to put on here!   Did you know that there's actually a Cloud Appreciation Society?  Hmmmm...maybe I should join!

more multiples (the edge of november)

Cloud Sunflower

It's a cold, gloomy,
gray, drizzly day
on the edge
of November
and even worse
it's Sunday
So I have to go
to work
tomorrow.


Metal Sunflower

Summer's heat and
soft, buttery,
yellow light
are gone
and the sky is hard,
the color of
lead.


Ink Sunflower

Last summer is far
away and long ago,
a faint
remembrance
like the taste of salt
on my tongue
or glittering on
my skin.


Glowing Sunflower

But I can wait
and remember
and think
of yellow things
like
sunflowers.