Tagged Writing
January “A River of Stones” Poetry Tweets Wrap-Up @JadeBlackwater
Last month I participated in A River of Stones (#aros) writing challenge. I heard about #aros just before the New Year via the venerable Crafty Green Poet, Juliet Wilson.
The #aros project is curated by UK writer/artist Fiona Robyn and her partner Kaspa. Their invitation to writers begged daily tokens of small stones, which they define as “polished moment[s] of paying proper attention.”
I enjoyed this daily meditation not only as a part of my journaling routine, but also for the pleasures of hopping in the stream, splashing around with a few fellow writers, and listening to #aros flow.
UPDATE March 3, 2011: You can now purchase a book of selections from the January 2011 #aros project, in which my contribution “slender moon […]” appears: pay attention: a river of stones.
Below is the tributary of small stones I shared via micropoetry tweets @JadeBlackwater throughout January 2011. Hashtags have been retained to show the texture of the day when each stone was palmed. Line breaks have been restored where ‘ / ‘ was used in the feed.
——
6:45 AM, Dec 31st
pre-dawn
morning star
preceding
even
old moon
#beforedawn
——
6:46 AM, Dec 31st
a shimmering
bulb
in the blackness
alders
shiver
in silence
#beforedawn
——
6:46 AM, Dec 31st
I shade my
eyes
look
south
still no
moonlight
#beforedawn
——
6:46 AM, Dec 31st
but wait!
a tree-line
twinkle
a sliver
of late flame
#beforedawn
——
8:33 AM, Jan 1st
range
hood
fan and glow
dusty blue
new
year dawn blooms
#beforedawn
——
1:22 PM, Jan 1st
now
the pink
announcement
now
the brown
darting blink
#beforedawn
——
7:48 AM, Jan 2nd
settled cold
quiets
coffee
steams over
waiting
correspondences
mercurial gems
#beforedawn
——
2:37pm, Jan 2nd
late light
low white
catkins waggle
tides of birds
pluck, repluck
#lowwintersun
——
7:48 AM, Jan 3rd
forest
dons the morning
shawl
crocheted
of frosted
breath;
too icy
for my
unwooled
skin
#beforedawn
——
6:32 AM, Jan 4th
burn ban in #kitsap
I pine for my stove
bundled in the dark
——
3:56 PM, Jan 5th
praise for overcast
skies! greys, sweet eye-balm
slathering quiet
#lowwintersun
——
11:43 AM, Jan 6th
flash of black
alighting raven
breaks concentration
——
10:23 AM, Jan 8th
great blue heron glides
afore the windshield
six fixed eyes follow
——
5:17 PM, Jan 9th
slender moon
suspended
between power lines
——
8:40 AM, Jan 10th
morning news
felicitations
rock on sis!
——
10:40 AM, Jan 10th
hilltop snow
sunrise sleet
rooster crows
——
6:47 AM, Jan 11th
dreams defrost
crackling and snapping
icy stars
#beforedawn
——
2:46 PM, Jan 12th
iced streets slush
in morning hush grey
ribbons wring across foothills
——
12:28 PM, Jan 13th
soft forgotten words
practiced syllables
tonguing memory
ichi ni san shi
go back through the draft
——
7:17 AM, Jan 14th
rain rattle
shake the world awake
drip tempo
#beforedawn
——
1:00 PM, Jan 14th
hemlocks hurl, howl, sway
scrub and brush awash
with windy dewlight
#windstorm #powerout #kitsap
——
4:56 PM, Jan 17th
“Now rose-pink!” cries the painter
“now mountain cobalt-white!
now scoop away all color
make room for coal-dark night.”
#dusk
——
6:02 PM, Jan 17th
beckoning sketchbook
cedar fingertips
skritch-skritch-shadashad
#afterdark
——
8:35 PM, Jan 18th
glowing yawn
chilled shadow
full tremble
#fullmoon
——
7:06 AM, Jan 19th
lunar mischief lingers on
morning breath exhalations
smoke detector reveille
#beforedawn
#wellnowiamawake
——
2:42 PM, Jan 25th
red alder
your swelling catkins
in first blush
#lowwintersun
——
5:12 AM, Jan 28th
morning wind
chimes a new system
brisk star chants
#beforedawn
——
5:16 AM, Jan28th
roof spine crack
early notebook ink
stray door draft
#beforedawn
——
8:06 AM, Jan 31st
dawn blossom
sweet low hanging fog
rose-colored grasses
#sunrise
Literary Journal Review: A cappella Zoo Issue 5
A cappella Zoo – a journal of magic realism and slipstream: Issue 5, Fall 2010
Editors: Colin Meldrum, Michael James Wilson, Amanda DiSanto, Micah Unice
The hardcopy of A cappella Zoo Issue 5 for today’s review was provided by the editors at A cappella Zoo.
Read selections from A cappella Zoo 5 here.
Follow @acappellazoo on Twitter
(And for more fun, read an interview with Editor Colin Meldrum by Jim Harrington at the Six Questions For… blog.)
If I had to describe a theme or a common thread for A cappella Zoo (AZ) issue 5, it would be this: voids, and that which fills them. AZ5 reads like a volume of the Never-Never Encyclopedia of the Esoteric: pages of places both peopled and unpeopled, people without places, people displaced. The contributors for this issue ponder voids of unknown, and speculate on the voices heard within. The result is a collection of literature which ultimately places the sketchbook and pencils in my hand this week – these works are adequately vivid and tangible to fuel your own creative engine through those long, dark nights.
The curtain opens with Showtime by Nancy Gold, winner of the Apospecimen Award for Fiction. Gold’s piece sets the tone for subsequent selections by deftly weaving emotion and imagination with a spindle of belief – the belief that we can be more than the sum of our parts; that our hearts are vessels meant to be filled. This is the first of many pieces which playfully create images that are both impossible and perfectly conceivable. (Read Showtime and just try not to look at your ankles and ponder a few tiny wings about their knobbly bones.)
I never read journals front to back, which is why I next bounce forward to Movie Man by Melissa Ross, telling of “a boy born in the projection booth of a tower in the sky away from the Earth as we know it;” first we are cast into the sky, and next drawn into the intimacy of Earth’s shadows.
In Borges’ Bookstore by David Misialowski smacks of one of my favorite Burgess Meredith Twilight Zones: “Time Enough at Last” (see also Jorge Luis Borges). This maze, void of reason and physical law, wraps upon itself into a complete, neat package. Speaking of neat packages, poetry lovers might like to begin with : sign language : by Joseph A. W. Quintela (whose work I seem to find everywhere these days). The unique composition of this poem is a perfect complement to austere images of solitude, plains, and big, wide sky, cleft open by shared experience.
This completeness is a quality I appreciate throughout AZ5: stories which, while wildly catalyzed, still anchor themselves in some clearly-formed thought. No matter how outrageous our surroundings, each author still affords us a compass with which to navigate the realm. Pestilence by Jason Jordan is such an excellent example: a form of tethered madness.
Many of the AZ5 contributors counterbalance the darker shades of humanity with artful prose and poetry, or a bit of wicked humor. Perhaps the most disturbing yet effective piece is The Crushing by Phillip Neel, which I may have otherwise stopped reading because of the nastiness of the descriptions, had it not been for the clever and poignant entrance to this particular void: that dirty of dirties, the DMV. I’m glad I kept reading – the payoff of this piece is what ranks it among my favorites for this issue.
Similarly The Snake Charmer’s Teeth by Mike Meginnis still haunts me weeks after reading, wherein a cruel story is sculpted with both elegance and requisite gentleness. What the Calf Daughter Knows by Rob Cook is both brutal and beautiful. This persistent poem stands out bone white against the void: completely unignorable.
It’s tough to pick a favorite, especially when I find a journal like A cappella Zoo which is good enough to reread many times. However, the sentimentalist (or perhaps the Japanese lit lover) in me found the deepest connection in A Tale of a Snowy Night by Naoko Awa, translated by Toshiya Kamei. In this story, space is not a function of distance or time, but of empathy. Naoko grounds us in crisp imagery which is as familiar as it is fantastical. Aren’t we all, in some small way, a crate of hopeful apples?
Einstein Plays Guitar by Tania Hershman is also a rewarding read: a well-developed snapshot of those graceful and fleeting whispers of true knowledge. Birds Every Child Should Know by Kate Riedel is another of my favorites from AZ5. I wasn’t sure what to think of it at first; but the more I read Birds, the more I feel the weight of each angelic, warmly feathered lump. In this piece we glimpse the unknown aflutter with spirit, the glittering moments we share with others that spark us on an entirely new path.
Thank you, Theodore Carter, for the tears I cried upon reading the final lines of The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob. With much of speculative fiction favoring the apocalyptic, it’s always helpful to recall with specificity that which we might lose in the aftermath.
If you wish to truly be suspended in the void, begin your journey through AZ5 with Sleepmaps by Barry Napier tucked firmly in your back pocket. Personally, I love dream-inspired art; this poem spares no effort in reaching for the most tangible sensations of the dreaming world, such that I too “never want to wake.”
I want to thank the editors of A cappella Zoo for preparing such an effective cross-section of mind-opening literature for issue 5. Each piece is clearly selected for its creation of both precipice and foothold. What I like most about reading specfic – especially GOOD specfic – is that constant feeling of discovery in each page. I love experiments in literature which keep me guessing and thinking and unraveling, and that’s exactly what you’ll find in A cappella Zoo: a bit of the unknown, made knowable.
For Laure-Alda, from Francis
For this July’s Clarity of Night “Uncovered” Short Fiction Contest I created a piece of poetry (with narrative movement to meet the requirements of this contest), inspired by Jason Evans’ image of gemstones here. You can read my entry Forties Club Finalist #22 here.
Laure-Alda and Francis aren’t strangers: they are characters from one of my story ideas. This poem started as a 200-word flash fiction piece written from Francis’ POV. After a few hours I realized that the fiction could be extracted to make a poem or rather, a love letter. I’m using love letters to explore Laure-Alda and Francis, their lives, their friendship, and their current circumstances (such as it relates to the story).
Listen to the audio (MP3 link below), and be sure to spend some time at The Clarity of Night this week – there’s a lot of good reading to be had.
Audio:
For Laure-Alda, from Francis by Jade Leone Blackwater
* * *
For Laure-Alda, from Francis
by Jade Leone Blackwater
If we awoke
clasped in sunlight
and found that the lump in my throat
had burst and broken
birthed a trinity of gemstones
to my dune grass pillow
would you cradle the tokens
to your nose as dew drops in the palm
watch colors radiate along our wrinkles,
remember our love for what dazzles,
burns us with brilliance?
Would you join me at the gorge
gulp turpentine and cinnamon wind
knock the sharp, sacred clap
which calls the rainbow-scaled fish-sage who,
in his high lip-pop dialect,
whispers “Only when the moon is dark,”
until the incantations crack
open our skull caps
into which we’d drop jewels
as cherries to dish, wait
for the western orb to reach the zenith
blaze its beam down and scoop us both moonward?
* * *