From the archives: 9/3/2006

 

swinging on a broken hinge
you find me
singing of flavors long since tasted
erased in
the hollowness
of an empty passageway.

echoing memories
bounce off the hardness
of oak paneling
the rich sweetness of wood—
intoxicating

come in,
enter,
you are welcome here

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Charcoal & Chiclets

2016 was a samovar filled with
indifference, intolerance and
a myriad of other self-boiling
elements that took us far away
from tranquility.

Unbeknownst to us, palpable walls
began to rise at a preternatural rate,
built of pepper and spite.

A mouth cannot make
another mouth
understand
if it is
intertwined with
brazen privilege.

Listen: we may tempted
to dump Benzodiazepine
into the waters of 2017.
Rewiring our brains.
Sedating us.

Or seek to terraform Mars,
creating a peace-filled
escape hatch, 54.6 million
kilometers away.

Here’s hoping we instead
have the prescience
to envision a better year.

To live it with zeal and grace.
Choosing gemütlich over schadenfreude.

2016 is done.

In 2017, new work begins.

 

Casting Directors

After G.P.

 

I was in an acting class
where the teacher had us
perform an exercise:

we were to
consider each classmate
and write what “type”
we thought they were.

4 people wrote down “mob boss’ wife,”
2 wrote down “alien queen”
and not one person wrote down

Hamlet.

Reasons to see The Pillowman

The Pillowman is a dark play. The playwright, Martin McDonagh, refers to it as a “cinematic black comedy.”

I’ve wanted to direct this play for over ten years. As a theatre major, I devoured the play when it came out in 2003. I went to a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. I delighted in reading the newly-published plays that came into my academic advisor’s office.

Upon finishing The Pillowman, I was amazed at how much it had affected me. I had never been that moved by merely reading a script quietly by myself. The next thought that I had was that I had to direct the play.

As a 19 year old college student, I had never directed a play before. I would go on to direct both a one-act and a full-length play before graduating. But that’s how powerful the play was for me: I knew I wanted to direct it before I knew I could direct.

The Pillowman has been an exercise in possibility for me, both personally and artistically. Could I find a company willing to produce it? Could I find the right group of actors? Could we pull it off? Would audiences come and see it?

Last year, I proposed the play to OutCast Productions. Ned and Sandy founded the company with the principles of producing theatre on the edge: theatre that provokes “a dialogue about such issues as oppression, human rights, politics, and the psychological and emotional worlds of human beings at large.”

The Pillowman is a perfect fit with OutCast’s mission and values, and I was honored to be selected to direct it in the 2015 season. Actor by actor, the cast fell into place: Max Cole-Takanikos as Katurian, Ned Farley as Detective Tupolski, Jim Scullin as Detective Ariel and Aaron Simpson as Michal.

To answer my third question above: yes, absolutely, we’ve pulled it off. Artistically, I’ve never been so satisfied with a theatrical production. Sandy O’Brien’s set is masterful, Max’s haunting illustrations project behind him in the long monologue scenes and Ashley Eriksson has composed an original score that elevates the entire show.

The fourth question I asked above is about audience members. That means you. Yes, you, reading this post on your computer or smartphone. You’ve probably heard that the show is pretty dark. You’ve perhaps read about how child murders play a part in the story. You’ve perhaps experienced the other works of Martin McDonagh and are trying to decide whether or not you should go.

Ultimately, it’s up to you. But I extend my heart-felt invitation to you to come and see what we’ve been working on. You won’t hear or see anything that’s more gruesome than a typical episode of Law and Order or any other procedural police drama. It’s definitely not as grotesque as Dexter or The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones.

I think what makes this piece so powerful, so visceral, for audiences is the magic that only comes from live theatre. There’s not the separation provided by a glowing screen. The actors and the story are so compelling, it’s hard to look away.

OutCast is an intimate, black box space where brave theatre happens. I hope you’ll come and share that experience with us.

***

The Pillowman runs through July 25, 2015. >>Learn more and get tickets.

Bitter Trip

Wanderlust was like bleeding.

I never liked to sever skin:
content to decompress
in the current vignette
indefinitely.

I would go places with you.
You would be the exception.

Every conversation an adventure:
never knowing what subject
will trip your hair trigger,
catapulting us into contention.

I would follow you
into the whiskey depths
of your soul.

But I would never tell you.

Untying The Knot, by Karen Paul Holmes

Tags

#NPM15, NaPoMo, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Month, Poetry

Untying The Knot
Bitter end: The loose end of a rope.

Why do knots form by themselves?
In my blow dryer cord,
cell phone charger,
dog leashes.
What Boy Scout crept into the dark
to practice right over left
around and through?
And what of the sheepshank of worry
in my stomach,
muscles tied tense with monkey’s fists,
my hair tangled in little nooses?

The twists and hitches in our relationship —
who caused those?
Should I have jumped
through one more hoop
to tighten our ties,
looped my love around you
one more time?
Like a rope,
our marriage failed at the stress of the knot
and frayed at the bitter end.

 

 

This poem appeared in Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press, 2014) by Karen Paul Holmes.

Karen Paul Holmes is the author of a poetry collection, Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press 2014.) Formerly the VP of Communications at ING (a global financial services company), she is now a happier freelance business writer, poet and writing coach. In support of writers and audiences, Karen founded and hosts the Side Door Poets in Atlanta and Writers’ Night Out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She received an Elizabeth George Foundation poetry grant in 2012. Publishing credits include Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Kentucky Review, POEM, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol 5: Georgia, and the forthcoming anthology of Georgia poets from Negative Capability Press, among others. She grew up in Michigan and has an MA in musicology from the University of Michigan. Besides poetry, she likes to try her hand (and legs) at ballroom dancing.

Favorite poets: Thomas Lux, David Kirby, Barbara Hamby, Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Elizabeth Bishop, Linda Pastan, Dorianne Laux, Nancy Simpson and Rupert Fike.

Listen to Karen read her poems:

https://soundcloud.com/matthew-glenn-ward/reality-show-save-this

https://soundcloud.com/matthew-glenn-ward/matilda-waltzing-a-poem

 

What the Light Reveals, by Rachel Heimowitz

Tags

#NPM15, NaPoMo, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Month

What the Light Reveals
Har Hazaytim, Jerusalem

Marble boxes cover this hill, graves
crumbled and aged, the color of teeth,
row after row facing east; buried

here are you who will rise
first, call back to the others, enter
the world of endless life. Your names

echo through generations,
like the lamplighter who walks,
torch in hand, moves

slowly from one grave to the next,
sending a glow into the darkening
night. Or perhaps just a match

set to a wick of pure olive oil,
the light clean and clear
as a summer day, sunlight

so bright we hide our eyes,
and fruit that ripens only
in the long heat of the summer sun,

fruit whose names define us:
Tamar, Te’ena, Rimon, Zayit,
whose shade shields us, whose

pips and stems compost back into the soil
on this eastern side of the hill,
where lights come on slowly with the dusk—

East Jerusalem with its cacophony of cars
and marquees, the green lights
of minarets kindled

one after the other, dotting the way
far into the folds of the desert.
Muezzins who call out,

one leading to the next—
voices, mournful, undulating—pleas
so like the shofar cries

that drift up these stone stairs, call us
back to where we come from— this umbilicus
that whispers a soul to a soul. Your names:

Keila, Pessel, Shaindela, Ruchel: you,
who loved to knead the dough: you,
who danced the hem

of her wedding dress to pieces: you,
who died in the Grodno Ghetto,
giving birth on a dirty floor,

and though we never knew your stories
our souls still told the truth, the death
was not easy. This is why we can’t sleep.

And the wind that once
blew cold in Belarus, now hot
and dry over this eastern hill.

No more lamplighters:
we are Nava, Odelyia, Yael,
and electricity now scrambles

the light between the words,
whispers rise like mist, a simple
wish that wherever we are

we can hearken back to the sweet pink
of a western sky, the last kiss of daylight
as traffic fades, the stars unveil

themselves, the muezzins now quiet. Wherever
you are, tell us why we need any answers,
tell us what any light will reveal.

 

 

This poem was originally published in Crab Orchard Review and it is the title poem of my recent chapbook, What the Light Reveals from Tebot Bach Press.

Rachel Heimowitz is the author of the chapbook, What the Light Reveals (Tebot Bach Press, 2014.) Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Spillway, Crab Orchard Review, and Prairie Schooner and she has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. She is currently the editor of arc-24, the literary journal of The Israel Association of Writers in English and she is due to receive her MFA from Pacific University in Spring 2015.

From the poet: “I have lived in Israel for the past 30 years. I have six children and I feel blessed to be able to share my poems with others.”

Favorite poets: “Some favorite poets include Tarfia Faizulla and Pablo Neruda, Poets who have influenced my work: Dorianne Laux, Kwame Dawes, David St John, Eduardo Corral and Marvin Bell.”

Unicorn, by Lucinda Marshall

Tags

#NPM15, #NPMLaunch, NaPoWriMo, Poetry

Lucinda Marshall is an artist, writer, and activist. Her poems have or will soon be published by Stepping Stones, ISLE, One Sentence Poems, Poetica, and Sediments.  Her poem, “The Lilies Were In Bloom” received an Honorable Mention in Waterline Writers’ “Artists As Visionaries: Climate Change Solutions. She also facilitates the Gaithersburg (MD) Teen Writing Club. More information about Lucinda’s work can be found on her website, Reclaiming Medusa. 

Favorite poets: Sandra Beasley, Alison H. Palmer, June Jordan, Margaret Atwood, Cynthia Hogue.

This poem was originally published by Stepping Stones Magazine.

Read the text of the poem here.

Café Terrace at Night, by Jessica Piazza

Tags

#NPM15, #NPMLaunch, NaPoWriMo, Poetry

Jessica Piazza is the author of two full-length poetry collections from Red Hen Press: Interrobang–winner of the AROHO 2011 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize and the 2013 Balcones Poetry Prize — and Obliterations (with Heather Aimee O’Neill, forthcoming), as well as the chapbook This is not a sky (Black Lawrence Press.) She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, is a co-founder of Bat City Review and Gold Line Press, and teaches for the Writing Program at USC and the online MFA program at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. In 2015 she started the “Poetry Has Value” project, hoping to spark conversations about poetry and worth. Learn more at www.jessicapiazza.com or www.poetryhasvalue.com.

Favorite poets: Edna St. Vincent Millay!  Edwin Arlington Robinson. Jill Alexander Essbaum! Rebecca Lindenberg, Cody Todd, Sara Eliza Johnson! Alice Fulton, for sure. Timothy Donnelly and Hailey Leithauser. And obviously Richard Siken.

From “This is not a sky” (Black Lawrence Press). Originally published in Connotation Press.

Read the text of the poem here.

Red, by Devon Moore

Tags

#NPM15, #NPMLaunch, NaPoWriMo, Poetry

Devon Moore is a native of Buffalo, NY. She currently lives in Syracuse, NY where she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and now teaches writing. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Gulf Coast, Harpur Palate, Meridian​, The Cortland Review, New Ohio Review, Juked, and others. Apology of a Girl Who Is Told She Is Going to Hell, her debut collection, will be released by Mayapple Press in May 2015. 

Favorite poets: Bruce Smith, Michael Burkard, Erika Meitner, Ellen Bass, Erin Belieu, Gina Keicher, Tomas Transtromer

[“Red” appeared in print in Gulf Coast’s Winter/Spring 2013, Volume 25, Issue 1]

Reed the text of the poem here.