Chaco Speaks, Poem and Watercolor by Mary Barnes

Chaco Speaks

On, on, on the people marched

Under the unrelenting suns.

Only a mass, a web, lemmings

All

Eyes watched, the knowing eyes.

Sacred priests levitated, transfixed, high above mesas.

Sacred birds flew.

The people, one mind

On, on, on the people marched

Under the unrelentling suns.

Only a mass,  a web, lemmings

All

Eyes watched, the knowing eyes

As the Comet seared across the sky

As Fire plumed from the south

Upward into the sky.

The priests, knowing, unknowing

Levitated.

Sacred Birds Flew.

The people, the mass, the web, lemmings

All

Levitated under the suns and

Chaco

Ebbed and flew

Erin Currier's Carnet d'Asie (Travel Journal) with response by Jennifer Acampora

      
           

         



     Who are we?
     silent color
     pen and ink
     seen and unseen
     heard and unheard.
     We
     are
     here.
     Our voice
     made visible.

Winnie Cooper #9 -- John Biscello

After all these years I still might use the same technique:
tugging on pigtails.
A cruel and delightful swing, gaining momentum to vault
headfirst into your secret hive,
vaguely aware of and interested in honey,
but the main draw, your bees,
and how many stings I could endure.
I was a littleboy then, ripe
with viciousness and feelings that came over me
which I didn’t understand.
And you?
Do you still have pigtails?

Cubist Porn Flick -- John Biscello

moustached
elbow minding dick
in an ear, stud, god!
shooting milk
into the mouth
kissing the wall where
a fly  lips, half a nose, unzipped
swallows it WHOLE.

Skirt -- John Biscello (1/5/13)

me so pretty pageantees tra-la-la their way through life and parks
in which the bushes conceal peepers skirting issues & scaling prettiness--
bottom, topped, bosom & bush--
pageantees & peepers a bad or maybe good match
naturally
after sundown.

Bird's Eye View by Joseh Edwards with Response by Jennifer Acampora

"Bird's Eye View" (32x48 inches, mixed media)

Ellipsis

Today I am a cat
sleek-eyed and lazy.
It is Sunday. I am not thinking of anything.

If it were Saturday
or even  Friday. I'd take
a walk read a book or write a while.

But it is not.
It is Sunday and I am
the cat who ate the bird in its cage
curling on my back on the sofa in the sun.

Another older piece, from a series of paintings in an 'Andean' palette (pinks next to oranges next to greens next to blues... you get the idea).

staring at paintings, hungry -- by John Biscello

Hemingway wrote

that he’d go to the Luxembourg, hungry,

and stare at the paintings

and this was a great way to see art.

The protagonist in Knut Hamsun’s

novel, Hunger,

empty-bellied and delirious,

bites hard into his finger, rending flesh,

to see, I imagine, how far he’d gone.

Kafka’s “Hunger Artist” desperately performing sideshow feats

of living, of being,

and Paul Auster in his flat in Paris

translating French symbolist poetry

with a stomach groaning soliloquies.

Saroyan, in his room in New York, freezing, hair absurdly standing on end,

trying to write a story, to be a writer.

These are some tales of hunger and low strong fires

that make for compelling drama

when you, yourself, juggling

the pits and seeds,

dream of paintings

far-removed from an ordinary appetite.

Requiem by Jennifer Acampora

Requiem

The yellow eyes of the cat are broken.

Now we see what it really is, this thing between us

soft on tentative pads, with jagged teeth

it has stolen our breath.

Come now, sleep and again

forget your hard-edged impulse.

They know not what they do

these rooftop chimneys

singing open to the sky

pouring night down their throats.

Immigration Laws by John Biscello

One of my poems which will be appearing in the next issue of Adobe Walls (a poetry journal based out of Albuquerque).

We are
immigrants in our own skin,
flash-fire refugees
who get by with falsified papers,
fake IDs, and forged signatures.
If caught

and found guilty
of a trespass
or transgression,
we pardon ourselves
in our native tongues,

language a placeholder
for the names
we were forced
to annul.

 

About This Blog

Hello all and welcome to Xphrasis, a space for us to share and be inspired by each others work.  You are invited and encouraged to post original work, post a creative response or just view the posts and hopefully find something that will inspire a work of your own.  The intention of this blog is to create community and dialogue and so there are a few guidelines we all should follow.  

•  When posting work, type its title and your name in the space provided for the title of the post.   Example: Channeling Georgia by Tera Muskrat. 
•  When posting a response, type the title of your piece,  your name and then the title of the work you're responding to, again in the post's title.  Example:  Untitled, by Jen Acampora, a response to Channeling  Georgia by Tera Muskrat.
• While there is space provided for comments, the purpose of the blog is not to provide critiques, so please keep the comments positive and use them for any flashes of inspiration and insights or questions and props to the artist/author, rather than for constructive criticism. 
• If you do not want to bother posting yourself, email me your work at jenaca68@gmail.com and I'll post it for you.

            Thank you everyone!