Published Prose
Denebola
“I once dreamt I was a starfish with four arms; Ophelia flying the earth with dry sand in her fists; a child-swan with a coppery neck broken. I once dreamt the moon was in my bathroom mirror with the name of a healer across it – she was a flamenco dancer named Lucia. Without her I would drown like Alice in my own tears.
My father thought I could not swim as a child. He was right. However, one summer in a pool by a motel on the Maine coast I fell in love with the turquoise waves and insisted, at five, on trying to test the water. The red buoys seemed like a necklace of jewels. What lay beyond the shallow end seemed like more than just adult thrashing and pleasure. For me that pool symbolized beauty itself.
I was named after a star, the star Denebola, because my mother worked for astrophysicists. It was my father, however, who worshipped the sun.”
p. 128
.......
I saw an image of myself with my skin like tatooed leaves. My eyes were blazed open but murky from river water. i was lying prone like a felled maple tree. The gray sky made my copper hair look like an apple you could eat.
My eyes reflected the moon in loops of forever. Denebola, eclipsed. I didn't know from this image how I had come to be drowned like that. I only knew that the image would probably come true and that this was my one occasion to see it.
p. 129
From “Heads and Tales” a collection by Heide Hatry and her heads
with texts by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, Mary Caponegro, Jessica Hagedorn, Thalia Field, Svetlana Boym, Katia Kapovich, Carol Novack, Johannah Schmid, Anna Wexler and others. Published by CHARTA BOOKS Milano/New York, 2009, www.chartabooks.it.
“I once dreamt I was a starfish with four arms; Ophelia flying the earth with dry sand in her fists; a child-swan with a coppery neck broken. I once dreamt the moon was in my bathroom mirror with the name of a healer across it – she was a flamenco dancer named Lucia. Without her I would drown like Alice in my own tears.
My father thought I could not swim as a child. He was right. However, one summer in a pool by a motel on the Maine coast I fell in love with the turquoise waves and insisted, at five, on trying to test the water. The red buoys seemed like a necklace of jewels. What lay beyond the shallow end seemed like more than just adult thrashing and pleasure. For me that pool symbolized beauty itself.
I was named after a star, the star Denebola, because my mother worked for astrophysicists. It was my father, however, who worshipped the sun.”
p. 128
.......
I saw an image of myself with my skin like tatooed leaves. My eyes were blazed open but murky from river water. i was lying prone like a felled maple tree. The gray sky made my copper hair look like an apple you could eat.
My eyes reflected the moon in loops of forever. Denebola, eclipsed. I didn't know from this image how I had come to be drowned like that. I only knew that the image would probably come true and that this was my one occasion to see it.
p. 129
From “Heads and Tales” a collection by Heide Hatry and her heads
with texts by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, Mary Caponegro, Jessica Hagedorn, Thalia Field, Svetlana Boym, Katia Kapovich, Carol Novack, Johannah Schmid, Anna Wexler and others. Published by CHARTA BOOKS Milano/New York, 2009, www.chartabooks.it.
Audience Review, Vol. 2, No. 3
Horses
"Take the 1961 movie, "The Misfits." It's the last movie Gable and Monroe ever made. The title fits both the humans and the horses of the story as they both are cast outside society, wild misfits unable to settle into a satisfying pattern of existence, predatory and preyed upon. It's Monroe -- at the end of her marriage to Arthur Miller, drinking and hooked on pills, arriving late to the set frequently -- who convinces the band of over-the-hill cowboys to free the mustangs they rustle up for the slaughterhouses for a living. Once NY Times reviewer claimed that it was the only scene in the film that worked, the climax, the scuffle in the Nevada desert when Monroe hysterically "kicks up a ruckus" that pulls down their horse-trapping scheme. She is the woman in love with the wild horses; she's the beautiful wounded tramp who's fading fast, but who still knows a creature who should be protected from a cheap death."
p. 74
"Take the 1961 movie, "The Misfits." It's the last movie Gable and Monroe ever made. The title fits both the humans and the horses of the story as they both are cast outside society, wild misfits unable to settle into a satisfying pattern of existence, predatory and preyed upon. It's Monroe -- at the end of her marriage to Arthur Miller, drinking and hooked on pills, arriving late to the set frequently -- who convinces the band of over-the-hill cowboys to free the mustangs they rustle up for the slaughterhouses for a living. Once NY Times reviewer claimed that it was the only scene in the film that worked, the climax, the scuffle in the Nevada desert when Monroe hysterically "kicks up a ruckus" that pulls down their horse-trapping scheme. She is the woman in love with the wild horses; she's the beautiful wounded tramp who's fading fast, but who still knows a creature who should be protected from a cheap death."
p. 74
The Audience Review, Vol. 2, No.
Birdman: A Memoir
"In a small Harlem museum , there was a ring of Crown King paintings, black with silver and gold and colored chalk. Basquait invented his cartoon icons of America as an outsider. And I was feeling this in myself. I remember the exercise of taking the subway up there and staring for hours at the paintings to memorize them. To switch my right brain on and open up my imagination synapses. My soul trembled with delight and said yes to the inverse narcissism, the codes, the blackness and bones of the paintings. He became my favorite post modern painter. He began to open up my eyes. Why were they shut tight?
Maybe the reason I called Tronzo Birdman, was the look he had on the Queen of all Ears CD, the Lounge Lizards record. You see him bald with squint bright eyes -- wise bright eyes and his funny bird nose at the camera. And that was the creature of a man who had mesmerized me with his anger and his guitar's heavenly blues oratorios. he was my former lover and boyfriend, Tronz. Most people downtown then in New York knew the Lounge Lizards was the hip white Duke Ellington orchestra of our day. Or Count Basie to the Jazz Passenger's Duke. Still Birdman and Lurie were rivals of a kind. Tronzo was happy for the gig but he always found Lurie to be too egotistical and too much of a showman. I loved them both, though Tronzo would later say I was more like John because I had stage presence and was the singer.."
p. 29
"In a small Harlem museum , there was a ring of Crown King paintings, black with silver and gold and colored chalk. Basquait invented his cartoon icons of America as an outsider. And I was feeling this in myself. I remember the exercise of taking the subway up there and staring for hours at the paintings to memorize them. To switch my right brain on and open up my imagination synapses. My soul trembled with delight and said yes to the inverse narcissism, the codes, the blackness and bones of the paintings. He became my favorite post modern painter. He began to open up my eyes. Why were they shut tight?
Maybe the reason I called Tronzo Birdman, was the look he had on the Queen of all Ears CD, the Lounge Lizards record. You see him bald with squint bright eyes -- wise bright eyes and his funny bird nose at the camera. And that was the creature of a man who had mesmerized me with his anger and his guitar's heavenly blues oratorios. he was my former lover and boyfriend, Tronz. Most people downtown then in New York knew the Lounge Lizards was the hip white Duke Ellington orchestra of our day. Or Count Basie to the Jazz Passenger's Duke. Still Birdman and Lurie were rivals of a kind. Tronzo was happy for the gig but he always found Lurie to be too egotistical and too much of a showman. I loved them both, though Tronzo would later say I was more like John because I had stage presence and was the singer.."
p. 29
Review of Dark Card by Rebecca Foust on Rattle
In Rebecca Foust’s first full-length poetry book, Dark Card, she creates a prism of experience, imagery and episode through which to describe and honor her relationship to her son’s struggle with Asperger’s Syndrome. The poems span in time from his bloody (almost mishap) of birth, to schooling traumas, to his rather triumphal eighteenth year when he has finally taken rational charge of things which enable him to function with others smoothly in the world. Far from a mere object lesson, Rebecca’s son is like a strange, wondrous and unruly kite that she must learn to anchor and let fly with the winds of existence. The book is also a reflection of her own transformation as her sense of her son deepens and their bond matures.
In a poem called, :”No Longer Medusa” she states:
“When I had you I gave birth
to my mirror
the chink in my armor.”
She goes on to say that while she once had the power of
“turning men to adamantine”
she is now,
“alive
all night with fear for you, undone
by your sweet, milky breath….”
p. 9
"Here I am Anyway" from HOME Anthology by Eden Waters Press
Part 2.
Rolando transforms trash. He was one of the original squatters on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, fighting off the police to take over abandoned buildings. Born near Naples, he has the strong hands and a feel for justice that made him a leader in the struggle. He won a place in a building on 7th street and set up a studio called RAP, Recycle and Pray. After “Being Visited” was finished, in about 1998, I was invited to a party at the squat and fell in love with the way he had decorated it with zebra wall hangings and costumes and colored lights. At the doorway there were hundreds of wine bottles he had sunk in cement that shone in the light at different angles. He invited me to be a guest on his underground radio show where he’d spin my CD and interview me as Queen of Mars, a character from the record. The voices told me he was “special” and as I left the party there was a ringing in my left ear.
The voices would wake me up at night and torment me with messages. They said I was in a fish bowl. I got so angry I smashed my kitchen window three times. When Rolando saw this, he offered to let me stay in the squat with him. There was an extra room and he had a loft bed on the other side of a curtain. We had already made love once I think. It was summer time. He was 17 years older than me but in very good shape – handsome and charming and eccentric. He reminded me of a lone wolf, with white hair and smooth sinewy bones. So I sublet my studio and moved into RAP.
A lot happened during that time, a lot happened because the voices didn’t think I was the best partner for Rolando. So they tormented me with jealousy messages. I once threw a bookshelf down a flight of stairs. But I also cleaned all his wine bottles and bought some pink plastic flowers that I hung like a grotto in the bike room. It cleaned the place up. Let me explain this. My voices came from the Hindu deity Ganesha. He was devilishly tricky with me. And because Rolando was a Sufi spirit and into trance music and liked women, Ganesha’s voice said I had to pay him a penance. The irony being that Rolando wanted to protect me from these spirits to begin with. Maybe RAP could have been my home, if I had given up my studio and given in to Rolando’s often stubborn ways. He wanted to take me to Italy and I tried to help him become more practical as an artist. Actually, he just liked to make things out of aluminum and coffee cans and go on late night excursions to find good trash to use. His soymilk chairs were really cool. In fact the squat had been featured in a NY Times lifestyle section.
This is the backstory. Or part of it. After we finally split up, and Rolando traded RAP for another squat in a building on 3rd Street called “Bullet Space” we gradually became friends.
Where was home then? What could fix my busted up heart? The voices, I think, were gone. But my psyche had been very messed up. It was scrambled, recoded by a supernatural energy no one quite believed in. Where is home, anyway? It’s in your dreams and your energy. It’s in your memory and your partnerships. It’s in the nest you make with your lovers. It’s the past and the future. Well, isn’t it?
Rolando transforms trash. He was one of the original squatters on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, fighting off the police to take over abandoned buildings. Born near Naples, he has the strong hands and a feel for justice that made him a leader in the struggle. He won a place in a building on 7th street and set up a studio called RAP, Recycle and Pray. After “Being Visited” was finished, in about 1998, I was invited to a party at the squat and fell in love with the way he had decorated it with zebra wall hangings and costumes and colored lights. At the doorway there were hundreds of wine bottles he had sunk in cement that shone in the light at different angles. He invited me to be a guest on his underground radio show where he’d spin my CD and interview me as Queen of Mars, a character from the record. The voices told me he was “special” and as I left the party there was a ringing in my left ear.
The voices would wake me up at night and torment me with messages. They said I was in a fish bowl. I got so angry I smashed my kitchen window three times. When Rolando saw this, he offered to let me stay in the squat with him. There was an extra room and he had a loft bed on the other side of a curtain. We had already made love once I think. It was summer time. He was 17 years older than me but in very good shape – handsome and charming and eccentric. He reminded me of a lone wolf, with white hair and smooth sinewy bones. So I sublet my studio and moved into RAP.
A lot happened during that time, a lot happened because the voices didn’t think I was the best partner for Rolando. So they tormented me with jealousy messages. I once threw a bookshelf down a flight of stairs. But I also cleaned all his wine bottles and bought some pink plastic flowers that I hung like a grotto in the bike room. It cleaned the place up. Let me explain this. My voices came from the Hindu deity Ganesha. He was devilishly tricky with me. And because Rolando was a Sufi spirit and into trance music and liked women, Ganesha’s voice said I had to pay him a penance. The irony being that Rolando wanted to protect me from these spirits to begin with. Maybe RAP could have been my home, if I had given up my studio and given in to Rolando’s often stubborn ways. He wanted to take me to Italy and I tried to help him become more practical as an artist. Actually, he just liked to make things out of aluminum and coffee cans and go on late night excursions to find good trash to use. His soymilk chairs were really cool. In fact the squat had been featured in a NY Times lifestyle section.
This is the backstory. Or part of it. After we finally split up, and Rolando traded RAP for another squat in a building on 3rd Street called “Bullet Space” we gradually became friends.
Where was home then? What could fix my busted up heart? The voices, I think, were gone. But my psyche had been very messed up. It was scrambled, recoded by a supernatural energy no one quite believed in. Where is home, anyway? It’s in your dreams and your energy. It’s in your memory and your partnerships. It’s in the nest you make with your lovers. It’s the past and the future. Well, isn’t it?