I love you Ajivit

The other night I saw Born into Brothels, the documentary that won the Academy Award. Basically, the entire movie is about this photographer who lives in the Red Light District in Calcutta and teaches the children of the brothels how to take pictures. The effects on the kids lives and her life is amazing. These kids were so wonderfully articulate and sensitive and talented that you wanted desperately for them to get out of the brothels. The movie wasn't successful because it displayed something you don't see everyday. It was successful because these kids were given a chance to do something that they would never had done otherwise. It was honest and didn't try to hide anything or disguise things. Things were laid out plainly.

I also really enjoy movies about kids when they're done well. The other one that immediately comes to mind is Spellbound which also cast the children as themselves and how they existed outside the eye of their parents, but also how they were effected by the pressure most clearly placed on them by parental expectations. Interestingly enough both documentaries were distributed by Think Film Company which seems to distribute a wide variety of films.

The 2 kids that were really very endearing by the end were Puja-the spunky girl and Ajivit-the boy that truly had an eye for art. I just hope that as they become adults they don't lose any of that spunk and talent.

Enough sappy comments, just go see the movie.

Paper Flowers

Recently, I discovered a new playwright named Egon Woolf, who is Chilean and appears to have only one of his plays translated into English. The play Paper Flowers is amazing. See for yourself:

"Love is a truce between periods of exhaustion. Love is broken teeth in a hungry mouth."

I've been thinking lately about my lack of seeking out non-English pieces of literature to read. What am I missing out on? Probably tons and tons.

Note to self, read more translated material.

Nature Tromp - iii Hill

iii. Hill

let’s begin in flight
both male drone and breeding female—go
carried from every ant hill placed on the limbs of grass
wings spread out in a colony escape
not just your little ant hill, one outside your window
but all little ant hills

a lift up as wind catches wings
she pounces, cat claws attached to screen
she has no demure meow

the drones drop off, sex caught mid-flight
a fall to death
breeders are left to build anew
a quick chew to release her wings
and she’s laying it all out
first brood chamber, you’re all minors,
obey and wait it out

New worker:
here is your abrupt temporal caste
lasting days 2-4 at a time:
1 care for your queen & siblings
2 dig dig there is always nest work
3 forage for food and defend your home

the tapping of rain
beating and mashing down
your hill a swirling mudpie

minor media major (soldier)
the inescapable physicality of it all

when a pack of you climbs up my piping
I wonder who is who
if soldiers are so forthcoming?
never slipping or sliding down the porcelain smooth
but popping out antennaes through piped in holes

when I turn on the spigot full force
you crumple and curl
I watch as you
let out attack and propaganda pheremones
confuse or a t t a c k,
c o n f u s e and attack

mandible jaw working up and down
that trail behind you warm
you’ll be swarming soon
but there’s no food here
just cold tile floors

my attempts at destruction are futile, god save the queen

Nature Tromp ii - Shell (absent)

ii. Shell (absent)

mucus train, wet—quickly
evaporating in the warm sun
top of the fence post—wait it out slug
reach for a leaf, take a dive down
your shell not quite absent
tucked up under your saddle-shaped mantle
little platelette, a fall can break you
after all you have no visceral mass
stacked up organs atop a foot

garden vines are thick and wirey
tomato red grow up and around your cages
flower out on top of, not through, the metal squares
carefully spaced apart, planted early
now you brush and sway against a breeze, touching

foot—thin and watery pull ahead, pedal and push-
thick and sticky yet
travel up, follow shadows, accordion movements

your tentacles are going
sensory-lower and shorter-smell and taste
optic-upper and longer you can see—
look for leaves, taste dead decaying produce
your radula is tongue tied and heavy,
quick tiny tooth like denticles are ensured
choke and strangle tight
shredded cacophony of leaves in your wake

to think just moments ago
hanging from a slime cord
you mated in mid-air
bluish swelling genitalia all pushed out
your mate wrapped tightly around
both simultaneouly male and female
taking and giving sperm
your fertilization pocket isn’t far from your food
drop out your 1,000+ batch of eggs
all laid out in a continuous string.
as you dip and dive past salt streams,
buried beer cans to drown you
eating and eating a fertile laid out plot

a scoop and you’re mine, palm centered
a push of mucus and you’ve marked me
curl and writhe under the current
salt can penetrate your delicate muscles
when poured directly on

little slug you were set to
die, the air is changing-
it’s going cold and moistureless here

Lots-o-Readings

Velvet Revolution
Student Showcase And Open Mic
with John Cleary (fictionoso and poetico)
and Elizabeth Gjelten (celebrated monologuista teatrista!)
hosted by Malia Jackson Nobel Prize Winning Nuclear Poet


Tuesday, May 10 at 5:00 PM
in The Poetry Center Humanities Building, Room 512, SFSU Campus

********

Robin Romm Chapbook Release Party
for The Tilt a collection of short stories
Winner of the 2004 Michael Rubin Chapbook Award from Fourteen Hills/San Francisco State University.

Tuesday, May 10th at 7:30
at Great Overland Book Company
345 Judah Street @ 9th Ave, San Francisco
(415) 644-0126

********

Ecstatic Monkey presents:
Toni Mirosevich Book Release Party
Queer Street
Reading with Malia Jackson & Lori Williams

Thursday, May 12 @ 7:30pm
StartSOMA Gallery
672 S. Van Ness between 17th and 18th

Toni Mirosevich is the author of The Rooms We Make Our Own (Firebrand Books), co-author of Trio: Toni Mirosevich, Charlotte Muse, Edward Smallfield (Specter Press), and of the newly released Queer Street (Custom Words), runner up for the 2004 Custom Words Poetry Prize. Afourth collection of poetry, My Oblique Strategies, won the 2005 Frank O'Hara Chapbook Award (Pratt Institute, Brooklyn) and will be published by Thorngate Road Press in September, 2005. Other literary awards include the Astraea Emerging Lesbian Writer in Fiction Award,the Americas Review Poetry Prize, and for 2004-2005 fellowships with the MacDowell Colony, Willard R. Espy Foundation and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Best American Travel Writing, The Progressive, and is forthcoming in Puerto Del Sol, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and in the anthologies AutoBioDiversity (Heyday Books) and The Impossible Will Take A Little While (Basic Books). She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

********

Fourteen Hills Journal celebrates its NEW ISSUE at
the Elbo Room
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 @ 6:30pm
647 Valencia Street (btwn 17th & 18th)

WITH POETRY AND FICTION READINGS BY contributors Aurora Brackett, AnneClifford, Susanna Kittredge, Laura Moore, Robin Romm and Margaret Ronda.


Anne Clifford's short stories have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Reviewand Get Off My Wagon, and have been performed by a Los Angeles theatercompany. In 2004, she won an AWP first prize for fiction and receivedher MFA from the University of San Francisco. She lives in Albany,where she works as a grant writer fornon-profit organizations.

Aurora Brackett is working on her MFA in Creative Writing at SFSU. Shelives in Oakland. "Cold War" won the 2004 Wilner Award.

Laura Moore's poetry, fiction, essays and photography have appeared inCoracle, Spectrum, Midnight Zoo, Danse Macabre, Limestone, 14850Magazine, The Ithaca Times, Kalliope and 14 Hills. Though she lives,works, and schools in San Francisco you can most often find her at theWinchester Mystery House. She has a season pass.

New England native Susanna Kittredge is currently pursuing her MFA inCreative Writing at San Francisco State University. She enjoyscooking, crochet, and watching the ocean from a distance. Her poemshave appeared or are forthcoming in the journals Diner, Sahara,Transfer, and Shampoo, and in the upcoming Faux Press anthology, _BayArea Poetics_.

Margaret Ronda received an MFA in poetry from Indiana University. Herpoems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Faultline, Seattle Review,Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She is currently pursuing a PhDin English at UC Berkeley.

The Hansel & Gretel Forest Series

With the last posting of the Hansel & Gretel series I feel relief. I'm glad I've finally committed this idea to paper. This is my first draft pass of the series and I still have plenty of work to do on it: cleaning it up, tightening it, and making sure the narrative line doesn't get lost in all of the description.

I think I've hit upon something that I think will make an intersting chapbook or book idea - placing fairy tales in the bay area with modern concerns. Next series: Little Red Riding Hood meet Mission Dolores. I think I'll have her check out various churches and religions rather than going to see her grandmother.

I'm in spring mode, lots of finishing of projects going on and more new ideas than I can possibly handle.

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 10-The End

10
the whole thing is sucked down
turned inward and under
a flip flop around
the ground is green kissed. dewy. grackle free
an absence of past
a return to the car, an exit out, a long drive home

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 9

9
The tap of his finger
against the squawking of the birds
produces a beat
rat a tat
rat a tat tat tat
pim-pom,
pim rat a pom tat tat
an S.O.S. with substance
Gretel only notices because the roof has flown off
something about refusing to
relinquish its chocolate core
the insides of the house are swirling
the triangle shaped room
comes out whole
air born, perched atop the bramble bush
amidst glass jars, red cloaks, a liquor cabinet

the beldame is last—
speared through vertically with a poker
landed in the fire pit
a click and the spit is turning
gas engulfed
licking her legs lovingly

Hansel is all punctured through
a punched out boy
Gretel knows it won’t last
the beldame will pour through
seal him up when she takes a last breath

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 8

8
The ground has shifted into puddles
with thorny middles, little O’s everywhere
broken with thin walkways
the grackles are bathing inbetween
jutting necks around thorns, little squawker
Gretel sits on thick heavy roots
and waits
for a crack, a breaking open, a something soon

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 7

7
meanwhile,
Hansel has pushed Gretel
she is on the outside-the edge
of his mind, this story, this tall tale
a Flit-in and out, a sometimes blink

the beldame has
slid inside, soaking up the
edges, thick heavy sponge.
she feasts/flirts—leaving
bone shells—she goes for marrow
a seeker of sorts, maybe

cocooned in a triangle shaped room
Hansel is strapped
he taps lightly with a finger against the
wall, holding out for—
anything besides a beldame
her eyes craving insides
the ends of his toes sucked clean
on the pristine floor, the deep inner core
pointy hollow room
spic and span clean

Mutability

This poem is a central component to my thesis and I'm thinking that I will rewrite the poem several times to indeed include the various aspects of seeing this image. Giving and taking a little more or a little less with each version. Then I will scatter it throughout the entire manuscript.

The Mutability of the Eye

i. Playbill

Sitting in the middle of the auditorium
my eyes fall at stage level
defying the architectures stacked appeal—
a perfect seat throughout the house


i. 1st Possibility

a shoe, table leg, corner of book, [see stage right]

not high heeled shoe, 3 legged table,
mahogany streaked wood-appears odd-
fourth leg fake, chopped prop—very faux

chunk of hair—my own—falters, flops
tickling my eyelash.
Momentary—brown out.


ii. 2nd Possibility [see stage left]

on a table stands a vase
oblong in shape a bluish
tint glows from within, it radiates
along its pear shaped middle,

lighting box has caught a corner
twinkle
blue light shards everywhere



iii. 3rd Possibility [see stage center]

stage, then curtain
stage light sweeping horizontally
shoes, then legs
swollen calf muscles
pleated hem of 1950’s skirt
standing next to bobby socked
girl of eight years
who should be
made up to appear poignant—they are
pointed replicas of self,
painted on face, contrary expression of—


iv. 4th Possibility [see stage]

Bobby socks legs are dancing
in the blue lights

Pleated skirt is perched
atop a settee flaking red paint

The table is dearly missing its fourth leg and
mahogany isn’t any sort of wood at all, at least not here.
Here it is streaked paint.


v. Possibility Over-
Curtain Cued

It’s all red velvet now—

embraced shoulders and a slight lift
it all seeps underneath
reflecting back up, shiny wooden floors absorb
dark movements

a swish back, low bows, clasped hands
red velvet swinging into place

again and again