Talking Earth celebrates Women's History
Month with a reading of prose and poetry from the VoiceCatcher
anthologies. Literally arising from a dream by Portland poet Diane
English, facilitated by her regular women's writing group members and
an interlocking all-volunteer network of writers and groups, the VoiceCatcher anthologies are entertaining, diverse, and impressive in the
talent and range of voices between their covers.
VoiceCatcher aims
to promote and nurture a women's writing community in Portland with
publishing, scholarships, workshops, and other events. I'm proud to have been invited to join the VoiceCatcher editorial collective this year! I'll be reading with Sara Guest, Diane English and a bevy of VoiceCatcher contributors,
hosted by Barbara LaMorticella. Won't you join us?
What: Talking Earth
When: Monday March 3, 10-11 PM
Where: KBOO, 90.7 FM Portland. Broadcast live on the web!
To the Poem I am Writing
Why won't you echo, storm, rage, sulk?
In my head you stomped and strutted
preened bold as burlesque in a Versace dress.
But this! This furtive shuffling off, this
mumbling from a lopsided mouth, this
turning away to stare at the wallpaper.
Liar, to make believe you were such a king
and now reveal yourself a ragged Dickensian also-ran.
Where are your brothers in kind, the words
you promised you'd bring with you,
the congregation, the babble of heightened text
and noble sentiment? You fraud!
You are only a little thing after all.
By Luciana Lopez from VoiceCatcher, ed by Emily Trinkaus
Quantum
"Nothing is less real than realism...Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things." –– Georgia O'Keefe
From all possibilities: this
coat keeping warm from throat
to moment. Strung like street
from yellow line to yellow line.
The red-hatted lady sloshes by.
Not quite cohesive enough for story,
the notes hover like photographs.
Each one shouldering the weight
of articulation. My car shudders
with not enough. My eye sockets
dark as a harbor relearning
the art of return after war
stripped the world of metal and fear.
I should have given you a reason
to stay. I didn't see how
the trees could divide. I could give
you green. I could feed you fiction.
The waitress asks me, "Just one?"
As if I were not enough. And yet
the room can barely contain me.
There is no justice. And no waitress
to serve its unanswerable demands.
By Sage Cohen, from VoiceCatcher 2, ed by Jennifer Lalime
