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Archive for September, 2013

Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?
—Edward Lorenz, title of a paper presented at the 139th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (29 Dec 1979), in Essence of Chaos (1995)

Let’s say the rainbow
lands in a field. The woman
watching it knows her treasure
is elsewhere. Still, she takes it
as a sign. Sure, there are other signs.
The beetle in the screen door. Two
white feathers. A cloud in the shape
of a shoe. Everything means
what she wants it to. She remembers
the words of Edward Lorenz: how the present
determines the future, but
the approximate present does not
approximately determine the future.
In the field, there are no butterflies
present, at least none that she can see.
Sensitivity to initial conditions,
she whispers under her breath,
wondering if just that tiny puff
of memory is enough to create
the next storm. There are rainbows
everywhere, she says to herself.
Where will the next one land?

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In Susan’s Backyard

Spryly
highly
yesly
mumly
Aiden
climbs the
laden
plum tree
smiley
wily
sparkling
eye-ly
Aiden
tosses
ripe plums
highly
through
the air
my hands
are there
sweet boy
who lives
so me
oh my-ly.

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if
not here
nowhere

*

if
here
everywhere

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Though there is not a thing I can do
to calm the heart-stilling fat slam of thunder,
my daughter clings to me and whimpers.
Immense tides of rumble shudder the sky.
Another. Another. We huddle. I whisper into
her ear, “I am here.” It is the truest thing
I know to say. In a great storm, we do
what we can. Stay close to each other.
Get quiet. Quieter. Gasp as if gasping might turn
fear to awe. Keep our eyes very, very open.

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Cosi e’, se vi pare
(That’s the way it is, if it seems that way to you)
—Italian saying

Under my fingers,
the chords are familiar,
allegretto, in 2/4 time.
I lean into the ritardandos,
swelling the passing tensions,
failing to remember to exhale.
The lyrics, perhaps because
they are in German,
are beautiful. I can forget
that they speak of sleepless
nights and helplessness,
and dreams that languish
unfulfilled. My voice drifts
into the rafters. What
do I know of dreams?
There is so much I do not know.
Even this life I call my own.
What do I know of it?
Who taught them to sing,
the birds in autumn?
Who taught them to dance,
the leaves? Tonight, I do not see them,
the shadows my voice moves through
as I follow the staffs in front of me.
Nor do I think of translation. Nor
do I think of who is listening,
nor of who is not. For now,
there is Schumann and Heine,
there is this voice that is borrowing me,
there is this song that says
it must be sung.

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For the Hungry

it bends
the dark
and sweetens
loss
it holds
the daughter
as
she coughs
it rides
on buses
slips
on tongues
it begs
to be
unlearned
undone
and when
the swagger
turns
to swoon
and when
the clock
has ticked
too soon
and when
the rain
keeps raining
long
it finds
the spaces
in the song
where all
the words
you thought
you knew
are different
now
it leaks
somehow
this love
this mmm
this empty
spoon

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Nine Reframings

a chest
full of flowers—
open me

*

my thumb hurts, I say,
my dad’s favorite fix—drop
a rock on your foot

*

only a sip
and already I’m drunk—
desert after rain

*

my knee hurts, I say
and the world
breaks my heart

*

puddle, puddle,
puddle, puddle, puddle,
tear

*

why so serious
says the leaf
already gold

*

such a blessing
to be thirsty in a season
of rain

*

my heart hurts, I say,
and the old poet says
live by breaking

*

using a thread
to climb to heaven, the angels
toss me a rope

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Sideshow Emporium and Gallery presents
Word Sharks Resurface
on Thursday, October 3rd at 7 pm,
ending only after the tide recedes.

Regional writers Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Art Goodtimes, and David Feela
will lead the reading frenzy with some choice selections from their own writing.

The public is encouraged to bring their own words or favorite pieces by published writers
to share at the end of the evening.

Please join us for this celebration of Word Sharks–
powerful words read by a toothsome trio in an intruiging event space.

Sideshow is located in Dolores at 411 Central, Dolores.
Help us promote this event by responding on Facebook and by forwarding this email…
Young people aged 13 plus are welcome. This is a free event (that welcomes donations).
Books by our featured authors will be available for sale.
Refreshments will be available, or BYO.

Read on and click the links for more details on our featured authors…

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate, authoring and editing thirteen books, including her most recent publication, The Less I Hold. Editor Uche Ogbuji describes Rosemerry as “always looking for the threads from the intimate to the transcendent…poems [that] are full of the restless energy needed to caress a child or a spouse in the one moment, and in the next to expand into the spheres of the night sky.” She has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and won the Colorado Independent Press Association poetry award. Rosemerry’s writing has appeared on back alley fences, in her children’s lunchboxes, and on rocks she leaves around town. She also leads writing workshops for hospice, recovery programs, women’s groups, teachers and people who think they hate poetry.

Art Goodtimes is a performance poet & Western Slope Poet Laureate, and newspaper columnist, among many other things. He is legendary along the Southern Rockies as poet, performer, ritualist, Rainbow Tribe member, and Green Party activist. In her introduction, “deep ecologist” Dolores LaChapelle describes him as part of the bardic tradition “which shows us how nature and human consciousness are but different aspects of one consciousness. Bards put mind and body together within the whole of nature.” In his poetry collection, As if the World Really Mattered, we find poems that joyfully expound on
the natural world and our relationship to it.

David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, and book collector. His work has appeared in the Utne Reader, High Country News, Mountain Gazette, The Four Corners Free Press, the Denver Post, the Durango Telegraph and the former Inside/Outside Southwest, among other regional and national publications. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas, appeared in 2009. His collection of essays, How Delicate These Arches, was selected as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the category of Creative Nonfiction.

We look forward to seeing you at Word Sharks Resurface early next month on Thursday Oct 3 !

Heather Narwid
Sideshow Emporium&Gallery
411 Central, Dolores
970-739-4646
Open: THUR thru MON 11a-6p (SUN 12p-5p)
Closed/ by appt only on TUE & WED

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Eight Failings

But remember,
it is by failures that lovers
 stay aware of how they are loved.
Failure is the key
 to the kingdom within. Your prayer should be, “Break the legs 
of what I want to happen. Humiliate 
my desire. Eat me like candy.
It’s spring and finally 
I have no will.”
—Rumi, Mathnawi, III, 4391 – 4472)

both legs broken—
still this desire to crawl
on my hands

*

wanting to send
a dozen long-stemmed
dreams

*

thrown into the ring
wrestling
myself

*

walking five paths
never taking
a single step

*

pulling back
the veils of the heart—
your footprint

*

not looking
for an answer—
so she said

*

beside the sunflowers
naked except
this strand of what ifs

*

sweet failure
loving
you

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Four Runnings

in the field
everywhere
a starting line

*

one step,
one more step,
one, one, one

*

watching the bird
watch me watching
the bird

*

bouquet of rain
every breath
a baptism

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