Sunday, March 12, 2017

Julie Kim Shavin - Three poems and one image



Julie Shavin adopted the Rocky Mountains as home in 1993 (and they are still looking for their real mom). She is a classically-trained pianist who began writing music at age 10. Her degrees are in Philosophy and English. Many of her artworks are enhancements of her photographs, drawings and paintings. She has four books of poetry and is working on the next, tentatively entitled "Closet Optimist's Creed." The Pikes Peak Arts Council has conferred upon her its annual Performance Poet and Page Poet awards two years consecutively. In 2016 she won the Mark Fischer prize, out of Telluride, Colorado, and she publishes often in literary magazines. She currently serves as president of Poetry West in Colorado Springs and describes herself as a nihilist/absurdist/synesthete of the best and worst and whatsitmatteranyway sorts. She is way weirder than her stuff and hopes for soonish congruence.



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1. Euphemism for a Poet: Experiment in O Flat

                                    a tutorial

easy  he says _________ ditch excess   for instance
_______________grotto     I add green ____________
_______like a body rubato_______ ponytail ________es
gold upon a shoulder _________________
____his smoke__________his smoke like
my grandmother s curls_________died when
_________________in her curls it seemed
___________d minor I sighed

                           white space  he says

_________his cheek a long dimple, and _________
moon in dark adders of tree____________let the reader
the reader will bring  insists because__________________
_____________and too    the blood of memory amidst
a garrulous geology of desire ___________those halcyon days
_________________as it goes since ______________
oh my ___     your mussssiccccc   he exclaimed

                                   white

waning in limbs of the near tree _______________silk texture of despair
__________elephants I say    babies_____________yes
___torture __________ dim dungeon of the filthy east where
even though they ______________________my father's wrong side of tracks
_____eyes blue ______ A-major but paler possibly due to ____________
sad admixture of joy__________good, he says, perhaps______________
and I could love____? No, don't go there__________the possibility
o fpoetry if only _________________________under this
kind sky of no snow         never forgetting the heart luffs its blood
which_____________ and then ___________s to the last algid shore

we assumed the _______ of receding cacti, grope forward to new conclusions
like_________ing in a sagacity of surrender perhaps due to __________ing
backwards in car reclining under a horizontal moon _____________
I wish that ____ had _____________ ed the calligraphy of blue lies
and__________________ the dog s soft snore _________
rabbitnose twitching the _________ moonlight
long the door's P.S. was before we noted ___________
and the crisp technique of death ___________impostor in my own life
even as ________ let the sussurous words_______________even as you ___________

cartwheels to car as if _________remember what I
______________center yourself no need to justify
                            

                                             lose punctuation

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2. Occlusion


bulimic
alpine nights
gardens die
two-step/one
(Sisyphean)
parched
(hairshirt dirt)
nervosa vines
weedwrestle
pull pull,
(neverlasting)
water water
(neverlasting)
persist in
blue occlusion
(cue-less)
bad nomads
(doing undoing)
jade aprons
(stains & flakes)
seeds spitting
(wayfaring)
we pray
in whispers
(and in wakes)


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Tablet Smoker Ink Outlines 2


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3. A Half-Dozen or so Thoughts on Solipsism, Self (and so forth) in re This Thing Called Life

1.  The Dead Hemispheres
Catches in the throat / sobbing, railing / mother and daughter / over the son, brother /you're the only one, they say / yet I cannot feel, am a pebble, a mountain  

2.  Equanimity
It has escaped me until now / or me is no longer / but things come back to haunt / like a me

3.  Caprice
Regarding those who love you / some things would seem obvious / but this is you talking

4.  Philanthropy
Each creature suffers alone / better to save a hundred / than one? / the demise of one is less? / each survivor suffers alone / and etc.

5.  Age
I was your age once / I know, the child says / but you see he doesn't believe / any more than you believe it is you / old hag / admonishing

6.  Bastard
Why I lay on the picnic table / those summer mornings of spangled sun / looking at sky / but never at night / at stars / now so cold / if one could only regret in advance / if logic could lose its body

7.  Squared Back if Not Away
Summer breeze / in a glorious green tree / what you / you call singing, dancing / I sense a cold beyond cold / I say even the w-w-wind sh-shivers-s-s