by Portia Choi | Aug 10, 2015 | Featured Poet, Interviews
In this text interview we discussed with Don Thompson his favorite moments as a writer and his advice to other writers. Then we discuss his Historical Narrative poem Local Color. Portia Choi: Don, what were your most interesting moments as a poet? Don...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
When I was ten my art teacher said the pink and blue ribbons I loved were not beautiful, then showed us Mexican olla and said, “Now that’s beautiful!” and posters were beautiful. and vermillion with spring green. For years I bought ugly art and wore ugly prints that...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
(the woman asked the famed psychiatrist) The cat at night in Malibu Makes a soft sound As he moves along the ground, Echoes the rumble, the growl and pound Of the Cat to Cathay— When the Moon ruffles his fur In a silver streak down the dark, She is stirring, subduing,...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
Make me a poem A great white poem words full of rushing staccato measures patterns for flying and movement of grasses— or round, like the path of the tuning-fork’s sound, round and liquid and gold. Give me the voices of wandering people, let them incense me with...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
Do not remove the heart. Extract the brain through open nostrils, but leave the paradise within my heart of hearts. It is a point so hot it would burn your fingers. This pulse-point is the drum of Shiva calling Shakti –and when she dances my heart rises to the...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
Your blue-veined hands swept all things into light; a box of apricots, a peeled grape, a sick dog that had to be chloroformed, a child to be led down hallways of ideas up staircases of words –anything to be fixed, mended, made out of nothing. How could you whirl...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
Goodness flowed from her fingers; blossomed in dresses made out of nothing, in fresh juice over ice (hand-chipped for my fevers), in home-made noodles and chicken broth with delicate chicken feet. The same patient fingers traced words as she read, and placed dominoes...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
remember that lilacs enfolded the night in a soft June kiss, a never-never land of love in a candy store. They floated like clouds of stingless bees in mesmeric rivers of honey around your tender face. There was a sound like water falling or clusters of little bells...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
The art student called his water-color sketch “Girl with Leaves,” sold it for lunch money. Long curls relax over her shoulder. Her wide white hat’s not drawn, but framed by sunlight; the shadows all are pools of sun and leaves; you know she’s firmly seated, but...
by Portia Choi | Aug 8, 2015 | Poems
In the center where nothing pulls her apart she lets go of chicken-fat indecisions; like Baudelaire dreaming the smokestacks of Paris she no longer flinches at her fate. Through dreams astound with their cryptic knowledge of details from her daytime world they keep...
