Post by shayepoet on Jun 26, 2008 3:55:58 GMT 2
A Cure for Suicide
Larissa Shmailo
A Cure For Suicide by Larissa Shmailo, Èervená Barva Press, 2008.
A chapbook of poetry and occasional translations.
Sample poem:
tinyurl.com/5desbl
Abortion Hallucination
A vision of a snake with glowing red eyes
formed by the light of garbage trucks and screeching new cars
driven by men who had once bought me dinner
then hated me when I didn't want to fuck them twice.
Carlight passing late at night on a street of an ugly
precinct lying deceiving the unwary who think it leads home
It is late so dark it is almost light that time of night when
the light hits the metal and the glass of summer windows left ajar
make me want something someone I don’t know who
The metal gate to the yard refracts this message via Queens boys who
drive too fast too late at night refracts this message to the window where
I watch from the couch
In the corner of the basement where my father used to lie I
Watch, interested, as the snake
grows larger and more menacing I am
taken slightly aback but remember him remember that I like
handling snakes and smile
and as always he softens grows smaller
becomes a hippopotamus I have won again I have stared him down
made him warm
and the Nile gives up its life to me
animals carnivorous and calm come home to me
two by two
I watch for the longest time
until the largest fills the window with his face
black as light
Agnus Dei
for this man’s baby for this man’s baby for this man’s baby
came the flood.
Review for A Cure for Suicide:
"In "A Cure for Suicide” by Larissa Shmailo, Shmailo writes (as the founder of Fulcrum Magazine Philip Nikolayev points out in his introduction) as if she is …” constitutionally predestined to sing out her lines…her eyes filled with life and love, pain and death, freedom and coercion, the real of the mind and the imagined of the heart.” In the poem “Dancing with the Devil,” the poet sings about the need to throw caution to the wind and trip the light fantastic with the Devil:
“They say if you flirt with death,
You’re going to get a date;
But I don’t mind—the music’s fine,
And I love dancing with someone who can really lead.”
Shmailo put herself in the deceptive calmness of the eye of a hurricane, asks us to tell her what makes us tic, and takes us on the Harlem River Line, like the “Duke” took us on the “A” train. In a sea of mimics this poet is an original voice."
-- Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ May 2008
About the author:
Larissa Shmailo’s new chapbook is A Cure for Suicide (Cervena Barva Press 2008), and new poetry CD is Exorcism (SongCrew 2008). Larissa has been published in Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Drunken Boat, MiPoesias, and many other publications. Larissa translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. She also contributed translations to the anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry published by Dalkey Archive Press. Larissa Shmailo is a director of TWiN Poetry, an informal international collective of recording poets and their listeners, and curator of Sliding Scale Poetry, which organizes benefits for human services and literacy organizations. She is also a public coordinator for the annual Fulcrum and a contributing editor for BigCityLit.com. Her first poetry CD, The No-Net World (SongCrew 2006) is frequently heard on radio and Internet broadcasts across the U.S. and the U.K. Larissa is listed in the Poetry Kit Who’s Who in poetry. Visit Larissa at:
cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo2
www.myspace.com/larissashmailoexorcism
larissashmailo.blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/thenonetworld
Cervena Barva Press May 19, 2008
Paper, 52 pages, $7.00
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www.thelostbookshelf.com