Post by thepoetslizard on Oct 10, 2008 16:01:10 GMT 2
Jean Vengua was born in San Francisco, and lives in Santa Cruz, California. Her pojavascript:add("","")
Italicizeems have been published online and in print in many journals, including Sidereality, We (both print and audio), Proliferation, Moria, and Fugacity 05 (N. Zealand). Her work has been published in the anthologies Babaylan and Returning a Borrowed Tongue. She has recently co-edited with Mark Young The First Hay(na)ku Anthology (2005).
Poems from PRAU (Meritage Press):
THE PAPER HOUSE
Because back then, I truly did not care. I want to return to the fold. This is the text, these are the tears along the creases of time. If time is that room, and an interior of paper and ink, which some say is “not limited,” then I must have built it all myself, and furnished it with my loneliness. I became beautiful in a manner of speaking, and without adequate protection against intrusions, I framed and latched the windows and thought this is myself. So, if you don’t mind or even if you do mind, I’ll return to the hundred rooms mansion, and put on the ornate cuffs and collars left by my changeling masters and mistresses. I will lock the doors tightly.
I am all yours, O.
*
NIGHT DIARY
She removes her clothing before going to bed.
Allusions she drops along the way.
What can you find out by picking through the trash.
4 dimes rest on each other like fallen dominoes.
The headache diminishes with an illusion of surcease.
Chartreuse post-its and floppy disks.
Mind your manners.
Say nothing.
Say little.
It’s late.
Tiny adjustments all day long.
In the night the body, the meat diary, remembers certain conversations.
*
THE PROBLEMS (2)
I barely know what I’m writing; it’s true. Something comes out of “reality.” Some letters; something is missing, and we know it. The sound of that engine is indifferent to humans, like a dog nosing garbage. Aching for some taste of something. Fat and the heat it generates. Beuys understood this. Or the assemblage and movement of parts. What might be fashioned from it? Still the old bird keeps trilling. Mimicking the bird next door. Mimicking, in fact, the door. Something opening and closing on squeaky hinges. Nothing is new, or should be.
*
TURNCOAT
position the bird in a side pocket or put it to sleep in poetry. step right up to the shining path. a broken column is pinned to the collar bone, pillar to support her head. she paints a portrait, enlarges upon puddles hidden behind creative writing, drips tears onto a palette, rips open her camisa de dormir. there are two fine breasts cleaved up the middle, and crowning the brow a hairy sliver of moon. the bees are joined in marriage behind literature, european. i kiss your hand, madelaine. i eat your cookies. she unstraps her camisa de fuerza. el corazón beats between science and the mystery of moths and myths. there is cooking for my mother’s rosary, juvenile for our apocalypse. choose your color, advance one square, retreat six. cambiarse la camisa is to change categories. in fiction, one must cross two rivers, being careful to avoid the black holes, center stage. fall forever into universe, tell a story, make place.
*
Source:
www.meritagepress.com/babaylan/
Book info:
Prau
www.meritagepress.com/prau.htm
Prose/Poetry/Images from
The Nightjar Logbook
www.geocities.com/gier99/nightjar2.html
Interview on Exchange Values
willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/01/interview-with-jean-vengua.html
