Some days fall open on an unexpected word,
piercing your too pedestrian obsessions,
pushing you into the doorway of mystery.
You’ve heard all about it: the light, the way!
The truth waiting like a mother for her child ~
and here you are momentarily free, swimming
in the amniotic fluid of your own nascent soul.
(c) 2016, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Malajusted
I had put on
my reddest dress
to spread brightness
on my arrival
but these women were rabid
had crawled to the drug locker
with their pee bags
trailing behind
and their white gowns
open at the back
for ease of examination
I tried to stop them
screamed for the nurse
but they were already
devouring
the coloured pills
and celebrating
their ephemeral victory
over doomed
maladjustment
untitled
this is an ugly poem
this is a wicked poem
this is a poem
about corpses lined up
in antiseptic bags
in the basement
this is a poem
about weary customers
drawing numbers
for refundable purgatories
on the ground-floor
this is a poem
about a young girl
on the third floor
pulling tight
at the pink of her hoodie
to conceal
the baldness of her head
this is a poem
about an old titan
on the ninth floor
reading instructions
how to grow titan vertebrae
from his Phoenix wings
this is a poem
about the twelfth floor
where hurrying visitors
carry intricate flower bouquets
for newborn cherubs
this is a poem
about hell and heaven
this is a love poem
Tintagel refunctioned
King Arthur’s men
having reached a certain age
are sitting
in the renovated Tintagel
two or three at a table
not round but square
flipping
through glossy magazines
peeping
at anorexic models
unaffordable sports cars
fitted zen gardens
considering
past steps
in hard to reshape dust
decisions not taken
missed opportunities
acts
that could have been done better
trying
to tame becquerels
to conceal
intimations of diapers
having fought
so many battles
against knightly opponents
looking straight
into their eyes –
but now
the sniper
hits from the inside
with no warning
except for occasional
hardly detectable
tracks of occult blood
– Aprilia Zank
These three poems were Aprilia’s response to last Wednesday’s writing prompt: Mighty (that’s you and me) …
DR. APRILIA ZANK is a lecturer for Creative Writing and Translation in the Department of Languages and Communication at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, where she received her PhD degree in Literature and Psycholinguistics for her thesis THE WORD IN THE WORD Literary Text Reception and Linguistic Relativity. She is also a poet, a translator and the editor of two anthologies: the English–German anthology poetry tREnD Eine englisch-deutsche Anthologie zeitgenössischer Lyrik, LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2010, and the anthology POETS IN PERSON at the Glassblower (Indigo Dream Publishing, April, 2014). She writes verse in English and German, and was awarded a distinction at the “Vera Piller” Poetry Contest in Zurich. Her poetry collection, TERMINUS ARCADIA, was 2nd Place Winner at the Twowolvz Press Poetry Chapbook Contest 2013. Aprilia Zank is also a passionate photographer: many of her images are prize-winners and several have been selected for poetry book covers.
Aprilia is a friend of and frequent guest contributor to The BeZine. You can find more poetry by Aprilia in the last two editions.
COMING TO THIS SITE SOON: A review of The Word in the Word Literary Text Reception and Linguistic Relativity (don’t let the title throw you) along with an interview of Aprilia.
©2016, poems and photograph (published here with permission), Aprilia Zank, All rights reserved
They come like thistle and thorn,
and write their rage upon my body.
They come like locusts and
feed on the fields of my soul.
Like the angry storm, they drown me.
Like the desert sands, they suffocate me.
They see me, a little person
of little consequence …
a girl
Just a trinket, a toy, a receptacle,
something to sell, buy, trade or
marry-off prematurely,
without my say.
But hear me, I am the answer.
I am the calm after the storm.
I am the antidote to
stone hearts and desiccated souls.
I am the future and the past.
I am the hope, the dream, the reality.
I am real.
I am human.
I am the answer.
“Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality without women. You can’t have anything without women” Nawal El Saadawi (b. 1931), Egyption feminist writer and physician
RESOURCES:
Lifting the Veil: Artists in Support of the Tahirih Justice Center:
The Tahirih Justice Center stands alone as the only national, multi-city organization providing a broad range of direct legal services, policy advocacy, and training and education to protect immigrant women and girls fleeing violence. Come out and support some of New York’s most powerful artists as they perform to raise money for a worth cause. $10 suggested donation all going to the center. Thanks to Terri Muuss for sharing this with us. Lifting the Veil Facebook Page is HERE.
August 7 at 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. EDT at BrickHouse Bewery & Restaurant 67 W. Main Street, Patchogue, New York 11772.
©2010,poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
I always feel a slight dismay if I’m called a “Zen” poet. I am not. I am a human poet, that’s all.” Poet Jane Hirshfield on the Mystery of Existence, Spirituality & Health Magazine, Mar./Apr. 2013
When I think of Jane Hirshfield, I think first of her kindness to my friend, Bay Area poet, Ann Emerson (poet #9 in this series), who died a few years back and who received compassionate and generous guidance from Jane at a conference some years ago. It meant a lot to Ann and was a high-point in her six-year journey through cancer with poetry. Once having read Jane Hirshfield’s work, you can’t conceive of her as being anything but kind. The empathy expressed in her poetry is vast.
I admit to being one of those who also thinks of her as a Buddhist poet. Her poetry is Zen-like in its attentiveness, its inward-looking meditative quality, a quality of the ineffable given expression. Jane Hirshfield is a Zen practitioner, lived for several years at Tassajara and is ordained in Soto Zen.
Immersion in the life of the world, a willingness to be inhabited by and to speak for others, including those beyond the realm of the human, these are the practices not just of the bodhisattva but of the writer.” Jane Hirshfield in Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
Another New York girl who eventually migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, Jane Hirshfield was famously graduated from Princeton University’s first class to include women. She is the author of eight collections including The Lives of the Heart (Harper Collins, 1997), which won the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems.
TREE
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books —
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
– ©Jane Hirshfield (from Given Sugar, Given Salt, Poems)
Originality requires the aptitude for exile.” The Question of Originality in Nine Gates
Her two collections of essays (must reads, no pedantry here) are Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (Harper Perennial, 1998) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Knopf, 2015). She also translated a collection of poems by Japanese women with Mariko Aratani: The ink dark moon : love poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, women of the ancient Court of Japan (Vintage Classics). Her study The Heart of Haiku is available in Kindle Edition.
Reading Jane Hishfield’s work is both a joy and education for your writerly self and a balm for your spirit. If by some incalculable misfortune you haven’t met her yet, seize this day.
© 2016, words, Jamie Dedes; photograph by A. Phillips and generously released into the public domain
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