On Sunday, April 29, 2018, over 60 poets published in the Altadena Poetry Review 2018 edited by Pauline Dutton and Elline Lipkin, gathered at a special event at the Altadena Library. In the photo above there are four Moonrise Press poets: Beverly M. Collins (Mud in Magic), Dorothy Skiles (anthology Meditations on Divine Names), Marlene Hitt (Clocks and Water Drops, and anthologies Chopin with Cherries and Meditations on Divine Names) and Maja Trochimczyk, publisher and editor. Also present, not yet published by Moonrise Press, is Pamela Shea, Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga.
Marlene Hitt published Clocks and Water Drops in 2015. here's a poem from the book:
The Old Clock
As
old as time. As old as my time
is
the clock on the mantle at home;
mahogany
brown, sloped sides,
its
pendulum swinging with no thought of its own.
It
sits on a faded pea-green footlocker,
Grandpa’s,
from the war,
My
eyes look back at it now;
clock,
box, shadows,
see
time swing back and forth.
Grandma
lies in my brother’s room,
cancer
taking her away by small bits.
Back
and forth, time, predictable,
with
no choice for anyone,
tick,
tock, tick, tock,
one
way then the other. Stop, I plead.
Its
pendulum measures
whether
I can stand the sound or not.
Back
and forth, it subtracts the minutes
of
my Grandma’s life.
In
one dark corner stands Death,
not
even bothering to sit down,
a
creature glaring,
a
bandana slung loosely around his neck,
wears
a Stetson, a Cowboy Death in boots,
lasso
in hand to catch her.
He
will own her, not I anymore.
Back
and forth. It is the clock I remember,
pendulum
monotonous in the night.
(c) 2015 by Marlene Hitt
(c) 2015 by Marlene Hitt
Beverly M. Collins published Mud in Magic in 2015 as well. Here's the title poem from this wonderful collection:
Mud
in Magic
It is to spend time on a funky
junction,
overlook the “how” and become
“I don’t know.” It is to wear an
early-bird
coat with full feathers when the
entire
event is late. It is to find that
one has tricked
the trickster, turned the tables
on the
bait-and-switcher...and got a
free ticket.
It is to take life too serious.
Put the squeeze
on what is not right-for-you,
feel it sting
the palm of your hand like a
bumble bee
on the blind side of an
apple...but win the bushel.
Mud in magic can be welcome, as
“loud”
at the library, “quiet” at an
amusement park,
fun as a root canal one day before
the feast.
It can murk up the view of a
clear day then dry
quickly. It is the moment a way
with words does
not win one a way with other
things wanted.
It is to select a
fall-from-grace, show that taste
buds are dull or absent from the
mouth altogether.
It is to be drunk on foolishness,
shame one’s way
up the side of the nearest
mountain, then watch
the seeds evolve into practical
moves.
Proof in the face, some stumble
and win the race
one foot behind the other; however
triumphant
or tragic. The low-down on
high-life appears
that dry desert has hidden
moisture
and there are obvious bits of mud
in magic.
Maja Trochimczyk read her poem "On Squaring a Circle" that first appeared in Into Light: Poems and Incantations (2016).
On
Squaring the Circle
It
is a simple square that contains the circle —
four
ideas, four words —
— Sorry — Forgive — Thank — Love —
No
need for explanations,
long
winding roads of words
leading
into the arid desert
of
heartless intellect, auras
of
geometric shapes floating above
your
head — a scattered halo
of
squares, sharp-edged cubes
prickly
triangles, and hexahedrons
No,
not that. Instead let us find
the
cornerstone. Simplicity.
Sorry —
to erase the past
Forgive—
to open a path into the future
Thank—
to suffuse the way, each moment
with
the velvet softness of gratitude
Love —
to find a pearl unlike any other,
a
jewel of lustrous shine —
incomparable,
dazzling,
smooth, pulsating sphere
A
dot on the horizon grows
as
you, step by step, come closer
until
you enter into the shining
palace
without rooms
where
inside is outside,
the
circumference is in the point,
the
point in the circumference—
where
movement is stillness
and
stillness dances within —
traveling
to a myriad planets,
suns,
galaxies, with unheard-of
velocity,
everywhere at once
Love everyone — Respect everything
* *
*
So
that’s how you square a circle
(c) 2016 by Maja Trochimczyk
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