Maggie Ellis - Collage - Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond

Improper

Here is the Improper, “you stop her,” party hopper
A hoper for poppies, “stop me”s, but she’s on her feet now, can’t
Catch or catch-all,
“Just let her fall,”
While the willows will, low or high, raise up
Their branches between the buckwheat fields. Now, down the street, straight,
Strutting, an instantaneous insider,
Initially intending only to injure, ignoring the insights inside, inept and
Benevolent,
Ignorant and wise and peppered with fears of irrational –
No, but this is a country lane, higgledy-piggledy piling around places and pieces of hay, You kids!
Just let it go, leave it be, let it alllllllll hang out, there’s so much to live, for you and me are together,
Again, with the stay off the lawn!

She’s faster, she’s racing, beginning to gain again, to leave you in the Dust –
Stop her, stopper, stop her, cradle the crippled craziness near the crutches
And cockles of your heart, hear her “Stop me”s, heed her holler of Help, help, Hell
With it, all sick, all sweet, all sour, She shouts shut up, and silently sink me slowly below
The edge, the brink, I mutter “Don’t want no damn shrink”, blink, blink.

And sweet-smelling secrets rise from the scrap-heap, king-worthy, dirty, apple-
Blossom clean, they sift through a screen of consciousness.
She is collecting, collaborating, correlating, corresponding quietly, quickly, quaking,
Quickening her pace, counting her pulse, Up and about and around, childish chivalry changing her
Revisions, decisions, visions, her fissions into fractions into wide, wide spaces
Surrounding the thunderstorm in her heart, calling
To your heart,
Bridges broken
Beaten
Silence spoken,
Eaten, defeated.

Author Biography

Maggie Ellis
Lancaster, PA

Student, flower-child-Quaker, and alive

The Poetry of Dena Rash Guzman and the Collage Art of Anthony Bondi

As Leda Lay

– on Beasts

Please click the image to view in larger size, and click once more to view in full resolution.

"As Leda Lay," on Beasts - Anthony Bondi, collage; Dena Rash Guzman, text

Artist Biography

Anthony Bondi’s full biography can be read here.

Author Biography

Dena Rash Guzman is a Las Vegas born writer, poet and visual artist. Contributor to several journals and anthologies, she and artist Viv G also recently co-wrote a play that was presented in Shanghai, China by the Shanghai Repertory Theater in 2011. She works as Managing Director North America for the Shanghai based independent English language press HAL Publishing, and appeared in their 2010 anthology, Party Like It’s 1984 – Short Stories From the People’s Republic of – available worldwide through Powell’s Books. She lives on a farm outside Portland, Oregon and is the editor and founder of Unshod Quills. Her second chapbook, “Love of Godzilla,” is pending release in July 2011 by the brand new Old Heavy Press.