Unshod Quills

Samples of the work of Spanish poet and artist
Yolanda Mora

Yolanda Mora on Lipstick

Notes on Sonnets

I can roleplay a sonnet with syllables
That fit in boxes, mujer acurrucada en una caja,
Highjacking me, kidnapping me –
Too many mirrors make beautiful green egg-face,
And green is for hope,
The size is important, the syllables, and numbers, numbers.
I hide myself inside onion peels blankets,
May Day is your day.
I studied Spanish sonnets with their own rules, I think, I think.
I remember
Shakespeare, translated, so no rhymes or sounds or.
Everything.
Missed.
So
I try to make a sonnet out of this school storage:
First, I’ll read Shakespeare and count, count
the boxes, the pace, rhymes and all.
Fit into it, fit, fit, like Tori Amos did
when best seller was punk rock´n´roll.
So
my lover came by with blood roses
Or
the blood rose was mine, I am mean,
I am mean.
A hypocrite, unbalanced young lady
of a Shakespearean age of gold.
I fit in my bed, rough orange peel my sheets
and blankets: I sleep all day and
in the night you are all bright sun.
Art is a mirror, a Francesca Woodman photograph
so
you see your own faces, your sonnets; out of this,
a transformation like a fairy tale
and delightful to watch others’ horror.

YM

The Box

-on sonnets

I can role play a sonnet under the sheets,
Green egg-faced woman to be in boxes –
May Day is your day, like orange peels.
I hide inside these blankets, woman, missed,
Can’t deny the syllables, hopeless.
So, a Francesca Woodman photograph,
Art is a mirror and I am mean,
I scared people with my pace, my face
Best-seller rock´n´roll, as Tori did;
you can´t fit into this box, like a lover.
Trespassing , spazzing, god I am fat,
Fancioulla, green mirror for hope, my base,
If you all see your image, my Art’s hoses –
I fail all the time, like a falling star.

Yolanda Mora on Lipstick

Author Biography

Japanese poet Naoko Fujimoto on lipstick and when we two parted. 

TOKYO SUMMER, 1993
for y.h.

– on When We Two Parted

There is a bathtub in the parking lot.

I’m falling in love with an abstract
painting, you tell me. Your body

hisses in an August rain. We collect
dead cicadas in the bathtub

and sketch them for hours.     This is a Tokyo
summer, 1993. A dandelion’s white seed softly

lands on the balcony. The cat
slashes open the window screen.

There is your head hanging by a curtain rod.

I don’t know how to live,
your mouth opens wide.

Dark and beaded rain
falls into the bathtub. I want to chop

off the cat’s legs and hollow
out its eyes. I’m craving

your warm body. Cicadas sing their silver song.

NF

MOTHER’S LIPS
after the tsunami in Japan

-on lipstick

You have no father,
my mother said & wiped
my neck with a long
towel; I smelled the lavender
soap: bubbles on her
cheeks: the outline of her
lipstick: dark
purple around her lips;
they were unlike mine; I wanted
hers; I hated the garden
scent; no
lavenders please, I said;
just muddy
bodies
on blue vinyl sheets
at the flower
shop; sand & pebbles filled
my mother’s mouth; I bit
my lip: tasted blood.

NF

Author Biography

Naoko Fujimoto was born in Nagoya, Japan. A recent poem of hers is forthcoming in Hotel Amerika. She is currently working on poems about the Tohoku Earthquake, tsunami, and  the ensuing nuclear crisis. Her spirit is always with the people in Japan.

Six Poems by David  Curtis

Ambiguity of numbered events

– On When We Two Parted

It was never two
it was three and/or more
three rotate two, shift
three rotate, two

before that the left over numbers
the dead carried
propped up on shelves
and in card board shoe box

the big D

then yes, then no
repeats five times
now break
30 days of sulking
silence
maybe one more unopened letter

DSC

adapted from Peter S Lucking

–  On Lipstick

Background
prevalent among the Sumerians, Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks.
Later, Elizabeth I with red mercuric sulfide.
For years, rouge
only promiscuous women
true societal acceptance
By 1915 push up tubes were available, and the first claims of “indelibility” were made.

Raw Materials
wax, oil, alcohol, and pigment.
beeswax, candelilla wax, or the more expensive camauba. Wax enables the mixture to be formed into the easily recognized shape of the cosmetic. Fragrance and pigment are also added, as are preservatives and antioxidants, which prevent lipstick from becoming rancid.

DSC

none of this looks

– on Transportation

clean shiny version
inhabits invisible places
wears filthy socks
walks anonymous

dead and dying
take me
to racist old folks Denny’s

for a Grand Slam bees wax
Florida all the sudden

DSC

that place seems better than this place

– on Mirror

same people arguing
justifying their habits

my life stopped at such and such date
whatever this is it isn’t life
eventually I hope to have a life

maybe I will take yours

DSC

To indifference then

– (a toast to Sonnets)

to fear of losing
to mock interest
to violating policy

to religious indoctrination
and Nation in general

to the giving up one vice for two others

to missing the boat(s)
to throwing lines

DSC

third name (getting closer in shape)

– on Sonnet

Decisions at early ages
Volunteering ‘else to remain
Anonymous  brown masses of
Angels. I won’t say thank you or
Lift mock trials nor will I pretend
To know if “no” in 2007
Matters when compared to the quest-
ions of 2011
I’ll occupy my time until
The appointed hours whether they
Come or not I’ll follow you ’round
(Place holder line)
( )
( )

DSC

Author Biography

David Scott Curtis, born 21 August 1964, is from Las Vegas, Nevada. He practices architectural design while being a father. Sometimes he writes. David is a member of the Unshod Quills Writers Collective.

Poet Kevin Weidemann on Lipstick

Greeting My Aunt on the Farm as a Kid

The sow squeezes out wriggling masses of blood and goo—
little piglets struggling to draw their first breaths.
With huffs and puffs and heaves,
the mama pushes out another one.

In painted-on eyebrows and lips,
wearing knee-high muddy rubber boots with shorts,
my Aunt Nade pulls the next new piglet out
of the hog’s oozing orifice.

This baby pig is stuck, she says,
like the lipstick still on my face,
from the duty-bound greeting
I was forced to make that morning.

KW

Author Biography

In addition to family, the daily running-a-business thing, and writing far too infrequently, Kevin makes time for his art project, TerraSight, which hosts a multitude of artists exploring globally conscious themes while embracing the struggle and beauty of the human condition through writing, painting, photography, music and more.  Kevin lives in Saint Louis on the Mid Coast.

Gregory Crosby, formerly of Las Vegas and presently of New York, on beasts, lipstick and transportation.

B.

– on beasts

Beauty still kills me; what can I say?
You die from a fall only the once.
They say I have no concept of time,
but I can count the lengths I’ve gone to:
five fingers, twenty-thousand fathoms.
I’m the one God forgot to invent,
so you had to do the dirty work.
I am heavier than any chain,
& I’m still slouching, but not toward
anyplace except the hollow heart
of grief, the original House of Pain.
They say she was sorry, that she loved
me, in her way. You could hear it in her
scream, I guess. Love can make a Beast of a man.
Of a beast, love can only make sense:
a mind, clear, above a wounded yowl.

GC

Lipstick Traces

-on lipstick

Whenever I think of lipstick, I think
of Marlene Dietrich, shot in the back,
at the end of Destry Rides Again,
& falling forward into Jimmy’s Stewart’s
embrace, she wipes the red from her mouth
with the back of her hand & dies into
one, pure, unpainted kiss. I always wish
he would grab her wrist, & fasten his
mouth against her scarlet (even in black
& white, Marlene’s lips burn redder
than all the memories of roses)
& smear her all over his decency,
his cheeks, flushed with it, kissing her as if
her blood soaked his sleeves, the bullet hole
black beneath her heart; not just the powder,
the echo, of a blank from a prop pistol,
somewhere in Hollywood, 1939.

GC

The Greatest Journey Begins With the Smallest Misstep

– on transportation

The iceberg just couldn’t wait to meet us.
Oh the humanity, that quavering voice
as hydrogen blossomed bouquets of ash.
The guardrail, twisted, a toothless grin
in a flash. Cartoon plume of smoke, midair,
as the engine sang tra la, the bridge is out.
Wings afire, like a little prayer
to Icarus. Head over handlebars
for your love, we barely cleared the fountain.
Soon we’ll writhe as our atoms scatter:
yet another transporter malfunction.
Somewhere in time, someone still stands above
a dying horse, gun out. It’s true, you know:
getting there is half the fun. So start walking.

GC

Author Biography

Gregory Crosby’s work has previously appeared in Court Green, Epiphany, Copper Nickel, Paradigm, Rattle, Ophelia Street, Poem, Jacket, Pearl,  and The South Carolina Review, among others. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. Prior to that, he was an art critic in Las Vegas, Nevada (which still works as an icebreaker at parties).

A quartet of poems by  an emerging poet to watch: UQ’s first featured writer is Pennsylvania poet Wendy Ellis.

Pin-ups

– on transportation

it was the worst and weirdest kind of trip
and I do mean trip
tripping
we were tripping
and we were
just a little bit too young
and a little bit too leggy & eager

but we were trying so hard

so we were tripping
and we were in a suburban shopping mall
behind it was a terrible woods
filled with litter and struggling trees

they had this desperate look
helpless and scraggly

our pupils were huge & we were drinking in this
weird landscape

oh to be so young
that young
that huge and so thirsty for everything

I was trying not to hate the woods
but I hated the woods
they were trying too hard
and it was too vulnerable
it made me ache
like the apocalypse

like fire might clean up that damn mess
like I would have to run from the woods
which would be so scary and weird

instead, we went inside this awful little mall
and tried to make sense of
being inside and being so wild inside

my god, we ended up in a movie theater
but only for a few minutes
it was too big
and so loud the sound was pinning us to our seats
we had to run from the noise

we ran laughing, leggy and breathless
into a record store where I bought the first album
I looked at
because I couldn’t stop staring at it

I was trying to hear David Bowie’s
crazy voice through the wrapper
but I kept falling into his uneven eyes
his crazy, painted face

he was from somewhere so far from
this weird mall
the noise
the struggling trees
and the leggy, tripping girl

who had to borrow five dollars
to take David Bowie home with her.

WE

Like A Plum

-on Beasts

My House Mother asked,
‘Do you eat the…will you eat the…’
and she sat there with the word in her mouth.

‘What? What is it?  Is it an animal?’
‘I don’t know. It lives in the mud.’
‘Is it a plant?’
She laughed, the word still inside her like a small plum.

‘I will show you.  Come, it is under the house.
It is in a bucket under the house.’
We bent under the stilts the house stood on.
A white plastic bucket stood in the shade.

And in it, something moving, many things moving.
She reached in & said the word.
It was a dry word, like a cough.
But the thing was wet & slippery,
long & knobbed at one end.
‘Do you eat THIS?’ laughed my House Mother.

She swung it hard against the lip of the bucket,
smashing it so it no longer moved.
‘No.  No, I don’t eat …’ and I said the word.

WE

Here is the Poem

-on lipstick

Here is the poem that has been staggering around in me all week.
I left weird, useless things in my old bag.
Change, crumbs, threads & wrappers.
An earring. A pewter charm.
Three wheat pennies taped to a receipt.

A cheap piece of candy melted through a corner
leaving a greasy smear with a red and chocolate center.

Zippered into a pocket, two lipsticks. Tobacco sticks to old lipstick like
lipstick sticks to the cigarettes I’m chain smoking.

Lipstick leaves a greasy smear on my sleeve as I swear away
tears & snot–swearing & grimacing.

If I were Sarah Bernhardt, I’d have to lie down just about now.
The text would suggest a subtext of such ennui, such sorrow.
The organist would weep with the telling. Her lipstick smeared
on the back of her hand hastily wiping tears so she can follow the notes.
Pipe out the story, larger than life.

WE

She Said

-transportation

She said, “I’ll be late.”
She said, “I’m sorry, my car
is a piece of shit.”

WE

Author Biography

Wendy Giles Ellis
Lancaster County, PA
Reader, writer, backyard muse & eccentric knitter.

The poetry and photography of Fork Burke, an American in Switzerland.

"Masquerade", Fork Burke, on the theme of mirrors

Union Square

– on when we two parted

Lips travel – being more than here to there

Like Eos

…replace the K with C

her lips

Where is she – where is Easter

…and literature

such as influenced

evolving desire

organized with for instance

soundings – this geometry of sound

signs found in books

meaning collapses

The purpose of focus

on an abstract specific

message

not easlily

wrapped around

ressurection

a good cry

talk it to death

Is isolation = meaning =

leaving the wolf

question

not just how

“to be”

came to an

…end

your map to this place

your words

without your language

your silence

forever passive

silence is a word

her lips – two

parting

FB

Third Body Parts – cut up

– on transportation

I can see him leaving in a minute – luckily the past I remember – tense up in the dream – for sometime he

touched his forehead – come under forever raised – they could walk with their heads high – Originally

my land was red – the only thing left standing then – who is stretched out sky

I AM HERE

Anyone no one to resemble I am without secrets – I sacrifice marvelous yet tragic not signs of life

wealth a man

memory chile – what I saw is false sense of history – goes on in my head – the round mirror

I never thought of going – of a son or daughter – I am understood by him – I could have heard my voice

and a paternal language – of a common noun into my legend

I did kick loud – Granny – come in Granny – human the caption –she smiles – I drank it in

smack German don`t find out – and not mystery mysterious – It said put wings that’s what

sadness there and delay time – his body remains his forehead his eyes my father – nay horizon

and stockings for little legs – original structure – frequency they fall on me my phrase is gone

rivers of distance of my body – sitting in the sun – a fine film of amber – a distant pleasure

our very eyes – open sesame – that land – way sesame – soil down – there are birds that dive

down – there are birds that go up and opposite of chance are reflected – I understood it – get down

so great is our joy at de ask me if I like – we shall use today – I climbed mountains – we are sitting on

beginning push back of our mothers source – to the point I resemble angels eyes – recognize this music

our transport our motor nerves which will strike no ground – suddenly the earth is immense – continues to move

if need be eternally and lawlessness

FB

HEELS

– on lipstick

This Dream

Where you are

me – you – and – I are hair

elegant gloved hand

preference the fall

fair complexion of garlic – promises honey

incentive to – eat it – red

we must see the mouth – notice

safe – longing – distance

I HEAR WOMEN SINGING AGAIN

GRACE – YOUR BODY

DREAM – I AM

TWO TYPES CASTED – desire

CENTER

ATTENTION

DREAM

EACH NIGHT – MEMORY BECOMES FICTION

REFERENCE – wardrobe – NO REFERENCE

continue – ear up – the kiss departs

heels – red

FB

Author Biography

Fork Burke`s poems have appeared in Hoezo Lepels?, PRAXILLA, Lyre Lyre, and Maintenant.   Licking Glass published a book of poems, poetic essays and other images in 2010 .  Recordings include “Fork Remixed.”  She received her BA in Creative Writing in 2008 from The New School and currently lives and writes in Switzerland.

Poet X. Joloronde on the theme of lipstick

El Paso Valentine

earlier i spent the day hiking
alone in the mountains
a woman and the wilderness
i felt empowered and brave
i opened my arms
and let in the world
later he telephoned

and reneged on the life we built
in favor of no discussion
and really bad timing
and my bravery crumpled to the floor
and when the shadows finally covered the room
i knew that i could stay there forever
so i got up
and i put on a very short skirt
and very high heels
and very red lips
and as i walked out the door
i realized that on any border
bravery is in the eye of the beholder

Author Biography

x. joloronde is a west coast girl living and writing in new england.

The poetry of New York City’s Jillian Brall.

One Afternoon on First Avenue

– on Lipstick

You are leaning against nothing,
standing beneath the awning of a closed store,
its large metal door, rust and turquoise colored,
oceanic, sealed from top to bottom.
You don’t lean against it because “What if
someone opens it from inside?”
Well, what if? Will you fall?
Are you afraid they’ll be insulted
by your uninvited spine and shoulder blades
using their exterior as a vertical bed?
Several stories above your head
a woman’s old face hangs out her window.
It just began to rain.
She extends a potted plant with her wrinkled arms
and it drinks for free.
Every shower is ladies night and every plant is a lady.
Some people were prepared and others weren’t.
The drops sneak up like a real creep.
It’s going to smudge everyone’s looks into other looks.
Your red lipstick isn’t waterproof. It isn’t anything proof.
It’s proof that you’re broke (because it’s cheap).
It’s expensive to be broken without any health insurance.
From a block away you see a man wearing glasses,
walking down the street in your direction.
As he passes in front of your body you see
his glasses are missing their limbs,
no plastic or metal is wrapped around his ears.
This only became evident when you saw his profile.
They are balancing on the bridge of his nose
like the sun above the Brooklyn Bridge,
which you can’t see from where you’re standing,
but you know it’s there. At least,
news hasn’t reached you that it’s missing.
It was there in your dream, bending beneath the midnight sun.
If anything had changed you assume you’d hear screams.
It’s a safe assumption.
What idea keeps his glasses from falling to the pavement?
If you take your eyes off the two wet circles of glass
will you be the reason they plummet and crack?
A little girl sleeps on the shoulders of her father,
her head resting in the dripping hair of his crown.
She wakes up because the sky is falling,
like in the book he read her before bedtime.
You know now your rain boots have slices in their skin.
The rain water gets in, and your socks are getting soaked.
And despite cold feet, you know this is a great position you’re in.
You’re waiting beneath an awning for a call.
He wants you to be available and you said you would be.
You want to be available.

JB

The Beast is an Angle of Light

– on Beasts

You saturate the frame and therefore the frame is empty.
You wear the accessory because you want the real thing.
You wrap yourself in wires because you want to be connected to a motherboard.
You wear big glasses because it’s very sexy to need correction.
You pose with your arms in the air, but you don’t really want to be lifted.
How far back can you stretch? Can you apply lipstick with your tailbone?
Can you pump perfume with your eyelids? Are you that gifted?
Your toes cram into hoof shapes because somewhere someone likes licking pigs.
You don’t want to miss out on the affection. You don’t want to discriminate.
Don’t be old fashioned. Don’t antiquate.
Your real mother is bored because she remembers when kneecaps were private.
Someone always wanted to scar them with a lick.
She always worried she’d have to scream and kick.
Nothing is threatening when everything is a threat.
Don’t believe the father of lies? Wanna make a bet?
The bass is so loud and heavy it tricks my ventricles.
I don’t want my ventricles to be tricked.
I feel very weak and sick.
We say thank you to this holey gift:
a decision engine, so we don’t have to pick.
I don’t need results in under 3 seconds,
but they say the babies beckon.
Here’s a collar: hurry up and stick your neck in.
How young is too young to try the belt trick?
Don’t be judgmental now, he’s just experimental.
He’s very advanced. Very advanced.
White eyeliner helps give his girlfriend that animated look.
Her crotch is made of megapixels and smells like customizable candy.
She’s so hot. SO HOT.
She straightens every curl and thins whatever’s thick.
I know the tricks that make steam appear, the father of what’s slick,
right before all the skin blisters off,
thanks to special effects and the angle of light.

JB

Author Biography

Jillian Brall received both her BA in Creative Writing in 2004 and her MFA in Poetry in 2009 from The New School, in New York, NY. She is a NYC certified Teaching Artist, currently living in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. She is co-creator/co-editor of the online poetry journal, Lyre Lyre (lyrelyre.com). In 2009, she self-published a limited edition book of poems, Wet Information, under ZoeWo Press. She is a saxophonist, as well as a visual artist, focused on collage, drawing and painting. Poems have recently appeared in The Best American Poetry Blog, Praxilla Journal, Connotation Press, 6S: The Mysterious Dr. Ramsey, Esque, The Tower Journal and The Portable Boog Reader 5, and forthcoming in Ping Pong Magazine. Several of her collages can be seen in issue 12 of Pax Americana, as well as featured on The Best American Poetry Blog, and have been used as cover art for several electronic poetry books published by Scantily Clad Press.

Unshod Quills’  first featured artist, Las Vegas, Nevada photographer Eva Steil shoots here
on lipstick, mirrors, beasts and When We Two Parted.

Please click each photo once, and then again on the following page, to see in greater detail.

Eva Steil, "Liets." Photo taken January 12th, 1989 in Atlanta, Georgia. On the theme of mirrors.

"Liets 2." Eva Steil on the theme of mirrors

"Eve 2" - self portrait of Eva Steil on the theme "When We Two Parted"

"Lip Blotter," Eva Steil. On the theme of Lipstick

"Tara in Fur," Eva Steil. On the theme of beasts

Artist Biography

Eva Steil is a Las Vegas based photographer best known for at once intricate and stark self portraits and for her portraits of other artists. Eva utilizes digital photography, but the bulk of her work has been done on film, and she continues to work in this medium today. A member of the Unshod Quills Writer Collective, Eva also writes poetry and lyrics. Eva wants to make your art gallery a Ground Zero for an exhibit. She can be found here.