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.

Michigan musician and writer Joe Secreast on the theme of sonnets.

toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat

how about a little boat of riddles
sailing on a sea four inches wide
stuck fast on a mud spit in the middle
waiting on a moonless sort of tide

how about a meteor from outer
space makes its way into the sky
carves a name converting any doubter
into a man stands just a half inch high

how about a stained blue book of puzzles
waterlogged and dried a thousand days
the pages salty weep and softly rustle
at any slight touch crumble away

sit down my boy and gently take the wheel
and steer it any fucking way you feel

Author Biography

Joe Secreast is a musician and writer from Marquette, Michigan. He likes motorcycles and extended bouts of heavy drinking, interspersed with the (very) occasional moment of clarity.

Joe Secreast on the topic of sonnets.

toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat

how about a little boat of riddles
sailing on a sea four inches wide
stuck fast on a mud spit in the middle
waiting on a moonless sort of tide

how about a meteor from outer
space makes its way into the sky
carves a name converting any doubter
into a man stands just a half inch high

how about a stained blue book of puzzles
waterlogged and dried a thousand days
the pages salty weep and softly rustle
at any slightest touch crumble away

sit down my boy and gently take the wheel
and steer it any fucking way you feel

Author Biography

Joe Secreast is a musician and writer from Marquette, Michigan.  He likes motorcycles and extended bouts of heavy drinking, interspersed with the (very) occasional moment of clarity.

Amy Sewart Ford on the topic of beasts.

Becoming Human

Forgetting the presence of the elders
Cursing, they fetched me to the old shark
All legs and teeth
My cousins held a leg apiece
I stared, defiant;
Whispers, then cries
“Look at the pretty bird!”
My middle, bared
The downward slash
Conciliatory, knowing smiles;
More than a ritual
The commencement of death.

ASF

Author Biography

Amy is a southern girl and a member of the Unshod Quills Writers Collective.

A poem from a top tier Pacific Northwest writer.

MARE’S NEST

– on mirrors

Gulp down those little pills to dull the ache,
drink until you blur that face in the mirror,
drowse and forget you’re ever an artist.

Hear the snap of crow wing in ghostlit mist
which frames gauze-filtered the gaunt shambling mare
who can’t tell if you’re dreaming or awake.

Author Biography

Sigerson lives in the Seattle area.

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).

The most original offering made to Unshod Quills for this issue comes from a team working at a turtle cognition library in Hillsboro, Oregon. The poems that follow were written for the theme of mirrors. Each are written from the perspective of the turtles the writers study. The photo is of two of the turtle subjects. 

Quake Climbs Away - photo by Rosemary Lombard on the theme When We Two Parted

PEACE

Sphere where the Ring swayed for its mastery
of the rest of Middle Earth,
Learn love.

Dear Bilbo regretted their wars,
teaching it’s book that sings,
Mirror of the way sight understands friend.

Few would work for that, that sway to peace.
Be remembering I turtle am peaceful.

—Spin Lombard

MIRROR TALK

The mirror I move by faces me with me.
Face to glass face.
Mouth to that glass mouth.
Scale to glass scale.

I decide who I am,
present my mirror self,
performing my truth game
by me.

—Scuter Tornieri

POEM WALKING

Poem alone walks away by being not read.
Mirrored by readers’ dreams,
the poem lives.

—Dittow Tornieri

Authors Biographies

Dittow and Scuter Tornieri, sisters, and Spin and Rosemary Lombard work at the Chelonian Connection turtle cognition laboratory in Hillsboro, Oregon. They like to write in the voice of a turtle crying into the wilderness of the human world. Dittow also enjoys creating line drawings. Scuter’s poem “Mirror Talk” reflects the work of the lab in mirror self-recognition. Spin’s poetry appears in Thresholds Literary Journal and Four and Twenty. You can learn more about Chelonian Connection here.