"Flight" - E. Ethelbert Miller - the silver of her / wings - #poem

Flight

(for June)

she steps off the

plane with

the silver of her

wings still caught

in her hair

the space between us

is not distance

the flight of my hand

towards her

gives no shadow

E. Ethelbert Miller. First published in Gargoyle #5 (Richard Peabody, ed.).

I would like / to be Phoenician...from my poem "The Quiet Softness" ("Don't you like me / more, now?")

The Quiet Softness

About Queen Dido, you wonder,

if at some point early enough for 

self-prevention she could have 

hung up mythology for a safe 

nakedness of, hey, herself, even 

if judged (when the world sees you 

as you were born it confronts fear 

of isolation and transformation, 

and the world detests confrontation 

unless it’s brutal and there’s victory 

or a shield or rhymed manuscript 

rendering titanic loss as fame).  

Dido was Phoenician. I would like 

to be Phoenician, say it with me, 

Phoenician.  Don’t you like me 

more, now?  Forgetting rapture in 

the arms of an accomplished heart 

or the quiet softness of a penis 

sighing, Aeneas sailed his cock 

to Rome, leaving her in Carthage, 

the city of her breasts stomach 

hips, configurations of the universe.  

Dido.  Were his promises to be 

believed, really.  You can still 

tell him no.  And it’s going to be 

a while before translations of war 

and abandonment no longer make 

sense.  In your lovely city you can

weep.  Yours, you built it, weep. 
_____
Sarah Sarai, published in Gargoyle 57, 2011, edited by Richard Peabody.

I know a poet who lives in one of the many Phoenicas; a lucky Phoenician.

Photo: a San Francisco company's production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. More on the Urban Opera HERE.

More on publication, bio statements & thusly

image from elfwood.com

Most journals want short bio statements. The work represents the author more than her time in the academy or grants, or should.

I'm happiest when authors self-deflate and are funny in listing accomplishments; feel most comfortable writing that kind of biography. Maybe that's because I can't ante up impressive academic credentials, or any that mean anything to me, or maybe I am a product of the aw-shucks-ma'am strain of Gary Cooper-ish self-estimation.

Of course I am egotistical in my own way, and a bit contemptuous of a proper-noun bio statement without flair. Everyone has standards. And maybe I'm too (toooooo) analytical. I keep breaking down accomplishments with self-talk.

Self-talk:  Well, being listed as a best by the New Yorker or N.Y.Times, simply means one person at those publications liked the writer. It doesn't mean clouds opened up and a booming voice (female, foxy) said, "This is the best."  But it's not without meaning and I'd be proud to be liked, loved or even tolerated by most any publication.

I wanted to be in The Threepenny Review from its beginning. My mom sent me an L.A. Times clipping about the journal and I was jazzed by Wendy Lesser's vision. Something about Gargoyle caught my eye, too; its editor Richard Peabody seemed so cool from far-off Seattle, and of course his last name so old money, so Gatsby.

Wendy Lesser is great (I had a poem in Threepenny a few years ago) as is Richard Peabody, with whom I share musical memories of our era (poem forthcoming in Gargoyle). Don't be careful what you wish for.  Just submit over and over.

This was going to be more about bio statements but, hey, the year is young. Stay tuned.