Stephen Linsteadt - Featured Poet on October 28!

After a wonderful and inspirational reading by the incomparable Sharmagne Leland St. John, the Village Poets have another poetic delight planned for October. Painter and poet Stephen Linsteadt and poet Maria Elena B Mahler have been scheduled to read their work and present a new book of poetry inspired by Stephen paintings on Sunday, October 28, 2012, at 4:30 p.m. at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, California (10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga).  Poets who have contributed to the Woman in Metaphor book of painting and poetry are encouraged to come and read their work from the book during the Open Mike segments of the afternoon.

We regret to inform you that due to our scheduling error Maria Elena B Mahler will not be able to appear at this reading, which was initially planned for October 21, 2012. Instead, she will be invited to return at a later date. On October 28, Maria Elena will be with us in spirit and will be represented by a couple of poems read by others.

Stephen Linsteadt is a painter, poet, and writer. He is the co-author of The Heart of Health; the Principles of Physical Health and Vitality. His latest book is titled Scalar Heart Connection. His poetry is published in Moments of the Soul (Spirit First), Solstice, Cradle Songs (Quill & Parchment Press), Saint Julian Press, Poets on Site, and others. His paintings have appeared in Reed Magazine, Badlands Literary Journal, and Birmingham Arts Journal and can be seen at StephenLinsteadt.com. His most recent project is an anthology of poetry based on his paintings, Woman in Metaphor.  A sample poem from the book is reprinted below.

Maria Elena B Mahler’s poetry has been published in English and Spanish in Badlands, Solstice, Quill & Parchment, Global Alchemy, Saint Julian Press and Poets on Site. She was a finalist for the 2011 San Francisco-based Primer Concurso de Poesía Latinoamericana en Español, and is published in the anthology by Colectivo Verso Activo. Recently, her work was also selected for the Spanish anthology Se Buscan Quijotes, published by El Centro de Estudios Poéticos in Madrid, Spain.

Maria Elena also co-authored the non-fiction book The Heart of Health (Truth Publishing Co.) and enjoys writing fiction. She was raised in the South of Chile. After graduating with a degree in Communications, she lived and worked in Mexico and Canada, and finally settled in the Sonoran Desert of Southern California in 2003.

_________________________________________________

Stephen Linsteadt

Saint-Rémy de Provence

A wale of rock jumps out of the land

and freezes above the earth;

the backdrop to “Starry Night”

painted close to where green bathed

the artist’s vision in a yellow

            tainted room.

The scent of Languedoc

still warm about your neck.

           

Thunder uncoils over the night.

Rain on my umbrella

drops of deep mystery. Madness in May

only warm iris blossoms understand.

Their light whispers

and won’t hold still.

You can’t complain that I’m singing

            this is an asylum.

And where are the human beings

who once lived in the olive groves?

We were compelled to keep our distance

            from the chapel.

Pigeons cooed then waited

for the echo to reverberate

off its stained glass walls.

 

_________________________________________

 

Maria Elena B. Mahler

 

 

La Machi       

Nobody knows her name, only the color of her skin.

If I had a photograph of her face

it would be sepia cracked by the storms over Mapuche land.

Her eyes would be dark stones of lava and

her hair flowing rivers of molten core.

Above Alerce forest, pumas draw the circle.

In my dreams I have seen her chewing chamico.

Along Chilean valleys, water runs horizontal

spoiling the virginity of Andean snow, where la Machi

got sweaty under the Araucaria tree.

His mal de ojo broke her spell.

Their passion over the still wet moss was all they had

between them.

The impediment to their holy union wasn’t the raven in her hair

but the bonds of duty as la chamana:

           forbidden to leave the underworld.

Breaking the sacred law meant certain death

so she quietly gave up her fruit:

    first a boy

    then a girl — my grandmother.

_____________________________________

Mariano Zaro

                        Portrait and Still Life with Art

I got married because I didn’t know how to say no.

                        I did not know I could say no, just like that.

                        You spend your life trying not to hurt people.

                        Maybe it was shame.

                        They say shame is premature exposure.

                        They say shame is the seed of all self-destruction.

                        We got married, it was the thing to do.

The next day

I knew I had made a mistake.

It was too late.

And when you talk to people about it—

well, I did not talk about it with many people,

just this old woman from the warehouse,

they tell you that is normal, that you feel strange

when you get married, in the beginning.

I wanted to talk to people about it

but everybody was too busy,

we were all busy trying to survive.

This happened when everything was there for me to have.

She stops talking, looks at the toast.

I don’t blame anybody.

Don’t blame myself.

Now I look back and it’s all there.

I don’t want to make it nice.

I don’t like sweet, I already have told you.

I know it’s all there. I can breathe.

She picks up tiny crumbs,

presses the tablecloth with the tip of her ring finger.

We leave the hotel.

I can hear the sound of her shoes—

the sound she liked so much

at seventeen.

I can hear the sound of her shoes on the floor.

_______________________

Photos from the Reading:

https://picasaweb.google.com/100602334921816625334/VillagePoetsStephenLinsteadt