Westside Women Writers, L to R. Maja Trochimczyk, Susan Rogers,
Lois P. Jones, Georgia Jonese Davis, Sonya Sabanac, Madeleine Butcher and
Millicent Borges Accardi, at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 2014.
Reading “Shadowlands” to a Friend At The Sepulveda Dam
by Lois P. Jones
Did my eyes avoid yours, Brother?
~ Johannes Bobrowski, German lyric poet and soldier
Mustard grass to our hips – sallow as Gauguin’s
Yellow Christ, it blows its seed, mixing
with the must of mule fat and sage. When the wind
is this strong, I remember the year branches twisted
from their trunks onto my path toward Terezin.
They were everywhere, needling the numbered graves.
I think of how anonymity makes war possible.
Otherwise you couldn’t look your brother in the eye –
become one of Bobrowski’s slavering wolves,
an SS who drove the Jews toward
the wild smell in the woods and the old house
running down to the water. And you know
what’s coming. Listening as if you are a part
of the descent – the river and its copper-
colored trail – the blood wall where nothing
is wet only driven in like nails. It tastes of rust
in our mouths, of shadowlands and a boot
in the snow and even in this dry heat
your cheeks are damp. You know what a home
looks like because you came from a land
of sheepherders and milk cows, where ovens
were meant to keep a back warm in winter
and wagons bore the day’s wheat.
What can we carry away but a chance
to remember how a man is a lantern
lowered into the earth.
Previously published in Tupelo Quarterly
SUSAN ROGERS
Susan Rogers considers poetry a vehicle for light and a tool for the exchange of positive energy. She is a licensed attorney, photographer and a practitioner of Sukyo Mahikari—a spiritual practice that promotes positive thoughts, words and action. Susan has featured at Cypress College, The Phoenix House, the Moonday Poetry Reading Series, as well as other venues. Her poetry has been performed at museums and galleries in Southern California and was included as part of the award winning audio tour for the Pacific Asia Museum. Her work can be found in Chopin and Cherries, Meditations on Divine Names, A Blackbird Sings, Woman in Metaphor as well as numerous journals, anthologies and chapbooks including The Best Poems of San Diego 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 editions, Poets on Site booklets, Ribbons, Badlands, Phantom Seed, several Southern California Haiku anthologies and the 2015 Altadena Poetry Review. Her reflections on poetry were published in an essay on the national site Women’s Voices for Change. In 2012, she was a finalist in the Tiferet Poetry Competition. Her poem, “The Origin is One” was performed at the televised 2013 Akigami Ice Festival in Gifu, Japan. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2013. Her work has appeared online in Kyoto Journal, Pirene’s Fountain, Tiferet as well as other online publications. Her poems are currently featured online at Saint Julian’s Press. She has been interviewed by Lois P. Jones for KPFK’s Poet’s Café. This interview is archived at www.timothy-green.org/blog/susan-rogers/.
Searching (The Dove) - by Susan Dobay
The Origin Is One
for Kotama Okada
The dove knows the way
follow her.
Your heart knows the way
listen well.
Within your deepest self
are wings of light.
They cover the earth
with waves of love.
Do you remember?
You once knew.
Stand in the warmth
of sunlight and recall.
The origin of the world
is one.
The origin of religions
is one.
The origin of all
humankind is one.
Circle back.
Imagine the great will
of all things
stirring in your fingers.
Reach out your arms
and open your palms
to the sky.
It is time.
Within the miniature apple is the full-grown fruit;
within the pine cone is the giant pine.
Within your outstretched hand is your reaching love;
within our heart of prayer is god's design.
Within the symphony is a golden flute;
within your eyes is the light that finds.
Within the tree is the sap and root;
within your image are my singing lines.
Kathi Stafford's poetry, book reviews, and interviews have been published in numerous literary journals (Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Hard Row to Hoe, and so forth) and anthologies (Chopin with Cherries, anthologies by Poets on Site, and other volumes). She was the poetry editor and senior editor at Southern California Review for many years. Her forthcoming book, Blank Check, is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2015.
Kathi Stafford at a Poetry reading from "Awakenings" - Beyond Baroque.
With Alice Pero, Just Kibbe, Susan Rogers and Maja Trochimczyk
Division
by Kathi Stafford
We used to
hold
hands near
the bower. Now, we lean together,
quiet, and
that is enough.
Evening came
fast—too dark to look
for avocados
any more. The sprawling
tree filled
the yard, its branches large
and smoky
brown. A tangy scent
floats at
dusk as honeysuckle
trims along
the fence.
Perhaps my
cells split
sideways as
I sat on the bench
in the
silence. I asked him to pick the
fruit, but
the hour was late. A woman light
on her path
keeps moving anyway.
Sonya Sabanac was born and raised in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina- Former Yugoslavia. She left her home town in 1992 due to the civil war and spent two refugee years in Denmark. Growing up with poetry never did she imagine that one day poetry would disappear from her horizon. Immigrating into USA in 1994, she was “silent” for more than a decade. Finding her way back to poetry was also finding a way back to her own self.
Sonya is a poet and a photographer, with a particular interest in landscapes and wildlife. Her memoir “How Did I decide to Go a Little Crazy” was published in the Anthology about immigrant women “Shifting Balance Sheets.”
Egret on the Beach, 2014 Photo by Sonya Sabanac
A Letter to My Ancestor
I was always curious about you,
but I don’t even know your name,
I can only count
three generations back.
To learn about you,
I imagine myself
where you were.
Banat of Temeswar,
The Habsburgs’ Military Frontier
and ever changing 19th Century,
where one could fall asleep in
one country and wake up in another.
How much of a good fruit
had fallen into your lap?
Your hands always nursing,
the land or the babies,
must have wanted
to fly away sometimes.
Did you lay in the grass
and travel with the clouds
when the lust for going far
would fill your heart?
And what did you do
when darkness fell
upon your world?
Frozen winter nights,
vagabond soldiers
appearing out of nowhere,
my brave ancestor mother,
you secured a passage
for me to come.
Distance of time
is between us,
but I feel you are not far.
Come into my dream and
tell me what I want
to know most of all:
what is yours that I carry on?
© Sonya Sabanac
April 26, 2014
MAJA TROCHIMCZYK
Maja Trochimczyk at Bolton Hall Museum, July 2012.
Maja Trochimczyk, PhD, is a Polish-born poet, music historian, photographer, and non-profit director. A former Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga she works with Village Poets on selecting poets to feature monthly. She wrote/edited six books on music (including Frederic Chopin: A Research and Information Guide, Routledge, 2015), and published five volumes of poetry - Rose Always (2011), Miriam’s Iris (2008) , Slicing the Bread (2014), and anthologies Chopin with Cherries (2010) and Meditations on Divine Names (2012). She serves as Communications Director and Board Secretary of the Polish American Historical Association, and is an author of hundreds of articles, book reviews and poems published in Poland, Canada, U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Sweden, Serbia, and China. As President of Moonrise Press, she is also a publisher of books on poetry, music and Polish culture. She received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and honors from the Polish government (medal for the promoton of Polish culture), PAHA, and local communities (ST Poet Laureate in 2010-2014). Visit www.trochimczyk.net, and www.moonrisepress.com, or Maja's blogs: Poetry Laurels and Chopin with Cherries.
Slicing the Bread with Trochimczyk's cover design based on her photos
The Summer of Love
She would never be as beautiful again as she had been
that summer in Germany. Blue eyes shining
from under the tightly-tied kerchief,
blond curls, shorn short for work.
They planted potatoes side by side in the fields.
He was tall, kind, athletic, son of the Bauer.
She blushed a pretty shade of pink
when she caught his eye.
It was their first love, they were so shy
led side by side, with jeering cardboard signs,
noisy blasts of trombones. A feast for the whole village.
Kids ran in circles around them, laughing –
The Polish Pig. The Traitor of our Race.
Bronia and Hans. People poked them,
pushed them, shaved their heads.
Identical, grotesque, bald puppets,
each with a single lock left hanging
in the middle of the forehead.
She was sent to Auschwitz.
He – to the eastern front.
It was their last summer.
(c) 2014 by Maja Trochimczyk Published in
Slicing the Bread (Finishing Line Press, 2014).
Clouds and Leaves in Wilanow, Poland, July 2015. Photo by Maja Trochimczyk
__________________________________
The two members of the WWW Group that are travelling and will not appear at this reading are Georgia Jones-Davis and Madeline Butcher.
GEORGIA JONES-DAVIS
Georgia Jones-Davis’s first collection of poems, Blue Poodle (Finishing Line Press), was published in 2011 and the second, Night School (also by Finishing Line Press) appeared in 2015. She grew up in Northern New Mexico and Southern California. It was as a student studying English at UCLA that Georgia first wrote and published poetry. She set poetry aside when she went into the news business for more than twenty years. Georgia worked as a literary reporter, sub-editor, book review editor and book reviewer. She was one of the founding editors of the Herald Examiner Book Review and an Assistant Book Editor at the Los Angeles Times Book Review for 14 years. Her critical essays have appeared in many publications including The Washington Post, New York Newsday, The Chicago Tribune and Salon.
After leaving the newspaper world, “Poetry,” Georgia says, “came back to me like a long, lost, muddy dog.” Her work has appeared in various publications including West Wind, The Bicycle Review, California Quarterly, Sam Hamill’s website, Poets Against War, Brevities, Nebo, South Bank Poetry, London, Ascent Aspirations, a Canadian journal, and Eclipse. She also contributed to the Chopin with Cherries anthology. Georgia was honored as one of the Newer Poets 2010 by the Los Angeles Poetry Festival/Beyond Baroque and the Los Angeles County ALOUD Series. She is a former board member of Valley Contemporary Poets, a Los Angeles non-profit, and founder of the Poetry Group at the Grancell Village Jewish Home for the Aging. Georgia Jones-Davis is a member of PEN, California State Poetry Society and the Academy of American Poets.
Maja Trochimczyk, Georgia Jones-Davis and Lisa Cheby
present their new books at Beyond Baroque, Spring 2015.
Chopin’s Sorrow
by Georgia Jones-Davis
Sorrow I love
more than any woman
So do not run your fingers
along my skin
countess
touch me
with white gloves
or I will break
like a minor chord
Polish, French, man, woman
I speak none of these languages
only that of rain and moonlight
Sex will kill me
with its gabardine trousers
cigars and gaudy novels
slashed ribbon of arguments
must of unmade beds
The other night
in the Salle Pleyel
the moon
her full face composed
edged close to the windows
to listen
I kiss her holy white dust
I press my lips to the purity
of her bloodless devotion
Published in Chopin with Cherries (Moonrise Press, 2010)
MADELEINE S. BUTCHER
Madeleine S. Butcher has been writing since 1979. An actress at that time, she wrote monologues, scenes and plays, later transitioning to short stories, guided by Merrill Joan Gerber. Poetry was always cropping up on its own, from time to time. She is a graduate of NYU with a BFA in dance. Besides her dance and acting, she has worked as an assistant picture and sound editor on feature films, She has taught ballet to small children, at risk teenagers and taught Pilates out of her home studio in Woodland Hills for ten years. Madeleine has been a member of Westside Women Writers for nearly three years. Her first piece is due to be published in the West Marin Journal this year. She and her husband are retired and traveling.
How Do I Know Thee, John Lee?
He lies blinking in the dark,
his eight year old self listening to the crickets
to the creak of his bed,
to his parents' voices on the other side
of the slatted wall
and he hears his papa say -
he's got the boogie woogie in him
and it's got to come out -
yes he does, says his mama,
yes he does.
His hands reach into the dark
he spreads his fingers -
the night lifts the ceiling off,
he sees plowed fields fall away,
a path into shining woods he's never seen -
he lies so still he hears his heart
beat his moving blood in the midnight darkness.
His heart so old and young,
looks back from the night
and he knows he has more
than that share-croppers cabin
can hold in all the world.
(c) by Madeleine S. Butcher
Photo by Maja Trochimczyk with a Druid blessing
