GAS Members Interview Poet and Artist, Belinda Subraman

Recent photo from Beyond Van Goph

 

GAS: What life event drew you into poetry? 

BELINDA: I was dyslexic and had a hard time learning to read. I finally learned to put my finger under the letters and pronounce each one. Even today I hear myself read each word inside my head. It was in the 6th grade that I became excited by poetry. I don’t remember what prompted me to read books of poetry.  Maybe it was my teacher, Mrs. Woodruff.  I remember writing poems in the 7th grade.  They were often humorous and classmates enjoyed them and passed them around. I can say poetry has been an important part of my life since around eleven years old.

GAS: Are you a musician? 

BELINDA: I don’t think so but I can make some cool sounds on steel tongue drums and I took African drumming lessens for years. Sample:

GAS:  Regarding the visual arts, are you taught or self taught? 

BELINDA: Self taught, but I read books, see videos, go to museums, etc. All those things tigger excitement to try new things. Only recently do I feel like I’m finding my own voice.

Inside a Combination Lock.  Mixed Media.

GAS: How is the place you live reflected in your creative work?  

BELINDA: I live in the desert. Cacti seems to pop up in a lot of my paintings and I grew up playing in a forest so trees often appear.  However, mostly I paint abstracts. As for poetry (and art), everything thing I’ve experienced plays into it as well as the places I’ve lived. One time I wrote down all the places I’ve lived and it came to about 25. I’ve lived in a lot of states, lived in Germany for six years and traveled to many countries.

My Desert. Mixed media.

GAS: How did GAS: Poetry Art and Music come about?

BELINDA: I’ll try to make a long story short. I started appearing in small magazines under different names in the 70s (Belinda Bumgarner, Mary Eldreth, Belinda Subramanian).

Some of my chapbooks from last century, before Print On Demand.

I started a magazine in 1984 called Gypsy, mostly because we were moving every couple of years or so. 1994 was the last regular publication of Gypsy and Vergin' Press for a long while.  In the early 2000s I did one more print issue called Loose Leaf Gypsy. It had hand-colored drawings, poems and photos on 100 lb. paper.  The poetry was bound in the middle of a folder and the side pockets held art that you could frame. That was way too expensive so the next Gypsy was online.  I did three issues online back when personal computers were still fairly new.  I didn’t know how to code and used a Flash program that not everyone could see. Somewhere in all this time I went through a divorce, went to nursing school and became a hospice nurse (as well as producing a weekly interview show and being politically active). Around 2007 I did a blog called Gypsy Art Show and did articles about poetry, art and music. A couple of people contributed reviews and essays from time to time.  After a few years I bought the domain name but when it came time to renew the name I could never do it. There was no way.  I kept going in circles.  I lost the blog and “they” tried to sell my name back to me for $5,000.  Heck with that.  In 2020 I started GAS: Poetry, Art and Music which you are reading right now.   I also started a video component to GAS which you can click on from this site. Example:

 Cover art by Jocelyne Desforges. 

Poetry, art and music by to Andy Clausen, Doug Adamz, Dan Nielsen, Jack Albert, Tony Hansen, Karla Van Vliet, Joshua Michael Stewart, Christopher Ethan Burton, Beat Poet Society (Bengt O Björklund, Anna-Bella Munter) Mark Saba, Amy Randolph, Nathan D. Horowitz, Jose Varela, Emocat (Heidi R Blakeslee), Henry Stanton and Ken Clinger.

GAS:  Are you able to discuss the concept of ”success” in the arts?

BELINDA: That would be different for each artist.  I have created things all my life but only recently was able to call myself an artist. I only started showing my paintings on the internet about 4 years ago.  The first one I showed several people asked if it was for sale. I was amazed and stunned and just said I’d never thought about it. But I gave a price and someone came to pick it up. I continued to post new paintings and requests to buy came in nearly every time. It took awhile to part with more paintings and to figure out what they were worth, or rather what price it would take for me to part with them.  Somewhere around this time I started considering myself an artist. I always thought of an artist as a sort of magician and finally decided I was making magic too.

Brambles. Mixed Media. Lucky Trifecta:  Cover art of EPOCH  (Scotland) and Chrysalis (El Paso) and 2nd place winner in the Sun Bowl Exhibit 2022, longest running art show in the Southwest.

GAS: Do you find more inspiration, re:subject matter, from outside or inside yourself?

I don’t think I can make a distinction like that because everything we witness goes through our own filters and forms our unique interpretations based on our knowledge and experience or lack of them.  I guess the answer is both.  I do tend to be more philosophical now so sometimes my writing is more about ideas but that came from a lifetime of synthesizing experiences.

My Amazon Author page

GAS Featured Writer: Ken Poyner

 

Ken Poyner has ten books behind him; eight still in print that can be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sundial Books, and just about everywhere else.  He is married to a world class female powerlifter, and lives additionally with rescue cats and betta fish.  He retired as soon as he could from his government job, and now enjoys the thrill of getting lost during short travel trips.  Individual works have appeared in Analog, Furious Gazelle, Rune Bear, and many other venues.  Visit www.kpoyner.com.

AGGRESSION


He is going to find the owner of the cigar.  He has been smelling it ever since being abandoned on this bench.  The moment he was alone, the odor of it pierced him.  He can see no source:  left, right or in front.  Behind is a garden fence.  Thick stone, with concrete leveler.  He can only see over it if he stands on the bench.  Positioned, eyes barely past the fence top, he sees standing by an outgrowth of wild flowers the friend who had just left, smoking a cigar. He leaps from the bench, seeking a suitable throwing rock.

-------------------------------------------

EDUCATION
  

She asks again that the department store not dress the front window mannequins so scantily.  Full dresses, winter coats.  Nothing sleeveless.  Keep the neckline up, the hemline down. For heaven’s sake, no lingerie.  Our boys get ideas.  We have to drag them gawking sideways by those windows.  Leave them alone, and they stand at attention, imagining variations on this storefront classroom.  This department store leaves her so much to undo.  Don’t get her started about her husband and the silly nothings he brings home for her to wear.  It is not something she ever wants to explain to her daughter.

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ESTABLISHED


He wonders why a cricket outdoors is soothing, but one in the house annoying.  They are the same insect, they make the same sound.  Early evenings outdoors they are a joy, particularly in multitude.  Quibble looks forward to sitting on his porch, drawing strength from their sound.  Even by an open window, their voices leaking in pleasantly paper the heart.  Close the window, shut the door, and even one cricket stitching in domestic air is a challenge.  Half the night Quibble will chase the sound, rolled up newspaper in hand.  This is his house.  There will be no crackling defiance.

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LINEAGE


He can’t remember when his grandson became his charge.  One day the boy was here and that day no one came to pick him up.  Family what it is, Quibble took on the responsibility of raising him.  He converted the spare room, began collecting boy furniture and clothes and toys.  His wife was at first not pleased and required a terror of convincing. But she adored how Quibble doted on the boy, slid comfortably into the role of a grandfather.  Tasting his delight, she imagined he would have been a good father, had they not decided to have no children.

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PARANOIA


Quibble loves to watch clouds.  Long hours he lies on his back in his close-cropped yard and stares at them dancing with what he believes is purpose.  At times, he can be in the town square settled in one of the four uncomfortable public benches, fixed on whatever clouds, no matter how few, warble angrily above him. Most citizens think that, like everyone, he sees faces and animals, shoreline and suggestive whisps.  No.  Quibble worries the clouds mean him harm, make him part of their rain-dreary schemes.  At night, the clouds creep closer, they stitch themselves with moonbeams into malice.

Review of J. D. Nelson’s “in ghostly onehead” by Jerome Berglund

 

 

If you read literary journals, chapbooks, print and digital magazines you very plausibly are no stranger to the extraordinary, inventive, captivating poetry of J.D. Nelson.  A master and expert in a wide variety of forms, as comfortable in the pure and stunning nature subjects of haiku as he is with surrealist, dada, absurd, thrillingly experimental modes he is best known and revered for, I was admiring this poet’s exquisite collections (and many years of epic, fruitful publications fastidiously inventoried on his polished, immaculate website MadVerse which any aspiring publishing poet can benefit from frequently visiting) long before I dipped my toes into the writing game personally, or had the great privilege of making his kind and generous acquaintance through the wonderfully potent platform of connection and collaboration Twitter provides for likeminded, gregarious creatives! 

 

So it was with great excitement and anticipation that I learned of this upcoming, career-defining collection “in ghostly onehead” many years in the making, laying out painstakingly in crackling glory the grandest achievements and finest examples from a career which has spanned two productive decades, includes over two thousand published poems in upwards of 300 distinct venues from a genius talent carrying the luminous torch of the Beats and French avant-garde into our singular digital era.  This is J.D.’s first full length collecting of poetry (his seminal Cinderella City released by Red Ceilings ten years back, available to download at no cost, has long been regarded as downright iconic) and you don’t want to miss it.  From his legendary subterranean laboratory (also renowned for its sound art, available through Bandcamp under the banner of Owl Brain Atlas) this recent Best of the Net nominee has compiled something truly special in a slick, riveting volume.  From its glorious cover artwork – the mossy Gothic arche pair wonderfully, capture eponymous ‘ghostly onehead’ idea – to the intriguing and memorable title, as the poet continues his tradition of specifying the length of time the pieces within were composed over, spanning a round two thousand days from his Coloradan location, one gets an immediate sense of the enormity of the venture and its cumulative weight. 

A dedication to his niece and nephews also provides readers with an immediate appreciation and understanding of what a considerate and caring person Nelson is in life, anyone who has had the great pleasure and privilege of interacting with him individually is well aware of his equal famousness as thoughtful human being, caring proponent of the vulnerable – championing both homo sapien and animal rights, laboring for and magnanimously supporting efforts for peace, economic, racial, environmental justice – and struggling populations, amazing mentor and resource to fellow aspiring poets and artists, in the writing community he has earned a well deserved reputation as elder statesman, senpai and role model, deep respect from editors and contributors alike, has made invaluable contributions to any journal big or small worth its salt invariably, recently also been dazzling the short form world with spectacular haiku with classical sensibility one would be hard pressed to observe outside of Red Moon anthologies, the collected works of English virtuosos such as Richard Wright. 

 

And here with surrealism of the highest order J.D. similarly shines and amazes, will leave the reader absolutely astounded.  There’s something so inherently enjoyable about allowing dada poetry to immerse you, like enjoying an unpredictable but fantastic dream.  It’s a wondrous and stimulating experience, akin to navigating one of those immersive aquariums through a glass tunnel down the center, surrounded by marine life on all sides, floating past beside and above!  Yet the flashes of humanity, joy and pain, hope and suffering that emerge, illuminate sporadically like bioluminescent fish, somehow manage then to hit harder than ever being lulled into a false sense of security once you’ve settled into the sensory freedom of surrealism and abstraction…?!  It’s also astonishing to find Dada with such a meditative, Zen sensibility, there’s something beautifully Eastern and timeless energizing terrifically modern — in terms of form — poems like “the detroit rock! rock! rock! liver” with its closing line, “the faint ‘coo, coo’ of the mourning dove”.  Nelson’s deep appreciation for and command of the Japanese short forms, many years of experience composing elegant, hard-hitting, top caliber haiku certainly inform and galvanize the economic, punchy, charged snippets of meaning in thrilling fashion, and the pivots at times almost resemble the classic shifts of a masterful chain poem or renga if viewed from a certain angle! 

 

The gems of social and climate consciousness, and righteous concerns and deft critique, are also not to be overlooked or discounted, such as ‘the water water’, an urgent missive amplifying and giving voice to both a planet and the next generation fated to inhabit it (to whom this collection has been addressed explicitly), in powerful passages such as “earth is the water”…   There are deep qualms but also cautious optimism balanced and moderated thoughtfully: “closing another bank account at midnight…the help is the thinking cube”.

 

(The suggestion, legitimate earnest brainstorm to call the aliens for help — in the first poem of the second section — is also a quite reasonable outside the box solution one can’t entirely laugh at or dismiss in these dismal, apocalyptic times… <_<)

 

Indeed, a leitmotif of lifesaving liquid (“what is water?”) recurs a few times throughout, is quite reasonably on the modern everyman's mind, and gets articulated here with legitimate primacy.  Other striking symbols including the worm, boots, monsters, salt, pants, and the act of humming — reproducing the sound the universe makes? — recur notably and deserve attention and patient consideration.  But earth, as supporting character and often protagonist, is the most omnipresent and heavily featured force and focus of these poems, and is one of the takeaways readers will no doubt retain on their minds long after concluding.

 

The numerous years of hard, diligent labor that went into this are appreciable, and also charmingly apparent in occasional self-reflexive asides, echoes intruding from the outside world as near the end of ‘eye milk’ a third of the way through: “are you still writing your book?”  These interruptions further situate the collection in the fascinating, aware and fourth-wall-breaking traditions of confessional poets such as Hemingway and Buk’, Berryman and of course his revered Beat influences!

 

It’s a shame J.D. was not born in a more receptive era or anointed scion to some influential line, for he is without a doubt one of the most unified with the universe’s creative forces individual I may ever have witnessed. There is a sadness in that responsibility, a loneliness to the task and duty (or ‘dharma’ even), the thankless and at times outright self-defeating aspects of this noble calling — “a machine, alone at night” — like the nomadic sanyasin of Hindu traditions, the wandering monks of Japanese poetry’s golden age, the underappreciated geniuses of impressionism toiling in obscurity crafting the greatest masterpieces of all time, yet facing enormous difficulties in their lives from beginning to end as a rule with few exceptions…

 

Personally, I’d love to see posterity’s many accomplished luminaries receive more deserved recognition in their lifetimes.  As readers (and many of us writers) we can help with that by supporting outstanding figures, valuing their work and celebrating it, sharing with friends and family.  Can’t encourage you enough to start here, this collection is out of this world, something truly significant and mesmerizing I so hope society learns of and has opportunity to sit with, reflect upon, enjoy thoroughly.  Congratulations to the author for bringing this monumental achievement to print, it makes a phenomenal testament to his prolific career and a fine introduction for fresh readers to many profound capabilities, rich materials to be unearthed in his earlier chapbooks and countless sizzling publications across the interwebs.  Poetry for appreciators of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, Jack Kerouac and Baudelaire!!

Jerome Berglund graduated from the cinema-television production program at the University of Southern California, and has spent much of his career working in television and photography. His work has been featured prominently in many journals, including as haiga in Abstract magazine, gracing the cover of pacificREVIEW, and appearances in Drunk Monkeys, Evocations, Landing Zone, Oxford Magazine, and Please See Me last year.  His pictures have further been published and awarded in local papers, and in 2019 he staged an exhibition in the Twin Cities area which included a residency of several months at a local community center.  A selection of his black and white fine art photographs was showcased at the Pause Gallery in New York, and his fashion photography is currently on display at the BG Gallery in Santa Monica.

GAS Featured Poet: Andrew Darlington

 

Ensorcelled by the September 1955 mystical vinyl codex ‘a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom’ at age eight, Andrew Darlington embarked on a lifetime quest to decipher the magical incantation’s profundity, traipsing in not entirely straight lines of zigzag wandering across decades of enchantment, yet is still no closer to the true enlightenment revelation must bring. As of now, the seeking continues across a proliferation of platforms, including EIGHT MILES HIGHER .

THE TIME HEELS/ INSANE NO MORE

the phases of the moon in 1907
the algorithms of butterflies,
a dialogue with the dead,
through an ambiance of bells
and birdsong in immaculate taste,
the faucet that drips and
the clocks that won’t tick,
where words are pictures in smoke,
and to say there is no choice is
a failure of the imagination,
for the moon is howling in the copse
and oblivion is calling my name

TO MOCK A KILLINGBIRD

it has presence
the soul of timber,
these trees contain
aspiration to be forest
to eclipse all other life
beyond the human flicker
untroubled by mind
not so much indifferent
as enduring in proliferation,
if I stand here long enough
they rise around and through me
if I don’t move they entwine
and suffocate me in leaves
rooting me hard into soil
ripping the grain of flesh,
replacing bone and sinew
to live a thousand years
in the migration of spores
in the slow soul of timber

INFINITE

it began on that first beach
it will end on that final beach
this continuity of frozen space
where time whispers echo in
every shiver and ripple of tide,
the grit of sand is lost lands from
imperceptible erosions counted
by the slow shift of constellations,
I stand beneath this storming sky
bare toes sandy and wave washed 
and I feel it tremble into my soul,
this is the nexus where eternity
curves in upon itself, and stills
into a single endless now

GAS Featured Poet: Rp Verlaine

 

Rp Verlaine lives in New York City.

He has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He taught in New York Public schools for many years.His first volume of poetry- Damaged by Dames & Drinking was published in 2017 and another – Femme FatalesMovie Starlets & Rockers in 2018. A set of three e-bookstitled Lies From The Autobiography vol 1-3 were published from2018 to 2020. His newest book, Imagined Indecencies, was published in February of 2022.

Eve

Wrote about

her active love life

for years. I was lucky

to be a part of for

a few eventful days

and featured in 3

or 4 poems that

fortunately

were kind.

She stood about 5' 4”

had long red dazzling hair

that went down to her waist

and would move with a

rare abandon as she

danced and twirled

reciting poems

from memory.

Now 62

that wonderful hair

is cut shot like a man’s

and is white as bones

in the desert.

She uses

bottle thick glasses

to read her work

not moving so much now.

Many of the poets

we knew are dead.

Yet her smile still has magic

even though she walks with a cane

when she reads, which is rare.

Poems about birds

and cats not

about her love life

anymore.

But I’ll always

remember her

with that wild red hair

I see it a few times still

in dreams beyond boundaries

where I gladly

surrender everything

to her again.

Of Carrion and Sunsets

We hover like carrion crows,

death in the air yet we still circle

this limited trajectory. We've mastered

the synchronized chaos of new emotions,

duplicating subterfuge of starlings at night.

The joy of laughter when the clown falls,

the curtain blind to what’s behind it,

the empty tears that fill a coffin,

calculating the odds against any sure thing.

The parade that ends with no destination,

trigonometry's failure to make things clear,

the difference between losing and surrender.

Wrong calls ghosting missing telephone booths,

vainglorious ambitions pretty in retreat,

the bright sunset never quite ours.

GAS Featured Poet: Michael Berton

Michael Berton is a percussionist, tequila aficionado, traveler and all around bon vivant. Poems have recently appeared in The Sinking City, Pank, Caustic Frolic, Boats Against the Current, Soor Ploom, Ubu, Page & Spine, Peach Fuzz and Talking River Review. His forthcoming poetry collection, The Spinning Globe is scheduled for late 2023 from Recto y Verso. He was nominated in 2021 for the Touchstone Award. A native of El Paso,TX, he currently lives in Portland, Oregon.   

North Beach Crawl to Chinatown

 

If you don’t have a boat

on the San Andreas fault line

you do without buoyancy

but don’t stumble into Sam Wong’s Hotel

at three o’clock in the morning

after drinking with poets at Spec’s

looking to rest your aching head

you’ll be scolded for waking the owner

and the complimentary wonton soup is cold

Fingertips Rattle Drum

 

feel the imagination

a gang of potential

 

miles of breathing

anonymous name

 

swallowing hard

earth’s smoke

 

weeping and hallucinating

ancestors’ visions

 

the poet’s eye

using peyote

 

in a retching cleanse

soars a crescendo

 

upon the blue sky

water rock

 

where the moon shines

to the bottom vibrant

 

river tremors quicken

sacred afterlife rhythms

 

earth’s tumescent shadow

uncoils a gourd down

 

into a wave of tears

to chart a deluge

 

and begin healing

the universal womb.

GAS Featured Writer: Benito Vila's Homage to Wavy Gravy

 

Benito Vila lives in a remote fishing village on Mexico’s Pacific coast. He first had his poetry published in 2020 in Love Love, an underground magazine based in Paris. His other published work includes the editing Of Myth & Men, a narrative cut-up of poet Charles Plymell’s email correspondence (for Bottle of Smoke Press), and creating profiles of "counterculture” instigators for pleasekillme.com and legsville.com. 

Wavy Gravy

Who is Wavy Gravy and why does he keep following me around? I’ve only met him once but he keeps popping into my life from time to time, as a wise character in friends’ stories, as someone who knows what’s really important. When I discovered he’d said, “Kissing builds up your mouth”, I wrote it down on a page that had the beginnings of this poem. When the poem began to take shape, I found his line was the perfect lead, the perfect title. In dedicating this poem to Wavy Gravy, I imagine he’d agree that oppression, injustice and cruelty have no measure, no standards, no units and no sonnets and he’d have fun with the idea that bitterness is not a flavor in the Love Store.

The one time I met Wavy Gravy was in the late 1980s at the Lone Star Café in Manhattan, a bar and performance space with a big iguana on the roof, at the corner of 13^th Street and Fifth Avenue. I didn’t know much about him then, other than his real name was Hugh Romney, Jr. and that he had been promoted by Lenny Bruce as a comedian in the early ‘60s before plugging into the Merry Prankster/Grateful Dead scene in the late ‘60s. He’d been wearing tie-dye ever since, often taking on the persona of a clown, rubber nose and all.

The man I met was no fool. Wavy somehow ended up seated next to me, and I watched him sort through the goofiness of the high and happy who came up to him. He matched their love and respect, or deflected their wit, as was appropriate. He sized up people fast, and always kept his part of the conversation kind. After watching him for a bit, I shook his hand and said I was glad to meet him. I let him be. There were way too many people who wanted his attention, and there was no way I was going to do anything to impress him the way he’d impressed me. 

Later on, I discovered Wavy had set up the non-profit Seva Foundation with Ram Dass, helping people get eyecare around the world, and that he’d created Camp Winnarainbow, a circus and performing arts camp in Northern California. I also found out he’d run for a “Nobody for President” campaign in the early ‘80s and was keeping a hippie commune, known as “the Hog Farm, alive and thriving. The Hog Farm is still going strong in 2022, even if its most legendary act is feeding and caring for the 400,000-plus who attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August 1969.

Last year, when Wavy, at 85, ended up needing some hospital care, he started coming up on my news feeds, the whole world it seemed saying nice things about him. That set me into looking into his life a little more and me liking what I found. Last month, I was in Portland, Oregon visiting Prankster George Walker when George told me the tale of how Neal Cassady’s ashes made it from San Miguel de Allende, outside of Mexico City, to San Francisco, to the home of Neal’s ex-wife and their kids, by way of Wavy and the Hog Farm. The Hog Farm was then outside of Los Angeles and it was the first U.S. destination for the ashes, which were being delivered by Cassady’s girlfriend, J.B., Janice Brown. J.B., with Cassady’s remains, arrived at the Hog Farm by hippie bus at the same time that Charles Manson’s black bus was exiting that compound’s property, which was right next door to the Hog Farm. It’s all weird coincidence but somehow relevant now that our world has gotten so strange. 

Maybe that’s the point here, that compassion lives on much longer than crazy. Or, better yet, as Wavy Gravy put it in his haiku elegy for his friend Ken Kesey: “They say Kesey’s dead––but never trust a Prankster, even under ground.”

Kissing Builds Up Your Mouth

For Wavy Gravy

1.

Kissing builds up your mouth. The people most opposed to escapism are jailers. A poem is more than a series of words strung together to sound nice or make someone feel good. The nine billion names of god float, adrift in a conscious soup, under the influence of an outmoded way of perceiving the world. 

Take root, feel the dark of the new moon. Plant trees if for no other reason than to be kind to those who come next. Plug in, feel the flow of knowing right now. Make art if for no other reason than to be a window for light to reflect off. Tune in, slow the beat until the hum heals. Write if for no other reason than to have your passion go where it needs to go.

Jump rope rhymes. A cake in the rain. One for the baby who sucks his thumb. One for the bubble that’s sure to come.

2. 

My cat looks at me like there’s a bird singing inside of me. Speak what makes you wow. Why are you here? One two three: to have fun. One two three four: to tell the truth. One two three four five: to sweep away the nastiness. One two three four five six: to learn, to teach and move. One two three four five six seven: to play, play, play and keep playing.

Every monkey is different and any monkey can lend a hand. Tyranny releases its hold only to come back again. Oppression, injustice and cruelty have no measure, no standards, no units and no sonnets. We have no idea the influence we have on each other but like planets and moons and stars, we bend space. We each have gravity.

A glass tumbles, resists definition. There’s no crash, no applause. I trust my compass: the closer to home, the easier the way.

3. 

I bow greet salute the person I am becoming. I bow greet salute the person I have been. Shabaz, shabaz, shahbaz, the open wing. I am I am. Relying on a measure of time is overwhelming, unless I learn to slow down the crush, the moment, the intensity, the show, the need, the emotion without resisting any of it. Being clever is nothing. Being wet is.

I ripple, I spiral, I wear my incomplete knowledge of the true nature of time and space with absolutely no sense of which thoughts, which actions, make or don’t make a difference. The poem is the word, bouncing off the page into the ear, across the heart and into the feet, your favorite dance, waiting for the sound.

Bitterness is not a flavor in the Love Store. It’s not even a topping. Forgiveness is available in sprinkles, swirls, cones and even comes in throwaway cups.