Thursday, May 2, 2024

GAS Featured Poet: Amy Christine Matus



        Amy Christine Matus is a writer from Milwaukee, WI where she was 

honored by The National Beat Poetry Foundation to be recognized as Beat Poet Laureate 2020-2022.


 She is passionate about the cathartic and connective spirit of art and engages in creative events, literary festivals, and collaborative projects both within her community. Amy also is passionate about traveling to participate in those farther away. She was a featured poet in CT at BeatFest in 2008, in Toledo, OH of the same year at Collingwood Arts Center, and most recently traveled to Kentucky to participate in an arts and literary festival in the summer of 2023.


She plans to continue joining other artists and forming a community while 

also highlighting the importance of the arts and staying connected and vocal. Her poetry and other writings has been published by New Generation Beat Publications, Good Japan Press, Rolling Thunder Press and other independent publishers. Amy also enjoys playing piano, singing and spending time in nature with her family and their dog, Hope.




Name Stake


She 

no longer tries to 

convince herself that this 

is wedded bliss 

no longer hides bruises 

with pancake foundation 

she will not lie to herself 

or hide from him 

his Trophies 


At nineteen her mother had told her

she was lucky

to have found this man

Now, twelve years into her prize

Mother rarely calls -too busy living that UnLucky divorced life

on some fancy Florida beach 


She Cooks -makes sure the steak is rare to his liking

musing as he stabs the meat with 

cutting knife 

counts how many nights  she has stood by their bedside 

willing it sharp enough 

to slay sleeping dragons 

-Interrupted

  to pass the salt


He never apologizes 

does not bring flowers like those

of daytime dramas 

Instead 

he glares at the mess 

and she?

she cleans it up 

picks up shards of broken spirit 

split like toothpaste in their sink


She would never leave -the world not enough big 

    even in dreams 

She wears her apron -tight.


yet some solace

her fingers find daily 

as they open 

secret stash

of 

birth control pills 


There will be no sons


     to carry on his 

       NameSake 

            






Lower Case Cursive 


i am 

writing

madly calm 

pout pale 

lips sealed like the envelopes 

that are licked after filled

with

Cursive love letters


lyrics in screenplays of graffiti on acrylic 

so quiet i am

and small

shades of nude

a bleached daytime moon

watching the flies


gathering to pause


voyeuristic 

curious 


oh...our shadows 

and these walls!


on the Verge

     

a cat perched

~ cheetah confessions ~ no issues with metaphor ~ i will say pussy willow


and 

then

think sideways, honeymoon 

the hunt begins 


windowsill curious 


all cats we are on windowsills 

contemplating 

jumping 

  Off


how it will sound


when these stanzas hit the ground 

          

nine life revival 


and how they will

   Dance.

deliberate. in alleys

calico and free

graffiti made by the 

 Heart Beat


let it be Loud


pulse pace breathe speak beat box hopscotch 

handstands and 

peace 

signs flying with feet


i am throwing my words into the World 


for 

u n i to Verse


let’s see in Color

and feel 

as we think


then 

slow down, stand still

holy the  glory


our chests

close enough to throb 

a vibration


that is god


that is god


that is god


and thunder! come the lightning 


poetic Leo cat 

be on the verge


windowsill curious 


chase . stop. 

grace. 

screaming Grace.







Inappropriate Clothespin 


Then Everyone Was Shouting 

for us 

to look at the clothesline 

at the yellow dress that dared 

fly in the wind like a sunbeam 

and all of the women dripped with frowns 

pointing to the drab whites and off whites that hung

bulbs to berry 

from their wooden pins 

proper and quiet 

made of nothing but 

gravel and the scolding 


the children 

ran behind her garments surely their mothers would not look for them there 

they could pretend 

the dresses were wings to fly them far away from the endless rows of wrinkling foreheads and drying linen 


the young woman new to the block

with head held high 

walked to the row that was so scorned 

placing onto it a red dress

that hung like lust from her clothespin 

she placed it close to the yellow one

so they could hold cotton hands together 

and walked smirking to her doorway 

as the other mothers 

gathered up their children 

tssssk-ing like pigeons 

to prepare dinner for their husbands -yet- feathers to fancy 


perhaps tonight there will be peaches 


Brave and Sensual 

next to the stew pot 







Thursday, April 25, 2024

GAS Featured Poet: Santosh Bakaya, Ph.D


Winner of International Reuel Award for literature for Oh Hark, 2014,  The Universal Inspirational Poet Award [ Pentasi B Friendship Poetry and Ghana Government, 2016,] Bharat Nirman Award for literary Excellence, 2017,  Setu Award, 2018,  [Pittsburgh, USA] for ‘ stellar contribution to world literature.’ Keshav Malik Award, 2019, for ‘staggeringly prolific and quality conscious oeuvre’.Chankaya Award  [Best Poet of the Year, 2022, Public Relations Council of India,], Eunice Dsouza Award 2023, for ‘rich and diverse contribution to poetry, literature and learning’, [Instituted  by WE Literary Community]  poet, biographer, novelist, essayist, TEDx speaker, creative writing mentor, Santosh Bakaya, Ph.D has been acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu [Vitasta, 2015], her poems have been translated into many languages, and short stories have won many awards, both national and international.Part of her column, Morning Meanderings in Learning and Creativity website, is now an e-book. 

She has penned twenty five books across different genres. 

 

Authorspress: 
Where are the Lilacs? [Poems, 2016]
Flights from my Terrace [Essays,2017 ]  
Under the Apple Boughs [Poems, 2017]  
A Skyful of Balloons [ Novella, 2018 ]  
Bring out the tall Tales [short stories with Avijit Sarkar, 2019 ] 
Oh Hark! [ Award winning long poem, 2022]
Songs of Belligerence [ Poems , 2020 ]
Runcible Spoons and Pea -Green Boats [Poems ,2021] 
What is the Meter of the Dictionary ? [Poems, 2022]
 A Sonetto for the Poetic World and You heard the Scream, didn’t you ? [With Dr. Ampat Koshy, 2022] The Fog, A Liquid Ditty Float[2023] 


 Only in Darkness can you see the Stars [ Biography of Martin Luther King Jr, Vitasta , [2019] 

Collabortaive E- Books :
Two collaborative e- books : Vodka by the Volga [with Dr. Koshy, Blue Pencil, 2020]
From Prinsep Ghat to Peer Panjal [with Gopal Lahiri, Blue Pencil, 2021]  have been No # 1 Amazon bestsellers.

Other collaborations: 
Mélange of Mavericks and Mutants[ With Ramendra Kumar, Blue Pencil, 2022]
For Better or Verse: Passion. Profundity. Politics [ With Ramendra Kumar and Ampat Koshy, AuthorsPress, 2023]
The Catnama [ With Dr. Sunil Sharma, Authorspress, 2023]  

 



1 Foul is Fair 


Hey, what was that explosion?
Was that a harsh splitting of wood?
Did a window pane shatter?
A lampshade clatter to the ground?
What did I see?
 Another window pane shattering!
Or was it just the night nattering?
Soliloquizing? Yak- yak – yak.
Maybe the rain pitter- pattering?
I saw glass fragments shooting through the air.
Foul was fair.  Foul was fair. 

 
Who was that master – blaster glaring at me? 
Baring tobacco -stained teeth, staring at me?
 Cracks of plaster sliced the wall.
 It was indeed so droll. I shuddered. 


The cracks reminded me of jagged edges of black lightning.
I saw something eerie slithering out of those cracks.
 Instinctively, I lashed out my right hand,
 the lamp on the side table spiraled off the table.
No fable this – but there was also a hiss…
Was the night done with yakking, and was now packing? 
Turning in?  Feeling sleepy? But, it all felt so creepy.
 Another bullet cracked the plaster.
 Faster – faster- Faster – flew the bullets, ricocheting off the wall.
 Bullets, blustering breeze and bombs! 
Foul had suddenly become fair.
 Life had become so unfair.



2 The Golden Oriole of Granny’s Memory


 I remember my grandmother
sitting so elegantly under a tree,
crowned by a shock of white hair
lost in the world she left behind.
Wistfully, she looked at the skeletal branches of the tree,
where the noisy parakeets doing somersaults
did not amuse her much. 


Her mind’s eye, saw only a golden oriole
perched on the pine tree back home, in Kashmir,
her ears riveted to the sounds of the splash- splash of oars,
 and the ripple of the waves in the River Jhelum.
She smiled half- a smile recalling the houseboat folks
waving out to her, with cheery greetings. 


But now for miles around,
she sees nothing but an expansive, arid desert.
She furtively wipes a tear from her wrinkled cheek,
and smiles a fake smile at what for her is a fake world. 


The Golden Oriole of her memory chirps on.  Unstopping.



3 The Haze


She looked dazedly at the man in front of her.
He looked familiar. Quite so.
“Every day I am losing more and more of myself.
 I want to grasp those precious chunks
before they completely vanish and hide in dinghy bunks.”
She mumbled looking at the man anew.
 Something clicked.
It was the spark in his eyes.
In that spark, there was something she knew.
 Tightly patting herself on both cheeks,
 she tried to remove the fuzziness from her mind.
The man looked familiar and kind. Quite so. 
He kept staring at her, looking grim.
 She kept looking and looking,
 wanting to capture that moment for eternity.
 And then she smiled a victorious smile.
She remembered their first hug outside her house,
and the way she had blushed.
 All of a sudden, a hush fell. A haze too.
 She stared glassily at the man who looked familiar and kind,
 when he asked her kindly,
“Do you remember our first rendezvous?”
 
She stared at him, wondering why the glass had become more opaque. 



4 The girl with the Haystack 


The ten-year-old girl with the haystack on her head,
looked this way and that, cautious her tread. 
Her eight-year-old younger brother followed her,
eyes darting toward the stalls selling fast food.

The girl kept looking back over her shoulder.

 "Can't you walk faster?’

The girl bellowed to her kid brother. He walked faster, 
running his tongue over his lips,
and his eyes over the fast food. 

Then putting her arm over her brother's shoulder,
the girl pretty burst into a ditty.
The twosome skipped onwards.

"Mother must be waiting for the wood."

Said the sister.

“Yes. I am hungry, I need food."Said the boy,
tending to a blister under his foot.


This scene quickly crept into my mind,
as I stood watching from the sidelines,
giving me immense food for thought.




5 The Man in his Easy Chair 


 The man sat in his easy chair, recalling the uneasy times-
the time he had been caged.
 The struggle, the strife, the frustration and the rage.
The gnashing of teeth, the wringing of hands,
the flowing of tears- and the stink.
The Overpowering stink! The filth and the contaminated air.
He ran his fingers thoughtfully over the arms of the chair.
 He still felt numb. Indignant.
But then he heard something. A tiny melodious trill.
Ah, it was a tiny robin which had swooped down on the window sill.
 It trilled with full throated- ease; gone was the man’s unease.
He shook away those memories,
and sat riveted to the robin’s song,
slowly forgetting that strangled existence. Those caged times.
No longer tense, he too lent his voice to the robin’s song. 





Thursday, April 18, 2024

GAS Featured Poet/Artist: LaWanda Walters


 LaWanda Walters is the author of Light Is the Odalisque, which was published in 2016 by Press 53 in its Silver Concho Poetry Series. New poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern ReviewPoetryThe Georgia ReviewThe Ekphrastic Review, and Live Encounters Poetry & WritingShe received Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in 2020 and 2024. She is also a painter who once worked with acrylics but now concentrates on digital painting via Procreate on her iPhone and iPad. She lives in Cincinnati.






What Glass Is

 

Glass shows itself through what

it holds, as in a Janet Fish still life—

four old-fashioned tumblers like

the ones in restaurants for water,

 

before you had to say you’d like

water with the menu. Here the water

fills up the almost-invisible glasses

set on a glass table outside, somewhere.

 

The bottoms of the glasses kiss

their upside-down likenesses

that swim up to the table’s surface

as fast as starving koi. The glasses 

 

might obscure the road that goes somewhere,

surrounded by woods on either

side, except that we see the scene,

the road disappearing, again and again,

 

a swirl of green and ochre, repeating

concentric circles of lemon-lime grass, indigo

sky, fir trees bending in the water, filling

the curvy tumbler, tumbling the view.

 

 





Composition

 

balances, the way it settles the wings

of the shoulder blades, how my mind becomes

another thing, a composition in greasy oils,

which takes time, which allows no fussing over,

 

the mind’s surplus of feeling in need of the blade

of the palette knife, scraping off the errors

I was fussing over for too long, muddying

what should be clear—taking time to clean

 

the excess of color with a palette knife

so it has time to dry in the sun, so the trees

show in their clear tones of green and brown,

so I don’t drive off into spinning mud,

 

so the sun dries the trees in their perfect being,

so you’ll see what I mean, meant all the time.

 






Screen Porch

 

Still tangled together in bed, we keep on talking

like water overlapping, small slaps

at a blue pool’s edge, like riders 

walking their horses home,

like two people rocking on the porch swing,

loath to go in to the bright yellow light.

 






The Renaissance of Grandparenthood

 

Grandparents, if they’re lucky,

get to go down the lane again,

make up stories, say “Let’s play like

we’re pirates with the costume earrings,

 

now we’re princes, now we’re home again,”

get to see what once they had no time

to see—how lost earrings make a pirate’s

loot—and know their child should be painted by

 

a Mary Cassatt. They see, this time around,

the curves that made Giotto’s cherubim,

the child in the painting all of them

at any time, and those who sit in court

 

should recognize Giotto’s cherubim

from a blue mosaic sky—gold and earth tones

seen and shown with awe, any court aware

of a chessboard that is garden, toads and all.

 

 




Two Seasons: An Elegy for My Second Husband

 

In the video 

your daughter posted last night,

Tokyo petals

 

loiter, swirl, circle—

a blizzard like a slow dance

of cherry blossoms

 

in the lantern light,

like that night in early spring 

I left you at Good

 

Sam and it started

to sleet as I was driving.

I was terrified

 

until the flurries 

distracted me. Like flowers 

riding the headlights

 

accompanying

my journey home to our kids,

escorted by snow.