Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
Tesserae translated from the Spanish award winning Teselas by Carmen Crespo by Robin Ouzman Hislop & Amparo Arróspide, this is an audio version of the original translated text in Spanish & English, which can be purchased at Tesserae Carmen Crespo Amazon.com
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
These songs were written by David Michael Jackson at Artvilla. These two sites were started together in 1998. Motherbird was founded by Summer Breeze and Artvilla by David. This release is on the Artvilla.com label and has been remastered and we are proud of the result.
The aroma of lilac drew me
away from my son
quiet as a crystal bowl in his stroller,
the early curious mosquitos almost kept us home.
Am I able to appreciate
this lilac,
her symmetrical perfection, without conjuring your pain?
I am fearful of this flower
I am panicked by her swift impermanence,
of my inability to hold her comforting fragrance
for those mostly marshmallowed mugs of hot chocolate days,
sequestered from the dirty New Jersey snow
where the radiators’ imbalance
from room to room
would make you yell when we opened the windows just a crack
“Goddamn waste of money!”
And the belts sang in their choir on the back of the closet door,
because the boys were fighting over remote controls again
And then, after my downward gaze had watched your darkness dissipate into the cracks
between the hardwood floors,
You would read me Shakespeare:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Is this
why I ran away?
To places where there are no seasons
to the endless
summer days,
where flowers never seem to die.
Your toes were stained with cigarette ash the last time I kissed you goodbye.
Did I
even kiss you?
You hadn’t showered for weeks
and I was scared.
Scared of your skin
scared of your scents
scared of my
shame.
The blue of your eyes was bright
against the rivers of bloodshot.
Mom says your eyes were green
It’s like she never knew you.
Sad and lonely, you asked me to stay
“Live here.”
You said.
“I hate LA.”
Like my brothers also bound to plastic liters?
They were small like my boy,
like you were once.
I am fearful in the face of this flower and her reminders.
Your grandson screams now like a broken dish
and
I wonder if you are there
silently crying
out into the black jungle for God to spare you
for your mother
for a future with mom
for a future with me
with a grandson you will never meet.
How could you have known this jungle
it would never leave?
Dying on the old hardwood floor in May
did you make it to the yard that Spring?
The worst death you died is not your final fall
it is the tree outside our window
cowering with dainty, dusty stars
you could not notice.
Did you glance outside that morning
and think to tell me of the lilacs that had bloomed?
Was your fall swift?
A small, unopened purple “bud of May”
gently shaken free?
The pain you healed, my father,
by noticing the lilacs
reading Shakespeare in Irish accents.
The unfolding damage it has caused,
in the tiniest creations
this unreconciled war from long ago.
Jennifer Schoch is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California where she received a master’s degree in Social Work. She is currently staying home with her young son while contributing as a writer for a book on social work and the arts. She has written, performed and directed for the screen and stage.
The Vietnam Effect Copyright 2021 by Jennifer Schoch. All Rights Reserved.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
* A poem by Amparo Arróspide, from “En el oído del viento” (Baile del Sol, 2016).
Hers and Robin Ouzman´s translation.
***
Can't all poets
get a PhD in synesthesia
by the University of Columba in New York?
Can´t they harvest medallions under the moon?
Can´t they work as professors of Punic Sciences?
As kindergarten teachers, can´t they work?
Can´t they translate their 14th century Chinese
concubine colleagues?
Can´t they afford to pay for
their third self-published volume?
Can´t all poets live on air?
Can't they rummage, deconstruct , snoop
build for themselves a submerged house
inhabit a crystal palace?
Can´t they repeat over and over the unsaid
incite questions of ethical and aesthetic weight
dismantle and fragment reality?
Can´t they receive writing
from a yearning and swift
void?
From a primordial nothingness?
Can´t they mortgage their crystal palace
their submerged house?
Can´t they rebelliously peddle little stars?
Can´t all poor poets steal books?
Can´t they read so
the complete works by Samuel and Ezra and John
by Juana Inés, Alejandra and Gabriela
by Anne and Margaret and Stevie
by Wallace and Edgar and Charles
by Arthur and Paul and Vladimir
by Dulce and Marina and Marosa?
And etcetera and etcetera and etcetera and etcetera?
Can´t all poets
add more beauty to beauty
and more horror to horror?
Can´t they draw maps and routes
of the invisible, futuristic city
foretold by their dreams?
Can´t they pursue the intangible
Move towards permanence
so that a poem
becomes a closed and completed vehicle
to treasure a present without behind or beyond?
Can't they unfold and transmigrate
can't they achieve mindfulness
Can´t they stammer forever
into everlasting silence?
