“21 janises” ZJC (2010)
I could listen to Janis all day long. Her backup band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, though, never pleases. This video is a good example. The first 3 minutes and 20 seconds of the folktune Coo Coo don’t even have her singing. Some unwashed hippie with no vocal range sings with […]
“men at buchenwald, moments before execution” ZJC (2008)
As anyone on the outside will tell you, Sartre was dead-on when he said, L’enfer, c’est les autres, Hell is other people. We are all born to be heroes, we are all born divine, it is only those you meet growing up, those you pass on the street, […]
“mariam on horseback” ZJC (2010)
I have been working on my tale of Mariam for almost a year. I am not Armenian and yet the tale starts like many Armenian tales do, “Linum e, chi linum; There was and there was not.” Except I have only glimpses of what I am suppose to say. It is […]
“hina and her dream shark” (ZJC, 2009)
The Polynesian goddess Hina appears in many stories; she is beautiful, at times vain, at times a trickster. She is credited with giving birth to the first coconut tree after she took the eel god, Tuna-roa, as her lover.
The story I am familiar with is when Hina sailed […]
“my oboe, my reed” ZJC (2009)
Be my oboe, my reed, poisoned pen life;
one that worries the heart. Of sass and plight
I’m your first. And yes, your prodigy knife
bores me to crime. You are all soft, all light
muscles and train. It’s the “all” I highlight
here, the refrain of quick skirts, seduction,
it’s the words. […]
“this odd sense of self: english” ZJC (2009)
I don’t have no most recent books but I
do have you. It is a start. I like how
I can say “you” like that. I will imply
much from one stupid syllable. Somehow
it works. English is a language of tricks.
Like “you.” Who said, “Ah speak […]
“venus in chains” ZJC (2008)
I recently attended a poetry slam at Michigan State University (hurrah for Logic for winning! You were amazing, once again!) but what I took away from it was the realization that, once again, most people are rather limited when it comes to conceiving of their own erotic worlds, if they think […]
“brain in a jar” ZJC (2008)
As I have told everyone who will listen it is midterm-time and I have spending far too much time attempting to memorize bizarre medical terms (and 90% of them are diseases and terrible things that can go wrong with the human body) under the guise that occupational therapists do nothing […]
Possible Cover Jacket for CD
When I was in Peace Corps I volunteered at an orphanage for disabled babies in the city of Gyumri, Armenia. Recently I had the good fortune of reconnecting with the director of an Armenian aide organization that works directly with my orphanage, Caritas. I had been wanting to raise […]
“Star Lily” ZJC (2008)
This is an image I made of a Star Lily, the lilium auratum, which gets used interchangeably throughout both this story and histories of the Himeyuri.
When I started writing this poem I was fascinated with the Okinawa word kusa-nu-nuii; grass roots. Grass isn’t as beautiful as lilies, of course, but the […]
“cleaning the wounded” ZJC (2008)
This is Yukio, a 10 year-old girl from the story I am trying to tell of the Himeyuri nurses of Okinawa. The goal of this movie is not to judge one side or another but to tell a story; however, being an American born many years after all this happened, […]
“capful of wind” ZJC (2008)
In the poem The Golden Legend, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow talks about the maritime belief concerning a capful of wind:
Only a little hour ago
I was whistling to Saint Antonio
For a capful of wind to fill our sail,
And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale.
Literally the term means a sudden light […]
“another world” ZJC (2008)
Earlier this morning I was thinking about the problem with writing a haiku. The easy part is figuring out the form (three lines; the first and third line have five beats and the middle has seven beats to it). What I find difficult is the idea of having to have […]
by Diane T. Sands (2008)
My friend, Diane T. Sands, is a “a naturalist, cartoonist, librarian, and free-lance scientific illustrator, who also uses the sketchbook as a medium for recording the natural movements of the world around her.” She is also the California president of Guild of Natural Science Illustrators.
I woke up this groggy […]
“if the stream called me” ZJC (2008)
It was that rancid smell that made me drive
her off. Damn! What a foul stench! Of course she
fought and cried. Of course. How would she survive
on her own? Who would take in a dirty
thing like her? No one, I am sure. That smell
of […]
“gilgamesh waits” ZJC (2008)
In the oldest poem, in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the warlord of the city Uruk, the part-man part-god Gilgamesh, has become a tyrant. His people suffer and cry to Heaven for justice and Anu, father of all, hears them and instructs Aruru, mother of creation, to:
“go and create
a double for […]
“old woman & cat” (2007)
Did I mention last Monday I was involved in a head-on collision that destroyed my car and banged up my knee? I didn’t? The good news is no one was hurt, not even the person who ran a stop sign on the icy road as I was entering the intersection […]
“fox pup fingers” (ZJC, 2007)
Imagine my dismay at finding out that the paws of a new born red fox are not yellow after all but black. I learned this after I had spent all day trying to get the colors in the fingers just so. I played around with the ideas that maybe […]
“Winter, cemetery across the street from my house — I” (2007)
Of what I will miss the most – wings. Graceful
fits a winged boy on a high rock above
fields and towns; taking only a handful
of what is. The hedge sparrow and street dove
are a narrow valley; their movements all
benign. Finches cannot trust in olive
orchards […]
“gagged by roses” ZJC (2007)
The metaphor of friendship being like a plant (a night blooming rose, let us say) is not new but I think it will work nicely. Two people agree to combine their energies and fortunes. A plant roots itself in the ground. To break that connection, for whatever reasons, […]
I woke up this morning to find three marvelous shooting stars in my in-box. It is rare that I get stars at all, let alone stars to make wishes on, let alone three of them. The arrived from one of my favorite living artists is Shelley, who can do no wrong in my […]