Dear Girl, This color I’m sending you is “cerise” —saturated, powerful, organic—reminiscent of you, your concentration; your mission for meaning, for fulfillment; your sly, deep hoots and hollers; your contradictions: intense beyond maternal measure and at a turn, goofy. Makes me think how your forehead creases, “cerise,” of the scar that forces your eyebrow to hop a hairless line. You carry this mark of boldness, reminding me always of risk you love, and your fragility. But you mend, did mend, we mend, and Granny will be better soon. Saturday, maybe, they’ll let her go home. You could make her a card, one of your intricate messages, illuminated laboriously. I marvel at their cleverness, the fun in them, for us who study closely—a new little face or joke tricking around the corner. Cerise: reject the trappings of this punk hue, allow it to meet your rods or cones, carry it to your brain, hold it, see it for its honesty. Sincere cerise. Serious as you. Bold as you. True as you. Carry it beyond today. Carry your blaze always. Long after I’m gone. The bold mixture of you, my love. Grand punchy cherry color you. Always, Mama
Born in Rhode Island, Pamela Hobart Carter grew up in Montreal and lives in Seattle. She earned two geology degrees (Bryn Mawr College and Indiana University), and became a teacher. Over more than three decades, Carter taught a variety of ages and subjects, from science pedagogy for a teaching program to art for middle school. When classrooms closed for Covid, she added make-a-poem-at-home lessons to her website. These days, she periodically collects poems from preschoolers via their dictation. Carter’s plays have been produced in Seattle, Montreal, and Fort Worth. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net (3x). Some of her other publications include the poetry chapbooks Her Imaginary Museum (Kelsay Books) and Held Together with Tape and Glue (Finishing Line Press); twelve short books in easy-English for adults (written with Arleen Williams, No Talking Dogs Press); and dozens of poems and articles (in literary and teaching journals and in anthologies). Carter is also a visual artist, gym climber, hiker, skier, and mother.
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To go from Sun Yat-Sen in 1912 to contemporary surrealism is a culture leap like Jonah’s out-of-the-body-of-a-whale experience, the room’s vibrations of ego, self-identity tenfold with lots of eyes and vertebrates watching, splashes and patterns, mosaics of the Incas stare from the wall like jungle gods and goddesses. A Carnival of Venice, the mask and arms incarnation of new life in Kolosov’s search for self-identity, Lina’s “Nightbird” with its purple knots and two hearts in love like kites at a cocktail party all shimmering off the wall, a mixture of lipstick and highballs greens and olives, lemons, with oranges of red and Tantric love.
Michael Magee’s plays and poetry have been produced and published in the U.S., England, and Greece. His play Shank’s Mare was produced at Northwest Actor’s Studio and later became a movie which won a best actor award at the Bare Bones, Script to Screen Film Festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A Night in Reading Gaol With Oscar Wilde was produced here and in Derby, England. He was co-editor of 2020 Tacoma: In Images and Verse and is editor and publisher of Beaux Arts Press. Recent work has been published in Cirque and Journal of Wild Culture. Michael has lived in Seattle, San Francisco, London, Nottingham, England and now lives in Tacoma, Washington. Michael has read at Shakespeare and Company, Paris and on BBC Radio 1, as well as being a participant in the Jack Straw Writer’s Program for radio in Seattle. He wrote several songs for the CD Vaudeville. He has been an Artist-in-the-Schools in Washington, Seattle Artist-in-Residence with the Seattle Arts Commission and Arts and Aging Team. His three other MoonPath Press collections are Terra Firma: Sacred Ground Poems 1970-2022, How We Move Toward Light, and Cinders of My Better Angels.
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