A-Z Challenge: D is for Dragonfly, Damselfly

I am working on a new children's book about a dragonfly. This is the first page of that book. The others are unfinished.




and here are two D-poems for national Poetry Month, by me:

Doubled

Birch trees lean over the lake. Shimmering, doubled,

white bark reflects pale streaks in dark water,

like postcards sent home from vacation,

like art splashed on canvas en pleine air

affixed with postage stamps, glued to your heart,

like love letters where the unbearable beauty

of this wild world is sealed with a kiss

and summer romance stretches deep into autumn

and beyond. The ebullient heart swings from bent birches

and drops into icy mountain water, shrieking

with shock and joy. Mirrored mountains rise

out of rocky shores to embrace waterfalls,

long ridges, your hikes to granite summits

lost in trackless wilderness. Fear

swirls though the gut like wind-tossed birch leaves.

The heart opens as if released from white trunks

to fall through yellow leaves into deep pools of wonder.

and a prose poem:

Dog

Panting from a summer heat wave, the woman sticks her head out the car window. She swallows wind in enormous gulps. Sky howls past her face and through her hair. She grins and sniffs the air, smells smoke. Somewhere in the city, a house blazes. Grey curtains hang in gauzy layers above the street and other scents assail her: burning brakes, electrical malfunctions, sewage, rotting garbage, woodchucks and rabbits. Hotdogs popping on a grill, fried chicken from a fast food franchise. Gasoline, exhaust fumes. At first, the woman names the smells. But soon, she flares her nostrils and simply inhales the kaleidoscope of odors. The inside of her head sings with smells. She barks at passing dogs, yaps at cats and squirrels. Drools. Hears the wind whistling through her teeth. When she shoves her shoulders and whole upper torso out the window, her husband says, “Down girl!” She spins and growls at him, baring her incisors, before she backs partway back into the car again and turns once more to taste the tang of barbecuing ribs and sweat-rich, skunk-scented joggers.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

A-Z Challenge, C is for Cheshire Cat

This Cheshire Cat is a painting in progress. (Not yet finished!) Click image to view larger.

Also, here is a new prose poem, for National Poetry month, "Cascades of Elder Blossoms:"


Cascades of Elder Blossoms

The man carried a white cardboard box such as one into which a baker might place a small cake. He set it on the table and opened it. Three girls sat up and stretched. They had been folded around each other like triplets in the womb. They were packed in elder blossoms, which cascaded away as the girls stood up and bent to step out of the box. The box must have been larger on the inside than the outside, because the girls, outside the box, were normal sized, slender and somewhat naiad-like. Except for the flowers, they were naked, but not embarrassed. They smiled, cheerful, ready for what came next, which they seemed to expect would be good.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

And, I'd like to mention my causes. (Inspiration thanks to Junebug). I am very interesting in the environment, in education, in reading (yes, this IS a cause!), in poverty, in children's issues, in animal issues, and women's issues. I am working on some books, and I am hoping to donate portions of the proceeds (--big leap here--they have to be published first!!!) to various causes. For example, I may donate 10% of the writer-income of Frog Haven to SAVE THE FROGS. And there will be a donation, assuming I am able to, from each of my upcoming books to some cause, which I will mention later.

A-Z Challenge, B is for Benny, April 2, 2011

Hmm, there seems to be theme developing here, if you can develop a theme in two posts. This is an illo for my children's book, Benny's Favorite Color and features Benny with a peacock at the Zoo.

I am not officially playing along with the A-Z challenge because I am not always available. But here are the first two posts any way.

Of course, I have a poem for the letter B for national poetry, by me:

Broken Bridge

Remember sleep, that trickster, laughing,

bright with moonshine? She draped curtains

of widow gossamer so thick over your face

that you inhaled her tiny hourglass of toxins.

She flung you into flights of unquiet silence.

Remember sleep? You walked through walls.

Sometimes, her light shone green, her detail etched,

complex and compelling. You saw hemp ropes with every fiber

shadowed against the checkered metal and concrete

bridge floor. Ropes piled like snakes on a bridge

that ended, like all your bridges, suspended above the middle

of a churning river. Sometimes, you flew. You flew.

Bridges dangled over open space, snakes of rope coiled

on their decks. You tumbled into snake pits, snakes slithered

in the henhouse, wrapped around the hen-hot eggs, wound

around your arms, your neck. You wanted to escape

or you wanted to rescue them from cold, heat, people attacking

or animals with fangs bared. You wanted to save them, you wanted

to fly with them though the aqueous air of their underwater caverns.

But all your bridges broke, hurtling you into space. You fell.

Over those bridges, toward open water, men swarthy

with rage, brandishing cutlasses and terror,

chased you. You turned and ran through complex mazes

of alleys and abandoned buildings. You were always trying

to accomplish something you couldn't quite remember,

something urgent and important. Understanding eluded you,

like sleep eludes you now. You fell.

Over and over, you fell off cliffs, tumbled, twisted,

a shrieking rag doll, waking before you smashed

on the jagged rocks. You'd read that if you died in a dream,

you died forever. No wonder the trickster abandoned you!

In the waking world, they'd find your body

curled in the womb of a dark invisible Persephone.

You believed in death until you died, again and again,

and woke, and woke again, and woke again

through onion layers of dreams, not sure which,

if any, was the waking life you’d come from,

the life you thought you remembered.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

The formating is wrong, it's supposed to be in six-line stanzas. My A post is here.

Amuse

did my weekword post HERE.

A-Z Challenge: A is for ART, April 1, 2011

A is for Art. I do art every day. Right now, I am working on several children's books. This is a partly completed painting on my iPad on Artrage for one of my books.

I am not officially doing the A-Z challenge, because I am not always available to play along.

And a very small A poem, for national poetry month (by me):

after

in the stillness

after love

only breathing

is

Me on Ascender Rises Above

Hey, good news, I'm a star! I've just appeared on Ascender Rises Above's blog. You can see me HERE and read the rest of her article. Thanks so much, Ascender!!!

(Meanwhile, you can also click image to view larger.)

Weekword: Fugacious

I posted it at Imagik.

If you've come here, looking for it, please go THERE!!!

Jacob and the Waterspout

I wrote another new children's book, which is, as yet, untitled. First draft. I decided to work on illos for it, or studies or drafts for them in the moleskine exchange sketchbooks. I am using the large watercolor sketchbooks for another children's book, A Good Day to Stay Home. So I am using the yellow coated paper A3s for this new book. To see the full illo and read about it, go to my image blog, Imagik.

Washing up in Ballookey's Moleskine Sketchbook

I sort blobbed this up a little.

It has a story. Onondaga Lake, in Syracuse, NY, where I used to live, is one of the most polluted lakes in the country if not the world. I was there one day walking and taking pictures when a migrant worker drove up in his pick-up truck, got out, and washed up in the toxic waters of the lake. A storm was approaching--I tried to tell him that the water wasn't clean, but he didn't understand me. I was thinking the storm was a figurative one as well as a literal one.

I had some problems with this, and may try it again sometime.

acrylic.

New Art: Damselfly

My newest piece of art. See my second newest piece of art, me on a vintage Indian Motorcycle, here.