WHITE WORDS

ATTN: ALL IUSB writers and artists!I would like to apply for Art Beat with the idea of showcasing Analecta, the preface, and other shool publication in Downtown South Bend. It is a great chance to introduce IUSB creative world! Please let me know your ideas and opinions even though you cannot participate. And of course, please let me know if you are interested in participating this event. Art Beat is a free, community-wide celebration of the arts, open to all. The mission of Art Beat is to showcase South Bend and its surrounding community’s variety of local performing, visual and culinary artists and create awareness for the roles that the downtown organizations and businesses play in the promotion and success of the arts. Art Beat is scheduled to take place on Thursday, September 4 from 4 to 8:30 p.m. Scenes for Art Beat will be west of the River along Michigan Street in the downtown area with one Scene across the Colfax Bridge on the Rink Lot at Colfax and Sycamore.Art Beat re…

Empty Suitcase: L-ead it
“Could you give me a shit of paper,” which is probably what all of my co-students hear when I ask for handout in an English class. “Give me one shi-t, yes that pink shi-t. Thank you, very nice. It smells f-lesh of carbon. The professor just printed the shi-ts.” Of course some new classmates who are not used to my accent show me a smile or weird face. Then I realize again that I cannot pronounce certain words co-llectly; perhaps, co-rrectly.

I automatically switch “she to shi” and “R to L” and some other particular pronunciations. As an excuse, my mother tongue is Japanese, and Japanese does not have tongue-twisted words with blowing air out of your mouth. So I cannot pronounce certain English words appropriately like “sheet”— I’m getting much better than before but still my tongue seems to never understand the certain position when it pronounces a word, as a kitten that has never understood where her litter box is— it is an absolutely shitty condition. I want to…

"Disconnected" by Naoko Fujimoto

The advanced poetry class at ND is cancelled. I hope that there is solution for this unfortunated situation. I am really disappointed right now. However, the fall semester has not started yet!

I am accepted by an advanced poetry class with Professor Orlando Menes at the University of Notre Dame!I am very excited.

Empty Suitcase (Practice writing summer)

I am sorry for the long absence in updating my blog— to tell the truth, I did not write anything except checks for a new bedspread for my new apartment, groceries for my appetite, and ridiculously expensive gas for my 1999 ‘Caroline’ after the spring semester was over— So hopefully, I would like to have a couple of writing practices before the Empty Suitcase starts this fall semester. As for writing poetry, I have my own projects going on. I am drawing ten pictures for my ten selected poetry. By the end of this year, I would like to make my own picture book, and have the only one which exists in the world. But I promise I will write some new poetry and post them.

As you know, I am facing the hell class right now but in the early summer, I faced the inexorable process of aging in Japan.

It was getting difficult to have conversations with my grandparents in the dining room; perhaps, in the bed, the hospital for people who wait for death. With the sm…

Poetry about HELL

Milton’s Paradise Lost
Stanford’s The Light the Dead See
Rimbaud’s a Season in Hell
C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce
William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Franz Wright

Thank you and I am glad to hear from people who emailed and posted ideas and comments.
I am still looking for poetry about hell. So please let me know if you have a grear idea about the topic...

I am taking a literature class— welcome to hell class with Professor Chaney—and researching about poetry about hell and heaven. If someone has some suggestion or recommendation for those topics, please let me know. I will very happy to hear any kind of information from you...

Thank you very much for great ideas, Talia and Charmi.
William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Franz Wright.

"Distance" and "Grandmother" are accepted by Big Scream Spring 2009!

***
DISTANCE

I sank into a florescent pink—
green margarita. A stubborn,

modern artist scribbled the colors
into my mouth, throat, stomach… Prickly

grains of salt
on the rim of the glass and a crescent

green lime abused
my lips and tongue.

I drained half a gallon of colors into
a toilet. While a stranger rubbed my back, I saw

Dove soap, my mother’s smell.
She was in a lemon nightgown when I left.

She held me, radiating
a heavenly aura of motherhood

like saints in religious art surrounded
by a halo of holy light.

A scab remained
on the harsh outline of my drunken face.

I picked and flicked it away with my long nails.
I wished I could be the scab.

***

GRANDMOTHER

My grandmother wears a faded green apron
in the kitchen and always eats

pickled Japanese radishes

grains of rice

or oranges

but she is losing her weight
for the paulownia casket

no ash for her bones

she writes sales slips but no letters
with her earthworm-like hand writin…

Reading July 12th, 2008

More pictures, Talia, Charmi, and Rebecca.

Thank you for the reading opotunity, Rebecca and Charmi!
I had a really good time to listen to all the fabulous music, creative stories, and poetry.

P.S. Arigato for making the dress, Mama!

Reading
Sat. the 12th at 3:00 p.m.,
The Chicory Cafe

"A Body of Work" - Women Writers performing original works, featuring Rebecca Waring-Crane, and including Charmi Keranen, April Lidinsky, Rachel Custer, Talia Reed, Naoko Fujimoto, & Judy Berg. If you're a woman and would like to be included in the lineup, drop me a line.

P.S. I will write some new stories (poetry) soon, soon...soon.