Blog – Page 59 – Bourgeon

Two Poems by Susan Meehan

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December 14, 2018

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Goddesses Incognito

Underneath

the drab,

the daily,

we are passionate goddesses parading in

spangles

glinting jewels

shimmering cloth

that mirror our enticing hips.

Underneath ragged watchcaps,

we are tender goddesses

crowned in

headwraps

tiaras

mantillas

bandanas

that accentuate our nobility.

Underneath blowsy t-shirts,

blazing ads in giant orange letters scrawled across our chests,

we are opulent goddesses wrapped in a splendor of

plaids

kente

batik —

rich in colors that males

don’t even know the names

much less the significance of.

Behind plastic face masks that claim to guard us from infection,

we are amusing goddesses

roaring out the music of joy

harmonies of silver giggles

cymbal crashes of belly laughs

organ peal guffaws

in happy certainty of our right to

pleasure given,

pleasure taken.

We are hidden where you expect us least.

Show us due homage

and we may flash you a glimpse

into our hidden realm.

Or we may not.

The unexpected entices goddesses

most of all.

Map

My hand

gripped into yours

seeks a pathway to your heart

searches through the veiny runs

joys intermingling at the rip

fourth finger-traced.

Susan Meehan is the author of Talking to the Night (2017), and Goddesses Incognito (2018), and was the winner of the DC Poet Project in 2017, an open competition created to surface new poetic voices. Poetry is Susan’s second, or third career. She recently completed a career in local government service, first as Mayor Marion Barry’s constituent service director for Ward Two and subsequently as D.C.’s first Patient Advocate, providing services to the city’s drug and alcohol addicts. Now retired, she remains active in local politics with her husband of more than fifty years.

Image of Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti – EAH009jkJzYVMw at Google Cultural Institute, zoom level maximum Tate Images (http://www.tate-images.com/results.asp?image=N05064&wwwflag=3&imagepos=1), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13458627

Two Poems by John Johnson

Gregory Luce

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December 7, 2018

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My Ancestors

My ancestors picked cotton

Worked hard stacked brick by brick

The old say the young

Just scroll the mouse

Facebook Instagram and click

They call them the instant

Microwave generation

Smoke some marijuana

Now on high school graduation

No job dedication

But hand eye coordination

Quick on that Playstation

I, ME, ME

I can’t wait for the

iPhone, new Playstation, Wii

My ancestors just wanted to be free

Free like

Your night and weekend cell phone plan

Got welts on their back for being African

When they wanted to be treated like a MAN!

Now we drown our sorrow in beer from

Big K liquor store

Because we know we came here on a boat

We aint get no ticket for.

My Man DC

My man DC would say stuff like

“Life is like a university with no walls”

“Now fellas, lets go get these drawers”

My man DC

My man DC just turned 21

Nickname was Blackjack

Finally got his GED

In high school

Wasn’t fond of class or backpack

Skin was darker than burnt toast

IQ smarter than Mos

He lived East of the River

Hangs out with his friends

VA and PG

They met over the internet

Playing “Call of Duty”

On plazma screen TV

When DC was younger

He knew “What was going on

He listened to Marvin Gaye

2015 legalized weed

And it’s perfectly fine now that Marvin’s gay

DC used to sit and listen

Belly full of chocolate

Running down Good Hope

Hanging round Ainger

2015 finally got a sit-down restaurant

Where he can eat some breakfast

DC is serving more Vanna Whites and less

Kiki Shepards

DC fell in love with her diamond-like features

And the curves on her 8 wards

But like every relationship things get bumpy

Like roads before street cars

DC’s girl would start beefing

DC would go vegan

He never called her female dog

Like veterinarian

Although deep down inside11

He was redder than Nats’ caps

His heart was broken like iPhone screens

But he played it like it was cool

Cooler than January and February

My man DC.

John Johnson is a poet, playwright, native Washingtonian and the 2018 winner of the DC Project, an open-to-all poetry competition. Johnson is the founder of Verbal Gymnastics Theater Company, and holds a B.A. in Theater from the University of the District of Columbia. He has received three artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts, and other honors include participation in “Anacostia Unmapped,” a radio project with American University’s WAMU, in conjunction with the Association of Independent Radio, which captures the narrative of residents in rapidly changing communnities.

Image of DC boundary stone by Ben Schumin – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2008404

Two Poems by Beth Konkoski

Gregory Luce

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September 28, 2018

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Night Sky with Donald Trump

If I put him beneath a sky full

of stars, stood him without

phone or tablet, landline

or screen, broke his connection

with the vast Twitterverse to

which he clings, claiming it as

essential truth, perhaps his only

way to verify that he is real,

could he stand this alone

in any kind of awe?

Under this spilled bucket

of starlight shining through

the hours, could he

find his own small stature, his

single beating heart? Could even

the stars tell him, in a language

his ears could comprehend,

that we must all be in this

together, our very insignificance

demands it? Could I place

a tender hand on his rich,

suited shoulder, let the dark

wash our politics downstream

and remind him that to codify

and slice away those we fear

because we don’t recognize

or understand them is to weaken

us all. The stars can sing just that song

when I stand in the cold and listen.

One Night Ghost

Under a chipped summer moon

I haunt the front yard of the house

we once called home. From the outside

through the warp of glass, I see you

with her, dancing past the picture

window. You could be us, gliding

past the coffee table, your hips

swaying like flowers, naked skin

offered without thought or bruising.

Such petal-soft touching once lived

with us—the back porch swing where we

rocked while its old bones creaked, cracks

in the linoleum that tripped

us between stove and sink, the grill

where you flipped burgers, cooked corn, burned

the letters you had once written

me. Back in the car I breathe, wait

for my ghost to quit its stalking.

Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Northern Virginia with her husband and two children. Her work has been published in journals such as: The Potomac Review, Saranac Review, and Gargoyle. Her chapbook “Noticing the Splash” was published in 2010 by BoneWorld Press and a second chapbook, “Water Shedding,” is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Image by nanamori, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54642056

Water Stones by Lea Craigie-Marshall

Editor

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April 11, 2018

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A young girl, exploring what, to her, are the wilds of the land. Hands and feet in the freezing waters, pulling striated rocks and raw gemstones from crystal clear waters. Watching as the droplets of water fall from the newly discovered minerals back into the lake which seems to linger near the edge of the world. Eager to know more, she brings them to her wise grandmother and, together, they tirelessly pour through a field guide of rocks and minerals in an effort to identify each and every one that she had found worthy. To her, each and every one is so vibrant and alive! Surely more so in her mind’s eye than in reality, but the polish of discovery gives each a radiance that makes them stand out in her mind, even years later.

My current collection of works, which I call “Cacapon,” springs from memories of playing in the waters in and around my grandparents’ home in Morgan County, WV. I can still feel the crisp cold of the water flowing over my hands, pulling new and exciting stones from beneath the surface. Like a gateway to another world, the river allowed me to explore things that could not exist on the other side – a feeling I explored and hope to inspire in these collected works. Flowing beauty that exists somewhere between reality and the wishful thinking of a young girl with an untainted view of the world.

“Follicular” by Lea Craigie Marshall, 2017; available from Zenith Gallery, Washington, D.C.

In each piece, I sought to recreate the other-worldly miasma of color that I imagined as the source of the colorful minerals around me. Using alcohol inks and my experience in controlling the flow of water colors, swirling worlds of color and motion emerged. The stones themselves were created separately, and layered into the work to highlight their distinctness from each other and the water surrounding them. Finally, resin was applied to bind the environment together in the depths of water, inviting the viewer to imagine plunging their hands down to retrieve the stones and enjoy the same feelings of wonder and discovery that I felt as a child. The world, changing slowly by its own means, disrupted by the curious hands of people.

“Stacked” is the work that I see as happening closest to the shoreline; within is the mixing of the two world, above and below the water’s surface. Stones have been arranged as the water bubbles from a disturbance. A footstep? The hands of a child? Perhaps coyotes or bobcats that have come for a drink. The dark colors of the fresh-water vegetation stain the rocks of the lake-bed a dark color while the blues of the sky are reflected in the clear water.

Each piece has it’s own story, unearthed and captured in this collection.

Lea Craigie-Marshall creates paintings, sculptures, collage, photography, murals and installation art. Her work is inspired by the natural world, current events, politics, and feminist values, and she aims to evoke feelings from the viewer that are unexpected. Lea has studied under private teachers and mentors in the art world over the past 20 years, and at the Art Institute of America, and Shepherd University. Lea has taught private and group art classes for a decade, and was invited in 2017 to participate in an artist’s residency in Columbia, Md. that offered her uninterrupted time to hone her painting technique. Her current public project is in Frederick, Md. where she is creating large-scale murals throughout the County Government’s building that houses the Animal Shelter and Adoption Center. Lea is a member of the Frederick County Artists Association Board, where she holds the position of Coordinating Secretary. She also has a studio in Frederick, Md at the Griffin Art Center. Lea’s artwork can be found at Zenith Gallery in Washington, DC. She currently also has work at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC., and many more works reside in private collections. He work has been featured in articles in The Washington Post, The GW Hatchet, and Arlington Now, and she has been interviewed by Japanese National Television.

Badass Creative by Cara Peterson

Editor

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April 11, 2018

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I started making art a year and a half ago because I felt a void of creative expression in my life. I was working a nine to five office job, and needed something that felt fully mine, and that I was excited to come home and work on at the end of each day.

I started by creating a 50-piece collection of two-toned linoleum prints with messages in collaged magazine letters. I made these prints as a colorful celebration of the strong, creative, openly vulnerable, badass women who have, and still do, contribute to the mission of intersectional gender equality and propel our nation forward. A book of the series, titled 50 Badass Quotes by Badass Women, will be released in May by Politics and Prose’s Opus Publishers.

As an active feminist and lover of words, that series was a way to engage myself in an artistic manner while immersed in images and messages of women that inspire me and feed my soul. The mission behind the project is to help others develop, or continue to develop, their own personal brand of feminism by reading some of the most insightful commentary on gender issues — including self-esteem, rape culture and sexual violence, body image, opportunities in school and the workplace, and so on. The series is a reflection of my feminist perspective, including some of the influences that made their way into my life prior to me even identifying as a feminist.

I’m still experimenting with multiple mediums, but the one I find myself most drawn to now is magazine collage on canvas. I enjoy that, like printmaking, it involves working with blocks of color that are able to take on a somewhat abstract feel (as opposed to mastering the art of detailed shading.) My art is less about capturing exactly what the subject looks like, and more about capturing the subject creatively.

“We Can Do It!” by Cara Peterson, 2017, magazine collage on canvas

My work is inspired by intersectional feminism and current-day (as well as a past) models of female empowerment. That theme is a constant in all my work. My discovery of feminism in college has been critical to understanding the world around me, and feeling secure and capable in forging my own path as a strong woman.

My newest works of magazine collage on canvas — I use glue sticks as my adhesive and Golden Semi-Gloss UV as my topcoat — are my first adventure into larger scale work. These newer pieces range from 24 X 24 inches to 36 X 48 inches. So far, I’ve completed works of Rosie the Riveter, Beyonce in her “Formation” music video, Rihanna on her “Talk That Talk” album cover, Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen with a newborn dragon on her shoulder, Wonder Woman, and Princess Leia with the words “A Women’s Place Is in the Resistance” in the background. I also made a very large piece of rounded magazine slivers collaged together to look like swirling water; several of the slivers have women in them, which is intended to create the sense that all of these women are collectively a force as strong as the ocean. (That piece, “The Wave”, was featured in The New York Times #MeToo Newsletter.)

Lastly, I appreciate the opportunity to use my art to raise money for causes near and dear to my heart, and am proud of the $5,000 I was able to raise for N Street Village, a local D.C. shelter for homeless and low-income women, by selling original pieces and posters of my Badass Quotes by Badass Women collection. I’m hoping to be able to raise similar money for Planned Parenthood with my magazine collage on canvas collection.

Caralena Peterson is a young woman with a passion for art, writing, and feminism. She started seriously engaging with the art world in early 2017, when creating a mixed-medium collection of linoleum-print-and-magazine-collage-letter pieces that are about to make their debut as a compilation book entitled 50 Badass Quotes by Badass Women (published locally, through Politics & Prose bookstore’s Opus Press). Her newest works are experiments into a bigger and more colorful style of magazine collage on canvas, though the theme of strong women and intersectional empowerment continues. She is also working on publishing her first non-fiction, The Effortless Perfection Myth, on the gender issues millennial women face while in college. Caralena graduated from Duke University in 2015 with a double major in Public Policy and Women’s/Gender Studies. She currently lives in Washington, D.C. with six badass roommates whom she loves with all her heart and admires for their fierce female-to-female support system and ability to forgive her for the little bits of collage pieces left in every corner of the house.