Poet's Corner

POET'S CORNER

Welcome to Poet's Corner. On this page we display the work of new and upcoming local poets. Our first poet in this series is Michelle Rambo. Michelle is a recent winner of two awards in the Sedona 2002 Centennial Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in S.P.I.C.E., a student publication at the University of California Berkeley. She writes play reviews, does proofreading (did our book) and has recently completed her first children's book entitled, What Is It Like To Be You? She is a Massage Therapist in Sedona, Arizona. The photo LEFT shows Michelle giving a public reading of her poems at the Sedona Creative Life Center on August 8th, 2003.

She has also just published her first collection of poems entitled, Memory Of Wings If you are interested in purchasing a book from the author please contact her at cell phone #928-254-9085 or via e-mail: jmrambo@hotmail.com

A truer you

You cut into your arms and

chest as through you were

searching out the remains of wings,

bloody digging for even a fray of

a feather

because maybe you just flew too close to the sun.

You crept under your own temple,

a frantic archeological excavation for

one bone, clue, or memory of an ancestor

linking you to the soil and stars with

something other than

the old smell of beer.

Paper-cuts rites of passage say

I am a man now

who will never forget the boy

who didn't know how to say

love me

in spite of you,

in spite of who you think I am

or want me to be.

Just love me.

I don't know what you found

under the first few layers of flesh-

playground wars you were

never meant to win,

a world of fewer words,

parents you wished for

tucked away in the rushing of veins.

The open swipes will

scab over soon to become

mumbled explanations,

slightly-raised reminders of

how much you wanted to remember

a truer you.

Fireflies

Fireflies don't mask their

flashes in blackness

behind bougainvillea and mangroves

nor compare their butts to street lamps.

They don't lurch out at dawn to curse

the sun for being

Brighter

nor cling to manes of sleek horses to mimic

galloping on the wind's sleeves.

Like star children tracing darkness

and her curves, orchestrating

twinkle by twinkle

the growth and grins of small things

when most slumber,

they are night lights plugged into

dreamtime for the ever-watchful;

corner-of-the-eye flint sparks for the ever-hopeful

and this is quite enough.

Memory

happens whether you like it or not,

whether you fill all the day's cracks with

driving fingers

busy tongues

or the study of silence.

It happens. Sometimes

just to interrupt the chopping of vegetables,

the frying of platanos, the hanging of

still-soapy underwear

on a thin line.

Sometimes just to dent the mad efforts to

become something more.

I don't mean a memory of

first times--

kisses, airplane rides

nor pockets of

immediate meaning--

hands braided together,

futures on fire.

I mean when the bone curtain flaps open

Memory of fluidity, beingness, expansion.

I mean the memory that you were

never alone nor born

never hurting nor winning

never separate nor somewhere else.

Links: www.norazpoets.org

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