Russian River Writers' Guild Maureen Hurley & Jorge Lujan

Maureen Hurley, John Oliver Simon, Jorge Lujan to read at, Copperfield’s Bookstore, Petaluma

PHOTO ALBUM

PHOTO ALBUM

1. By the same white car
where my grandparents stood
sternly facing the camera,
was that me in my mother's arms
or someone else, milk eyes squinting
as she drools, her fat starfish hands
clutching a red and green tropical sea.
My mother's skirt, an island in paradise
and later, the jungle print will become
a pillow for my grandmother's couch
where I will wait years for my mother
to reclaim that skirt, and me.
All this fuss for a photograph.
who'd have thought those faded photos
marked the end of an era?

At the age of two,
that isn't me looking in.
I'm looking out of the photo
at a woman, older than my mother
who is still holding me in the picture.
She says she knows me but I know better.
I am cross without my nap
so I squint and sing and coo
to the sun in a blue sky.

Now she makes some other writing marks
but I swing my arm across the paper
and the table and the wall
filling the world with rainbow color
putting an end to all this writing.

2. That can't be me at 13
about to start high school.
That's someone else who looks like me,
who feels very grown up and eager to begin.
I'm looking out at myself, looking in.
She looks different, she isn't smiling, like me.
Are we related?

Her eyes glow red from the flash of the camera
making her look like an albino rabbit
while my eyes are brown.
My mother's skirt, a pillow on the couch
is now threadbare.

My red dress is embroidered with small mirrors
reflects a cloudy sky, like a pond,
a mirror full of algae.
I awake at night full of fear
I can't hear what she's saying.
a namelessness in the dark, like a sudden flash
that bleached the color form her hair, from her eyes
turning them from brown to red
like the rabbit who said yes.
All the times she turned them down,
every single one of my children.

10/7/1988 rev.4

CPITS Teaching journal, Jorge Lujan workshop suitcase words, photograph at 10

Jorge Luhan, who was our guest artist from Mexico, called this renaming lesson beautiful names. 

For example fox: the phoenix of the woods.

Moon: lost pearl from Saturn’s rings

Sun: high yellow spark that travels.

River: fleeting bluebird

My favorite was the student sample dragons: stoves on the run.

We made lists on the board and we combined the ideas.

It rained and all the names were lost. Ask the wind, you want me to do your work. Ask the fox but he danced. Ask the moon but it was cloudy. Ask the sun it was also cloudy. Ask the wind when you were so beautiful a hovering blue river of the sky redwoods, the sky on fire. wash your feet in the sea smooth lavender rocks, so warm, smooth rock in the hand of the earth in gods hands. Dusk: a forest on fire waiting for a visit from the moon. The wind took the names to the next village and the first poetic words were spoken, they were born. This is how poetry was born.

Jorge takes all the ideas and then tells us a story, a little boy and girl return return home to tell their mother: we have been moving the smooth blue river of the sky, where the trees were rockets to the sky, where the smooth lavender rocks were in gods hands and a forest was on fire waiting to visit the moon.

My definitions:  Marsh: sky catcher of sunset where wild geese squabble and sing in their floating nests. Candle: with its burning eye piercing the night of false dawn. Jasper: a bleeding stone of crushed embers from the first fires. Breeze: a fire roaring in the pines with no flame at all.

Metaphor is discovering the mysteries of the New World around us. Write a poem containing the four sentences from your definitions ask yourself what kind of water, involve the elements, give lots of details.

Northbay Poetry Series at Copperfield’s with John Oliver Simon, Jorge Lujan, Maureen Hurley

RRWG,CPITS Bilingual poetry & music at Markey’s Cafe with John Oliver Simon, Maureen Hurley, Jorge Lujan