Visuals, Poetics and the Artist
The Silver Braid
Summer feature 2006
The Silver Braid
Summer feature 2006
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Visuals, Poetics and the Artist
The Silver Braid Summer feature 2006 home
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Mannequin Envy | |
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Centerfold
She stood in the window making faces at passersby. She wore gold-laminate clip-on earings and a pink slip, one strap falling off her shoulder. She sacrificed two possible marriages and one child to be here. Her poses remind men of their youth, twenty thirty forty years ago. She's 17 but lied through her red lips and cigarette smoke rings by saying 20. The men with dollar signs in their eyes all believed her. She feels older than the sun most times. Grey as a storm. Her hair she knows is reminiscent of a shipwreck but she doesn't care. She gets to be here. A centerfold in a magazine. So many eyes glued to her, groaning her name like it's an open vowel. |
Alice
Her name crawls into his left ear. Pulls his dreams apart. Leaves a trail of cream everywhere she goes. Once he wrote her a love poem. In it he said things like, I touch you but not your skin. I reach inside of you where the warmth of your memory lies. She felt the heat of his words, felt the wound they created across her body. Believed if she stayed he would devour her. He slept through it all. Unaware of the blood, the scratching, the pain as she dug, burying a small bone for him to remember her by. |
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Artist's Statement: Q: How does poetry and visuals come into play in your life? I depend on poetry. As much as I depend on anything, bread and water, the love of my children, a car to get me from point A to point B. People often say: music saved my life or this particular band got me through the worst time of my life. Well, poetry saved and continues to save mine. I wrote my first poem when I was six years old. Its title: Hallway. My mother saved it because according to her I thought it was the most brilliant thing in the world. I thought I'd tapped into something really extraordinary and I suppose I did. The world is full of so much dissension, injustice, and cruelty. Poetry swallows all of it. It broadens the narrowest mind and enriches the darkest spirit. Visuals, in my case, photography, is something I do because I enjoy it. I do not claim to have any expertise with photography, in fact, you can probably find a thousand people better equipped to explain the logistics of light and shadow, subject and frame. I simply enjoy taking photographs. I like finding unique subjects and catching things in unusual ways. One thing I am most certain about, memory is unreliable. To think I could remember my daughters face at three when she is twenty is ridiculous. Time is constantly erasing and every second brings something new. Photography is my way of remembering. |
Q: Do you use them in different ways? Sometimes. If I had to apply a percentage to each I would say that I am involved with poetry 75% of the time and photography the other 25%. Reading poetry, reading other people's words can often inspire images. And vice versa. I can take a group of pictures of my box turtle as he tramples through the gravel out front of my house and be inspired to write a poem. Objects too can inspire poetry. A stop sign, peaceful surroundings, the sunset, a lone shoe laying on the roadside. Visuals inspire thought and thought inspires visuals. Q: Do you find they affect each other? Yes, definitely. I can be searching for that one word, that one key word to tie up a line in a poem and if I apply a visual to the poem, the word is suddenly there, available, almost predestined. Q: Do you find yourself expressing different aspects of yourself in each? Yes. With poetry, I tend to stay more narrow, or focused is a better word. I tend to focus on what I'm saying, or what I am trying to portray to a reader. I attempt to go straight to a readers heart. I want to inspire emotional reactions just by saying something a certain way, by choosing words or phrases that might seem unusual at first but make an impact. Whereas with visuals, I tend to be more open. Photographs can exist all by themselves. They can say nothing or they can say so much, where one shot expresses completely opposite feelings in different people. An image of a girl's face for instance. For you it might be a tragic, uncomfortable image. For someone else simply a girl with big eyes and a bright smile. Who's to say what the limits are on either poetry or photography? Certainly it matters to me that I am able to get my point across, possibly touch somebody emotionally in the process, but more importantly, that I am able to simply express myself. To imagine something or to dream about it and then to act upon it, pen in my right hand, camera in my left. |
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Lisbon, 1934
As I make my way to Fernando's house, sunlight, soft as fur runs along the path. Its waves tickle my ankles. Its warmth settles into my bones and relaxes me. Fernando is my lover. He is like an injured bird. He is an old man whose health is deteriorating by the second. He smokes too much and his head is filled with sad ideas. When he drinks he grows more indifferent. I like to hang kisses from his earlobes. He pretends not to notice me as I make my way through a valley of trees, as I cut a shorter path alongside the river. He stands in the doorway and waits for me. |
Sisters
We slept in the same bed, waking to find our limbs crossing like flesh colored ribbons. My one hand pressed beneath the small of your back, our breathing in unison. The roaring comfort of dreams slowly fading as another day opened, a series of doors we each had to choose which knobs to turn. Sometimes we chose together, played eenie meenie miney moe and then held hands as we went through. Other times our differences got the better of us, you in one door and I in another, clicking the locks quickly behind us. I remember feeling sorry once we were apart, as you walked through your days and I walked through mine. |
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Lisa Zaran is an American
poet and essayist. She has authored four collections,
the sometimes girl (2004, InnerCircle Publishing), You Have A
Lovely Heart (2004, chapbook with Little Poem Press), Clipped From Our
Days (2005, online chapbook with Argonauts' Boat), and The Blondes Lay
Content (2006, Lulu Press). Individual poems, essays, reviews and
interviews can be found in hundreds of magazines, journals,
lit zines, and anthologies worldwide. |
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