Yes, heatwaves and waving heat, torrential showers, fires with crackers or without, people going places where there’s water or going places to dry up. July is here and clouds are exquisite, important strangers. I will start off with this beauty from Miranda July, and when you finish watching this, please watch her reading of “Strangers”!!! What an experience~A Handy Tip For the Easily Distracted by Miranda July
I found Miranda July when I heard her reading an excerpt of Janet Frame’s. So here is a poem by Janet Frame:
An Orange
“Who trapped me in this tangled golden swamp
where breathing juice I struggle
through vine-fibres climbing the pale
oval stones; sweet and it stings; if citrus
suffocation gets me before I make the white padded prison wall
record I died inside an orange drowned in denser
sunlight but neither I nor the news got through.
Why? I’m my own messenger. An ant crying Help Help
on the windowsill has as much hope. Therefore
should I describe the object others might see?
‘The globose fruit of the rutaceous tree;
Citrus aurentium: a golden berry.’
Where? I’m still inside the swamp
Happily resistant to classical and poetic diseases but
Suffocated by Vitamin C.”
So, with deep love and devotion for these two creators, I give you three more:
Thaddeus Rutkowski delivers three unforgettable stories, “Animal Sightings,” “Road Trip,” and “Moving Day.” And his interview is captivating: “I remember sitting in the room, talking to the composer, and thinking, Capote was in here, lying on that couch.”
Allie Marini Batts blasts through with two beauties: “Things Your Mother Won’t Tell You, But I Will,” and “In Sickness.” “...meat and potatoes paid for in blood and vows, two rings of gold that are both empty on the inside.” Powerful! And read what Allie is working on now and her thoughts on writing and life in Tallahassee in our interview.
Leah Wellborn stopped my breathing in her brilliant, mesmerizing story, “This Weeping of the Skin.” Told in second person, this one slows down time. “You visualize it, every time it happens, and you observe it in your mind’s eye with strangely detached fascination, heart pumping over-hard and fast, body and mind bracing for the rush of toxicity to come. The little vacuum pocket begins to dilate, and within moments it pushes everything else aside, pressing organs and muscles to the perimeter of your thorax.”WOW!
Don’t miss out! Get something cold to drink and read, read, read!