Yellow

It Was All Yellow

yella_cows
Mood: Chillaxed
Drinking: Sweet Tea

At long last, a new cinépoem has arrived.

Shot last November in the central valley of California (Pachecho Pass, Gilroy, Dinuba, Reedley, etc.), “Yellow” is a departure from the norm, if there has indeed been any kind of norm with our cinépoems.

It’s a mellow little fellow with more of an outward-facing perspective than most of my work, which tends to be introspective and more emotional.

Michelle and I tried to do something a little different with the visual representation of this poem to match the different tone of voice. We hope you like it.

Go get Yellow
YouTube Yellow

-Lo, who is quite a fan of roadside fruit stands.

Cinco de Mayonnaise

buffysing2
Mood: Revving Up
Drinking: Nada

After 30 days of daily poem posts, I feel all rusty and creaky returning to the status quo of weekly(ish) posts.

But real life cannot sustain daily poems, at least not the kind of life I’m in the habit of living.

It was a brilliant idea, though, wasn’t it? Even though I thought myself insane in the beginning, I found it fairly easy to get into the regular rhythm of writing a poem a day, especially when I gave myself permission to post poems that unapologetically sucked or (this was even harder) poems that had the potential to be so amazing, but needed a few more days or weeks of percolating and editing.

Some of these un-percolated poems (Je t’aime, for instance, which now has a new name) are being re-thought and re-written as I type. Ok, not as I type, but in the general background of the return to real life, they are being revised.

Someday I’ll post them again in their better, shinier, actually finished form.

The best thing about all of this was that I wrote so many things that never would have been explored had I not given myself the daily deadline. Honey, for example, was an amazing accident, and I don’t think I would have thought to explore my personal history with bee stings had I not been wracking my brain for any scrap of story that could be whipped up into a poem.

The second best thing that happened was that I started tearing through several of the poetry collections I purchased back in January at the Associated Writing Programs conference in New York. I don’t make it a regular habit to read lots of poetry books, and it’s completely my loss. I found so much inspiration in the words of other poets, and I’m now simultaneously reading the work of Galway Kinnell, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, and Elizabeth Bradfield. What a feast!

So farewell, National Poetry Month celebration. Perhaps we’ll meet again next year.

A few bits of newsy things:
1. Michelle and I are editing a new cinepoem called “Yellow”
2. There is a ladonnawitmerdotcom refresh in the works that will include a real RSS blog feed (yay)
3. The Secrets of Falling is reviewed in the May issue of The Other Herald

All good things, all keeping me busy, busy, busy. Seems to be the way I like it… and off I go.

-Lo, with a “Grrrr” and an “Arrrgh”.

tree Mood: Industrious
Drinking: Green Tea

even the dust here
is weary and
bored
covering the brown men
in their roadside shacks
with a visible layer of
despair.

dreams get smaller
in dinuba. children
hope for chicken nuggets
and plastic birthday
gifts. everyone goes to church
and WalMart on Sundays
to worship
in the air-conditioned aisles
of capitalism and canned ham.
the 24-hour supercenter
fills an entire field
where the transplanted
landscape palms
look dehydrated
and uncomfortable.
across the street, all the
stores stay closed, the windows
shuttered with yellow dust.

the air smells
of ennui and
nectarines. it is four
hours from home and
a wide world away where
all the bumper stickers
are redwhite and
conservative and the only time
brown and white ever mingle
is when money changes hands.

on the side of the road
I pay a brown man two
dollars for a box of bruised
purple plums. I plan
to say gracias instead
of thankyou but it seems
so condescending. when
the moment comes
I panic.
I keep my head down
and mutter merci
which helps no-one. I feel
exceptionally pale and
unaccountably guilty.
there’s nothing left to do but
drive away.

-Lo, who really is exceptionally pale.