Autoretrato de Kahlo

Hands on hip
this woman looks so-
lid.            Emp-
ty.   Light streams
 
body’s dispersal.
Flashes off solar
plex
us.
 
Vast night sky.  Burnt
umber pushes
her head past her eyes.
 
Anguish wished far
for.  Wide spread
skirt.  Ecstasy on
going.
 
Light so light and
lovely.  Who though is
ready for this
final    dis/
solution?

Penn Kemp

London ON performance poet, activist and playwright Penn Kemp is the 40th Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets and their 2015 Spoken Word Artist of the Year. As Writer-in-Residence for Western University, her project was the DVD, Luminous Entrance: a Sound Opera for Climate Change Action, Pendas Productions. Her latest works are two anthologies for the Feminist Caucus Archives of the League of Canadian Poets and the Guild of Canadian Playwrights, to be launched at the Writers’ Summit at Harbourfront in June. Forthcoming is a new collection of poetry, Barbaric Cultural Practice and a play, The Triumph of Teresa Harris. www.mytown.ca/pennkemp                                                       Adapted from Eidolons, White Pine Press, and my anthology, Twelfth Key, http://www.mytown.ca/twelfth/.

The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between green and indigo.

This is the way it went down.

1763 a maiden sits for a painter.
Her mother is the distant cousin of a Duke.
The girl sits and obeys her mother for hours
while the painter captures the hue of that portion
of the visible spectrum lying between green and indigo.

She blinks and now it is 1874 and she is a whore in Paris.
The painter asks her to open her legs. She opens them
willingly. He momentarily drops his brush and stumbles
for something to place in his mouth. A cigar. A stiff hard drink.
He finds a way to get back to the hue of that portion
of the visible spectrum lying between green and indigo.
He asks her to stay the night.

In the morning it is 1978 and the painter is in the living room
of the house she is temporarily staying in. She is just out
of High School. He is painting a cactus.
A cactus.

His eyes are the hue of that portion
of the visible spectrum lying between green and indigo.

She approaches the painting.
She asks what is it? He says "a cactus".
All she sees is green.
She asks "why" because she is still too young to
understand about the hue of that portion of the visible spectrum
lying between green and indigo.

She walks away.
He goes back to painting pricks.
Each stroke stabs her.

She looks away for a moment
and she is 55 years old
and she is alone
staring at a canvas and all
she is able to think about
is blue.

Didi Menendez

Didi Menendez sometimes writes poems.

Marley Jayne M. is an 8-year old emerging Metis artist in Alberta.

She works in a variety of media such as acrylic, pencil, pen and ink, watercolour, plasticine, clay, felt tip pen,and pencil crayon.

Each piece that Marley creates has a message or meaning. Her creative style is fervent, solitary and passionate.

Marley has created children's books using mixed media and hopes to secure a partnership with a publisher.

Visit Marley Jayne M. at Pachella Productions.

 Ida

            We’ve all sold ourselves at one time
or another for a glass of wine,
 
            a crystal mirror,
a twenty left on the hall table.
 
            Sold ourselves to keep going,
a kind of cannibalism,
 
            until our bodies showed the bite of every tooth,
our flesh gave up, sunk
 
            in lumps at the ankles, those joints of least resistance,
swollen over the tops of our shoes.
 
            We’ve been undone, like the cane unwoven
from the wicker, patches frayed at the hems.
 
            Still, looking into the mirrors of our own eyes,
we see the girls we were,
 
            elegant girls whose cut glass vases remain unchipped,
whose lace doilies cover our sins and scars.

Elaine Mintzer

Elaine Mintzer has been published in a number of journals and anthologies including Cultural Weekly, Rattle, Silver Birch Press, Lindenwood Review, Cyclamens and Swords, and Voices Israel.  Her work was featured in 13 Los Angeles Poets. Elaine’s first collection, Natural Selections, was published by Bombshelter Press.  She writes and teaches writing in Los Angeles.