cooo....

so...i just got word that my fiction story: "cecilia" will be in the autumn issue of pax americana!
if you have not already...you can read the piece below, although the final version may have some changes/edits.
thank you to the editors over at pax...
and to all my friends on here who take the time to read my writing. the support means a lot.
much love,
zoë

* (website: paxjournal.com)

6:15 PM - 9 Comments - 18 Kudos - Add Comment

tennessee pocket gems... (summer book sharing)

I wanted to share this. I find it inspiring. It is a beautiful collection I just bought today. I have only read his plays… and now am excited to read his poetry. I know I will come away with many pocket gems.
Love to all,
Zoë

From : The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams
Edited by: David Roessel and Nicholas Moschovakis


Dear Tennessee,
I have recently been reading through the work of a lot of the most applauded younger American poets… These are the people who are being published in the literary quarterlies and are getting their books published.
My impression, after reading them en masse, is that they are simply decorators. They have a lot of technique and produce a beautiful surface, but they say absolutely nothing, and one gets the impression that they are afraid to touch real life or real human emotions and problems.
Your poems, on the contrary, have a way of getting right into the marrow of life. They are charged with authentic emotion and they tell a story which people can understand and identify themselves with. They are not slick in the way these other poets are smoothed and polished, but after reading them, I begin to think this is a considerable virtue in itself. Therefore I would like to urge you once again, and more firmly than ever, to put aside your modesty and get together for us a little selection of poems. Now please believe me, I know what I'm talking about. I think the public is getting sick and tired of elegant poetry that has no content. I think you will be amazed and delighted with the response that you would get to a volume of your own poems. There would undoubtedly be a few snippy reviews from some of the high-brow critics but I believe that the real reaction would be measured by the number of letters you would get from readers who were touched and deeply moved by your understanding of what really goes on inside people's hearts and minds.

- Letter from Jay Laughlin to Tennessee Williams
- April 4, 1955


A poem from the collection:

The Beanstalk Country

You know how the mad come into a room,
too boldly,
their eyes exploding on the air like roses,
their entrances from space we never entered.
They're always attended by someone small and friendly
who goes between their awful world and ours
as though explaining but really only smiling,
a snowy gull that dips above a wreck.

They see not us, nor any Sunday caller
among the geraniums and wicker chairs,
for they are Jacks who climb the beanstalk country,
a place of hammers and tremendous beams,
compared to which the glassed solarium
in which we rise to greet them has no light.

The news we bring them, common, reassuring,
drenched with the cheerful idiocy of noon,
cannot compete with what they have to tell
of what they saw through cracks in the ogre's oven.

And we draw back. The snowy someone says,
Don't mind their talk ,they are disturbed today!

3:31 PM - 5 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Cecilia...(short fiction)

I keep telling her it's best we don't get involved with the weather of a customer, cause after it all goes down, the sky's still the same knee scrape color and we're left watching the sun rise, smoking cigarettes in the alley, breathing in cat shit and jasmine, figuring out how we're going to sneak back into the youth center.

"We're a team, Cecilia," I tell her. "We're in this together."

"He was angry tonight," she says. Made us crawl through his doggy door. Wouldn't let me use the bathroom. I'm not going back there."

"He's giving us five hundred dollars."

"I don't give a shit about five hundred dollars."

The sun is a glob of yellow. We can hear the birds, and we know we'll have to sneak into the back window, while they take their showers. Which means, we won't be taking showers.

A bird lands near Cecilia's gold, almost everything she owns, studded purse.

"That's a Mourning Dove," she says. "Hear it coo? Listen!"

"I'm listening," I tell her, pushing the side of my face into her curls.

"One of those birds built a nest in the rafters of my bathroom window, way back, when I was living with my dad. Couldn't shower for weeks. Had to take the quietest baths," she says.

Together, we watch the mourning dove fly. Up, up, into the tree directly over our heads. Cecilia keeps looking up, towards the branches alive with morning light. Pink buds dancing on soft stems. Her eyes, wet and black, like soil waiting for seeds.

"I swear, I saw a little chair strapped to it's back. If I could just hop on," she says.

2:39 PM - 17 Comments - 36 Kudos - Add Comment

Spinning Wild... (a short story)

spinning wild is in pax americana journal! you can read it at: paxjournal.com (issue 8) just click on Zoë!
Thanks kindly for the support...
cheers,
Zoë

8:08 AM - 12 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

memories 1 and 2...

Memory 1


It was Venice Beach:

The way cigarettes first tasted. The color of roller skating legs. Helicopters breathing over National Blvd. Burying a rat underneath the peach tree. Eating on a futon, a lawn chair, the front steps. Hearing neighbors fucking, fighting, molesting. Jimmy Cliff singing: Many Rivers to Cross. Dylan singing: Simple Twist of Fate. A black and white TV set from Catherine and Chuck. Shoplifting at Rite Aid for Cherry Currant lipstick and Cover Girl face powder. Graffiti across bedroom walls. (Hate me / Love me in pastel chalk. When I grow up I want to be a rock star in sharpie green.) It was, "Skinny bitch, I’ll kick your ass tomorrow."



Memory 2


It was Marianna:

Her mother was a nanny. She had a little brother named Paulo and two baby pit bulls we used to play with. Their apartment was across the street. They had the white bread my father would never buy. The orange perfect slice of cheese. It was summertime and our chests were swollen, stung by an invisible bumblebee. Only fifty cents to swim at the Culver Plunge Pool. She went to Hamilton High and I ended up at Culver. We’d run into each other on Venice Blvd. A Marijuana patch sewn on my jeans. Her Spanish highlights, against the sun.

10:48 AM - 14 Comments - 28 Kudos - Add Comment

she's no ballerina...(fiction fragment)

We sit down together in a pastel colored booth at Denny's. There are still pieces of glitter clinging to her eyelashes.
"I'm starving," she says, opening the menu.
As the waitress comes over and pours our coffee, her long red nails chipped, a band-aid wrapped around her ring finger, I realize I haven't been home all day. I don't know what's going on with my father, Daniel or anything and eventually I'll have to head home and face it.
"I can't do this," I tell her. "Will you be able to get where you're going from here?"
She looks up at me, her face completely frozen and still.
"Uh huh," she says.
"I'm sorry I even got involved. Really, It's not my place."
"Is my father okay? Was the apartment okay?"
"It looked okay to me."
"Are you going to tell him you saw me?"
"Really, it's not my place."
I grab a couple dollars out of my wallet and throw them on the table.
"For the coffee," I say.

Towards the door, a woman wearing a white halter dress is begging her boyfriend for a quarter by the prize machine.
"I want to win that little bear," she tells him. " The one with the heart. The one that says, you're beautiful."
"You're not going to win," he says. "These things are rigged. Come on let's eat. You're drunk."
I walk out of Denny's. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Larissa sipping her coffee. The waitress is bringing her a bowl of something.
She's no ballerina, that girl. There's something sharp inside her, but its deep down, cutting her insides, not like Darlene, who cuts up the customers. Larissa doesn't want to let it out. She doesn't want anyone to see.

3:04 PM - 7 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment

gardening on la mirada ave. (a poem)

Do you remember digging
for the red darling? It was
our earth of razor splinters.
It was our blood egg.

We removed the flamingo,
the stone angel, the terra
cotta mother mary, the cactus,
the 99 cent store roses.

We dug past the rooted
necklace, the broken
charms, doll heads, cats
and birds to find her,

yawning.

Teeth knocked out,
replaced with seashells,
still batting wet red lashes.

1:21 PM - 10 Comments - 20 Kudos - Add Comment

must we preserve this architecture? (a poem)

we stand against a backdrop
rare to see - to swim across
this paper snake pond this
terrarium in dizzy glow

stars are missing arms

walled somewhat muted
it is a military
way of you

5:39 PM - 11 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

florescent sound...(fiction fragment)

I never like opening up the bar, being the first and only one inside the place, fumbling for the light switch, even though I've done it a thousand times. I'm afraid to step inside, unless all the lights are completely on. I unlock the huge iron padlock on the back door, grab the broom as if it were one long finger and push up the switch. The lights flicker like a candle about to die out, then flare up, buzzing with florescent sound. The bar is dusty and dim in the daylight, a color I can't describe, and I swear I can hear the sound of a man crying. It always stops after I pull the first chair down, off the table.

7:23 PM - 9 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment

like a flamingo on fountain ave ...(2 small fiction fragments)

He walks to the window and pulls up the blinds, letting the light claw at our faces. I look out the window with him, as if I have never seen the view. Through the sun burnt vines, we watch a woman trip on the sidewalk, her platform shoe flying forward. She stands on one leg, like a flamingo, rubbing her ankle.

***********************************************************************

We pass the bar and I wonder if Vladimir is inside, if his daughter has come home. I see his face clearly in my mind. Every wrinkle around his mouth, every peppery grey strand of hair on his head. I see his fingers, thick skinned, knotted like forest trees, gripping his glass of vodka. I see him gently swallowing the harsh liquid, letting it swim down his chest, as if it were something pure and holy.

5:18 PM - 7 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment