barbara bullard
an open letter from our feature barbara bullard:
I received a
Bachelor of Arts degree in dance from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I work as a freelance writer. I am currently
supporting my writing habit by answering telephones and doing some technical writing. I am in the midst of writing and editing a manual
for parollees on “how to get a job.” The
best part about this writing assignment is that I get to end a lot of sentences with
prepositions.
In
addition to writing poetry, my muse amuses herself with art—the preferred medium for
the moment is weaving. I am in love with the
textures and colors of yarns. I look at just
about everything we do in life as a kind of weaving, especially writing.
I belong to a
group of poets called The Redondo Poets, and I read regularly at our Tuesday night
readings at Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach. I have featured at: Border’s on the Promenade, The Rose Café in Santa Monica, Sacred Grounds in
San Pedro, Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach, and most recently, at Cal State Long Beach in a
monthly reading series sponsored by the college.
I was invited
by the City of Redondo Beach to give a reading for a group of individuals in varying
stages of sight loss and blindness.
I am timidly
testing the publishing waters. To date, I
have one success—a poem published in the anthology Sips From Foreign Shores. I guess you would have to call me one of the
“newer voices” from the poetry community which you support so graciously at Moon
Dog Cafe.
GOING
BLIND
He
leads her the ten or so short steps
to
the place where she will perform,
with
the luminous half-light lead of the dancer
a
touch that barely exists.
Their
arms are lifted, fingers overlaid, gesturing
like
irises toward the indifferent darkness.
It
is too light a touch to save her from anything,
but
it is direct and lovely and telling
and
she follows it explicitly, joyfully,
as
if within the close, safe sphere
of
the inside slow, walk turn of a rumba.
She
is grateful to move this way again
with
dignity and grace
in
the brief stretch of steps
no
one else would think twice about taking.
She
moves with measured abandon
shedding
layers of wariness with each turn
within
the ten or so short steps
eliciting
a slow, deep memory beneath her skin
a
fluidity in the way she impresses space
in
the way she carves the air.
© 1998 Barbara Bullard
feature: jim doane
Jim
Doane writes junk mail by day, poetry by night. Each being good training for the other. He
hosts the Coffe Cartel reading in Redondo Beach every Tuesday, mainly because no one else
will. Only one of the venues he’s featured at previously is still open—Jim
wishes the Moon Dog better luck. His poetry has been self-published on several of the
better bathroom walls around town (that’s a lie, I got rejected). Why should you come
and listen: “My parents hate my poetry.”
The
Theology of Pooh
What
if Christopher stopped believing in you,
Winnie?
Would the world deflate like a blue balloon
slowly
losing the interest of air until flat?
Can
you hear him chopping down the trees of childhood,
clearing
the woods for coming development?
Perhaps
you’ll live on in a dream never remembered.
There
Tigger, Piglet, and you will dwell on faith
waiting
for his return. Living empty
adventures
of forgotten stuffed animals.
© Jim Doane 11-97
