poetry & collage

i hardly ever mention that i'm a poet on this blog, and i'm not sure why. i think poetry and collage are not that far apart from one another. for me, poetry and collage both take images from the world around us. i'm always observing the stuff around me, i think i am a collector not only in ephemera, but in words and sounds and snippets of conversation. i often create alone in my attic room, but i am always pulling inspiration from the world outside.


for me collage is blending imagery and patterns into gesso and crayon and paint. and poems work with word and rhythm and sound and images. sometimes i incorporate words into my collages and i always have images in my poems.

so i wrote this poem yesterday & i like it because it reminds me of my collages.
it's untitled so far.

My name is a book of lives
I press leaves inside
Scraps of the city – one crumbled bus ticket, a newspaper washed from rain,
a torn photograph of two little girls

Look inside a red suitcase: You’ll find letters to no one

My name is the map of the world
A body of continents and stars

On the airplane
Look at the map: flights intersect
Travel miles & seas & hours & clouds

A window bird trills by my bed
Power lines crisscross streets
Like threads in the sky

A book of lives is a month of Saturdays
A seahorse from Peru
Perfume at my neck
All the threads in my body connect
The heart beats

Found & lost, inbetween, unexpected
These are all my names
Contradictory, jade-green, city grids
The last bite of an ice cream cone
These are all my names

A book of lives
Lives in my right hand
I clutch a pen in the other

A bird in a cage
Left handed
A piece of me is in everyone else
We are breathing in everyone else’s breath

All the rivers flower into the sea