2010s · All the Tiny Anchors · Anchors (Poetry with Music) · Poetry · Recordings

Sunken

Click here to listen to live recording with music!

You were always in need of sleep
always closing your eyes
lying against me
I built myself around you
a place of safe-rest

Let those deep gut-long sighs
out into our warm space
rubbed your dark-circled eyes
when I bathed you
in my wide comfort

I pressed for your surrender
my hands on your jaw
I know your eyelids
better than your eyes
You said it was me, not it

You said it serious
so I’d believe you
but sleep is not surrender
and job-tired was your cover

Your heart-tired sunk me
under, down, below
There isn’t a long enough bed
I’d never be enough rest

First published on Cadence Collective

Events · Feature Readings

April 5, 2014 Pondwater Presents: Nancy Lynée Woo and Sarah Thursday

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On Saturday, April 5th, we are taking over Pondwater! Nancy and I have been planning and plotting to present poetry in a beautiful and unique way.

Here is the information from the event page on Facebook.

Pondwater Presents: “We Are Not The Silence”: An Outdoor Showcase with Nancy Lynée Woo and Sarah Thursday

Synchronicity runs rampant between these two. Nancy and Sarah first crossed paths less than one year ago when they met at The Poetry Lab. They quickly realized they shared the same zeal and fervor for the world of poetry, and they seemed to have approached that a-ha moment of “Yes, let’s do this!” around the same time. So they began to write, read, workshop and attend countless poetry events together. Throughout these experiences, they also connected on growing up with struggle, living as empowered, passionate women, and manifesting dreams of bright poetry futures.

Sarah and Nancy are thrilled to be guests of the ever-charming Pondwater estate! They will be showcasing some of their best and least silent work – in conversation with one another. Plus, they’ll be accompanied by their musical friends – yes, music! They’re lovingly calling the evening, “We Are Not The Silence.” Bring your biggest hearts.

Nancy Lynée Woo has been writing poems since she was 8 years old but is only recently out of denial that she does in fact write poems. (She does in fact write poems!) In the last year, her work has been published or is forthcoming in a few journals, such as Artemis Journal, The Subterranean Quarterly, CHEAP POP, Cease, Cows and of course the wonderful Cadence Collective.

Before the poetry fire was fully lit, Nancy earned a degree in sociology from UC Santa Cruz, then spent the lost years after college flitting around as a Jane of a million trades. Now, she is working full-time as an editor while striving toward a first collection of poems. You can see her freelance website at spilltheink.net and follow her on Twitter @fancifulnance.

Sarah Thursday is a music obsessed, Long Beach poetry advocate, member of The Poetry Lab, and teacher of 4th and 5th graders. Poetry has been a part of her life since she tried to write songs on her grandmother’s guitar at age 7. Without musical talent, poetry became her song. After a ten year hiatus, she returned to her song and dove into the poetry community by creating and running CadenceCollective.net, a website to feature Long Beach area poets and poetry events. With the guidance of co-host G. Murray Thomas, she now co-hosts 2nd Mondays Poetry Party at Gatsby Books.

She is honored to have forthcoming or been published in The Long Beach Union (CSULB), The Atticus Review, East Jasmine Review, Lummox, Carnival, Ishaan Literary Review, and Mayo Review. Her full length collection, All the Tiny Anchors, is in the works. Follow her at SarahThursday.com.

16504 E. Masline St., Covina, CA 91722

Events · Feature Readings

Rapp Salo(o)n Reading on Friday, March 7th

Reading on Friday, March 7th in Santa Monica at the Rapp Salo(o)n with lots of cool people:

Also, featuring Language Chorus, MAN POEMS; Singer/Songwriter: AMILIA K. SPICER; Vocal Duo: THE CLOWNS WILL EAT ME with MASON SUMMIT and SPENCER SHAPEERO, 8PM Open Reading Sign-UP 8:30 ShowTime

1436, 2nd Street, Santa Monica, California 90401 Facebook Event Here.

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2014 · Events · Publications

Lummox 2 Anthology!

This anthology has so many incredible poets and poetry, like G. Murray Thomas, Daniel McGinn, Marianne Stewart, Anna Badua, Raundi Moore-KondoRD Armstrong, Zack Nelson-Lipiccolo! I completely recommend investing in it! My poem, “Summer Drunk”, is on page 156.

http://www.lummoxpress.com/lc/lummox-anthology-2/LUMMOX2cover

2010s · 2014 · Poetry · Publications

All the Ways I Love You, Long Beach

Check out my poem on Cadence Collective, about my home city, Long Beach. I moved literally more than 20 times before I was ten and started my eighth school in 5th grade. I always felt out of place because we were really poor and pretty much homeless (not one of our own) for a few years. Then in 1984, we moved to Long Beach to a duplex in an alley off 7th and Junipero. It wasn’t a nicer place, but our tornado lives just blended in with the rest of my surroundings. (Which is what Child of the Alleyway is about.)

I moved to North Long Beach for middle school and high school. It felt more like a normal life than anything I’d know before then. After high school, I moved back to the South Bay area for a while, but it never felt like home. I returned to Long Beach in ’98 and have lived in almost each corner of it. It still makes sense to me. It’s diverse and messy and cultured and poor and familied and wealthy and gangster and ghetto and historic and avenued and civic and artsy and we all mix together in this beautiful stew.

All the Ways I Love You, Long Beach

2010s · Poetry

Sonic Screwdriver

I wish I had a sonic screwdriver
I wish I had a magic wand
I wish I had a time machine
or pixie dust or a book of spells

I wish I had a genie lamp
I wish I had the holy grail
I wish I had a flying carpet
or a portal or an Atlantis key

I wish you were three
in the back seat of my car
singing an 80s Cure song

I wish you were sixteen
driving with me to open mic
singing an 80s Cure song

I wish my love was enough
I wish you weren’t there
I wish you and me were anywhere
far and away anywhere else

5-2-13

2000s · Healing the Heart of Ophelia · Poetry

Concrete Decay

He was a redhead, freckle-faced boy.
His eyes were pale blue emptiness.
Fair skinned with blonde eyebrows
that got lost on his forehead.
He squinted all the time,
when he looked at you,
when he listened.
He was inarticulate and lacking grace.
He was a white-trash junkyard kid lost
in the wilderness of waist high grass and bamboo.
Lost in punk rock and Billy Idol snarls,
mohawks and dog-collar studs.
He bought me a Barbie tea set
and I felt like he loved me.
I forgave him for nailing My Little Pony
to the wall with a hairspray-spiked mane.
He came to my church with a motorcycle and tattoos,
after the Marines with spaceship conspiracies
and patent worthy inventions,
with his red hair and freckled-face
and his eyes as pale as ice.
I saw him on Christmas Eve
after his release with his crystal-meth mom.
He hugged me with his sweat-lined skin
at my job at the discount store.
I sunk away from him and his toxic residue.
He called me his little sister, but I only smiled
back a discount employee smile.
I stepped back from his oozing disease
that poisoned his reasoning,
that made him eat dogs
and break into automobiles for a place to sleep.
I stepped back from the dementia
he wore like a tattooed-robe on the day before Christmas.
When in backyards as big as city blocks,
the grass grew as tall as children,
we could hide in the long blades
like rabbits resting from the bloodhounds.
We built a world of bamboo forts and yachts
through the holes in the chain link fence.
We mastered block walls between junkyards
and guard dogs and newly constructed condominiums.
We lived adjacent to a graveyard of demolished houses.
We explored the wreckage like Greek ruins.
He was my brother then in our world of demolition.
Wild and without restraint,
the games were more than hide and seek.
Truth and dare. Did I dare?
Red-haired with children in a line,
waiting to prove bravery.
I am not that kind of sister.
I left the game.
I left the decay of concrete
and steel rusted through.
I left the forts and yachts
and green blades as tall as children,
as tall as rabbits.
I left my half brother
as I went back to my work
at the discount store on Christmas Eve.
I left the disease I saw seeping through his veins.
I am not his sister.
I went back to counting money
and separating credit slips and ATMs.
I am not his sister.

3-9-01
Included in a forthcoming project called Please Judge: Short Stories Based on the Songs of Roky Erickson.

1990s · Poetry · Things Mean A Lot At The Time

The Disaster On Aisle 8

Some people are better off
never to be seen again
a thought I never thought
until tonight at the grocery store
I saw you by the bottled juices
with your blushing bride
in her child like naiveté
pushing a cart of potato buds
your voice got softer, almost queer
like she tamed your wilderness
I once knew as your wicked smile
I can’t help but wonder
how she erased the shadows
and smoothed out your wrinkles
I guess it’s only fair
you found your redemption at last
and me and my continuous journey
still hoping and getting burned
by similar lies like you
why did you have to meet my eyes
as if you still had the power
to climb in and destroy all mine
you go on now-I am passing by
we’ll never be mutual companions
not if I had my way