Video: Silent Whistle

* Spinion Note: This piece was previously published in Quail Bell Magazine.

Director: Tyler Rosado

Winter. Sparse. Cold.
Yet nature continues to cycle Her course. Bare branches resemble cerebral synapses. A symbol of a macro and microcosmic unity between all organisms.

Book Review: The Green Condition

*Spinion Note: This piece has previously been published in Quail Bell Magazine.

The Green Condition is a lyrical collage composed of raccoons, metal-casting, Roman history, Seattle, and the trials and tribulations of moving. Though Colen dives into these distinct and metaphoric images in a stream of conscious-style, she ties them together through the narrator’s revealing one-liners:

Once I know what to listen for, I hear it all the time.

The Green Condition evokes the lush, overgrown arboreal environment that is the Pacific Northwest. At the same time, it evokes the loneliness that comes when a new job absorbs a significant other. The narrator has no choice but to observe her (his?) new surroundings.
When she leaves I put her toothbrush in my mouth. I hold it here two hours.
Comparisons of Seattle and Rome further evoke the narrator's loyalty to nostalgia. Unlike Rome, Seattle stands, and continues growing. Does the narrator hope for the fall of Seattle where the couple can return to their old life?

At one point we had a symbiosis. An understanding of how a life should look.

Enter the raccoons and metal-casting the narrator continues dissecting during these lonely days. Colen weaves these vastly different images together in a way that reveals a the narrator’s resolve in this new environment: scavenging to survive and building a thick skin despite a dissolvable core.

In the green condition there must be adequate strength for handling.

I am most interested in the bronze sculpture of the wolf, and the core that was made to hold it. The core that was designed to come apart in the end once the casting metal had cooled, held shape.

Was it the move? The raccoons? The longing for a fading love? The casting of a new shell to survive? We won’t know—but through these images, though at first glance appear irrelevant, Colen deconstructs them in a way that inspires readers to find symbolism and meaning in the most uncharted manner.




Elizabeth J. Colen is the author of the poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Steel Toe Books, 2010) and Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies (Jaded Ibis Press, 2012), as well as flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (Rose Metal Press, 2011). She lives in Seattle.

Leyla's Lament

Photo: DAZ

Mama, how do you make the pain go?

Do I wear my veil

and tuck my tears

in for sweet dreams?

Mama, do I cover my skin?

Will the thick, black cloak

hug my scars

the way you hug me?

Mama, do I sit behind latticed windows?

Are those lacy shadows

just whispers

of your lullabies?

And, Mama, will my scars shine?

Shine like the sun through my window,

where wind parades past the bars

and twirls my eyelashes into a curtsy?

Wait, Mama, what about my eyes?

Will they crystalize when tears flow?

Like gems in a dark cave?

Will they still shine?

Stone Cold Fox

photo: Rachel Thibault

Stone Cold Fox

lush Lux peach

celestial azure orbs

misty musk soddened mounds

siren squeal start

listen glisten glow

scatter scented glass

shatter shrill drop

crunch squeeze crunch

crumple stumble stop

flip flop buzz deflate

nuzzle pulsate

fade

fade

  fade...

Under the Table

photo: DAZ

Under the Table
 

I could be losing my touch.

That complex cleverness dripping my muchness

into a puddle of doubt on the floor

underneath a table of gum stalactites: 

crystallized, chewed-up, neon mounds,

once full of cerebral flavor,

oozed in muse booze, now

withered and wrinkled.

I'm left alone to spelunk

for my gems of rhymes.

Subterranean

 

photo: Lib Hedgepath

Subterranean

Take me into the tunnels below
the manholes and oak roots,
where lights no longer echo
and noise falls mute.

There I'll find my voice of reason
amidst cackling pipes
and graffiti of treason -
signs of a once-lived life.

Where darkness becomes a friend
and no longer alien.
Within these walls I mend
myself beneath the subterranean.

Denial

photo: Lib Hedgepath

Denial  

click clock staccato of rain drops
against her window pane
that frames a charred horizon

stained with lofty clouds.

the door creeps open with a creak,
pouring in a draft that trips the light
into a shadowed promenade against the walls,
as the moon of her lust and doffed desire
waxes through the threshold.

his bare feet shuffle to the hearth
and stop at the edge of heat,
he sits next to her and tells her
"Please tame this fire."