IN MEMORIAM for Denise Franco by Valyntina Grenier
April 30, 2013
GOODBYE SONG
Don’t plague the butterfly
blessing the lemon bush
it’s like pushing a ballerina off balance
or stealing a bushel-full of tangelos
working to be ripe.
As intent as breath
cancer takes us
from the ones we love.
Truth waits for us to discover
Justice has her eyes covered.
Chaos harbors the scales.
Hectares of ash move out with the waves.
Heart travels through Chaos,
from life to peace,
freedom from fight
from fear.
On the day you die a roadrunner steaks across the road. We rent a canoe and laugh too hard as we remember how to row. We set out for some place to say a prayer and a sandy shoal to rest and picnic. I think of Giovanni and Nicholo in matching life jackets and bucket hats on the empty bench between us. We discover a halcyon cove where the birds loll on marooned branches. I place my hands over my chest stare up into the sky and weep. Jane recites her poem
Blue Nude
Please take this shy Spanish girl
whom they say you resemble
and ride with her, here are the field poppies
damaged by night, here your blue slumber, your horse.
Take this prayer, which you must surrender
in order to understand, as in moments when you are reduced
to the truth. When you are ready,
the beasts will be there. Let silence go through your heart,
the mild horse your blue one
already stirring toward morning, where it will be white.
While she recites I think of you in your final hours. I hear Chris Cornell singing “all night thing.” A lone heron watches us row back to the dock.
I pledge to see you, dear one. I will repeat you, your brilliance, the mode of your brow. Countless gestures impart understanding. Like a child fighting sleep we move towards closure. I will shrink into a bawl then open as you flower through time, loving, ardent, with the capacity of your spirit to give.
Denise Marie Franco b. December 18th 1967 d. March 13th 2013. In Denise’s words,
“On this Thanksgiving 2012, I give thanks for the wonderful life I have lived and the wonderful life I continue to live. I am blessed to have two wonderful children, and a wonderful man who light my world and fill my life with love on a daily basis. I am blessed to have a wonderful supportive family, and amazing supportive friends. Friends I consider like family! Friends I’ve known most my life (you know who you are) , and ones I’ve met in recent years, all who add substance and peace and love to my world.
Thank You… because I feel very fortunate!”
The slideshow is composed of photographs taken by Denise. “Blue Nude” is from Jane Miller’s Many Junipers, Heartbeats. The image above is of a poem I wrote several years ago. Brian Watson found it among Denise’s papers and read it at her memorial celebration in Malibu California at the Nicholas Canyon Chumash Village.
A LITTLE MYTH FOR JANE
February 14, 2012
YOU have my heart.
IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT ! WE HAVE POEMS TO LISTEN TO ! FOUST ! JENSEN ! MILLER ! HASS !
January 30, 2011
In the tradition of the real live Back Room Live, formerly held at Mc Nally’s Irish Pub in Oakland Ca. the last Saturday of the month at 7pm, I’ve chosen four poems to read to you. Hope you like hearing them as much as I love reading them +V.
click to hear: BREACH AND ORISON I. TERROR OF BEGINNINGS by Robert Hass from Time and Materialsm
click to hear: BAD BOATS by Laura Jensen from Bad Boatsm
click to hear: VOW by Graham Foust from Leaving the Room to Itselfm
click to hear: CODA from A Palace of Pearls by Jane Miller
DON’T FORGET TO SEND US YOUR WRITING ON LOVE!!! We’ll be posting writing and voice files about LOVE all February long. Send us a page, paragraph, chapter, scene, essay, article or poem along w/ your photo JPEG, bio, and if you have one or can make one, an mp3 file of you reading the piece. We’re reading Now – February 14th 2011. So, send us some LOVE to backroomlive@gmail.com
Join us LIVE at Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson Az Saturday September 18th at 6pm for readings by ! Karen Brennan ! Jane Miller ! Valyntina Grenier !
September 11, 2010
Conrad Wilde is located at 439 N. 6th Ave. #171 Tucson Az.
Life-long Press will be producing a limited number of handmade chapbooks featuring writing by each of the authors!
The writers, their writing, and voices will be posted here throughout the month. Scroll down to see whats up.
JANE MILLER reading Ecstasy
September 2, 2010
click to hear: Jane Miller reading ECSTASY
As the ancients detail it
ecstasy passes
over us in a mist of particles
it lives bare
dies unburied
I finally understand it is raining
it is beautiful
a couple of hawks in a tree
& not the tree entire
MIDNIGHTS, poetry and prose poems by Jane Miller, is Saturnalia Press artist/poet Collaboration Series, #4, 2008, with visual art contributed by Beverly Pepper and an introduction by C.D. Wright. Miller’s other recent work is the book-length sequence, A Palace of Pearls (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), which received the 2006 Audre Lorde Prize in Poetry.
She is a recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award for Poetry, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. A resident of Tucson, she is Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at The University of Arizona, having served as the program’s director 1999-2003.
