#coleman stevenson

[jeffalessandrelli]

Sunday Nov. 1st book release reading with PDX heavies Dao Strom, Emily Kendal Frey and Coleman Stevenson. One last respite before Nov. 3rd.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqcOmspjkuGtU5C1BFovvEytiFsuOXuuKp

https://bit.ly/2RNBJOV

[susanthejournal]

TWO POEMS / Coleman Stevenson

The Cinnabar Fields 1.    Found afield, a blade of grass        singing in the gap        between joined thumbs. 2.    We have ideas        and we are burning        to project them. 3.    We have ideas and they are burning us up. 4.    Magician stones are cinnabar        and cherry red garnets.        Standing inside a ring of fire is Process.        Fire is a mood and an antique tool. 5.    Time is on fire and disappearing into blackened wisps,        into embers that scratch apart in the grate. 6.    The mechanical fortune teller        has confirmed this for fifty        years in the same slow        jerking movements. 7.    The increasing gentleness of adulthood        weighs on some in a progression of Wednesdays;        for them, to douse is to capture. 8.    I do not think the Alchemists tired of turning lead into gold. 9.    The Magician cuts wands        on Wednesday, Woden’s Day,        the day of Mercury. 10.  Mercury sulfide of the red-spotted stone        held in a salty palm        activates the Trinity. 11.  There is no fire without air. 12.  The whistle in the grass. Couldn’t Say, and Didn’t: Part 3 When to the heat I commit my skin I cannot rise too fast. That woman I hate is still alive though one day she won’t be. That ruining woman is still alive inside. Outside, she lives in a house near mine. Things waiting to bite have simple names so you may not see them coming. Should I be punished for bringing them into the house on my hair? Must do away with everyone who calls me by the old name. People I know are always there in the room, and so am I, but also never. ⁂ Coleman Stevenson is the author of Breakfast: 43 Poems (Reprobate/GobQ Books, 2015) and The Accidental Rarefication of Pattern #5609 (bedouin books, 2012). Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications such as Paper Darts, Seattle Review, Gramma, E-ratio, Louisiana Literature, Mid-American Review, and the anthology Motionless from the Iron Bridge. She is co-curator of The Doppelgänger Museum. She writes, designs, teaches, and runs her divination business, The Dark Exact, in Portland, OR.