#sydney lea

[kochalka]

This should be really special!  I drew a wordless comic called The Seagull and the Star, VT poet laureate Syd Lea composed a poem to accompany it, and then composer Joseph Hallman composed a piece of music to go with the words and pictures.  It will be performed live by the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble on Friday Feb 17 at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier, VT and Saturday Feb 18 at the Black Box Theatre, Main Street Landing, in Burlington, VT.  http://vcme.org/music/

[loudlylovingreview]

Sydney Lea: Perspective

I know a certain woman who, unfailingly coos about her communion with her two ceaselessly squalling Siamese cats. She does so wherever she goes. Given the opportunity, she also tells whoever will listen that little kids are gross. She does this knowing full well my wife and I are parents to five, grandparents to eight. Snotty noses, poop in their pants, scabs on their knees. That sort of snide…

Sydney Lea: Perspective

[loudlylovingreview]

Sydney Lea: Before the Operation

The surgeon assures my wife and me:“a little scrape, then zip! Home-free.”How did age come on with so little warning? I woke up in tears early this morning,then put on an album by the great Art Blakey.I needed distraction from the night’s dream of Bobby,sweet friend killed in ‘Nam back too many years.I wept to have dreamt that young man in tears.I wanted diversion too from the knifeand this…

Sydney Lea: Before the Operation

[smashpages]

Two laureates team up for ‘The Exquisite Triumph of Wormboy’

James Kochalka and poet Sydney Lea bring you the adventures of a worm with a human face.

[exceptindreams]

Fathomless | Sydney Lea

"Fathomless" Sydney Lea

I remember that store, and the nasty redneck whose stink seemed a challenge to everyone in it. The scene is decades old, but I'm still confused that no one took up the challenge—including me, though I liked an occasional fight back then. The prospect of pain

meant less to me once, I guess. An aneurism had just killed my brother, so the pain I'm talking about was my body's. I breathed up another pain that day. I checked the man's beat pickup; why would he want them, those skunks knee-deep in its bed? I left the lot

still more confused, my sweet retriever shivering on the seat beside me. The godawful smell still clung to the dog's wet coat, and my own. There'd be no more hikes for us that morning: rain had arrived, bone-chilling. If you killed a skunk, why would you keep the thing?

To kill some time, I stopped at The Jackpot View. We've always called it that. Five mountaintops bled into mists to my east in New Hampshire. The sudden squalls spilled leaves on the woods-floor's pall of nondescript hue. Now he was dead. Now my brother was dead.

I can't define any God, but only this morning, I caught a whiff of road-killed skunk and thought I could speak of Him or Her or It as surely as I could tell you the slightest thing concerning the man I'm remembering now, the one who shot

or trapped or clubbed those miserable reeking creatures. The smallest enigmas we ever encounter remain as hard to explain as all the epical ones. I've failed for years to fathom the death of my brother; but it's just as hard to understand why a scene

in an old Vermont store should linger like dead-skunk odor, which if you've lately been tainted comes back to scent you whenever a rain blows in—or like some pains you may have thought you'd forever gotten over, but which at some odd prompting come back to haunt you.

[rabbit-light]

My Wife's Back

All naked but for a strap, it traps my gaze As we paddle: the dear familiar nubs Of spine-bone punctuating that sun-warmed swath,

The slender muscles that trouble the same sweet surface. We've watched and smiled as green herons flushed And hopped ahead at every bend, and we've looked up

At a redtail tracing open script on a sky So clear and deep we might believe It's autumn, no matter it's August still. Another fall

Will be on us before we know it. Of course we adore That commotion of color, but it seems to come Again as soon as it's gone away. They all do now.

We're neither young anymore, to put matters plainly. My love for you over thirty years Extends in all directions, but now to your back as we drift

And paddle down the tranquil Connecticut River. We've seen a mink scratch fleas on a mudflat. We've seen an osprey start to dive but seeing us,

Think better of it. Two phoebes wagged on an ash limb. Your torso is long. I can't see your legs But they're longer, I know. Phoebe, osprey, heron, hawk:

Marvels under Black Mountain, but I am fixed On your back, indifferent to other wonders: Bright minnows that flared in the shallows,

The gleam off that poor mink's coat, Even the fleas in its fur, the various birds —The lust of creatures just to survive.

But I watch your back. Never have I wished more not to die.

Sydney Lea

[kochalka]

Two panels from a collaboration I’m working on with the poet Sydney Lea and the composer Joseph Hallman.  Yes a music/poetry/comics hybrid performance is on the horizon for us.

[therumpus]

Spotlight: James Kochalka And Sydney Lea’s “LEAF”