Polynesian Rhythms at FPL

Young, older, and everyone between came out last evening to the FPL to watch and learn about Polynesian dance from the wonderful dance team Pele of Polynesia.  In celebration of Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, Pele of Polynesia featured traditional dances from Tahiti, Samoa, New Zealand, Fiji, and Hawai'i. Group leader Bernadette (Pele) also expounded on some of the history of these traditional dances. A special thanks as well to Josie and Jim Travlos for helping to arrange this wonderful event, and for sharing their cultural knowledge with those in attendance. Audience participants of all ages had a great time learning these dances and listening to wonderful Polynesian music.

3 poems by FPL Poetry Series host, Oscar Peña

 

Oscar C. Peña was born and raised in Kingsville, Texas.  His poetry reflects a love of family, growing up in a small town and a belief that joy, pain, sorrow, laughter and love are meant to be shared.

A member of The Poetry Society of Texas, Gulf Coast Poets, and the Galveston Poets Round Table, Oscar has been a featured poet at the Webster Barnes and Noble; Seabrook Coffee Oasis Poetry Reading Series; and was a Juried Poet at the 2007 Houston Poetry Fest.

The three poems below are from Oscar C. Peña's book Fire of Thorns.

Protest at Saint Martin’s

My mother gave me two dimes

before mass started---

one’s for you and one’s for God.

Men reached out with baskets

and she noticed I gave nothing.

Give the man themuuuney!

I cannn’t.

Did you lose your dime?

Nooo, just God’s, I whispered in reply.

Eight years old and dry-mouthed nervous

during first communion; when Padre José places

the hostia on my tongue the wafer flutters

in my mouth and hangs there like a bat.

My tongue stabs at the intruder, my eyes are melting,

I’m gonna vomit if I don’t spit.

A woman, in widow’s black, grabs

and pulls me to her bosom.  Her rosary worrying my teeth,

she jabs a gnarled finger and rams the cracker

down my throat.

It was a miracle---

That night…

Amá, I was kinda wondering…

Mom interrupted---

don’t worry, God will find his dime.

~~Oscar Peña

Cibola

This mythical city of gold drew Conquistadores

to the new world in search of that which does not exist.

I look into the water

and see what others do not,

viridian, ochre, gold, beryllium ores

of rose, emerald and aquamarine,

coral, silver, yellowed reds and jade.

Dive deep,

reaching for what calls

a little deeper,

but I cannot touch.

Now afraid

the surface far above

I turn back

and swim, and swim, and swim.

Help me,

tired, too far---

I break into the light,

gasp the air and vow never…

I look into the water

and see what others do not,

viridian, ochre, gold, beryllium ores---

And I dive.

~~Oscar Peña

Carlotta

My father said,

    I took care of my sister

    when I was eight years old

    while Papá y Mamá picked cotton.

    We stayed under a tin roof

     hiding from the sun.

     She died.

My father said,

    I walked with Papá

    and other men to a ranch

    near the town of Carlotta to collect wages---

    no one went to knock

    or call the man out.

My father said,

    Ranchos always have dogs looking for an excuse,

    we were announced … we waited…

    kicked rocks and waited…

    talked about weather and women… and waited.

    The man finally came out and asked what we wanted.

     I hated that man.

My father said---

    Lo odio.

Seventy years and his words still dripped

strong and sweet as wild honey

waiting to sting.

My father never told me his sister’s name.

~~Oscar Peña

Standing room only for speaker Dan Illerich

A standing room crowd came to hear featured speaker Dan Illerich speak and answer questions surrounding the events documented in Judith Heimann’s book The Airmen and the Headhunters: a true story of lost soldiers, heroic tribesmen and the unlikeliest rescue of World War II. Dan is also the featured narrator of the Airmen and Headhunters PBS documentary.  Dan Illerich lives in Friendswood, Texas with his wife Mary. He is the last surviving Airmen in The Airmen and the Headhunters story. He provides the only first hand testimony of the American Airmens’ experiences with the Dayak tribes in Borneo. Of the ten men in the B-24 bomber crew shot down by the Japanese in November 1944, seven survived the parachute from the plane. Dan tells their story.

2 poems by Net Poet Society poet Dede Fox

After the unexpected publication of her poem "Here and Now" in the 2006 Lone Star College literary journal, Dede Fox decided she enjoyed having an audience.  She signed up for an InPrint poetry workshop, bonded with her fellow writers, and became a working poet.   Her "Chapultepec Park" won AIPF’s 2008 Christina Sergeyevna Award, and she was twice a juried poet at Houston Poetry Festival.  .  Dede’s poetry appears in the Texas Poetry Calendar, di-verse-city, Sol Magazine, The Enigmatist, The Poetry Revolt, and Swirl.  TCU Press published her children’s novel and Highlights Magazine several of her non-fiction articles. Librarian at Collins Intermediate in the Woodlands, Dede has taught with Houston’s Writers in the Schools program and is on the board of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council. 

Bewitched

            No evil fairy heaped curses upon

this charmed child with hair like swirled

honey, chocolate brown eyes, creamy

skin sweet with kisses.  Laughter bubbled

from her, sweet grandchild, long awaited.

         

           Grandmother, overjoyed, wove

dresses from the finest flax, combed

wool for the softest blankets, knit

tiny sweaters until her fingers bled.

Gnarled walking cane in hand, she hobbled

long miles, presented her gifts to the royal family.

          Ladies-in-Waiting recoiled at the pungent

odor of the salve spread on Grandmother’s aching

limbs, covered their noses with lace handkerchiefs

while children hid behind their skirts, pointed and

jeered at Grandmother’s simple clothes and manners.

Blushing, her princess daughter turned away,

distracted the court with the antics of her baby.   

          Grandmother limped home. Soon twisted

vines tightened over her cottage, so far from the palace.

The old woman no longer threw open shutters, lost

hope of seeing her daughter or granddaughter travel

down the slow path in her dark woods.

          The curse was on her, Grandmother gifted

with a precious child she could neither see nor hear

nor smell nor hold close.

          Anger fueled Grandmother’s stone oven,

with a fire so intense that it baked her into a wrinkled

old crone who hacked away entanglements.

          She covered her cottage with sweets--

honey swirls, chocolate kisses, creamy caramels--

waited to lure small strangers inside, ones so delicious

that she could keep them caged, fatten them,

                                                    and eat them up. 

~Dede Fox 

5546,

I have worn your street number

like a hated tattoo--

removal will be painful.

Inspectors say your cast iron pipes decayed

under a slab riddled with fault lines,

like our grieving family.

Nine months to repair,

nine months to say

good-bye.

Notes flutter from every open drawer;

reminders of things lost and found,

found and lost.

What treasure lies beneath layers of labels

peeled from the phone? A number

to reconnect a mother’s scattered thoughts?

At the bottom of a painted wooden bowl.

lie memories of a father’s fingers cracking

pecans with a nutcracker, silver as tears.

In bedrooms

no sock left unknotted,

no pocket unchecked.

Many spill hidden riches:

an old letter, a tarnished spoon,

watches repaired by Grandpa’s steady hands.

Bright patches inside faded wallpaper

trace spaces once filled with grandchildren’s art;

stair-stepped little ones once pointed with pride.

Will buyers know there are mismatched door keys

four, the number of children raised here,

each unique?

5546, a street number,

echoing heartbeats,

enduring tattoo.

 

~Dede Fox

Other poems by Dede Fox:

Glow
Spring Cleaning

Video poems by Dede Fox:
Bewitched

Rothko revelations: poems by Kathryn Lane



Rothko Chapel, Houston, TX

This past April 4, the Friendswood Public Library hosted a poetry reading by a group of poets known as Net Poets Society. Their newest member, a fine poet by the name of Kathryn Lane, read a poem inspired by the work of artist Mark Rothko. I was reminded how much I admire this artist’s work and later asked Kathryn if she would share these Rothko inspired poems with our from the reference desk readers. Those of us who live in the Houston area are privileged to be close to The Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, and Cy Twombly Gallery off of Sul Ross Street.  I have visited these collections many times and have never left without feeling inspired by the experience.

This entry is timely given the fact that the Menil is celebrating Rothko Chapel’s fortieth anniversary with “an installation of rarely exhibited canvases by Mark Rothko, closely related to those the artist completed for the chapel.” 

Below we find two poetic expressions of the work of Mark Rothko by poet Kathryn Lane.

Kathryn Lane began writing fiction in 2009 after leaving an international finance position in Latin America and the Caribbean with Johnson & Johnson.  Her short stories have been published in Swirl and The Texas A&M Border Fiction Anthology.  While attending a writing workshop at Texas A&M in November of 2011, Kathryn attended a poetry reading and fell in love with the intimacy of poems and began experimenting with poetry.  Since then, her poems have appeared in Homeless Diamonds, a London-based poetry journal, Primitive Archer, Swirl and The Poetry at Round Top Anthology.  A native Spanish speaker, Kathryn has performed poetry in both English and Spanish.

Kathryn is a board member of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council. 

Brushstrokes 

Subdued light bathes the gallery

where paintings hang

in a mysterious, almost spiritual, quality.

Brushstrokes talk in hushed tones

over rabbit skin glue,

revealing shadows of vagueness

apparent in the under painting,

tails of pigment fanning out into fuzzy edges

like a million nerve endings dancing

on the reds, maroons and crimsons.

After all these years, the old

yet energetic blocks of color palpate

the artist’s energy: his ecstasies, his tragedies,

his doom, like a shadow of the man falling

upon a red canvas, foretelling the future.

Black Paintings

The paintings were black with a hint of brown, perhaps;

they hung on walls—brooding;

the rectangles hovering tensely next to each other

like unhappy lovers.

The silence suddenly seemed profound;

the room acquired a dimension beyond the mundane—

like the artist would have liked—

space widened, diffused light became three dimensional

and the paintings reflected movement and modulation of color.

I sat there feeling the luminosity of silence

observing dim light infuse breath and life

into the black paint until the silence inside of me

became too much to bear.

~ Kathryn Lane                   

More poems by Kathryn Lane:

From the Rickshaw

Rangoli

Taj