Dear friend and poet, Sarah Suksiri, dazzles as she reads a few of her poems. Listen here.
Month: February 2012
Jacarandas and JCL
Before embarking on my journey to midwest and MFAs, I lived with a good friend, JCL. One night she asked me to write a poem about jacarandas (amazing trees that bloom lavish periwinkle sticky) and I did. When I got to MFA school, I was nervously turned it in for my first workshop. Since then it has changed here, there, and back again. The poem, left in a drawer for many months, was rediscovered and reburied. It came out from hiding long enough to find residence in a small Canadian lit journal whose clean layout caught my eye. Poems like people are always on the move. Currently, JCL is living in South Africa, I’m in Chicago and the poem is home in Canada. [Update: the Canadian Magazine is now defunct, and the poem lives here]
Jacarandas Bloom
for Jen Chi Lee
for Jen Chi Lee
On 8th Street,
where the legless & drug-addicted
where the legless & drug-addicted
mumble pleading eyes
for the change in your pocket.
for the change in your pocket.
On Raymond Avenue,
where a teen shotandkilled
where a teen shotandkilled
sparked retaliation gunfire & prayer,
we fast-forward to exhale:
we fast-forward to exhale:
gnarled branches set loose a purple-blue.
The sidewalk luminous with
The sidewalk luminous with
this syrup, this bubble wrap. A water-
fall clipped to the trees,
fall clipped to the trees,
who have not
forgotten it is Spring—
forgotten it is Spring—
wring us out,
old dishrags, cleaned.
old dishrags, cleaned.
Big Hair Poets
I have the potential to be a big hair poet, at least with the hair part. My hair gets big when: I brush it and oddly enough when I do not brush it. On Tuesdays and Thursdays when I teach, I can’t seem to get the rhythm right with the commute, showering, tying it up, letting it dry especially in the winter grey mornings.
So this week I embraced it. Instead of trying to tie it back, I dug my fingers and messed up the hair a little more.
This moment before class when I could not tame the tresses with a hair band, and I was left with a choice to leave it as is or make it a bit bigger made me think about the personas we project around us. There is poet-professor I know who plays the part of tweed-coat-wild-grey-black-hair-unshaven-slightly-angry-poet professor so well. Does he know he is playing it? Does he try to or do his untucked button-ups and elbow patches just come naturally to him.
alessandra simmons 
