Spring 2009, Volume 6

Poetry by Consuelo I. Marshall

Circle of a hundred flames

Would you come here and sit by me? It won't take long,
it is not a complicated story. My husband is watching a movie
on the big screen I bought him for Christmas.

Excuse my sneezing. My head feels like it will burst,
those two orange earplugs holding in dusky air.
Aside from that, I am glad you are here, my paper and pen.

I can't eat, dropping two sizes since the wedding.
In the bathroom mirror, my eyes see a broadening.
The cat uses his whiskers to see if he fits through a fence.
I know if my head goes through the bars, the rest follows.

A goodbye kiss in the morning and there is no food.
Crouching hunger much like rain, once blown away—leaves a clean slate.
I read in a cook book once that it is a trait of the heart—
fanned into being by an Avocet's wingspan.

Teenage girls with stork legs glide by me in the mall.
Cell phones are appendages, drawing the eyes away from hips.
I read once in a book that they believe
if their lips caress, then bite and swallow a candy bar,
it penetrates their veins, and bloats body parts
beyond recognition. .

The rock star of poetry puts new strings

on his Hummingbird, mother-of-pearl inlays; sound so sweet real birds swarm to taste hints of
color on tortoise-etched blossoms.

The Zen Buddhist poet and I sit in an old house, now a restaurant in Phoenix. We lunch
surrounded by those who thirst for tuberose iced tea, exotic bathrooms with mosaics that climb
walls.

We talk about the rock star of poetry, his college friend who teaches in Arizona. If poems paid
like music, their names would be in the Poetry Hall of Fame and never be forgotten.

We need an Old Poet's House, I say, a rambling place with a world of rooms—a kitchen big
enough for fifteen poets. More sway on hanging benches on the cardinal porch, listen to the rock
star of poetry play his Hummingbird—swinging to the rhythm of lines, the rhythm of the garden.

Keith Richards plays "Dead Flowers," then "Let It Bleed," "Love in Vain," and "No
Expectations." His Gibson trademark emblazed on my mind-that honey-red Cherry Sunburst finish.

I want to write about lost love.


BIO:  : Consuelo Marshall attended the Fresno State University MFA Creative Writing Program in 1997. She has written articles on the arts for The Ventura County Reporter, Lifescapes Magazine and The Ventura County Star. Additional articles include; Artists as Advocates, Studio Notes 2001 and a case study, Workplace Giving: A source for arts support, 1999 for the NEA website. In 2005 Marshall served as poetry editor for ARTLIFE Magazine and her poems have been published in The Pacific Grove Poetry Anthology, 1987, Zambomba, 1998, Fresh Bread, 2000, Convergence, Spring 2004, Ventura County Star, 2004, Convergence, Winter 2004, ArtLife, 24th Anniversary Issue, November 2004, Poetry Zone Poets of Santa Barbara, Volume IV, 2005.