Mooncat

Lithograph, 7 x 5 1/2"

Dark finch coming
for throaty sips
minds the mooncat,
a stilled tail.


My neighbor's cat, Moonbeam, felt it was his right to come into the house and eat my kitty's food. He was very thin, so I let him. My kitty, Zoe, had objections. Right after I printed this lithograph, Moonbeam died. I took all the poems I wrote about him and Zoe and put them together in a children's picture book manuscript, SUNCAT, MOONCAT.

Singing, Red Bird in the Pink

Lithograph, hand-colored with Prismacolor, 5 x 5"

Singing,
red bird in the pink.


My prints that have poems embedded in them are based on Japanese surimono, a collaborative woodcut style practiced in Japan 1790 through 1830. Poets would commission woodcut artists to create images to go with their poems. The prints were sent out as announcements and as invitations to poetry readings. They were usually printed in very small editions.

Poppyrose

Lithograph on gampi, 8 x 6"

I used this image for the cover of POPPYROSE and for the poem "In the Afternoon" which is posted below this and was included in the book. Many of my early lithographs were printed on my handmade sheets of gampi.

In the Afternoon (for Dee Dee)

When I was a little girl I knew my father
came across the country from Iowa
when he was a boy.

In my mind it was very long ago, a history.
In my father’s mind it was long ago, but something recalled.
In my grandmother’s mind the trip from Iowa with her new young
husband in the Model T her father gave her for her
high school graduation was only yesterday and she
remembers today how the prairie smelled
as she washes the dishes this afternoon.

We can drink our coffee, the light coming in the window,
the window my grandfather built fifty-five years ago
and it’s all different.

Time doesn’t run smoothly, it wraps itself around
and gets thick in our childhoods
and evens out when we’re grown.
Then when we’re old it thins out,
except when we remember—
when an old woman remembers
the way the prairie smelled.

And then time gets thick again and wraps itself around
a grandmother’s cup of coffee
in an afternoon in January
when the sun comes in sideways.


I was very homesick after I moved to Virginia. I wrote this poem one afternoon when I was wishing I could be back in North Hollywood in the kitchen with my grandmother. It was included in a handmade book I made called POPPYROSE.

Casting Off the Grand Architecture

Lithograph, hand-colored with Prismacolor, 9 x 7"

Casting off the grand architecture,
beginning the awakening
from the one.

Honeysuckles are about the first plants to leaf out in the spring. They are the last to let go of their leaves in the late fall. You can pull them out by the roots and stick them in the dirt where nothing else will grow and they thrive. The poem is about meiosis.

The Red Deer

Lithograph, hand-colored with Prismacolor, 9 x 7"

Blue shadows across snow
follow the red deer.
Footsteps alight in darkness.

Ptazynski: First Day

He is shorter than
the cool-eyed
deer.

He speaks the language
of poets.

He orders new students:
draw, make no lines
on paper.

Put one point on top
and move down
through space.

To the right eye the
palm is flat.
To the left eye
the back is flat.
Three-dimensionality
is a construct of the mind.

We stretch our eyes
without knowing.
Without moving
we have circled
the waiting hand.

My mind eye
moves out as thought
to formcaress
that which I seek
to know.

And I seek to know
he who with eye contact
brings lightning bolts
to the heart.

And I seek to know he
who extends himself
as electrical radius
of form and curve of mind.

Best not to stand too close
to learn the things he knows.



I wrote this poem the first week of art school at UCSB after my first drawing class with Bill Ptazynski. After I moved to Reston it was published in an anthology of local writing, Dirty Laundry. UCSB added the poem to Ptazynski's obituary after he died.

Down in the Fading Leaves

Lithograph, hand-colored with Prismacolor, 7 x 5 1/2".

Down in the fading leaves
titmouse looks for food,
a rounded leaf herself,
rounded with looking.

The Long Lace of Spring

Lithograph, 7 x 9", hand-colored with Prismacolor.

A green sky of white stars
opening as bird speaks,
the long lace of spring.

My Human Ears

This is a white-line relief print. The image is cut in linoleum and painted with Japanese watercolors and then printed. The poem reads:

My human ears hear
the human voice of goose
going home.