Responses to Gale Turner’s performance
First she turns like a music box doll, spins slowly, lightly on a vertical axis, weightless, detached—the blue vase a nostalgic reminder of carefully composed tableaux from a past century of well-thought-out art in a scene—pensive, that those times are no more. Then she bends and folds in a flow as a rushing wave of the present enlivens her curve, this way, that angle of desire, of reaching for what comes, the flower of the moment. I want it. I want more. - Pat Etheridge
Ocean of body, fish of hand,
detail of fins, a fin,
the five fingers,
fish has whole essence
of ocean inside it.
Waves in body, wave my soul.
This is magic.
On the big stage
in the hot light in the dark house
a moment of feeling
like this becomes
the heart of humanity.
Scale and scales of fish,
of balance.
Scale of a landscape of emotion,
a small bird with fins across the sea
of the sky.
- Christina Svane
A mute phrase repeated two times
La vie en fuchsia shirt turns
the corner in wave-like moves.
The music box twangs within me.
I do not view the second time
as clearly with the stimulation
of musical action, constant and sobering.
What remains is the turquoise afterbirth.
- Beth Goren
A phrase of movement
moon’s phase
clock walk
wheel turning through time.
A music box for
Edith Piaf’s lament.
La vie en rose revolves,
a human clock in heaven.
Slow.
Seasons change.
Fast come
coats, flowers, thirst,
next, next, next.
The human clock
speeds forward.
Time’s music
adjusts.
- Diana Larkin
Responses to Beth Goren’s performance
She wraps the thread around
and around a spool of verbal intention.
She knits the pattern and then
knits over it, knits beyond it,
pulling, pulling the thread,
she knits it. Precisely,
in a constant rhythm,
one thread over and under,
another thread over and under,
then she pulls it, around and through.
She knits and pulls, knits and pulls,
and goes further and further,
giving attention to that which forms a pattern,
the pattern of intention.
I perceive it.
- Pat Etheridge
The foot leads in,
down the dirt road
that is heaven.
I want to be at a campfire.
I hear the urging voice
that speaks of equatorial nights
and dani running dances—
I hear, desire to see all the world.
I feel desire for campfire and
stars, and even blisters.
I feel the thump of heart pumping
up the trail with a heavy pack.
I long for something that happens
in starlight when the water you have
is precious and shared.
- Christina Svane
The poet is me
The dirt road is heaven.
The shaman walks,
then squats,
then walks again.
Clouds shower hail
in early spring.
The shaman walks on,
seeks no cover
other than this moment.
Moment, Mother Moment,
embrace me.
Hold these sagging
shoulders up,
hold them steady,
and keep them moving,
likes masts and sails
in wind and water sprays.
I am only one Being
only one sound.
This thing takes time.
- Beth Goren
I used to be respectful.
Now I just sing
and clap.
I am a walking voice
and an everyday gardener.
I listen I see I reflect
I imagine
I live and breathe.
- Gale Turner
One step followed by another.
I want to make myself
open to transformation
so I can float
from apple to apple eater,
from buzzing bee to writer,
to dancer.
I want to make myself
open so my voice can take me
across continents,
so my voice can leap
like an animal
or fly like a bird.
I want my days to unfold
like a dance.
- Diana Larkin
Responses to Christina Svane’s performance
The space comes to her. She feels herself in the space. She turns in the space. The space comes around her. She is present in the space. Her weight is in the space. She pauses. She feels her weight in the space. The space is around her as she weights herself in the space. The space is weighing her presence. She moves her weight in the space. The space is full as she weights her body on the floor. The space is empty as she pauses, then moves. She comes to the space and moves herself through the space. She weights herself in the space. She weights herself in the pause in the space, then moves to her next conclusion. The space opens around her and she is free of its weight as she comes to the space within it in the space she feels herself in the space. - Pat Etheridge
Surprise,
like a mudslide,
closes the coast highway,
like the waves take your dog
and you can’t save him.
Surprise,
that the root of a tree
chopped down
has pushed up again.
Surprised
that moving is
my doorway out and in, still.
In stillness,
the truth comes clear,
no matter how much water
has passed under the bridge
where things happened.
- Christina Svane
Is this long-legged woman with generous breasts a Goddess? Does the Goddess walk backwards in circles, mapping crops on wooden slats? Has she been balancing legs above the floor, trembling ever so slightly, for thirty years, cycling from Vermont to New York City and Holland and Sebastopol and Massachusetts? Is her spirit large from all this movement and motion and change, while she is beating wings, beating wings into the batter of an angel food cake? Are the musical threads that fall freely across harmonic space reaching up her spine and towards her halo? Is her soul aligned to the ancestors, Buddha’s relics, the wind and graveyard, where spirits hover? - Beth Goren
Your hands dance
they pull you in space
they shape, they weave
your movement stories together.
They sing your song.
Your hair is your partner
your flowing counterpart
you free spirit. You can perceive
movement in a rock.
- Gale Turner
You are me, you are all of us.
You look around,
assessing your world, our world.
A pain hits you squarely in the eye.
You try to remove the pain,
adjust your vision. Bending
in stillness, you reach
to grasp the shape
of your world, our world.
You find a circle, a roundness,
a pattern that finally makes sense.
You hold it briefly.
You swim forward, fly backward,
move with joy, exhaustion, serenity.
You give thanks.
You are sad, happy.
The moods merge.
You are us,
all our moods at once.
- Diana Larkin
Responses to Diane Larkins’s performance
The bell of her voice chimes,
now golden, now hollow, now clear—
a change-ringing over a time,
then time again.
Mellow bong, metal clang,
cross-over and cross-under,
song again and song again,
past coming back, present for now,
future to be.
Ring and chimes ringing and chime,
bong and bong. A carillon in her frame
for a constant refrain.
The time is the sound, the song of her time.
- Pat Etheridge
How the music of each poem
is like a movement
in a symphony,
adagio, allegro, andante.
The agate pebbles
rolling down a velvet hill, the air.
I am taken with the joy—
in the speaking, in the making,
in the holding hands.
Out of anything we make joy,
like striking a match
to anything
will give light and heat.
The poet as flint,
burning up sorrow.
Mine.
- Christina Svane
Words flow
and thoughts circle
around skulls, marching
to rhythms as the poet speaks,
sometimes catching her breath,
keeping up with the written word.
The wastelands of Siberia
are covered with snow;
they slope down to desert floors
in a leap of faith.
Does faith wait for the leap,
or is it the other way around?
The poet is in no hurry.
- Beth Goren
Harmonious words
with falling-down horses
and starlight time,
blending colors of purple
green pink and yellow.
Throw your sounds my way
again.
- Gale Turner