And the winner is...

I am delighted to announce that my poem "The Name" is the winner of the unFold 2012 Poetry Garden Show. Thank you to the judges

• William O’Daly, translator of the late and posthumous works of Pablo Neruda
• Jessie Carty, author of Paper House
• John Sibley Williams, author of From Colder Climates

And congratulations to the following poets, who received Honorable Mentions: dt.haase, Ben Nardolilli and Linda Leedy Schneider.

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The Name

I remembered the name of the lilac tree

years after you told me.

I’m sorry I never retained plant names.

Only shades, and shapes.

Our whitewashed wall was once my favourite

but even that is fading.

© Nora Nadjarian

You can watch the beautiful animation they made of my winning poem here:

Aphrodite Rising

In the audience,

the eyes of the astonished shells.

My body is water,

voluminous, untamed.

My body is light,

craved, dazzling, an enigma.

My body is sand,

flowing upwards through the hourglass,

filling me, pushing me into lucid air,

bathing me with transparence,

gushing me into perfection,

sculpting me free.

I am becoming a goddess.

I am rising.

 © Nora Nadjarian

From  "Cleft in Twain"

Cheque Republic

The Czech girl talks non-stop, in Czech. I have no idea what she’s saying but I’m nodding my head from time to time, just so she doesn’t think I’m a fake. On the train, we’re crossing borders. Austria, Czech Republic. On the way to Břeclav. She’s saying she’s a single mother of twins. Or that her boyfriend is sixteen years older than she is. And that she sells hand-made jewellery by day and sings by night. Or that she hates what she sees in the mirror every morning. And that she spends what she earns on make-up and clothes and hides a tiny diary in the pocket of her leather jacket. And, Or. Neither, Nor.

Czech is one hell of a language. If only I knew what she were talking about. Maybe giving directions to Babylon. Straight ahead, turn right, then left, then join the dots around the park opposite the castle… You’ll see it. You can’t miss it. Maybe she thinks in Czech, dreams in German, pretends in English. Babylon is a beautiful place after all. Like that hall where a Danish poet and his American translator decided to read the poem and the translation at the same time. Simultaneous translation and original on top of each other, layers and layers of. It was lovely, I finally understood everything about language. I loved that poem.

We get off in Břeclav and the girl asks me if I need a taxi to Valtice. I nod and then shake my head as if to say: we can share, but I only have euros, no crowns. It’s almost like admitting I’m a fraud, not a single crown on me, not even on my head. We drink some young wine in a musty cellar in Valtice and I decide to tell her everything about me. Except that she isn’t here.

And if Someone asked me to spell the word Czech right now, I’d probably hesitate and think of my cheque book. And if I were American, it might be Check. Homophones should be spelt the same way, I’d say, to avoid confusing innocents. And Someone would verify that I’m a complete and utter phony. And then I would ask that Someone to tell me the truth, as he or she knows it, even if it were in Czech.

© Nora Nadjarian  

 First Published in LITnIMAGE

Cherries

sometimes in my dreams

i am naked picking cherries

my body undressed of you

were we really two or one-

the leftover pips say two

too hard pips they are dead

but the memory of cherry flesh

is raw it bleeds my mouth sweetly

wakes my body with each bite-

months years later my lips

are still red moist

© Nora Nadjarian
from "25 Ways to Kiss a Man"

The Truth Is...

... I don't do much to promote myself. And so, I've decided that starting from today and throughout the month of June, I will be posting snippets from my own work published in books and online.

I start off with a small excerpt from my micronovel "The Republic of Love", published by BluePrintPress in 2010.

In the beginning. It is the fifth of July, exactly six days before I once met Danny. I live in a house with pale blue walls, the colour of sky. The house has many windows, each of which is a different gilt-framed painting, through which I can see beauty if I look hard enough.

            I am reading a letter:

            Tomorrow will be the beginning of your life. Tomorrow you will cross a bridge and embark on an authentic journey. Soon, a man will take you 2356 kilometres away from your old life, in a boat smelling of oil and fish and salt. You will wonder when you will ever step out onto the quay of another port, how long it will take before you can put down the two bags containing all your possessions in the world. You’re finding it difficult to balance the two, to do a balancing act with the two bags: Keep nothing in your left pocket, empty the right-hand side of your brain of negative thoughts, stop the boat from overturning.

            At night, you will both fall asleep together in a small cabin where the wind will blow into your dreams making a hollow sound, a door opening, closing, opening, closing. You will wake up in broad daylight, floating over the ocean, watching a landscape full of lines and wild colours and strange brushstrokes. The earth is full of love and truth, yes, but you know that already, don’t you. You will travel in the right direction. It will feel secure, it will feel natural, like the journey of water.

            I live in a house with pale blue walls and white furniture. It makes you think you live somewhere near the sky, or that you live in a dream. You could never be angry in this house, but you might feel lonely as you walk from room to room expecting to find something which is never where you last left it. It is not a house designed for one person, not even for two. It is large enough to have an entire family of five or six living happily, filling it with love and laughter.

            I inherited the house from an uncle of mine who never married and never had children. He was a dentist. Strange isn’t it, that he made his money from bad teeth, and the only recollection I have of him is this image: him dropping an egg on our kitchen floor, when attempting to make me an omelette.

            What’s that got to do with anything, Danny didn’t ask, when I told him the story...

In Loving Memory

 In loving memory of a lost friend 

FLYING WITH CHAGALL  

After Marc Chagall’s  Above the Town (1915)

Silently, cloudlessly, we fly

swimming, legs and arms over

roofs and fields and streetlamps.

We skate over and above a sky

of white, our breath trailing behind us,

around the leaves and their small voices,

like notes of a fiddle.

Oh how – how do you do

it, without falling or slipping

or landing on a green roof

and bruising it blue? No one asks,

but everyone wonders. They all

look into the sky canvas and squint,

and inwardly sigh all day, all night.

It is a dream which only you and I see.

And nobody else.

And nobody else.

© Nora Nadjarian

Published in   "All of Our Lives: An Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Writing  " (ed. Sarah Shapiro) Targum Press, 2009

                                                                                               

2011 Chapbook Appeal

An open letter from the Editor in Chief of Folded Word, Jessi Graustein, who published my chapbook Girl, Wolf, Bones.

Please read her appeal (also pasted below), think about it, respond, buy for yourself and for friends. It is a pity that these wonderful books are produced with so much love and attention, and then nobody reads them.

November of this year marked our 2^nd anniversary of producing chapbooks. We couldn’t be more proud of the titles we’ve published—titles written by authors passionate about keeping the craft of writing alive. Each one is a testament to the fact that literature is not, and will never be, dead.
I don’t know where you stand in the great e-book debate, but I personally believe that they will be critical for keeping literature open to new voices in these difficult economic times, due to their financial and physical accessibility. At Folded Word, we have made it our mission to offer 99cent e-book versions of our print chapbooks during the pre-order period because we want to make it possible for any reader to support the artistry of our authors. These e-chaps are formatted to play nice with all e-reading devices and have “speech to text” turned on for the visually impaired. We thought that with all the free e-reading apps out there, at this price and functionality our e-chaps would fly off the virtual shelves. But they haven’t.
In trying to figure out why, I’ve come up with a few questions for you:

1. If you read chapbooks, how do you acquire them?
2. If you don’t read chapbooks, what is the main reason for your reluctance?
3. Do you feel that buying e-books (whether chapbook or book length) encourages publishers not to produce print books?

To weigh in on any of the questions that apply to you, either leave a comment below or send me an email (editors [at] foldedword [dot] com). I can assure you, by the way, that Folded Word is committed to keeping book craft alive—a commitment that can be seen in our signature chapbooks and broadsides. In fact, the sale of e-(chap)books makes it more possible (not less) for us to produce future print titles by increasing cash flow with few additional time demands.
We have some amazing chapbooks available that could truly use some love. If you aren’t familiar with our chapbook list, please explore our chapbook blog at http://foldedchaps.wordpress.com. If all our social-media followers/fans took a chance on just one 99cent e-chap, we could make the close of this year very merry for our chapbook authors. It could also be the highest-yield investment in the arts you’ll make in 2011.
Whether you join in the discussion or not, whether you purchase a chapbook or not, we want to thank you for being part of The Fold. We would not exist without you.
Cheers & Happy New Year,
J.S.