FLAWN #4 - May 2023
A monthly newsletter of events, shout-outs, interviews, and bite-sized pieces of creative work from the Florida Local Artist & Writer Network (FLAWN).
A Piece of FLAWN
Welcome to our fourth serving of FLAWN. If you enjoy what you find here, be sure to subscribe, and you’ll get our monthly newsletter in your e-mail inbox once per month! (Desktop view allows for optimal viewing.)
Subscribers can also submit one piece of writing (<500 words), art, or multimedia content for guest post consideration. As we want to promote the arts in Florida, we’ll consider pieces submitted by those who live in the state, were born here, or whose work is somehow inspired by the state. All genres are welcome.
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No.004 - Blackout poem of a page from a George Washington biography
by Yuki Jackson
There are errors
which call for correction.
I find the remedies
but people are misled
to wickedness
and the consequences
of such ignorance
are difficult to combat.
Evils must be felt
before they can be removed.
The tools are a generous mind
and dangerous concern.
From the high ground
on which our footsteps
do justice--
this is the origin we now feel.
This poem was originally displayed in the "Poetic Portals" exhibition, a collaborative venture in which Tampa Bay area visual artists were each paired with a local poet to create an artwork inspired by their poem. Curated by James Hartzell and Jason Harvin, this exhibition and event brought together the local poetry and visual arts community in an unprecedented way.
Yuki's paired visual artist was Paul LeRoy who created the piece below inspired by the collaboration.
Southern Tour Dates!
May 19, 5:30PM | Sarasota, FL |Bookstore1Sarasota (w/ Heather Sellers)
May 23, 7PM | Gainesville, FL | Third House Books at the Civic Media Center (w/ Kenneth Kidd)
May 25, 7PM, RSVP | Atlanta, GA | Decatur Library Auditorium (w/ Dustin Brookshire & Eleanor Eichenbaum)
May 26, Time TBD | Gainesville, FL | Moisturizer Gallery (w/ Eleanor Eichenbaum & friends!)
June 3, 7PM | Orlando, FL | Zeppelin Books (w/ Kristen Arnett & Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya)
June 4, 2PM, Pride Reading | Sarasota, FL |Bookstore1Sarasota (w/ Gloria Muñoz & friends!)
Here’s the first poem from the nature machine! (which you can order now)
britney spears argues a specific worldview. posits by Tyler Gillespie Britney Spears argues a specific worldview. Posits only two types of people exist: the ones that entertain & the ones that observe. Other theorists may disagree. (Judith Butler et al recognize the performed nature of gender – so who isn’t performing? – & we trace poetry’s roots to song, to orality etc. etc. etc.). Britney’s binary might seem reductive, but her framework proves useful for us to consider the active/passive nature of existence: the (in)action of choice. Consequence of being. She asserts it’s better to dance (entertain) than to stand (observe). I’m usually against such absolutism in judgment but if pressed yesterday I would have agreed. Today, though, I’m not so sure. originally published in mutiny!
The Ice Will
by Boy in the Rain
Revisionist Villanelle
by Dustin Brookshire
Columbus couldn’t navigate for shit,
but that isn’t how his story is told.
There is too much history we don’t admit.
If you praise Columbus— quit.
He chopped off hands for lack of gold.
The man couldn’t navigate for shit.
In 1500, Ferdinand found Columbus unfit.
Spaniards were tired of being controlled.
There is too much history we don’t admit.
Columbus was stripped of his governorship,
but still funded to find more gold,
even though he couldn’t navigate for shit.
A tyrant, murderer, enslaver. A culprit
textbooks let get away. So many sins untold.
There is too much history we don’t admit:
Columbus was a sex trafficker. We omit,
and no one knows how many girls he sold.
Christopher Columbus is a piece of shit.
There is too much history we don’t admit.
The Writer’s Corner
The Writer’s Corner is a monthly installment in which Dustin Brookshire interviews writers residing in Florida with a focus on south Florida writers. The May installment features Hollywood poet Brendan Walsh. Brendan has lived and taught in South Korea, Laos, and South Florida. His work has appeared in Maine Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Limp Wrist, and other journals. He is a 2022 Florida Book Award Gold Medal winner, and the recipient of grants from Fulbright and Broward Cultural Division. Brendan is the author of six poetry collections, and he co hosts the Fat Guy, Jacked Guy Podcast with Stef Rubino. Visit him online at brendanwalshpoetry.com.
Contrapuntal
by Gloria Muñoz
There is like here
when we’re all
defending water.
Here is like there
because we’re sinking.
Night is like day
when a chant
is a prayer. Day
is like night when birds
wash up in oil. Wet
is like dry when the scream
stays in your throat.
Dry is like wet when water
protectors are sprayed
with pressure.
New is like old when
there’s lead in the water.
Old is like new
when smokestacks
smudge out the stars.
Up is like down
when regret is an endless
nesting doll.
Down is like up
when the drilling starts.
Colonial Time (mixed media image + text)
by Ryan Rivas
It's June 2020 and there’s still a hint of a breeze at dusk. I pass the John Long pool at the Colonialtown North Neighborhood Center, which was once a white-only women’s club before it became a segregated community center. The pool is closed and drained due to Covid-19, but the emptiness evokes the era when white-run municipalities nationwide drained public pools to avoid integration. Orlando closed public lakes as well, claiming high bacteria counts endangered swimmers. In the summer of 1963, young Black activists staged a wade-in at the John Long pool, after which the city shut the facility down indefinitely.[1] Even before Covid the pool did not keep regular hours, and it doesn’t seem farfetched to conclude this reduction of public space is a lingering effect of whitelash to Black resistance only forty years ago. Meanwhile, a mile west of the pool, in downtown Orlando, protestors block Colonial Drive as part of an ongoing uprising against a pandemic of racist police violence.
[1] “Segregation and Desegregation in Parramore: Orlando's African American Community,” Tana Mosier Porter, The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 82 No. 3, Winter 2004.
Guest Post! Ser la Leche by Clayre Benzadon Gutpunch as soon as the soap-sour aroma touches the two front teeth, buoys creamy, full-bodied, at the roof of the mouth, gurgle-clogs the throat with foam. O sea, mala leche. Si tomas leche así, del carton, y sabe podrida: mala suerta, sabes? As in, I am the milk, like I am the shit, sick, in liquid form—take me as I am. Cuando te doy una leche, it’s a gesture towards sweetness, sis, I’m thinking of the juxtaposition of the phrase “don’t cry over spilled milk”, and how the tongue is naturally more sensitive to dulce (de leche) when things are hotter (like me, when I want to be). I’m thinking more of the spilling as useful, a tactic, pouring a glass of it over your head: here, have this milk, drink it, bit(ch) of milk magic (like Milk Bar®, or the makeup company). Sometimes, the sourness begins to froth when mom or dad tells me, “estás de mala leche hoy”, or especially when remembering the taste of the off-white liquid protein substitute they used to make me gulp down—I’d hold my nose every time I had to ingest a tablespoon of artificial lemon, a toxic I’d almost puke back into the amber bottle— For dad, the most important part of a child’s growth involved strong bones: his reminder, proteina! sounded like the got milk? campaign, but to advertise Cola Cao Chocolate Drink Mix instead; worst would have been to have a son who ended up enclenque, weak, feeble, lanky… I lap up what I can get, I guess; see, I am the milk because the body inhabits what it’s most averse to. Milk is the food of the gods, the first human diet, yet galactosemia means something else: galactose + blood, or the accumulation of galactose in my blood, the inability to properly metabolize sugar into the galactic—in this way I unshapen, travel all the way down to the gut, then eventually collect in the liver. Sí, soy la leche. Maybe I’m milking it, but my instincts tell me I’ve been that lost boy on the milk carton for so long, people finally know who I am: except I’m not the proud son, I don’t have the muscle for it. Sometimes it meant I was the schoolkid without a proper birthday party (I couldn’t have my cake, and I couldn’t eat it either). Women tend to have smaller, thinner bones than men. I’m trying to metabolize this fact. I’m churning it. No matter what form the milk surfaces as, maybe all I’m reaching for, wading towards, is to reach kin above the milk skin, to form into nata, a delicacy soft to taste, melt-in-the-mouth digestible. What it really boils down to is this: more than I try to skim / the girl out myself, more than anything, I’m the (m)ilk / of my mother. This poem was previously published in Grist Journal. Clayre Benzadon received her MFA from the University of Miami and currently works full-time as an educator at Miami Dade College. Her chapbook, Liminal Zenith was published by SurVision Books in 2019. She was awarded the Alfred Boas (BOE-AS) Poetry Prize for "Linguistic Rewilding,” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has been published in places including ANMLY, Olney Magazine, and SWWIM.
Guest Post!
Photograph and Poem: Lagniappe to SIN by Suzanne S. Austin-Hill Ten do’s and don’ts carved in stone; One reason why remembered in, and on, wood. Suzanne S. Austin-Hill hails from The Big Apple. She is a poet who lived in Miami, the Cutler Ridge area, from July 1980-April 2010. Suzanne now lives in a house built on what used to be a thriving tomato farm in Ruskin, a crowded suburb of Tampa. She has penned hundreds of poems; many recognized on the local, state, and national levels. Suzanne is particularly proud of the pieces published in Sandhill Review, Culinary Origami Journal, NonBinary Press, 805 Lit + Art, Newtown Literary, Lucky Jefferson, O Miami, and by the Florida State Poets Association. Her first book of poetry, Sixty-seven pages from the Heart, is a testimony to her belief that poetry is an ointment, an elixir, and a tonic that pours out from the heart. It is available at <amazon.com> Photo Credit: Wall above door at DaVita (now Optum, July 25, 2019 at Sun City Center, FL)
FLAWNT IT! 🎉🎉🎉 compiled by Gloria Muñoz HUGE congratulations to Yuki Jackson who was recently a featured playwright and poet at the Straz Center! Congratulations to Tyler Gillespie on the launch of his new poetry collection the nature machine!!!!!!!!! Save the date for his launch event happening May 10th at Tombolo Books. And shout out to all the tired poets and event programmers making it through National Poetry Month! How ya'll doing? Asking for a friend. O___O
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