as we part

I leave next week for my six week poetry tour with the Incredible Kisspulpers. I haven’t been away from Oklahoma that long since I was 16. I will miss you and the way you say things like, it might could and I tell you what. I will miss your dustbowl grin and your
wide as wings streets. I hope to meet some fine folks along the way. Some folks that tell stories at least half as buttery as yours. I will bring back some sea shells and some evergreen needles. I will kiss your face when I return.

I will do three shows before I leave:

1) Dustbowl Art Market {Campus Corner, Norman} : 10-6 on Saturday August 29 I will be at Angela Chase’s booth if you would like a copy of the new book or cd.

2) Paralogia Lounge {Bricktown, OKC}: 8pm August 30
Sunset Sundays w/ band and food


3) WordPulp, {Queen of Sheba,OKC}: 8pm Sept. 3rd
Spence Brown and the Dudes, poetry slam, Ethiopian food


Please come out and give me a good luck Oklahoma squeeze before I hit the road!

Event Record

7am: In my dream we made love. I woke all twitchy like I had just stolen money from my moms purse.

8am: Looked at Vintage fashion blogs. Wondered why so many of the girls buy their clothes at Urban outfitters. I like brown buttons.

9am: Thought of your elbows. Contemplated moving to Finland to explore my Finnish ancestry. Taped ladders to my hands. Metaphorically.

10am: Ate toast. Wished I hadn’t. Glad I had. Read the paper.

11am: Thought of your neck and the place where it meets your chin. Felt a bit cumulonimbus. Like I might pour out at any moment.

12pm: Made my grateful list:
I am grateful for the lightening and the rolly polly I found in the window seal.
I am grateful for old clothes and brown buttons.
I am grateful for staplers.

i heartopus you.

The Red Cup Summer Concert

Kavi sang two songs and performed a poem. She couldn't get enough of the stage. I guess I'm gonna have to become a real stage mom. Look out Partridge Family. Here comes the Zunigas.
{photo by Laura Heller}

our first show together

Victor and I actually did our first show together in the 9 years we've known each other. It was at the Paseo Arts Festival and it was super fun.
{pictures by skip largent}

My Favorite Street Festival

This weekend is the Paseo Festival in the Paseo Art District. I have been coming to this festival since I was a kid. My mom had a booth when she was just starting out as an artist, and I would help her sell things like painted cowboy boots, whimsical rocking chairs and other functional art. Later, when she owned The Blue Moon, an art bar on Paseo Drive, I would help sell art and beer. My parents painted the Paseo Art District Mural at the end of the street and I’ve been doing poetry at Galileo’s for 10 years now.
It’s not like some art districts in other cities but for a long time it was all we had and
with the nurturing of artists and smart business men, its really become an oasis in this city, and well, its my home.

I also love this festival because unlike the downtown Festival of the Arts, this festival still has mostly local artists and musicians. It still feels homegrown. And this year, with Ed, the owner of Sauced, doing the booking for the South Stage, we are really going to see an eclectic mix of amazing local talent. My Tea Kind and Elephant Revival will be playing as well as Justin Witte, Jabee the Beautiful, Edgar Cruz, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey and many others, including little ol’ me. I will be performing poetry at 7pm on Saturday.

Diane Cody, one of the organizers of the Paseo Festival, and a long time friend of mine, wrote this beautiful blog that I wanted to share excerpts of.

“Constructed in 1929, it was the second shopping district built by the brother of the creator of the Plaza, a much larger area located in Kansas City. It boasts stucco buildings and Spanish Colonial architecture.
It has seen many things, and in the seventies filled with artists and hippies, often one in the same, eventually earning a designation as an artist community. It is a soft spot for the creative and edgy in this otherwise conservative town. For me, it harbored the education in art I never completed in college. What better teachers are there than experience and exposure, coffee talk and nurturing by those practicing their passion? This is a community that allows for differences, and in doing so, understands each other….”

“It is these days before a festival when the magic happens. For almost a year ahead, meetings were held, entries sent, musicians booked, artists juried, then accepted or rejected, food vendors scheduled, volunteers sought. This making of an event that attracts thousands annually for three days that will delight and inspire, awe and entertain, is no small effort.
It requires the determination of mission and focus of volunteers with a common goal, when they may have nothing else in common.
It will require eighty trash barrels, hundreds of bags of ice, portable potties, electricians, signs, publicity, name tags, walkie talkies, posters and tee shirts, barricades and securtiy. All tip of the iceberg….A town inside this community will be born. Tents and stages will sprout from asphalt. A time warp of sorts, three days of escape and adventure will manifest.”

I hope to see all of my friends and family this weekend. In our quirky little home.
If you have never been to the Paseo District, it is located basically at 29th and Walker, close to downtown.

Some girls collect stiff dolls or tea cups or acrobatic hearts.
She collects boats. Keeps them lined up along her crooked
shore. Strokes their metal bellies, their wooden spines.
Picks at their salty paint. Each boat is named for something
lost.

Recess. Blue Blanket. Good Morning. Lassie the Fish. Greg.

She has never taken them out on the water. She is terrified
of whales. She instead sits by their side. Waxes their necks.
Reads poems about oceans. Lullabies them with the crest
and trough of her breath. But today she has decided how to
love them.

She will gather twine and cable. Gather wrench and ratchet.
She will snap planks, rip sails, smash open their use. Paste
their shoulder blades together with sap and brine. Construct
a night sized sculpture from their beauty. They will never
drift. They will never, ever drift away.

If Mother Theresa Were Found To Be a Child Molester

The paper moon would peel itself away
from its crusty glue axis. The cotton ball
clouds would drop. The fat tummy flowers
would leak magenta and cerulean all over
the wax grass.

Your entire diorama world-view would
fall apart.

There are cut out faces of saints and gods
taped to your poster board faith. They are
stacked and circled in a diagram of holiness.
In the center is your loyal heart. Ready to
climb the rungs.

You leapt out of a woman who prayed before
she even took a sip of water. Her face is pasted
right next to Mother Theresa’s. Your father was
the villain that every good hero story needs.
The dope dealer, the grenade. They play tug
of war on your shoulders.

An old woman once stopped your mother in
an airport and told her you would be a preacher.
Your mother welded this identity to the cufflinks
of your three piece suit. Brushed it through your
velvet hair, poked demons out through your feet.

All you ever wanted was to be good.

When I hold you, honest and dismantled,
all I know of you is good. All I know is a man
that so desperately wants to be sinless he would
go forty days without touching himself. Who curses
himself for thinking of another woman. Drinks
holy wine from little plastic cups because he
believes that molecules can contain blessing.

Your faith is that huge.

When I hold you, you are sinless.

conversations with cardboard barack

1.
you are propped up like a campaign smile
next to my mother’s fireplace. i contemplate
poking a hole in your paper teeth to watch
scared shitless pour out all over our hardwood floors.

2.
did you see the shrines?
she made the most beautiful shrines with glitter
and flags and your face glued like crucifixion
to each altar of Hope.

3.
i signed up for the recession today. i crumbled
up my travel plans, my Be Free In My RV plans,
threw them in the fire and warmed my toes with
their milk and honey smoke. i have a good job
afterall. who am i to be leaping around all faithful like
when there are people cashing their last unemployment
checks and you are holding a press conference in the desert,
your stone tablet blueprints heavy under your arm.

4.
my daughter says you should be president because
a president should be smart and handsome and because
you look kind of like her daddy. she doesn’t like how your
eyes follow her around the living room though.

5.
we are shopping for a cardboard Michelle. we can’t afford
to go out anymore so for entertainment we will cut
designer outfits from construction paper and tape them
to Michelle for each holiday. when we need to remember
that everything is going to be alright, we will bump your fists
together and play songs about change.

6.
i know you saw me crying. every now and then when i realize
you are actually our president, history comes crashing
down on my shoulders and i sob like the time i told my daughter
that only 40 years ago her father and i would have been felons
for marrying outside of our race. like the time the hundred year
old woman told the story about picking cotton to earn the poll tax
to vote for Franklin Roosevelt. i sob like Progress is no longer
just a poster hanging on our wall.

7.
my mother refuses to put you in the recycle bin. even after
the inauguration, she keeps you standing next to the
year-round christmas tree. she says after 8 years of heartbreak
and embarrassment she needs to see you every morning while
drinking her coffee and selling off the last of the shrines on eBay.