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“I Am the Goddess”

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La Tigresa and The Tongues of Flame perform at Taste of Rome in Sausalito, California.

To purchase the audio CD, Naked Sacred Spoken Word, visit LaTigresa.net

“What gives this book of La Tigresa (Dona Nieto) its real power … comes … with the genuine relationship the Tigress has with nature’s gifts: insects, rocks and the moon. I’ve never read a poet … who could evoke so much from an encounter with a butterfly! … with a charm that is unforgettable.”
–Jack Hirschman, San Francisco poet laureate emeritus

“In its passionate embrace of sensuality and society, the poetry of La Tigresa (Dona Nieto) purrs and growls, but rarely meows. [She] knows what she’s doing as she plugs touch back into every page — along with voice, heart, gut and every other sense … La Tigresa celebrates the body electric and the body politic with sheer pleasure, devotion, intuition and wit … In her stand-up presence, under her spell, you smile, recognizing the underlying question that drives these poems in which corporate and human agendas collide.”
– Al Young,
California poet laureate emeritus

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Clickable

WATCH

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Listen to the CBC Radio 2 series Inside the Music

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Frank Zappa’s album covers in narrative sequence

Ruben & the Jets: “Anything” (vinyl version)

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Courtesy photo

I am all Day and Night: The Music of Frank Zappa

A 3-part Philip Coulter Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio-documentary on the American iconoclast Frank Zappa

“One of the most ear-opening documentaries on the creative process I have ever experienced.”
— Al Young

© Shore Fire Media

Bebop Tango rehearsal, Sweden, 1973

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Cocaine is not grown in the ghettos,
big drug money not laundered there.
Trees with greenbacks for leaves
decorate streets and alleys.
Carrion birds pluck rotting frames,
smothered grasses wither in dust.
Leached lives teem in these ghettos,
blood siphoned to vases afar.
The yoke on their necks is held tightly
by gold-plated buzzards who soar.

— Adam David Miller

© 2009 Adam David Miller

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THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A FAT GIRL

Boys ask for dates,
but only because they want to mock you.
The fake suitor approaches,
grin dripping with malice,
behind him, his posse
ready to snicker.
They want you to say yes,
see your pudgy face
swallow your brief smile,
then flood with tears
as they oink at you
and hit you on the head
with pencils.

When you’re with friends,
you can never say aloud
“I need to lose weight”
without them being silent, awkward
like the squirrel contemplating
how to leap across a river
without drowning.
Or someone will say
“Oh you’re not that big.”
The girl half your size
can say she’s fat, and she will be
showered with consolation
and complimented on how she is pretty
just the way she is.

Your family constantly laments
losing the pixie version of you,
“What happened? You used to be so cute!”
Aunts ask your weight
and pinch your jiggly arm
as if it were a slab of meat
ready for slicing.
Your parents tell you
that you could be so beautiful
if you’d only lose that second chin
and big bellybutton,
not knowing they’ve made you
feel ugly as a skunk.
But even after all this fuss,
they still fill up your dinner plate
and give you an extra chicken leg.

© 2009 by Lisa Kwong

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SEVENTEEN SYLLABLES OF FAME

Camera flashes,
artificial stars gone like
fame’s lusty glory.

Rumors, ripped magic
carpets, crowd the air, their threads
twisting and turning.

Lonely man takes night
walks, hopes for conversation,
goes home empty-souled.

Gossip, words with black
wings flying across blue skies,
sears friendship’s clasped hands.

Slave to fame can’t see
ghosts creeping in the hallways
of his lonely heart.

Lies, fishnets of hurt,
flood life until the truth is
shipwrecked, buried, forgotten.

A cracked mirror, fame
shows him the scum, flashes love,
then takes it away.

© 2009 by Lisa Kwong

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Lisa Kwong received a B.A. in English from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Her poems have appeared in Ishmael Reed’s Konch, www.news.appstate.edu, Floyd County Moonshine, and The Sleuth, a magazine dedicated to all things Nancy Drew. As a poetry ambassador, she has organized
National Poetry Month readings since 2004.
A student of classical clarinet, Lisa Kwong
currently lives, works, and writes in the New River Valley of Virginia.

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Courtesy Photo

Eddie Lang (1902-1933)

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This is Blind Willie Dunn talking to ya (G7)

Nobody else (Am) you can see my

Nimble fingers even if (F major)

I can’t see yours what happened

What happened I’ll (E9) give ya

The straight dope (C major) I got no

Reason to lie Eddie I sd Eddie (Em)

I don wancha (C major) to go into that

God damn hospital you know (C major 7)

People die (G7) in hospitals Jesus Blind

(wch is what he called me, Am) Crosby

Said to do it and (E9) I tell ya Crosby

Knows what he’s talking about and Kitty (Cm)

Sd it was ok so why (G7) should I

Worry Christ (D7) nobody worries about tonsils

Gimme (A major) the racing form I wanna

Pick a winner (G7)

And (I Am) (I Am) (I Am)

He died

– Jack Foley

© 2009 Jack Foley

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The Official Eddie Lang Website

Sally-Ann Worsfold: The Quintessential Eddie Lang (1925-1932)

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Ruth Etting and Eddie Lang:
“Without That Man” (1932)

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Katherine Hastings

Jack Foley

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ekleksographia: wave two
issue four | november 2009
edited by Judith Skillman

features exciting new poetry, prose and drama

by Jack Foley

© Timothy Cross

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