Caroline Swanson and Kaylynn Parkinson
Monday, Dec. 16 at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street at SPC
Host: Rebecca Morrison
Caroline Swanee Swanson earned her BA in English Literature at the University of Iowa where she was an Undergraduate Writing Track fellow and participant in the 2010 Irish Writing Program in Dublin, Ireland. Since graduating, she has returned to her native land of Sacramento, CA and interned for various poetry series and publishers. In 2013 she was a semi-finalist for A Room of Her Own grant award for fiction. Currently she holds an associate editor position with Vestal Review, a literary magazine dedicated to the flash fiction genre, and is a co-host for the Keynote Poets and Writers Workshop through the Sacramento Poetry Center. Her current projects include a collection of poems called “More Than Pain is Love,” a contemporary fiction novel about the artistic process, memory, and geography of the self. However her true passion lies in remaking fantasy and fairytales for the “disenchanted”.
FOR KHALEESI ON HER BIRTHDAY
When you are lying on
The lawn of some foreign country
Without your towel
Remember that a belly full of beer and peanuts
Is the perfect launching pad into the infinity of blurried stars in twisting sights
Set against the revolving of the earth
To juxtapose another year of life with the last
Don’t try to scry or compare the differences of constellations
As though you might be able to unscramble various, previous destinies
And not the very least of star-crossed lovers
This globe is only as big
As the matter which you occupy
And every moment is as big as the space before you
No matter how long it takes to breach the moon and reach the sun
What words are more wise
Than the ones which flow from the heart?
For passion untempered will
Burn the phoenix for entire lifetimes
Until finally casting such song birds
Back into the primordial womb
Where they must learn to swim again
In order to earn their wings; a red flame of the fire
Flowing from the bluest heart with just a little oxygen
So when you are lying on your back on
Some foreign lawn
Remember that every breath both ignites and extinguishes
And that this is not just one night, but many
That in a fractal’s eye only grows
Through the lens of a looking glass Jimmy-rigged
From the bottom of a liquor bottle
And when the time comes, I will wish I was lying with you, friend
To hold your hand, to rig your sail as you steer your way into the cosmos
Of your own creative reason, imagination, passion,
Because this is the moment that will feel as heavy as eyelids
And the dreams of Father Time
by Caroline Swanee Swanson
Kaylynn Marisol Parkinson has been on this earth for 23 years & she is blessed enough to say she still finds beauty in discovering parts of herself and this life I’ve never known on a daily basis. She has a heart that’s big enough to serve the universe . She finds peace in writing, it fuels her soul. She wishes for everyone to stay beautiful.
