Hollywood Woman A Poem by Sara L Russell 18th March 2023

She has had an illustrious lifestyle
and many well-earned accolades;
donates to some causes quite worthwhile
she has gongs and awards now, in spades.

Her mansion’s been featured in Tatler
in Mode Avantgarde and OK;
She’s been called a trooper and a battler
and she always has plenty to say.

But her face is a bone of contention
it is fixed in a permanent grin
from a facelift hauled too tight to mention
and too much Botox in her skin,

And her lips, in an unnatural rictus,
have a top lip that sticks out too far,
Yet she boasts how her surgeon could fix us
if we weren’t as poor as we are.

She goes to cafés with her ladies
all from the same era as she;
and their pooches are treated like babies
and given fresh truffles for tea;

And when she is smiling or laughing
The waiters recoil in sheer fright
For her terrible grin leaves them gasping
She’s like a cobra poised to bite;

and some of her friends look like harpies
and some of them look like vampires
and their eyeliner’s drawn on with sharpies
and they drink to lost loves and desires;

But they carry on laughing regardless
For they clothes-shop at Rodeo Drive;
They are diamonds of high grade and hardness,
though they look to be barely alive.

 

Sara L Russell aka pinkyandrexa

Sara Louise Russell, aka PinkyAndrexa, is a UK poet and poetry ezine editor, specialising particularly in sonnets, lyric-style poetry and occasionally writing in more modern styles. She founded Poetry Life & Times and edited it from 1998 to 2006, when she handed it over to Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospide; Robin now runs it as Editor from Poetry Life & Times at this site.  Her poems and sonnets have been published in many paper and online publications including Sonnetto Poesia, Mindful of Poetry and Autumn Leaves a monthly Poetry ezine from the late Sondra Ball. Her sonnets also currently appear in the recently published anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. She is also one of the first poets ever to be published on multimedia CD ROMs, published by Kedco Studios Inc.; the first one being Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows, which was featured by the UK’s national newspaper The Mirror, in October 1999. (Picture link for Mirror article) Angel Fire. And the 2024 AI version of The Perils of Norris cartoon, by Sara L Russell using Canva Pro AI, Episode 1. The Perils of Norris featured from this site Poetry Life and Times

When the Messiah Comes poems from Aieka by Daniela Ema Aguinsky Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop

i.

La foto de mi abuela el día de su casamiento

Sé que no lo deseabas
pero lo hiciste.
El buen chico judío asignado
no resultó
tan buen chico.

Pasé tu edad
no me casé con el mío.
Lo deje ir lejos
una noche de luna
en la terraza
tomó mi mano y dijo

no me gustan las chicas
con las uñas pintadas.

Las mías
eran rojas
y dejaban marcas
en las paredes de su intestino.

A veces recuerdo al goy
de la fábrica de máquinas de coser
gritaba tu nombre
en la cueva privada de su boca.

Alegre
soprano de interiores
fósforo
en una caja húmeda
durante un corte de luz

vos empezás a irte
yo recién estoy llegando. 

i.

The photo of my grandmother on her wedding day

I know you didn't want to
but you still did.
The assigned good Jewish boy
did not turn out to be
such a good boy.

I am past your age
I didn't marry mine.
I let him get away
a moonlit night
on the terrace
he took my hand and said

I don't like girls
with painted nails.

Mine
were red
and left marks
on the walls of his intestine.

Sometimes I remember the goi*
from the sewing machine factory
he screamed your name
in the private cave of his mouth.

Cheerful
indoor soprano
a match
in a wet match box
when there is a fuse

you begin to depart
I'm just arriving.


* Goi (non Jewish boy)

ii.

Palimpsesto

Me tiré ácido
me raspé la piel
y me escribí encima.

Abajo quedaron huellas
los textos que no llegaron
al canon de mi existencia.

Que vengan los cabalistas
los estudiantes de Talmud
voy a desplegarme sobre la mesa,
una escritura sagrada.

Desnúdenme con cuidado
rastreen los indicios
discutan el estado original
de esta mujer borrada.

ii.

Palimpsest

I threw acid on myself
scraped my skin
and wrote on it.

Traces were left below
the texts that did not make it
to the canon of my existence.

Let the Cabalists come
students of the Talmud
I'm going to spread myself on a table,
a sacred script

Undress me with care
track the signs
discuss the original state
of this erased woman.

iii.

Las copas están hechas para romperse

Lo sé
desde que mi abuela guardaba la vajilla
de su abuela, en un aparador especial
que nunca se abría
por lo delicadas que eran
esas copitas verdes de tallos finos como lirios
capacidad mínima, brillantes.

Nada ameritaba
perturbarlas
de su estado decorativo
los nietos no le habíamos dado
una jupá, un compromiso, un nacimiento.
No le habíamos dado nada.

Pero mi abuela sabía mejor que nadie
que las copas
están hechas
para romperse:

van a quebrarse
mientras lavás los platos
o estallar contra el piso cuando levantás la mesa
un día que estás sobrepasada
o se le van a caer a tu nieta, dentro de veinte años,
cuando se mude sola a su primer departamento.

Van a resistir
como las personas viejas resisten
hasta quebrarse
un día cualquiera de sol.

iii.

GLASSWARE  ARE  MADE TO BE BROKEN

I know
since my grandmother put away the crockery
of her grandmother, in a special sideboard
she never opened
because of how delicate they were
those little green glasses with thin stems like lilies
bright in miniature capacity 

Nothing was worth
disturbing them
from their ornamental state     
grandchildren hadn´t give her
a chuppah*, an engagement, a birth. 
We hadn't given her anything.

But my grandmother knew better than anyone
that glassware
are made to be broken

they are going to break
while you wash the dishes
or explode on the floor when you ´re clearing the table
stressed out
or your granddaughter will drop them in twenty years´ time
when she moves into her first apartment alone.

They will resist
as old people resist
until breaking
any sunny day.

* chuppah: a Jewish wedding

iv.

                Cuando venga el Mesías van a curarse todos los enfermos
                     pero el tonto va a seguir siendo tonto.
                      Refrán Idish

Cuando venga el Mesías

y reconstruyan el Tercer Templo
no quiero estar arriba
mirando a los hombres rezar
en círculos que cantan y bailan
mientras mujeres charlan
y chicos gritan.

Cuando venga el Mesías
no quiero estar arriba
con el humo de los sacrificios
abajo los sacerdotes entran
y salen como amantes
pronunciando
el nombre sagrado.

Cuando venga el Mesías
y todos retornemos a la tierra
quiero estar en la tierra de este mundo.

iv.

                   When the Messiah comes, all the sick will be cured.
                        but the fool will remain a fool.
                         Yiddish saying

When the Messiah comes

and they rebuild the Third Temple
I don't want to be above
watching men pray
in circles singing and dancing
while women chat
and children shout

When the Messiah comes
I don't want to be above
with the smoke of sacrifices
the priests entering below
and exiting like lovers
pronouncing
the sacred name.

When the Messiah comes
and we all return to earth
I want to be on the earth of this world.

v.

Teléfono fijo

Mis papás me dieron un teléfono fijo
la línea está incluída dijeron
tenelo por las dudas
y quedó en el piso

cuando suena, rara vez
sé que son ellos
(nadie más tiene el número)
me siento en el sillón
espero tres tonos y atiendo

a veces una noticia terrible otras
una invitación para almorzar
lo único fijo este teléfono.

v.

Landline

My parents gave me a landline
the line is paid for they said
keep it just in case
and it stayed on  the floor

when it rings, rarely
I know it's them
(no one else has its number)
I sit on the couch
I wait three rings and answer

sometimes terrible news other times
an invitation for lunch

The only fixed thing this phone. 

Daniela Ema Aguinsky (Buenos Aires, 1993) is a writer and filmmaker based in Argentina. She Directed the shorts Virtual Guard, Hurricane Berta, 7 Tinder Dates, and several others. She published Amante japonés, Aieka (2023) and Terapia con animales (2022) in Argentina, Mexico and Spain, book that won The National Poetry Prize Storni in 2021. She is also the spanish translator to the California based poet Ellen Bass; Todos los platos del menú (Gog & Magog, 2021). Twitter: laglu Instagram: laglus

 
 
Amparo Arróspide (born in Buenos Aires) is an M.Phil. by the University of Salford. As well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines, she has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento. The latter is part of a trilogy together with Jacuzzi and Hormigas en diaspora, which are in the course of being published. In 2010 she acted as a co-editor of webzine Poetry Life Times, where many of her translations of Spanish poems have appeared, she has translated authors such as Margaret Atwood, Stevie Smith and James Stephens into Spanish, and others such as Guadalupe Grande, Ángel Minaya, Francisca Aguirre, Carmen Crespo, Javier Díaz Gil into English. She takes part in poetry festivals, recently Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

To kill or not to kill Bill. A Poetry Text by Robin Ouzman Hislop. Excerpt from Cartoon Molecules

To kill or not to kill Bill*										

i

Weary   if it weren’t a country from whose border
the slings and arrows of ardent hope for   die

us   to put up with those of them
put up with those of them   to die

you that   actually   Bill's last bullet to get to this point

the question for him was obscured by reflecting on it
end that we would all or not
unexplored natural miseries    human beings as simple as that
and the consideration that creates the that we don’t know about!

and i the movie advertisements refer to

so an unbearable situation   or to an authority
and the advantage that must make us pause
that must make us pause

 i can tell now   can tell now   the only one left   only one left

that’s us   that follows that first impulse of troubles that afflict one
the great and important plans life    because   who would tolerate
to suffer   we might have been the best   with a naked blade?
oneself with a naked blade?

(woman)

who would continue to exist
and end the dread of the love
the calamity of such a long problem
because in the end our life is a hurry for others
who are diluted to the point of sleep

perhaps thinking about a sleep of death
this mortal body has to endure
is in us all

i went on what hell of a lot of people i wasn't

the whips and scorns
the pain of rejected time
the tyranny against this load   sweating and grunting
the prospect    sweating and grunting the prospect
that confounds us and makes a traveller
return    ay   that’s the thing       ,

looked dead   didn't i?     dead   didn't  i?    well        .,

ii

As to that and the consideration
of impulses of troubles afflicting   grunting
the prospect that confounds rejected time
the tyranny that creates the that we miserable human beings
as simple mortal body have to endure
that would continue to exist and a long problem
because its an unbearable situation

the one I'm driving to right   a coma

or to tolerate   to suffer us to end the dread
of the that we don’t know about
so we wouldn't be in a hurry for others
from whose borders of authority 									
and the advantage plans of life - because
who put up with those of hope for us to die
all or not?

 a roaring rampage of revenge    rampage of revenge  

unexplored natural might have been the best for us
that follows from the first of them
the question for him of love   the calamity of such   the end of our life
with a naked blade obscured by reflecting on a sleep of death
the slings and arrows of ardent whips and scorns
the pain diluted to the point of weary
if it weren’t a country that must make us pause
against this sweating load and the one great important thinking about      ,

the last when I arrive at my destination

iii

Or to tolerate   to suffer us
has been the best for us   that follows us
to pause against this sweating load
and that would continue to exist
even if it weren’t a country   that must make that -

the one i'm driving to     i'm driving to

that confounds rejected time   the tyranny of a sleep of death
the slings of life   because who puts up with arrows of ardent whips
and the scorns in a hurry for others whose such ends our life with?

a hell of a lot of people now    can tell now    i can tell satisfaction    i've killed you that

as to that   and the consideration of end   the dread
of the that we as a simple mortal body have to endure
from the first of them   the question of a naked blade
obscured by reflecting on impulses of troubles
afflicting   grunting the prospect
all or not

actually   Bill's last bullet the movie advertisements refer to as an in for i got bloody last

unexplored natural might have been for him of love
the calamity of long problem   because of its unbearable situation

only one left    only one left

the borders of authority and the advantage plans
pain diluted to the point of  weariness
if we don’t know about it    so we wouldn't be it!

the one i'm driving to    i'm driving to

or not to be   creates the that for us to die   to die

when I only woke up    i went on one left    only one left    i wasn't    people i wasn't    
but put me in a coma – destination    it wasn't from one    wasn't from one more    
only one more    to get to this point   but right a coma     ,



*
To kill or not to kill Bill   text derived extracts from Hamlet’s 
‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy Hamlet Act3 Scene1 taken from the No Sweat Shakespeare Hamlet ebook 
& Uma Thuman’s car scene in Kill Bill 2. 

 
 
 
Amazon.com/Cartoon Molecules-Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.
 
 
See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Africa North. An Excerpt from All the Babble of the Souk by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Africa North


Solstice winds, rain return in spells
a moon waxes full, dogs howl as well.

All the babble of the Souk
men over there, over there women.  

All the life of the planet
so little part of it that I breathe.

Weather beaten highlands, once passed through.

The river bed, no more like a parched bone
its late autumnal river meanders as a vein
past four reservoirs
a quest that will end in winter´s flood.

Between them are momentary mists
where brightly clad figures of the north, suddenly dim.

On the frontier’s beach taxis come, go
only the stranded remain, together with the seagulls
four men huddled, drenched in pouring rain
dead once more, again, all pathways home
washed away, again.  A broken song

remember me, sung in a doorway
brings the world at large together
as suddenly as it narrows.

Water runs on marble
nakedness revealed, nakedness concealed
form water words, water memories, mists, fates.

Veins wrestle the marble into mangled knots
blemished pearls on an implacable skin
shards leaving fragmentary traces
empty spaces awaiting faces.

Lights dance in the night, picturesque
“casas blancas del pueblo”
appear through the darkness

as the brush strokes of my mind steal the action of the shadow.

Mists cordon the mountain tops
guerdoned crowns  like wreathes.

Ancient fields' still colours surrounded
by burgeoning new lead to the valley below.

Old women , old as aglow, so slow they go
poised aloof in an untouchable world, trapped.

High in kiln firelight they cowl night’s shade
to oversee goats on the hill beneath.

Daughters of necessity naked in the rock
unleashed in white trefoil in the marsh
swamp of night rain, stark where epochs
sleep in their shadows

replication of memories, where the old
becomes the new, a world splits in two
with Morpheus in the breach.  

Beyond control, beyond reach the erratic butterfly
flits bloom to bloom, the intrepid stalker with net
both captured in the mimic mould.

A  knot is tied, a knot that wrestles
embraces, that ravels birth
unravels death & binds its existence.

Her face is as if a moon glazed over
with a less serene ceramic dust that in the end
after its perplexity contains its surety.

She draws her forefinger laterally across
under her eye lid in a smear

nor can you change the image of what you are
in the pupil of her eye.

Babble bodies blur
voices with their echoes down the street
sky high, prices fly

a bird song breaks, a splash charade
Faces in the rain thin
weakness of watery years.

A winnowing canvass tosses corn
as fireflies in the blazing day.

The hag in her rags begs her bag
holding all shadows to account.

You sit in the solitary corner
at the empty dice board
to throw, as the music swells, as strings play.

On the washing line clothes of all shapes
sizes are waiting to be filled
suspended between earth, sky, where white sheets blow.

A twinge of nostalgia flashes
a link between a fluttering curtain
an open window frame, a sun shadow game
a flickering apparition pattern leaving only - strands.

A breeze flutters an open foolscap on the table
as though a phantom reader
should flick with regard through a score of notes
then stops at the first blank white sheets
stays, the moving hand that wrote, wrote no more.

On record, old honky-tonk goes on
amidst the heaps of consumer city sneakers
in the same dust where faces
turn from their spring red lustre to a sun soiled wear

through a beehive of allies
names, aye to fetch them home again
as if where the countless dead resided, you’d said
in a market of women shrouded in shawls.

Berlin falls, Baghdad falls
all the years turn to further tears
further fears to merge with your voyage
the shape of dreams to come
to be only endearments of what has gone before.

A flower opens after a thousand years in a shell of tears
indifferent to its beholders’ sight
who paint it with the colours from the waters of their night
on an unknown shore, to whose sight it opened once before.

Children’s faces like radiant imps
play carefree in the streets below
overhead on red tiles, fat pigeons bicker, coo.

In an internet cafe, an Arab girl discrete in headdress
plays with cartoon molecules of Micky Mouse
Kola bear

nubile women’s faces dream of nudity in their shrouds.

Wonky pinz nez specs, jumble sale clothes
bad teeth, unshaven grin
looking a faded duplicate of a down
out James Joyce with the come on
are you Irish, he asks
perhaps he was once upon a time.

They came through the cleft of the mountain
 - where the river ran
to swim as a blur in the naked purple of the eye

on the mountain face there is a scar
once a sacred place, now extinct, as they are.

Yet wild still she runs, amidst the sheep, goats
toils at the hearth, dutifully bears children
yesterday she knows but not tomorrow
where she hides her sorrow

even as he ploughs the hillside
a photo will steal his soul, but his beasts will do.

Twilight’s girls, girls, girls
throng the bustling street corners eating caracoles.

By day the olive tree green in the blue sky of the window
seems almost immortal enriched with the blood
it’s enriched, now at its roots.
Costa de la playa, white beehives in the sun, all money, no honey.

In the broken lights of the bazaar
the dusky eyes of the beggar sunk in their sockets
maze in crooked cul de sacs embargo amidst
the furls of silk that foil the flickering lantern niche.
In the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow.
Streets packs ravage carcasses
at dawn, the city wakes to the city’s obedience
to obey its disappearing shadows.

A ghost city of watchers
watched as shadows by a memory that has outlived them
now fragments in an admixture of old, new
- amidst a junk yard of rubble

watcher shadows phased captive to their fading stories.

The street’s mechanics of the day
obey their limits, patterns of parts
where we end only to start in a series of nows

post mortem of the world at large
an autopsy of ghosts on the slab.

Born to see, in the boutiques people seem
like their own mannequins
existence is a mystery with no purpose

only we endow it with a destiny, it does not seek from us.

All the Babble of the Souk.amazon.com

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.

See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Poesía en Toledo con Amparo Arróspide y Eva Chinchilla

 
En el Festival Voix Vives, día domingo 4 de septiembre. Con Javier Gil Martín (Cartonera del Escorpión Azul). Actuación con lectura de los libros “Deshacerse” y “Aventuras de BitBot”
 
 

 
 
 
 
Amparo Arróspide (Argentina) is a poet and translator. She has published seven poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar, Presencia en el Misterio, En el Oido del Viento , Hormigas en Diáspora , Jaccuzzi, Valle Tiétar , Aventuras de BitBot, Aman y Llá + Cielito Lindo , (1st Certamen Rapallo de Poesía), as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and in both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards even though she´s very fond of novel approaches to poetry. A member of Genialogías – the Spanish women poets´Association– and Euraca seminar.
 
Editor’s Note: see also Poetry, National Literature Prize 2018, Francisca Aguirre, Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop
 
 

 
 
Eva Chinchilla, evachin. Poet. Author of Años Abisinios (2011), Verbo rea (2003), and a third poetry book currently in production. Participant in anthologies such as La noche y sus etcéteras. 24 voces alrededor de San Juan de la Cruz (2017), Hilanderas (2006) o Estruendomudo (2003). She is also a board member of poetry magazine Nayagua, which is a publication by the José Hierro Poetry Foundation, where she was a teacher from 2007 to 2016. Member of the Genialogías Association and the 8que80 collective of female poets; co-editor of Diminutos Salvamentos poetry collection. She walks along the haiku and flamenco lyrics paths. A philologist (hispanist), with a degree free master in continuous training and questioning. Born in Madrid (1971).
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is our poetry editor at Artvilla and publisher of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com More of his personal work can also be viewed at https://poetrylifeandtimes.com video & audio poems, translations etc.,

The Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop Audio & Text


 

 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, & Moon selected Audio Textual Poems available at Amazon.com as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)