Trish Falin is a Southern California poet whose work has appeared in the journals Soundings, Penumbra, Welter, Dash, Askew and others. A former news reporter and editor, Trish earned her MFA in Creative Writing Poetry at Antioch University in Los Angeles in June 2009 and completed a collection of poems called Eating Moon for Dinner. Non-fiction work published has included travel books and text books for carpenters in Las Vegas. Trish is the Poetry editor for The Citron Review.
Trish writes poems about twisted dolls, broken toys, torn negligees, battered people. She lurks on the corner of Santa Monica and Vine and watches all the lowlifes around her. She stations herself outside the crumbling resorts of yesteryear and meditates on the mischief made and the tears shed up in the pretty honeymoon suite. This is not poetry of joyous affirmation. It is not a saccharine or banal sitcom, either. Trish writes short gritty poems about lives on the edge, and the pleasures of these pieces come from their perverseness—and the truth that lies just below the surface of this perverseness. To read Trish´s work is to look through a keyhole and get a glimpse of what we´re not supposed to see. But the more they say we shouldn´t look, the more we want to, the more we need to. This is necessary poetry.
He Might Have Been a Bee Once
What is it about this man who sees a woman in red
then gives her a line, gives her pots of geraniums,
suffers with her on an afternoon alone,
bends her body over green plumage on a balcony
waters the plants,
as if his hand is holding the hose
while cars along 405 hum like bees.
He kisses her ears, the soft sweet
Canyon Sunflower’s yellow heart.
He whispers simple pleasure, his voice stretches out
to root somewhere inside her,
plunging into the mandala of each smile.
She records his words in her guidebook.
She sings of flowers, pulls down Purple Nightshade,
thinking of Wild Radish and Blue Eyed grass,
but not Prickly Flox. Does it matter what they're called?
Some Kind of Wild
It pounds against your chest,
cuts circles inside your desert,
runner at rest, horse at start gate,
dog sniffing rabbit.
Some kind of rush streams through blood
a flash flood to sweep everything I am—
old photos, empty bottles and car parts—
down river like some kind of delicious disaster
I drink, chug air, a wind hauling body parts;
stop breathing, skin barely contains.
In skin, on skin, canvas of next masterpiece,
I want to paint over until perfection
or a more beautiful imperfection appears.
I have to run, my eyes hear what you say,
your eyes smell of miles of grass covering.
My skin will not be quiet, forgive me, I talk too much.
What is it about this man who sees a woman in red
then gives her a line, gives her pots of geraniums,
suffers with her on an afternoon alone,
bends her body over green plumage on a balcony
waters the plants,
as if his hand is holding the hose
while cars along 405 hum like bees.
He kisses her ears, the soft sweet
Canyon Sunflower’s yellow heart.
He whispers simple pleasure, his voice stretches out
to root somewhere inside her,
plunging into the mandala of each smile.
She records his words in her guidebook.
She sings of flowers, pulls down Purple Nightshade,
thinking of Wild Radish and Blue Eyed grass,
but not Prickly Flox. Does it matter what they're called?
Some Kind of Wild
It pounds against your chest,
cuts circles inside your desert,
runner at rest, horse at start gate,
dog sniffing rabbit.
Some kind of rush streams through blood
a flash flood to sweep everything I am—
old photos, empty bottles and car parts—
down river like some kind of delicious disaster
I drink, chug air, a wind hauling body parts;
stop breathing, skin barely contains.
In skin, on skin, canvas of next masterpiece,
I want to paint over until perfection
or a more beautiful imperfection appears.
I have to run, my eyes hear what you say,
your eyes smell of miles of grass covering.
My skin will not be quiet, forgive me, I talk too much.
© 2011
Trish Falin
Trish Falin was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the January 2011 Second Sunday Poetry Series
Trish Falin was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the January 2011 Second Sunday Poetry Series