One Stranger's Songs
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
AND AS I MOVE And as I move With the wind You are beyond the moment’s edge I saw you looking here You asked me with eyes beckoning Will you love me? (continues) THREE—3 Three is a varied number of multiple meanings Three theorems can be drawn and from these 3 infinitum descriptions met Three can be superstitious Three can be counting And three can describe Three or multiples of three things describe a dimension describe religion describe social tension (continues) ANTHROPOGENIC SLIP, OR “DOLCE-DOG” Soft bellowing breadth Strong firm bone ribbed cove Inhaling air and Exhaling sweet love As fine air sifts from lung To breadth exhale Lone emblem dolce soul (continues) SQUID, I LOVE YOU Spotted white on dark White dorsal stripe Spots come and go, changing Color dark elk horn coral To pink translucent flesh TICK’S TOCK STOCK—CYCLE FULL CIRCLE From the 20’s, still in school My Lyme’s and epileptic gridlines Caught in life’s coarsest filter Gridlines come gridlocked Though still I see EVOLVING MORE One gram to 1 calorie raises one degree And so the oceans will boil eternity One cell, two blastulas form—twain Step dance quickly and regress again One oxygen, two hydrogens, and carbon bond Then nitrogen, hydrogen, ammonia, codons (continues) AU/RTISTIC DIMENSIONS WITHOUT SPACE Eyes gaze the pallet Eyes touch the painters stand Eyes quarry sight from airs around And paint moves surface gone Across space hands merge Terraced boundaries always crossed (continues) YOUR CHAIR IS FOLDED Your chair is folded And blown over from wind Your shudders closed And you refrain From moving outside From exterior seeing You hide from air’s passing That feeds you (continues) A TIME’S CONTRAST: CAST IN BRONZE Smooth skin Water melts Over skeletal grace As he works In damp weather (continues) LITTLE HORRORS BITE ME Eaten by mosquitoes Tonight All nights I donate my blood Insect evolution Donation Swearing each time To self-comfort Closed walls Refuges from proboscid guns (continues) DAILY TIDES—MATERNAL PATERNITY Swollen ankles Desk or café leg trousers Stranded, visualized Sits longing Conducting speaks Back dropped Avid motion lands Feet-dead flat energy-time tops Awaiting charm and smile My child’s smile (continues) RECURRENT BREACH IN WEIGHTLOSS And when that fish bone Lies behind the Potatoes that must have Made the dinner Without the meat though (continues) LANGURS STIR -2 Lights saltate Branches vibrate Sounds awake from motionless Feelings stir Old langur’s fur Fingers scratch, all relentless (continues) AUTISTIC RUST Gaze at pallets, touch the stands Query sight from air Surface motion, paint restrained Edges merge in pairs Tracked boundaries cross the planks Never touching skins Lines weld a sane man’s bond Lettered battle pins (continues) SONGS OF MIRRORS Clear specter mirrors and casting devotions Seeming might crumbles in air Plenty remarks at her loss of invention And desperately alights in dull detention to hide Let me guide and lift your heart (continues) AIRFLIGHT’S FACILITIES Airplane bathrooms Closet station toilets Two for the trip Made for the masses Designed nil-class No paper towels (continues) KARACHI 747 I am slowly writing as I sit here Karachi, near India’s borders Read from a Saudi in a 747 As we see passengers very few Luggage carried up/down The dawn was met by the Mist of new day—fog on the flats Barred from New Delhi (continues) GIFT SHOPING AND CRUSTED LASHES Caked with mud Serious eyes Not knowing tears Childhoods departed Far from grown (continues) VERMONT MEADOWS We are free at breakfast walking Lazy, rusted and wanting more Harmony of a tractor’s distant grind Clear sound of a near song’s meadow Not knowing who to thank for it (continues) NIGHT'S-SLIME STORY TALE Summed: Standing, striding, sliding so smartly, snails: single foot, stomach, stone shell ‘n all, singularly signify selection’s satisfaction. Snails are a summitry success, so superbly sublime! An all embracing snail, Slips (snail’s name), slides and straddles sticks, seldom stuck. Slime being a smoothed softener on the sediment’s scathed surface, Slips’ slime, simulating snow, slides (continues)
Formats
Book Details
Recognition Programs
About the Book
Immigrating to the United States at the age of five from Paris, France, Christine Schonewald found herself surrounded by people speaking the melodic sounds of English, Danish, Cantonese, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and other languages. Growing up in San Francisco, California, Schonewald’s verse, spawned from the mix of languages, beginning with childhood’s imagination. The infusion of rhythms, word sounds, and music into her emotions would soon generate poetry.
Other factors shaped her life and her writing, increasing her curiosity, and flexibility. All through school, a slow reader and poor writer, Schonewald would later find that both dyslexic and epileptic setbacks trained her to explore alternative means for both inquiry and problem solving. They had underscored her love of sound and rhythms. Later, other weights also affected Schonewald’s perceptions, such as her five-year-old daughter’s 25+ year bout with Lyme disease. Poetry was her private lifeline. While partly voicing feelings of inadequacy, anger, and hopelessness, her poetry most importantly nourished her life’s vital humor and romance. Life continues to make her curiosity about culture, history and nature insatiable.
Sometimes communication requires descriptions of despair to underscore the immeasurable value of options, opportunities and hope that life offers. One Stranger’s Songs provides prevailing themes across time as Schonewald shares her stranger’s human voyage through some of life’s good, hard, and celestial times, all of which are inseparable. Enjoy forty-plus years’ work in response to people, travel, explorations, and discoveries and see if you witness yourself in any of these delightful responses.
About the Author
Winner of San Francisco Writers’ Conference awards in 2006 and 2007, Christine Schonewald attended the University of California at Davis and the University of Maryland and worked as a research scientist and college professor. Originally from France, she now lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills.