Dear Godfrey Logan, editor of (A Brilliant) Record Magazine:

I am submitting five new poems for your next online publication of (A Brilliant) Record Magazine. I am including poetry covering a range of themes that I feel will fit well with your collection. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Swados

Elizabeth Swados is an award winning author and composer; she is a Tony nominated, Obie award winning theater artist, Guggenheim and Ford Foundation recipient, as well as a Pen/Faulkner citation. Her latest book, At Play – Teaching Teenagers Theater was published by Faber and Faber. Her other recent publications include: My Depression (Hyperion), and The Animal Rescue Store (Scholastic). Her theatrical credits span from Broadway, to off-Broadway, to around the world including Runaways, Missionaries, and Jabu. Her poetry has appeared in magazines such as Meridian Anthology, New American Writing, New York Quarterly, Emory's Journal, Confrontation, Paterson Literary Review, Speakeasy, Barrow Street, Runes and Home Planet. Her first book of poetry, The One and Only Human Galaxy, is to be released in April 2009.


The Kite

It feels as if someone’s died
and I don’t know who.
The kite, with its sail of green silk,
resting gently in the sky
on a thin string and tail of yellow yarn
is suddenly yanked down by a sailor’s heavy rope
tied to a rock held in the hand of my enemy.
He never speaks to me directly.
He just robs my triangle
from a particularly lovely blue sky.



Crevice

I ponder this and I ponder that
until I ponder myself away
it would be dishonest to say
that I haven't wasted many
valuable hours
if not years
on already previously claimed
and undecided questions.



Home

I think my body is
the minnow that's
reached the rock in
the river
and can't get any further
Home is a negotiation
between hope and impossibility



News This Week

Shooting judges
is the way the human race
metaphorically
kills God
who cannot die
and must be killed
by proxy



Out of Beats

If rappers wrote Haiku
then Buddhists would play poker
and the crow on the Cyprus tree
hanging upside down
would drop a seed of grass
onto the head of a bright yellow frog
who would pee in the pond
its speeding heartbeats
buzzing like the wings of
a puzzled fly.