Ellaraine Lockie
Ellaraine Lockie
STROKING
DAVID'S LEG
a chapbook collection of poems inspired by international travel.
Chosen Best Individual Collection of the Year
for 2010 by Purple Patch in England.
From the book:
Sexed on a Kona Balcony
All his lovers have fed the birds he says
This is after I've sprinkled the balcony
with pieces of pancake
Well, we can't help it
Our wombs command the role
as surely as the moon dictates the slap
of waves against lava rock below the hotel
We are hardwired to feed hunger, if not in children
then in pets, plants and wild things
I especially like the wild ones
The touch between feral and female
A scrap becoming energy that burns in both directions
The myna who is empowered to squawk and walk
the perimeter as if giving orders
Zebra doves too dumb or smart to pay attention
House sparrows hopping like wind-up toys
as they pick up pieces for babies in a nearby palm
All of them fueling to follow their own destinies
And me with the same small flame that must have
kindled Annapurna when she filled Shiva's begging bowl
It burns through my morning bath
When I come out wrapped in a towel
to find more food for the birds
A saffron finch with fluorescent head
is eating macadamia nuts
that my man chopped with his pocket knife
He calls it male bonding
The nuts are coffee-coated, sugared and salted
Ellaraine Lockie writes poetry, nonfiction books and essays. She has authored a poetry/art broadside, Mod Gods and Luggage Straps, BrickBat Revue, and five previous chapbook collections: Midlife Muse, Poetry Forum; Crossing the Center Line, Sweet Annie Press; Coloring Outside the Lines, The Plowman Press; Finishing Lines, Snark Publishing; and Blue Ribbons at the County Fair, PWJ Publishing. Among many other awards, she has received the Writecorner Press Poetry Prize, the Skysaje Poetry Prize, the Lois Beebe Hayna Award from The Eleventh Muse, the Elizabeth R. Curry Prize from SLAB and has won the San Francisco Writers' Conference Poetry Contest. She also teaches school and community poetry workshops.
STROKING DAVID'S LEG
is a 40 page hand-stitched chapbook.
$10.00
TO ORDER ON-LINE
From the US or Canada
From Other Countries
