Memories, Michelle Buchanan, 2009
36x36, Oil on Canvas

Have a beautiful day,

Michelle B.

First in a series, using doll parts.




















Hallway, Michelle Buchanan, 2009
18X24, Oil on Canvas

Have a beautiful day,

Michelle B.

This is one of my most recent paintings. Lately I've been
making political statements with my art. It was bound to
happen sooner or later.

















Hypocrisy, Michelle Buchanan, 2009
11X14, Oil on Canvas

Have a beautiful day,

Michelle B.

Winter Advisory

Dogs huddle near fire--
warm commas,
pausing in and out
of sleepy day.

Twitching feet
run miles along
black and white
drifting dreams.

Michelle M. Buchanan 12/16/2008

There is a certain quietness
in small spaces. Breath bounces
off corners. Trajectory.
Lever, closing curtain
slow click. clicking
like a roller coaster
catching the chain up.

The lever opens and
closes. Starts, stops, emergency
breaks. It keeps the assembly
line moving, locks the rolling bed
into position.

Curtains hide backsides,
insides of living rooms, and
puppets before the show. The bland one,
light blue and bigger than the sea
hide the dying when they need
to be cleaned up.

Switches make decisions. On, off.
The lights, a toy, the electric
utility box.
When to stay, or let go.

Some have the audacity to hang
on to life, like a loose thread on the
underarm of freshly pressed shirt.
Gasping for air, a
flipped fish from the tank.
While we watch.

Every now and then
the curtain sways, air of
strangers walking by.
Keep one hand on the lever,
feel the switches with the other,
let ridges and smooth surfaces
burn fingertips

as your breath
bounces off the corners of
small spaces.

Michelle M. Buchanan November 4, 2008

Clay Sculptures
April 08

Compliments of Mipoesias magazine, I received OCHO #15, guest edited by Francisco Aragon in the mail today. I knew I’d be out and about driving my daughter around this evening so I made a date with myself (hot) and stuck the book in my bag for later. I dropped her off at 7 and , with 2 hours to kill, decided the coffee shop would be my romantic getaway with my copy of OCHO tonight. I’m sitting here at the table getting annoyed at the girl with the cackling laugh in the adjoining room and the waitress who thinks it’s okay to run the little vacuum while customers are in the room (no doubt she has a REAL date and wants to get done early), and did I mention the baby that is meowing?

But as I start to read the book it all seems to dissipate into the air. The background noises, dishes clanging, people talking...it all disappears as I delve deeper into the works of some really good poets.

Some have names I've never heard of. Like Xochiquetzal Candelaria, whose outstanding poem Esta Palabra blew me away. She writes:

At night, the pepper sweet oil
Triggering sweat glands filling

Thousands of tiny tubs in the hollows
Of my neck, how the wave of its one

Brown syllable grows like debt
Spans weeks, then years

Before it breaks
& slides back to blue.

I looked through the window of the café at the snow on the ground outside. The bench that just months ago was covered with leaves, and months before that held a place for young couples sitting in the warm sun. Then I turned back to the book, as if looking into another window. A window quite the contrast from what’s outside right now. One full of color and warmth. Full human struggle, love, relationships.

Then there's Octavio R. Gonzalez, who I have heard of. He's actually a friend on Facebook that I don't really know and haven't read before. After reading his poem Blacksister I definitely know I'll be searching for more of his work. He starts the poem with a quote from Sylvia Plath then he writes:

The dark funnel,
time, sucks away

your face, blacksister.
Silhouetted, telephoned, she

suffers my bellow
with calm, psychological

palms upraised to God;
erects a place of family,

encircling her
sums and son;

blacksister I
am crying ever some.

It was poems like this that were strung throughout the entire issue, that kept me reading. Kept me peeking though these windows into private lives. Like a voyeur hiding in the bushes I couldn't stop quietly watching and waiting for the next scenario. Francisco Aragon did a fabulous job choosing the poems and poets for this issue.

And, as if time and space eluded me I find myself back home sitting in my studio posting a blog. When I finish this I'm going to read it again. It was that good.