Hi All
It's an excellent day for me to shine the light towards someone I find highly talented. It is a joy to share with you the poetry of B. Lynne Zika (and an amazing video created by her son) today on the Jimmy Broccoli page!
I first read B. Lynne's poetry on the Rye Whiskey Review site (I highly recommend it) and really enjoyed what I read. Since then, I've read a good bit of her work and am an admirer of it. B. Lynne's poems are well-crafted and are always interesting and a pleasure to read.
This is B. Lynne in her own words:
B. Lynne Zika is an award-winning writer and photographer. Her father, also a writer and poet, bequeathed her this advice: Make every word count.
Today would have been B. Lynne's son, Christian Brackett's, birthday. Below are two poems by B. Lynne followed by a link to an animated video created by Christian. The poem "By His Own Hand" is about Christian and this post is dedicated to him. ______________
By His Own Hand
Each night a tendril of your death unfurls and weaves itself into the underpinnings of my sleep. Come morning I find its dark wings rhomboid-mounted again, and so I carry you forward weighty on my back into Day Thirty, thirty-one and counting. Boy, when you were seven years old you could crazy-eight or backgammon your way to stardom, dumbfounded when some ill-informed adult refused your challenge on the basis of such a paltry thing as age. Come gather round, citizens; he shines because he must. He'll leave his detractors face down in the dust, yet discount his own value as tarnish and rust and sally, face down on the floor.
—B. Lynne Zika ____
A Day of Pain
So it’s a day of pain. The dappled greens of the poplars and sycamore punctuate the landscape in commas and ellipses. The loblolly pine provides exclamation marks by the dozens. I whittle today, not bothering to sharpen my blade. A lazy artist can hardly aspire to greatness, but such a convenient excuse rushes to my aid. Put it down in the history they’ll write of me someday: It was a day of pain. The walking stick, bits of grey bark still clinging, rests beside my pillow. The day I gathered it from the adjacent woods I contemplated the time when, back in the city, there will be no sticks to gather outside my door but squares of balsa to be purchased at the local art supply, $35.30 a bunch. Today I silence the Chopin filling my room in favor of ringing silence and the rare whoosh of a car navigating the county road. It is a day of pain. The path to the pond is overgrown, trumpet vine, Confederate jasmine, hardwood saplings vying for sun. A square of gold creeps across my floor from the open door toward my bed. Let it come. Let it bathe me in light. I shall eulogize its warmth with gratitude and praise, for this is a day of sheet and pillow. Yes, this is a day of pain.
—B. Lynne Zika
Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfXwcOpHRFk
Photo: B. Lynne Zika.
