Poem: paper dragons

paper dragons

blue & yellow folded paper dragons
sail away in an indigo Tintenfaß
dragons dangerous yet delicate
for they cannot breathe fire
and live

(c) Nissa Annakindt 1990

The word 'Tintenfaß is German for 'inkwell'. The funny letter at the end is pronounced like 's'.  This is the origin of the poem: one day I was looking through a mail order catalog from Dover Books and came across several advertised books about Origami, the Japanese art of folding paper. One of the book descriptions must have mentioned that it gave instructions for making Origami dragons. And so this poem kind of poured out as poetry often did in those days.

This is one of the poems in my poetry book, Where the Opium Cactus Grows.  Shared in Poetry Pantry #159 over at Poets United.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry Group, Poetry Zine

For a couple of years, some time ago, I used to edit a zine. It was something I liked to do and wasn't half bad at. But the printing and postage cost a lot.

When I self-published my poetry book on Lulu.com, I first began to get the idea that Lulu.com might be a great way to publish a zine. But it took me a while to get to the idea of doing a poetry zine.

The advantage of doing it as a Lulu.com book is that the 'zine' will be a nicely printed book with a cover, and it won't cost me a fortune making that happen. I wouldn't be able to pay in contributors' copies--- the poets would have to buy their own copy/copies.

Now, the hard part would be to find some poets who write what I could recognize as quality work. So I thought of starting a Facebook group for poets. Here it is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/479819908761898/

Both the group and the future zine are called 'Red Explosions'--- a line from an old poem of mine--- because it expresses what I want--- poems with something vivid, explosive, strange, or interesting. Not a bland collection of words as in:

my girlfriend
dumped me,
I feel
like sh*t
and want
to
die
die
die

(If you want to see further examples of what I, perhaps due to a lack of mental health, think of as poetry, you might go to my book on Amazon.com and look at the free preview there at some of the poems I've written.)

While I am not accepting submissions just yet, if you are interested in submitting to the zine, you might do well to join the Facebook group so you can share poems there. If I like your stuff enough, I will probably ask you to submit when the time comes.

UPDATE: the zine has become an e-zine. This one right here.

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Poem: See, a Fishing Junk

See, a Fishing Junk
a sijo

See, a fishing junk floats to Kowloon
& I saw a typhoon drinking the harbor.
Stop, I said, do not drink all the water
For the sake of the fishing junk.

But the typhoon drank on
For the sake of relative humidity.

(c) Nissa Annakindt Dec. 13, 2012

One of my more recent poems, and thus not included in my book When the Opium Cactus grows. I will probably be sharing it in the poetry group Red Explosions Poetry Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/479819908761898 Please consider joining the group if you write poetry.

Shared on Poetry Pantry #158.

The kitten in the picture is Anthony, who decided to take a nap in the garbage can the other day. He is named after Saint Anthony, who found kitten Anthony and his sister when they went missing for a week. 

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Poem: malison d'etre

As I may have mentioned, I'm doing most of my blogging on Facebook these days, at the link given at the bottom of the page. But I still want to post my poem for Poetry Pantry at Poets United, and so I posted the poem on my Facebook and added my poem to the Poetry Pantry linky. And I thought I'd better post links to the poem here. Click on the poem title to read the poem.

malison d'etre


jonathan is a bat out
of hell
which explains his crispy singed
wings
and his
expression of perpetual exasperation
and why he sleeps
hanging over the heat register
on cold nights
he's working on a PhD
in social work
but what he really
wants is to
be a rock star
like michael jackson
& madonna
strangely enough he cant stand baseball
or hippoptamuses


(c) Nissa Annakindt 1990

This poem is included in my book Where the Opium Cactus Grows.



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