Guest Artist: Eggemoggin Reach Review
Volume I, published in 2004, contains poetry and
prose by 28 writers who are members of the Deer
Isle Writers' Group and the Eggemoggin Writers'
Collaborative.
Eggemoggin Reach connects Penobscot Bay and Jericho Bay, and flows between Deer Isle and the mainland. We chose the name Eggemoggin Reach Review because our contributing authors live, and write, on both sides of this beautiful body of water. Eggemoggin Reach Review, Volume II, will be available for sale in June 2007. If you wish to purchase a copy of Volume I, or pre-order Volume II, please contact us via email: anne522@verizon.net
From Volume I, three poems and a short story:
House of the Dead
Horns of past moons
Scratch the dust.
Tattered rugs worn thin.
Afraid to turn the key,
I stand halting.
Beyond the threshold
Dissolved in vinegar
My shadow too, could disappear.
- Billie Hotaling
You Called Me What? the woman at the checkout counter consumed with her daughter and she says Dearie like it rolls off their tongues a little bit sweet | The Ardent Dog You just wait, just wait! One day, when he wasn't doing anything He looked up, red tongue relaxed For a small while he quivered, muzzle
apulse he's been scouting all his backyard |
Morpho Nimbus
She walks in the door carrying a bunch of lamb's ears.
"I must put them in water immediately," she says.
Her hair, fluffed out against the stars, cumulus around her head, fills the doorway.
Is this a hostess present, I wonder?
"Please show me where I can put them," she says, importantly.
Dressed in silky white pants and an abbreviated black tanktop, she is the essence of professional New
York, of Madison Avenue art director, gold rings and bracelets gleaming on her hands and wrist.
Bracey greets her loudly in the small mudroom. His round, cylindrical body wriggles with enthusiasm;
he misses New York.
I locate a large, crystal vase for the thick, gray, hairy lamb's ears, which she places in the hallway.
"They will be all right here," she says.
I guess they're not for me.
At dinner, she feeds Bracey pieces of roast chicken and kernels of yellow and white corn.
Eyes riveted on her face and hands, body rigidly expectant, his whole world focuses on this benficent
relationship, waiting for the least or the greatest scrap with equal intensity, a love affair far gone. Sighing,
he lays his head on her bare, sandaled feet, satiated with adoration.
She speaks of her heyday on Madison Avenue: jingles for Pepsi Cola and Maxwell House Coffee,
corporate jets to Panama for shoots. Her apartment on Fifth Avenue and house in Kent, Connecticut,
however, are for sale.
She owes the IRS $200,000, has further debts of $100,000, is out of work.
"I must not forget my lamb's ears," she says.
"Tell me about them," I say finally. "Why are they so special?"
"I grow butterflies in them. They are full of feeding caterpillars. This big cluster will be totally consumed
in a few days," she answers.
"But how do you manage in New York? Where will you track down suf?cient lamb's ears?" I ask.
"I go to the flower district, to the farmer's markets. I ?nd enough," she says.
"Why do you do this?" I ask.
"I love butterflies. I love making them. I watch the caterpillars eat the leaves with their powerful
jaws. I get up in the night and listen to them munch. I have to see them go into their pupae, into their
chrysalides, these metamorphic, diurnal insects, before they take the shape of their imago, their final,
winged state."
"Bracey, sleeping on her naked feet, stirs, furry images passing through his head, causing him to twitch
and snuffle.
"In my hallway, do eyeless, furry, ferocious-looking caterpillars crawl over my garden hat and shirt,
slither across the old pine captain's chest, hang from the slatted bench, a soft, circus frenzy of mayhem?
"I bring a cloud of butterflies with me to New York," she says. "They fly around my apartment,
between my Biedermeier desk and dining table and chairs, among my Dutch still-life paintings of pears
and cherries and pitchers of cream. Nymphalis antiopa, Cynthia virginiensis, Polygonia interrogationis, I
adore them! I let them out on my fire escape to fly into the New York noontime sky, up the steeple of the
Chrysler Building, the radio/TV tower of the Empire State, the square tops of the World Trade Center.
"One morning, when I was taking the elevator to work, a man beside me in the crowded space, said,
'I see a butterfly in your hair!'
"I didn't move, but continued facing forward, staring at the door.
" 'I see another butterfly. My god, your hair is full of butterflies!' he cried.
"The door opened and I walked into the shiny black lacquer lobby of my advertising company lit by
recessed lamps in the tall ceiling, the butterflies still in my hair, the man left behind, agitated, amazed.
"I liked that," she says, pushing at her sumptuous, abundant brown hair.
"When the time comes to leave, she lifts the lamb's ears out of the vase. I look into them and see a
dozen caterpillars eating.
"They will soon be quiescent," she says, sheltering the soft, woolly foliage in her arms.
"I think of her imago as she walks toward her car with the bouquet, picture her at the corner of Madison
Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, stopping trafic with butterflies floating about her angel's hair, the dusky
purple, sunset red, and iridescent lavender shades of the membranous wings lighting up this corner of the
city, this New Yorker with the heart of a naturalist, Amazon explorer in search of insects, adventuress in
the jungles of Africa, festooned by canvas bags and butterfly catchers, wearing the order of the Madison
Avenue Lepidoptera.
"Bracey follows a lost, odoriferous larva as it inches along on five pairs of abdominal prolegs over
the hooked tufts of the hall rug, his long, sophisticated nose pressed to the carpet, less than a centimeter
behind.
-Brenda Gilchrist
Brenda Gilchrist wrote, illustrated, and designed four books published by Braceypoint Press, Deer Isle, including Paws for Peace and Gabi's Doggone Totally Awesome Guide to Maine. After thirty years in art books publishing in New York, she moved to Deer Isle year round in 1990. Her work has appeared in the Maine Times.
Billie Hotaling My life has included several creative activities: teaching, children's mental health work, writing, painting, dance, music, and raising four children. Two published books, Count the Stars Through the Cracks, and Be Like the Bats, were rewarding endeavors. New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Ohio, and now, happily, Maine have been home. Billie passed away in 2005, and is greatly missed by her fellow writers.
Jacqueline Michaud's work has appeared in national literary journals and anthologies, including The New England Review, New Laurel Review, Florida Review, American Letters & Commentary, and the forthcoming U.S. 1 Worksheets and CELAAN, among others. Her work also has appeared in The Breath of Lips Parted: Voices from the Robert Frost Place, and the Eggemoggin Reach Review, two anthologies published in 2004. A finalist in the Virginia Brendemuehl Poetry Competition 2006, her most recent work includes translations of poems by Francophone writers, and a major collection of poems by the 20th century French poet and screenwriter, Jacques Prévert. Ms. Michaud received her BA in French Literature from Skidmore College.
Julian Waller has been a summer resident of Deer Isle since 1989 and a member of the Deer Isle Writers' Group since 1995. He also lives in El Cerrito, CA and does sculpture and poetry on both coasts, since retiring as Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Vermont. An Anthology of Prose and Poetry by members of The Deer Isle Writers' Group & The Eggemoggin Writers' Collaborative Eggemoggin Reach Review