Earth Speaks: An Oratorio by Joanie HF Zosike (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Earth Speaks: An Oratorio
by Joanie HF Zosike

1. Recitativo—Earth

“Our last chance to tackle the climate catastrophe.”
Ugh.
“How to heal the earth.”
Argh.
“Our fight for the planet.”
Grrrr.
Expressions like these curdle my molten lava.
They make me want to smash my surface with a mallet!
Instead of wreaking havoc, I sing:

2. Chorus of Fig Trees and Farmers

She fell in love with her
landlord Sam, a generous man.
They were agrarian lovers
who worked on the land.

Fig tree gave the woman
a root and branch of itself.
She dropped seeds in the ground.
Her patch of earth grew to sky.

It grew fiercer, too.
how its green fig eye spread
greater than a mountain.
Woman held her head high.

Fig twitched its leaves and
shook-shaukelt-secoué
Shekere shekere IH! IH!
Ritual dance pounded Earth.

Well! Earth is in no mood
for bucolic solutions.
She doesn’t approve of naïve
resolutions. She needs more.

Earth seeks a new directive.
She’s maintaining her orbit
but must gain cooperation from
those who have injured her.

3. Duet: Earth and Human

EARTH: What makes you think you can save me?
HUMAN: I was born from the dust of your dust.
                I will prove that in me you can trust.
EARTH: What gives you this terrible power?
HUMAN: I’m your owner, your tamer, your plougher.
EARTH: You’ve never owned me and you never will.
HUMAN: What if I take you to dinner, pay the bill?
EARTH: All right, enough with the rhyming!
                We have to get down to the real nitty-gritty.
                You keep talking about a fight for “the planet.”
                Meaning me. Must it always be a fight?
HUMAN: That’s right, I can’t abandon you after I’ve done you such harm.
                And I swear, I did so out of innocence.
                I never meant to hurt you.
                I just didn’t know.
EARTH: So you’re saying you were ignorant?
HUMAN: Just like Eve fell prey to the snake’s manipulation,
                I fell under the spell of my own self-adulation.
EARTH: There you go, rhyming again. The editor specifically said…
HUMAN: Sorry, I have to reread the guidelines.
                What I mean to say is, I owe you a good old-fashioned healing.
EARTH: Get your grimy hands off me, infant.
                You think the only way to accomplish anything is by force.
                I’ve lost patience with your battle cries and wars!
HUMAN: Don’t go all semantic on me, Ma.
EARTH: It’s not just wrong words, you think wrong thoughts.
                Perhaps you should ask ME what I need.
HUMAN: Okay, what do you need?

4. Earth Aria

EARTH: Sprinkle me gently.
                Don’t grizzle my grit so that soil drains down the hillsides
                You are so sloppy, child, throwing your trash this way and that.
                You’ve burned away the ozone so you can’t go out without a                 hat.
                You’ve charred the forests and mountainsides, disgraced every                 place
                you’ve trod across the land in your mania to leave your mark.
                You’ve suckled the blood from my rivers, my streams.
                Cast your plastics, spit my oil into the ocean’s crust
                Put a flag on the moon! Good grief!
                I ask you now to press your face into mine.
                Sing to me ancient songs. Place your ear to the ground,
                hear the whispers from the bedchambers of my bowels.
                I’m built like a brick house, organic and mineral.
                Trees are my bones, don’t break them.
                We’re made of the same stuff—I’m just a little more round.

5. Glorious Hallelujah!

HUMAN: And bigger.
EARTH:  And don’t you forget it!
HUMAN: Are you saying I’m star stuff, too?
EARTH:  More than you know.
HUMAN: Is my human body—
EARTH: The same as my celestial body.
HUMAN: I’ve always dreamt that I could talk with you, Mother Earth.
EARTH: I’ve dreamed about that too, honey.
                Yearned for the chance to make myself clear to you.
                Too bad I had to shout to get your attention.
HUMAN: You are kind of scary these days.
EARTH: I’ve always been scary. But I’m always benign.
HUMAN: Can I learn to think like a celestial body?
EARTH: Perhaps. If you really try.
HUMAN: I must fly away to distance stars to save the human race!
EARTH: What, to terraform and make the same mistakes all over again?
                You’re just not a one-trial learner, are you?
HUMAN: I guess not. But how do I learn to fix—tackle—heal—fight—
                I’m confused.
EARTH: No kidding.
                Follow your instincts, child, that’s all.
                Learn from the seasons and tides.
                They are my children, too. They’ll be looking out for you.
                There’s no need for apprehension.
                Did I forget to mention, we can stage an intervention together.
BOTH:    Glorious, glorious Hallelujah!
CHORUS: Glorious, glorious HEAVE-HO!
EARTH:  I don’t want you to leave so try not to heave
                and I urge you to think when you hoe!
TUTTI: Glorious, glorious Hallelujah!
             Arboreous glorious Hallelujah!
             Victorious synergy, Hallelujah!
             Green is the color of love!

PAINTING: Spring by Harmonia Rosales (2018).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The first thing I thought about when I saw the subject for this Silver Birch series was:

“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn and
Tied her with fences and dragged her down.”
—The Doors, “When the Music’s Over”

I thought back to my solo theatre work written in the early 90s, All Right, So I AM the Earth! and realized this theme has been with me a long time. Then I remembered that with others of my generation, I screamed as if wounded about an imminent catastrophe since the late 60s. Flash forward to 2022. The catastrophe is here. The repercussions of war and injury done to the ecosystem are intrinsically related. It will take imagination, vision, resistance, and strategies we have yet to imagine to overcome what our careless treatment of life on earth and in the oceans has wrought. We are all responsible to a degree, so the best thing we as individuals can do is: educate ourselves, reduce our carbon footprint, and don’t forget how to dance, sing, and love. And, if all else fails, write an oratorio.

PHOTO: Joanie Fritz Zosike in All Right, So I AM the Earth!, solo theatre work written, composed, and performed by JHFZ, directed by Stephanie JT Russell, photo by Jeanne Liotta.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joanie HF Zosike is the 2019 Writer’s Hotel Sara Patton poetry stipend recipient. Her upcoming work includes Jambu Press’s Light on the Walls of Life, an anthology dedicated to Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Her chapbooks are Character Poems (Chez Chez) and Bliss, Not Weight, (Ides Anthology of Chapbooks, Silver Birch Press). Her poetry has been featured in a ranged of publications, including Alien Buddha, Home Planet News, Levure Literraire, Maintenant, Syndic, and The New Guard: Boom!  “Compassion,” a short story, appeared in Have a NYC 3 (Three Rooms Press). Joanie received an Albee fellowship for her play Inside produced at American Actors Theatre, a NYSCA regrant for 12 Steps to Murder produced at The New Theater, and Foundation for Jewish Culture grant for And Then the Heavens Closed, produced at The Jewish Museum (all in NYC).

Waiting for Chekov by MK Sturdevant (MY FRONT DOOR Series)

Waiting for Chekov
by MK Sturdevant

 *TRIGORIN: Anyone could walk in here. (helps her up).

It isn’t closed exactly, if through the diamond window the light can shoot through most afternoons. What to do. There is nothing to do. Standing up might be something. Looking through the diamond not at it, something more. The prairies are coming back in some places. I could tell my mom, my sister, but no one can come. I seem content here, in the light, playing off the wall in this tiny foyer. I seem content in it, in life, housed in a life, we seem. Doors seem. They say, come in! This is where you come in! But if they can’t prevent you, if they can’t lock you out, they’re broken. A door says come it says stop. I say nothing, illuminated finally not by an answer but an impasse. I’m in a camera with a diamond pinhole. I am the subject. I am not open, exactly. This girl, glowing, in here, me, herself, is not as tall as the door, not as closed, but I too give you all merely a window. You see the trunk of a man, maybe you think I want you. You smell the milk of me, you recoil. I was once given a man made of flesh and keys. I stayed shut. Is there a view of the lake? It’s too hot. None of you make any sense! I know it’s snowing! A vodka—and hurry.

*TREPLEV: No one’s going to come in.

I know that, child. What year is this? It’s not surrealism. This is just nothing coming nothing going. Words float. If there is no one here to hear them assembled, is there any order at all? Air! Give me air. I am not some desperate object. Air!

*Anton Chekov, The Seagull. Trns. Curt Columbus. Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. Chicago: 2005.

NOTE FROM  THE AUTHOR: The feeling of time passing so slowly while stuck inside with family members and waiting for news, just has a Russian-play feel to it. It also is increasingly unclear to me (during quarantine) whether things people say are comedy or tragedy. In this way, a door, being open and shut, an invitation and denial, and the same thing every day yet full of possibility, seemed like a perfect way to tap into some Chekov, and see if I could find some company.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: MK Sturdevant’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Orion, Flyway, Newfound, Kestrel, Alluvian, the Lily Poetry Review, Tiny Seed Journal, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2019 Montana Prize in Fiction, and is a reader for The Maine Review. She teaches philosophy in the Chicago area. Follow her on twitter @mksturdevant.

Though a Little Out of Fashion, poem by Deborah Herman (Half New Year Poetry Series)

THOUGH A LITTLE OUT OF FASHION
by Deborah Herman

Though a little out of fashion,
There is much care and valor in the morning

I think we have no great cause to desire
the approach of day.

We see the beginning of the day, but I think we shall
never see the end of it.

A friend
Under you

A good and kind gentleman.
I pray, think of our estate
as men wracked upon a sand,
that look to be washed off the next tide.

I speak to you, but a man,
as I am.

The violet smells; the element shows;
all his senses have human conditions.

Laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man;
his affections are higher mounted,
when they stoop, they stoop with the wing.

Therefore, his fears relish in reason.

He, by showing it, should dishearten.

He may show outward courage;
but I believe, as cold a night as he could wish.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:. I have chosen for my Half New Year Poetry submission page 72 [for July 2nd, Half New Year] of Henry V. I have taken the dialogue between men out of context — they are speaking of rumours they have heard about what kind of man the king may be, without knowing he is present. I have instead turned the prose into a love poem, rather than a dialogue that takes place on the eve of war. The play as a whole is about sexual conquest — Henry must “woo” Catherine of France before forcefully taking over the country to make his leadership (and his offspring) legitimate. The play is also rife with “homosocial” male companionship: the “band of brothers” speech, and even the Harfleur speech, when Henry threatens that his army will kill all the babies and rape all of the girls of the city. So I have taken liberties with page 72 of the play and have tried to make it into something beautiful (and sexually ambiguous).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Deborah Herman is an emerging poet with previous publications in Existere, Rhythm, Transverse, and Vallum. Her poem, “Endurance,” will be published in the upcoming water-themed issue of the Motif Anthology (Vol. 4).

June 21, 2014: L.A. DI DADA at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA

Peter and Alice, play by John Logan

Peter and Alice, a 2013 play by John Logan, is based on the meeting of 80-year-old Alice Liddell Hargreaves and Peter Llewelyn Davies, then in his thirties, in a London bookshop in 1932, at the opening of a Lewis Carroll exhibition. The London production, directed by Michael Grandage, starred Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw. The play is based on an encounter between the original Alice in Wonderland and the original Peter Pan. Find Peter and Alice by John Logan at Barnes & Noble. Watch a trailer for play at youtube.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Logan is a playwright, screenwriter, and film producer. His first play, Never the Sinner, tells the story of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case. His play Red, about artist Mark Rothko, was produced on Broadway in 2010, where it received six Tony Awards. Logan received an Academy Award nomination for co-writing Gladiator, the Best Picture-winner in 2000, and earned another nomination for writing The Aviator (2004). Other notable films include Star Trek: Nemesis, The Time Machine, The Last Samurai, and the Tim Burton-directed musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, for which he received a Golden Globe Award. Logan’s recent feature films include Rango, the film adaptation of Shakespeare‘s Coriolanus, the film adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and Skyfall. In 2014, his original series Penny Dreadful premiered on Showtime.

Subway to the Future, story by Jesús Salvador Treviño

SUBWAY TO THE FUTURE (Excerpt)

by Jesús Salvador Treviño

I held the copper subway token up close and examined it. The outer part of the circular slug had a complex crisscross pattern imprinted on it and in its center there was an aluminum plug…The token read Good for One Fare on one side, and on the other side, New York City Transit Authority. As I held the token, I realized just how much it meant to me. When I had first pulled it out of Mrs. Romero’s sinkhole on that Saturday morning so long ago, along with the autographed picture of Carmen Miranda and a pair of sunglasses, it had, in an instant, crystallized my decision to leave Arroyo Grande. I had dreamed of New York and an acting career for years, but always felt it was a hopeless goal, a silly dream. But the moment I picked the token out of the sinkhole, my life changed. Suddenly, New York didn’t seem so far away. It was as if the token was urging me on, saying, “Yes, Julia, you can become that actress. Just go to New York! Look, here’s your first subway ride!” 
***
“Subway to the Future” appears in Jesús Salvador Treviño’s short story collection The Skyscraper that Flew and Other Stories, available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jesús Salvador Treviño  is an American television director of Mexican descent. He has directed episodes of the television series Resurrection Blvd., Babylon 5, Crusade, Bones, Star Trek: Voyager, seaQuest DSV, Crossing Jordan, Third Watch, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Criminal Minds, Prison Break, The O.C., ER, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Dawson’s Creek, Chicago Hope, and NYPD Blue. He is the recipient of the prestigious Directors Guild Award and two Alma Awards for Outstanding Director of a Prime Time Television. As a writer, his work includes the short story collections The Fabulous Sinkhole and Other Stories and The Skyscraper That Flew. In a recent interview, he said, “I have devoted my life to opening up opportunities for Latinos in media so we can create positive, realistic portrayals of who we are.”

Cast recording of Bukowsical!

BUKOWSICAL!


Book and Lyrics by Spencer Gren and Gary Stockdale 


Music by Gary Stockdale

A completely irreverent, wacko, hilarious, tuneful, and, above all, raunchy musical. 

BUKOWSICAL started life as a 50-minute one-act in Los Angeles, was revised and expanded, and went on to the New York Fringe Festival, where it won the award for Outstanding Musical, and was later produced by New Line in St. Louis. The musical traces Bukowski‘s life from obscurity to international fame.

LA Weekly called Bukowsical! “riotously funny.” The Los Angeles Times called it “an uproarious romp.” Backstage said, “The production skims along, each number wrapping appalling bad taste in a perky, upbeat melody that makes dipsomania a lighthearted romp. . . It’s terrific fun and so wrong in all the right ways.”

Original cast recording of Bukowsical! available for $17.98 at kritzerland.com.

Good writing, quote by Anton Chekhov

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

ANTON CHEKHOV

Photo: Mrdorkesq, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Tennessee Williams in Bangkok, memoir by Eddie Woods

Congratulations to Eddie Woods — a poet and contributing editor for several Silver Birch Press anthologies — on the publication of his memoir Tennessee Williams in Bangkok.

BOOK DESCRIPTION FROM AMAZON: A playwright, a journalist, and a stunningly beautiful drag-queen prostitute. In this fascinating memoir, Eddie Woods brings all three together. And along the way graces us with countless insights into the heart and mind of one of America’s greatest dramatists. Even while paying homage to his beloved Kim, the most unique of his many lovers. As well as regaling us with numerous other tales of his more than two years in the City of Angels. Wherever he is, Tennessee Williams is smiling at this book. Now you can smile with him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eddie Woods (born 1940 in New York City) is a well-traveled poet and prose writer who variously worked as a short-order cook, computer programmer, encyclopedia salesman, restaurant manager, and journalist. In the early 1960s he did a four-year stint in the US Air Force, and since 1978 has mainly resided in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where together with Jane Harvey he launched Ins & Outs magazine and founded Ins & Outs Press. Of all the many writers and artists he has known, Tennessee Williams remains the most memorable.

Find Tennessee Williams in Bangkok at Amazon.com.

What fiction means, excerpt from play by Oscar Wilde

According to Oscar Wilde: 

 “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh. Otherwise they’ll kill you.”

Wilde kept his Victorian contemporaries laughing with his delightful play The Importance of Being Earnest. But in the midst of the hilarity, Wilde slipped in social commentary about everything from theft and domestic service to alcohol consumption and marriage.

Some of my favorite lines revolve around the era’s most popular form of entertainment — the three-volume novel. Here is some of the play’s comical and cutting dialogue:

CECELY: I believe that memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels…

MISS PRISM: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.

CECILY: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily. I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

MISS PRISM: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde debuted in London on February 14, 1895. The play is available free at Project Gutenberg.