Michelle Meijs combines traditional and digital media. She creates the initial drawings with pencil on paper and the circulism shading technique, then the image is scanned and replicated with a graphics pen & tablet. She has no formal art training, so is self-taught and learns through trial & error. At the moment, she’s exploring other media such as watercolors and gauche, and will take her drawings to a new stage in the future. A few of her works have been featured in a graphics novel, and on a music CD album cover.
Michelle was born in Jamaica, but has resided in Curacao since 1990. She had her first art exhibition here in Curacao last November, and is now preparing new works for an “Island Theme” show.
your coat of sugar is long gone
that trail of poison is so evident, don’t make me tell you another time
i can’t have succubus
i can’t have judah
i can’t have cling-on
i can’t have slime
gnash your teeth all you like you are
not going to infiltrate my life
go wrap those claws around another specimen
we are done here
and here is another little short sample:
i am falling like an empire
i am starting to enjoy that sensation of falling. leaves
rain love
these things are good
and they fall
i will ride a sun beam
all the way the bottom
and here is a little piece that i wrote about gender:
i want to wear lipstick
and blush and eye liner
and thick gobs of mascara
really caked on
then wipe it all off and
scream:
fuck your beauty standards i am
fabulous with out face paint
i want to wear baby doll dresses
under trenchcoats with
a top hat
and 3 days stubble
commando of course
i like my hair short so
when i go out in my tight tight jeans and
pretty scarves and ambiguous shoes
people see me from
behind they don’t really
know what to expect they
could think im a dyke
or a girly man
or something else
or or or.
i like it this way
blurry
i like it this way
hard to define
someone on the bus
said what is he
haha
what are you
— D.B. Smith, free verse poet
But boy,
i sense your presence but why don’t you see me?
i feel like crying, yet my eyes are dry.
You always said no one was there,
But i was,
acting as a shadow,
walking behind you..
A photo can say a thousand things
your face always has me stoned,
and i was always, as usual, lost for words.
But i believe a photo could show a story of who we were,
but do you still remember me? (i hoped)
Father, father were you ever there?
i sense your presence everywhere.
I tried to dream of you, really hard.
But sometimes they say,
people try to hard,
yet get nowhere
I wished, there was a bridge between you and me.
That i don’t have to be dead to cross over.
Surrounded by people but truly so alone
People going and coming,
Losing myself bit by bit,
in this world full of ugliness
Its no wonder why people nod and agree.
why dying could be a bliss.
BUT THEY SAY.
Time can heal a broken heart,
time can nurse a wound as well.
but why couldn’t time allow me to forget you?
& time should also,
let me be at rest,
and let this pain,
slowly walk away.
Dreams were dreamt
yet they were dashed,
since everyone knew no one was perfect, why bother?
Odysseus, come lash me to the mast
That burns priapic on the deck – make taut
The ropes; secure me ’til the danger’s past.
I have no safeword; every word is fraught.
Faintly begin the raptor maiden moans –
Now keep the rudder straight, and rowers pull!
Lest sunken wrecks and coral-coated bones
Scuttle my ragged clause and hole your hull.
The deafened seamen toil fore and aft
Past monstrous hybrids singing, each to us –
It’s too late to reverse this fragile craft,
So lash me to your mast, Odysseus!
I need the Sirens’ music in my ears
More than I need to be the one who steers.
Dorothy Hickson is a writer and yoga junkie living in Columbia Heights, D.C. She has a day-job proofreading radio transcripts and scribbles madly on the subway. You can go to www.dorothyhickson.com/tumult.html for a few more scraps of her writing. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first novel.
Fran Laniado is a graduate of Bard College. She’s had several day jobs, but writing is her passion. Her work has appeared in publications including Verse Noir, Pure Talent Online, OperaOnline.us, and New Works Review. She is honored to be a part of Synchronized Chaos.
The Smell of Onions
Fran Laniado
Fran Laniado is a graduate of Bard College. She’s had several day jobs, but writing is her passion. Her work has appeared in publications including Verse Noir, Pure Talent Online, OperaOnline.us, and New Works Review. She is honored to be a part of Sychronized Chaos.
Lucia hated onions. She hadn’t always. She could faintly remember a time in her childhood, when the smell of her mother cooking onions was a comforting, pleasant sensation. But it had been warm then. The onions were not cold but spiced with the secrets of her mother’s recipe. That had been when she was a child. When she still saw them as food- as a mere vegetable and not the bane of her existence.
Her hatred had developed over the course of the past eighteen months, working with them; unloading them from the picker’s crates and loading them into the boxes in which they would be shipped to the markets. Working twelve to fourteen hours a day, her eyes had finally stopped tearing up, but the smell had seeped into all of her clothing. It had invaded her pores. No matter how much she scrubbed in the tiny cold shower that her employer provided her and Pedro with, she couldn’t rid herself of the subtlest remnants of its reek.
