BLOG OF THE WEEK ~ MAGALY GUERRERO

I have been waiting for this day for a very long time, my friends. I have been stalking our fellow poet and witchy woman, Magaly Guerrero, for a considerable time, hoping to feature her for your delight. And now here we are! Yay! You likely have encountered Magaly at her two blogs, Magaly Guerrero (Dark Fiction. Dark poetry. Balanced witchy living), and Magaly Guerrero's Pagan Culture, or at our sister site, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, where she links up regularly. Draw your chairs in close. There be spirits here. Our tea may be steeped with a little of Magaly's  magic potion, and don't be surprised if you overhear an incantation or two. When two witchy women get together, anything can happen. For certain, there will be cackling!

Sherry: Magaly, yippee! Here we finally are! Tell us where on the planet  you make your home, and what is wonderful about it?

Magaly: I live in New York City, with a Piano Man, a Little Princess, and an urban garden that always threatens to take over our apartment… especially when the Wheel of the Year turns towards the cooler months. I’m minutes from Manhattan and right across the street from an enormous park. This is perfect, since I would lose my wits without a healthy amount of forest nearby… and horses—which I never, ever, ever feed while their caretakers are not looking *cough*. 

Sherry:  A wonderfully exciting  place to live! Tell me, as one who lives vicariously if, indeed, I live at all, do you have a favorite place to go in the Big Apple?

Magaly: Actually, Sherry, I don't think I have a favorite place to go in New York. I go wherever the things I like to do are happening: I enjoy readings, book sales, conventions, fresh fruit markets...So you see, not as interesting as you might think. I go to shows my husband is playing or conducting. I enjoy Shakespeare in the Park in summer...But all those things are just things I would do any place I might live.

Sherry: It sounds wonderful, and so does your husband. What a talented pair you are! I so enjoyed your recent post about your Piano Man, entitled Finger-Feeding Souls. Do check it out, kids, it is a veritable feast to read!

Magaly, I know you as a writer of poetry and prose. When did your journey as a writer begin? And which is your first love? 

Magaly: My first love is prose. I began writing fiction in my very late twenties. It was sort of an accident. One night, while I was on Active Duty working as a case manager for Marine-4-Life (now the Wounded Warrior Regiment), a nurse came to get me because one of my Marines was having a bad night. His leg had been amputated recently, and the pain medications were not doing a great job. I ran to his room. 

He was enraged, but not at the pain. After much encouragement (and whispered oaths of secrecy), he told me that he had accidentally ripped the last few pages of the dark urban fantasy romance he had been reading and now couldn’t tell how the story ended. It was after midnight. I couldn’t get a new copy for him. I asked him about the plot. After I got the major points, I went back to my office and wrote an ending. He loved it. The smile on his face filled me with joy. I’ve been writing fiction ever since.

Sherry: What a marvelous story! I am so enjoying this conversation.  As, of course, I knew I would. What do you love about poetry?

Magaly: I love writing poetry for the same reasons I'm crazy about prose: the two take imagination and life, morph them into tales, and birth them safely into the world. For me, words are therapy, problem solvers, rewards... I write stories - shaped as poems and as fiction - to celebrate my happy moments, to release physical pain, to make sense of difficult issues, to soothe emotional hurts, to play... I love reading poetry because a good poem makes me think, and thinking is a really good thing.

Sherry: What is that song? "You're so young and I'm so old...." Enjoy that faculty while you can, my friend. I've passed my Best Before date. Cackle. What do you love about blogging?

Magaly: My favorite thing about blogging is that it offers a way to form relationships with people I might’ve never met otherwise. And you know what? That’s a gift.

Sherry: I completely agree. Would you like to choose three of your poems and tell us about each one?

“Always”

Why I always will?

Because my lips nearly burst
with the rage of my own
screams,
and you came and kissed them
into song…

without trying to change
me.

Magaly: I wrote this one after a really upsetting phone call. I remember ending the call, and telling my husband, “I’m going to write something mean.”  He smiled at me, kissed me, and said, “Go write a little decapitation therapy, love.” The comment made me roar with laughter. And my husband’s attitude, the way he knows me, inspired “Always.”  

Sherry: I love “you came and kissed them into song.” Someone who loves without wanting to change you – that’s a gift, too. One of your recent poems resonated very deeply with me. Let’s take a peek:

“On the Wheel of Living and Dying”

Another year’s swallowing its own tail,

riding helter-skelter on the Wheel

of living and dying and living again…

getting me from dizzy to sozzled

on the juices of Chaos’ other brother—

you know him,

he’s the calm-camouflaged Catastrophe

fed by society to all its accepting

self-blinded souls.

In spring, I lived content

between happiness and heartache,

soaring over a precipice of brilliance,

thinking, Not my drama.

Then came July’s heat

to sweat a lioness’ dying tears

over a world that screamed,

“Murder-death-kill!”

I waited for the ebb and flow of the status quo

to trip into an endless downward spiral,

where it would choke in stark, tumultuous grief.

But nothing ever changes—Chaos reigns

when we fight the fog while stuck in place.

So I sat through the fall…

existing

on naps, snacks and blogs…

muttering

of sweet blood denied,

of poverty-driven chaos,

of fuckin’ hard goings…

Winter slapped me like a sickness—

a pandemic of empowerment and changes

shouting into my skull, “Take control ruthlessly.

Misery doesn’t need more friends. Escape

clouds of barely submerged apprehension.

Tongue kiss enlightenment. Reclaim your belief 

in dirt, in Faerie, in the resurgence of love, in Self!

Devour this creative boost.” 

I am reclaiming my all.

I kissed Gaia with spirit, flesh and bone,

felt my old doors opening,

welcomed the rebirth of inspiration;

I met the eyes of the infant Wheel,

watched them open… open again,

glimpsing the spring of a new me.

Sherry: Wow. Simply: wow.

Magaly: I asked friends on Facebook to share 3-word phrases that described their 2015. This word-baby was conceived by their descriptive trios and birthed by my Muse. I had to play around with the phrases a little… But in the end the entire poem was built from bits of my friends and me. And that thought always brings a huge grin to my face.

Sherry: What an original method for birthing a poem. How cool. Let's look at your third offering, my friend.

“Let’s Make Love and Lightning”

“I wish you’d read The Art of War.”

He shook the remote control towards the Gaza Strip,

which once again, burned the innards of their television.

“Discussing all that fighting madness

might help me make sense of the world and its creatures.”

“We, earth men—”

“And women, dammit! Don’t you ever forget women.

If your tactics leave them unequal, half-wanted or neglected,

I will battle against the misogyny rotting your tongue.”

“Rotting my tongue?”

He had no choice but to attack.

“It was…” he almost shouted, It was just a damn quote

from The Martian Chronicles.

But there was so much fire in those big, beautiful eyes,

so much energy fueling the lashing of his lover’s tongue.

You are ardor made art, heart of my heart.

His husband deserved veracity, alliance, a double shot of hope…

So he placed Bradbury in front of the television,

abandoned the initial scheme,

allowed tenderness to capture and overthrow treachery,

and cited time tattered wisdom (cynicism-free and trueness anew):

“We, earth men, have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.”

His husband’s vision had gone liquid,

wrung raw by all the non-fiction horror in the Five O’Clock News.

But neither hurt nor social disenchantment could silence the man he married.

“Sleeping beauty,” his husband said, “awoke at the kiss of a scientist

and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe.”

He picked up Bradbury and caressed his cracked spine with his trigger finger.

“Do you know why I read this novel when you weren’t home?”

“Sun Tzu told me,” he said, flashing the universal conspirators’ grin.

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night,

and when you make your move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

Husband met husband in the middle of the living room.

With Bradbury and Sun Tzu as witnesses, they kissed.

And the words they didn’t speak into each other’s mouths, said,

Let’s make love and lightning, not war or ruin.

Sherry: I adore this poem, the conversation, the caring and, especially, the closing lines. Best antidote to the news I can think of.

Magaly: This was my answer to a prompt that listed 13 words, out of The Art of War, and instructed us to write a poem using some of them. The details of the prompt mentioned current conflicts in Syria, Gaza, the Ukraine… I found myself revisiting news articles on these subjects. I was also rereading The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury, at the time. This piece is a dance between many of the thoughts the experience left in my mind.

Sherry: There is a depth of information and emotion in this poem. I love hearing about the various ways you write poems. No wonder I enjoy reading them so much.

I note you have published three books. What would you like to say about Blooming Howls? It looks fantabulous!

Magaly: Blooming Howls is a very short dark fantasy collection. The “fantabulous!” look you speak of is the artwork of my dear friend, Michelle Kennedy. And it was inspired by a scene that takes place in the first story in the collection.

           

Sherry: May it sell many copies. Is there anything you’d like to say to Poets United?

Magaly: I would like to thank everyone, especially you, Sherry, for sharing your words with me and for letting me share mine.  

Sherry: Thank you, Magaly. I am so pleased I finally had the chance to feature you here. I consider it a scoop! 

Wasn't this fun, my friends? Every week, another poet who knocks our socks off. What a lot of talent there is online. Do come back and see who we talk to next. Who knows? It might be you!