Ephemera for poems by Lisa Fishman and C.S Carrier

Counting down to the launch of Little Red Leaves #6: The Ephemera issue. I've completed two more poems for this issue and have stepped back for a second to talk a little about the how-and-why.

Lisa Fishman submitted a gorgeous short poem called [Can you carry this object]. The poem's short lines, teetering on curt, generate a kind of unfolding conversation wrapped around playful grammatical oppositions. The paper airplane ephemera design was inspired by the title of the poem as well as this folding/unfolding structure. You have to construct the airplane in order to read the poem.


C.S. Carrier sent us an equally excellent abecedarian poem entitled For a Lyric Opera. After bumbling through a few drafts of ill-conceived versals, I settled on the most literal ephemerization possible. I made the poem into lyrics/notes. Holding this piece in my hand, I swear I get hymnal flashbacks from my southern baptist days. As Carrier says: "...O lyric, god's foreskin / O meringue that dries, hardens the ceiling..."

In progress... Ephemera Issue - "Dawn" by C.S. Carrier

As a lover/hater of all things pantoum, I was truly excited to read "Dawn" by C.S. Carrier.

The poem feels more like a procession than a beginning. Lines like "she's splotched with porcelain" and "the rain pools in the turquoise ashtray" immediately evoke stillness, silence, inactivity. You feel the inevitability of the day, the stillness that marks the start, the coming that already feels gone as the poem's "mouth poceeds through life." Carrier uses the repetition inherent in the pantoun to create a kind of stalemate, a time that is timeless--four steps forward, two steps back.

What's more poignant in this poem is the mention of Kurosawa ("Kurosawa presides over the cinema") in the wake of current events in Japan right now. It feels like a dedication to the past, a rumination on the "what was" in the "will be" of the earthquake's aftermath.

I decided to go with this vague, wistful feeling when designing the ephemera. I found some lovely Polaroids taken by Jeremy Pettis who graciously let me use the photos in this piece. (Polaroid's, to me, a always muddled in their own Polaroid-ness--much like pantoums always jilted by their very pantoum-ness).

The final ephemera is a procession of pictures with each (repeated) line of the poem scribbled underneath. If you like, please consider purchasing a subscription to issue #6 (only 7 left!).

In progress... Ephemera Issue - Lauren Levin's "Tresk"

Little Red Leaves has taken on a pretty ambitious task. Issue #6 will consist of individually owned and operated ephemera objects that promise to be all over the place (in a good way).

The first poem up for ephemerization was Lauren Levin's 'Tresk," a wonderfully jagged poem that stomps down the page. Here's a sneak peak at the final pamphlet that accentuates the short lines with thick black highlights and adds red "T" accents (ala the red cross) on the word 'Tresk.'

(Note: TRESK has been called a migraine gene, acting like a switch that can control the sensitivity of pain nerves in the brain.)

If you like, please consider purchasing a subscription to issue #6 (only 7 left!).