(PURITY

feeling a deer
quicken its leaps—

the artist avoided
aftermaths of wounds

How might a grid eliminate
gesture from paint

viscous as it flows
like a menstruation—

a loss that teaches
intensity

and failed mitigation
through geometry

Encaustic will fail:

did the Greeks attain
Purity?

Did I earn the moments
I made my mother cry

Eileen R. Tabios has released 20 print, 4 electronic and 1 CD poetry collections, an art-essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, a short story book and a collection of novels. Recent books include 5 Shades of Gray (i.e. press) and the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA with j/j hastain (Marsh Hawk Press).  Recipient of the Philippines’ National Book Award for Poetry, she has exhibited visual poetry and visual art throughout the United States and Asia. She has also edited, co-edited and/or conceptualized nine anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays.

Ms. Tabios has crafted a body of work that is unique for melding ekphrasis with transcolonialism. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, computer-generated hybrid languages, Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Music, Modern Dance and Sculpture. As part of her poetry-as-performance approach, she blogs as the “Chatelaine” at http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com; edits a popular poetry review journal, Galatea Resurrects (A Poetry Engagement) at http://galatearesurrects.blogspot.com; and founded Meritage Press (www.meritagepress.com), a multi-disciplinary literary and arts press based in San Francisco & St. Helena.