Doraine Poretz, poet and playwright, is one of the founders of the Venice Poetry Workshop at Beyond Baroque. Presently she is poet-in-residence in several schools in the Los Angeles area. Six books of her poetry have been published: Re: Visions, This Woman In America, Scattered Light, and Arrival, all from Bombshelter Press; as well as Last Exquisite Tear (Golden Frog Press) and most recently This Alchemy (Olandar Press). Her short stories have appeared in both Doubleday and Dutton editions, and her poems have appeared in such magazines as Onthebus, Harbinger: Fiction and Poetry of Los Angeles Writers, CQ (California State Quarterly), Grand Passion: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond and others.  In addition to her work with young poets, Ms. Poretz teachers a poetry series for adults entitled Writing Down the Music of Your Life, and conducts monthly seminars in poetry on myth and the archetypes of the unconscious. As well, she has participated in the Actors Studio Playwrights Unit both in New York and Los Angeles, and her plays have been produced or developed in theatres on both coasts. 

Longing For The Muse
 
Within my house, a tiny door opens to midnight silence.
Still, with all this quiet, She doesn’t arrive.
The shush of dead leaves, the only sound; the blooming camellias,
proud: the porch, well-starched and waiting.

It’s been too many years for Her to be out there, roaming the dark.
The interview I lost my youth for, the one scratched down on
reams of paper is flying beyond the stars, or stuffed somewhere
in the garage between rusted canisters. I don’t know why

She chose me in the first place, so why should I be petulant now
She hasn’t returned? But oh, it is such a sumptuous night!
If only, once more, to feel her touch, her breath.   Her knife.

                                                

Lullaby In The Desert Night

                                                for my daughter
 
For you are the wishbone that shall stay whole.
A teepee of wonder, an Indian’s promise.
And arrow of moon’s has startled your bones.
And no storms shall harm you.

Rise on your left foot my slim-hipped darling.
Or rise on you right, you cannot fail.
For you are the lizard eating the sky,
even as you are the mountain basking in sand.

And that is why desert animals
prowling the night,
sleep peacefully
by your side. 

 Upon looking at the rugs at Harrania

                                                  for T   

   
all trees suddenly become their trees,
the ones these child-artists weave
in this small Egyptian village;

trees that rise into threads
for the Angel of Weaving —
she who smiles, who inspires,

lightening the task of teasing out dreams,
tethering gestures
of color and shade
which loom

in a twelve-year old brain, so that  trees
become birds or emerge from dark rivers
which flow with an infinite grace;

and by doing so, gratify the gods
to carry us further, all a little further

to see what cannot be seen —
and claim it. 

© 2009 Doraine Poretz