May Zine, Day 4: Crafty Afternoon!

 What would a backyard poetry/zine festival be if you couldn't have a few craft projects? This was a great excuse to get my poetry dinosaur, a draft notebook, and multiple colors of pens to create a few tiny zines of my own. When I do this again in the fall, I'm going to rely more on crafting the zines themselves rather than printing and photos -- these were fun but it felt like they could have used some additional handcrafted elements. 

This was a fun project-in-hindsight rather than in the planning and I'd like to do something similar in the fall: three mornings worth of reading and at least two afternoons worth of tiny zine writing. The two projects below aren't necessarily finished (there's plenty of notebook left to keep noodling in) and I'll be interesting to see what might be inspire in the fall (a parliament of birds in the patio gazebo?). It looks like this summer will be without a moonflower tower (last year's seeds haven't sprouted) but...so many possibilities. Perhaps by the fall I'll have an entire library of these. What kinds of small projects captivate your attention? 

-- Chrissa

Zine #1: Wandering

What if you were the fairyland the wind was gently populating?

Beach towels disperse fantastic landscape across a green backyard corner. And those ferment gently into fairyland, as highways dip into seascape.

Lizard toes shuffle across vinyl: it is now time to wander the new land. A freckle mite wakes beneath scale-sand, crawls up to the grasslands, and sights Knee Hill.

The mite--Freckle--scurries through tall, pale grass stems toward the low rise of the hill. Past Saturday rise, sun shadows in the sand, a broken path for Freckle's hike.

Down through unshaven grassland, along a bright beach, Freckle listens for ocean. Sunlight speeds host waves to wind, a breeze's susurrus foams tide-lost memories.

let the breeze float you by the wild walks while the land sleeps; hear them grow tame in tales. A hot asphalt memory lifts; one of frog ponds sings; an iris swamp one stains.

There, an overhang smelling of hot plastic and hose water beckons Freckle. The land rouses to wade a flood tide; Freckle finds warmer, deeper sands and sleeps. 

Zine 2: Glim City

How fast can the city speed you through? Does noise foam as it crests?

I've named them Vivian! They're my first over-water link and a perfect pair of mirror shades. My eyes won't burn in the afternoons and I don't need to go any further than the beach to leap the Gulf.

They've named me Glim: girl limned in machine. I'm their passenger as they're mine--they're worried about that, out here on the sand.

I've brought them to the beach so that I can switch between horizon and city and so that I can feel the hot breeze and pretend it's the rush of trams and bots. Vivian calibrates; my forehead itches and the waves fade.

I become more than the Chester girl, more than a suburb...I'm a thought waiting to be processed by a genius. I was city-blind. A code thrums like a tear at the edge of sight. There's a warming about moisture: STAND BACK.

I lean into the wind, step forward, feel a chill brush my toes, fizzy about ankles. Vivian argues the city needs my body safe--I can't remain standing with my feet in the lacy edge of the ocean. Birds call close to me. My view flickers.

I have no food for anyone this afternoon. They continue to call, closer and closer, but I have already drowned in the city, my knees locked, my head a satellite behind the sky.