Monday, June 7, 2010

Desiree Morales featured in Chaparral

Chaparral is an online poetry journal that doesn't feature hundreds of people at a time or have busy pages with ads galore, or publish just anyone any time. The issues of Chaparral are lean and muscular, featuring an electric group of hand-picked writers whose poems all touch on an evocative theme. The pages are comprised of sparse information on a black background.

Desiree Morales, whose poem, "Negotiating Death in Los Angeles," was featured in the Forest Drive showed up in the Spring issue of Chaparral.

The journal features the striking artwork of southern Californian, Shawna Taklender. The high contrasts and natural shapes of her work suit the journal very well. I'm picking up on a theme of rooting in the landscape and going out in many directions. I'm thinking of poets all spread out around the south land in their little rooms made of drywall and wood, smelling the dry June sage and orange trees on the wind. I'm imagining people huddled together around a fire deep in hallucination, their bodies are still yet they're acting together in other realms. I'm thinking I should get another glass of wine and read more poems from Chaparral.