TALES SERIES: BELGIN YUCELEN (ART); CAT DIXON (POETRY)
sculpture by Belgin Yucelen
Cat Dixon
Nursing
Once I was a woman with pink,
perky little nipples. My breasts
never ached.
Now, a cow, my udders tingle
as a wild, white stream squirts
into my calf’s eyes.
Now, a trough for five to seven hours
a day, my skin splits and blisters.
My nipples are white moons
with purple, bleeding craters
and these veins under my skin spark blue
like dying stars. Stretch mark constellations
collapse a whole galaxy.
Come little calf, suck and gargle
as you rise above the moonand moo me to sleep.
Cat Dixon teaches creative writing at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She is the board secretary of nonprofit The Backwaters Press. Her work has appeared in Sugar House Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Coe Review, Eclectica among others. Her full length poetry book Too Heavy to Carry was published in 2014 by Stephen F. Austin University Press. Her chapbook Our End Has Brought the Spring will be out this June from Finishing Line Press.
Belgin Yucelen studied sculpture at the Florence Accademia D’Arte in Florence, University of Colorado Boulder, Art Students League of Denver and Scottsdale Art School. Her work has been represented in private collections and exhibitions. Sculpting and printing are ways to communicate for Belgin Yucelen. They provide an imagery where she presents her ideas and beliefs. The human figure is the main source of her work.
For National Poetry Month, Les Femmes Folles featured a daily 30/30 challenge to write poetry and prose /make art on the topic of on tales of bras and breasts. Check out the full list of prompts here or follow @LFFBooks on Twitter and Facebook. To celebrate the month of writing and creating, LFF also posted a CFP to feature new work in a special feature of Les Femmes Folles: Tales of Bras and Breasts to run in connection with TALES exhibit in May at Monongalia Art Center, themed around the book, featuring art by TALES artist Lauren Rinaldi, with work by 15 other artists from around the U.S. We received fantastic submissions from writers and artists all over the world. We’ll be sharing this feature with you during the rest of the month. Stay tuned for artful couplings and dynamic duos, and writing that is double trouble, double the fun, and sometimes in double Ds.Also, forthcoming from Les Femmes Folles Books, is a new print anthology that is seeking new work. Deadline September 18, 2015. Bared collects art and poetry on bras and breasts by women writers and women artists. Poets and artists bare their best breasts clad in bras, bare-chested, or both to boast their barbaric yawps in poems, in paint, in pictures, and art. Check out the CFP hereor follow @LFFBooks on Twitter and Facebook.
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Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins. LFF Books is a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) and The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015). Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund
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