The Taste of a Strawberry Moon
New Books are Blooming from WBC Writers
The full moon shone a bright peach-pink Saturday night as I drove home from watering my garden. Mesmerized, I longed to somehow get closer to the moon or pluck it from the sky like ripening fruit. As we head towards the summer solstice, flowers bloom and heat abounds.
“Red are strawberries, redder than red roses, heigh ho tra la la, redder than red roses. Red are strawberries, redder than red roses, green the grass is growing.” I sang this Finnish folk song years ago with a kindergarten class on one of the last days of school. We were at a local park with a pond and forested paths. As we walked, the children’s voices rose higher and higher, like the heat of the day. I always wondered how something could be redder, more of something than something else. But as I conjure the image of a rose and then a strawberry in my mind’s eye, there is something more vibrant in the strawberry — perhaps it’s my desire for its sweetness, a desire to feast with more than my eyes, to taste beauty and swallow it whole.
We at Wisdom Body are fortunate to have an abundance of new books forthcoming this summer from our members to announce to you! They taste both of beauty and of fire. And like a truly profound book should, each is both a fruit — a result of a process — and a seed — an invitation to continue thinking and creating in the same spirit.
Chloe, a Greek-American writer herself, has translated Greek writer Marios Chakkas into English for the first time. She writes, “Somewhere among the sun-scorched rocks, sloping hills, and the illuminated meadow in front of St. George’s church, Chakkas wrote: ‘All the times that I dreamt or hoped, I didn’t delude myself; I only thought, “It is what it is, I missed my shot.”’ This word, hope, came to be the gilded arrow that pierced through Chakkas and in turn gave rise to his book The Commune. And, although he swore to never hope again, The Commune is strangely hopeful — or, rather, it is a work that reaches into the folds of both the past and future as to ignite the flames of a distant revolutionary dream. From a young age, Chakkas’ life was marred by various sociopolitical conflicts which required him to remain hopeful if he were to stay alive. It is in the ironic formulation of their deaths that Chakkas’ name, the names of his comrades, the names of all of the insurrectionaries who have since been maimed, jailed, or killed by oppressive governments are whispered. The commune is on the horizon.” She dedicates the book to: all the incarcerated comrades across the world, to those who have died, those who persist, and those who could not imagine living any other way.
amy bobeda’s What Bird Are You? is now out from Finishing Line Press — an ecopoetics exploration of what it means to be people who are also birds who are also people. From the Left Coast to Prospect Park, the birds in these poems become their own wings. Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or an independent bookseller near you!
Finally, it’s not too late to submit to our latest WBC chapbook, After Roe — exploring the fiery emotions, grief, and experiences of life after the Supreme Court ruling. We still have space in the chapbook for poems/prose/hybrid/text & image work. Please email submissions to wisdombodycollective@gmail.com.
And next moon we’ll share more about C. M. Chady’s forthcoming anthology!
