i groove bench/

thank you to alixandra, origami instructor extraordinaire, for a recent social outing complete with literary chatter and chapbooks! i picked up a few excellent items from her new micropress, which i recommend checking out. her short, mini-books have a 'zine aesthetic with spatially aware text. highlights from the swag:

• the inaugural chapbook for conchologists' press, an origami-inspired book features "she'll," a poem alixandra wrote at a workshop i faciliated this summer. it's a spare text, its strength in lines. can't wait to read the longer poem into which this text has migrated.
• three chapbooks by recombinantdna press. "this time last" has grace and pause. would play well with poems in small arguments by souvankham thammavongsa and at the edge of the frog pond by nelson ball. also resonates with "birds for janet, the heron" by michael ondaatje.
• second chapbook: "incessant." this poem has a split personality, feels like two poems with legs, arms, mouths intertwined. if two conjoined sister poems, i suspect both poems would survive surgery. where "this time last" coheres in its sections and flow, "incessant" holds possibility for expansion.
• third chapbook: "no cure for love." this dark spelunk into the history of science and leeches is tidy in its creepiness. there's a part of me that either wants to know more about leech history, or wants a series of "history--science--creature" vignettes. and both.
  
• an art-run of one: magnetic mounting board with moth she created after a recent visit to the royal ontario museum. she designed a new breed of moth -- desomne hiulco, open-winged day moth -- formed out of fuzzy pipecleaners and thick, painted handmade paper. it's a fine addition to my fridge, where two robust, magnetic butterflies (sent to me by my dad, who got them by supporting the canadian hearing society's "good vibrations" campaign) keep it company.
• all of these tasty treats greeted me in a bright yellow bag from the phillipines with the curious pseudo-sentence emblazoned on its paper: "i groove bench/"