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Sunday Brunch

Poetic Micro Essays

Look for a new post of Sunday Brunch every month on the first Sunday. This column features Tripod Poems, poetic micro essays inspired by three randomly chosen words. These words become the title of the piece, are contained within the piece and are developed into observations on life in the Southwest and beyond.



Assemblage – Organize – Invocation

Assemblage is art
brought together
from bits and pieces,
random odds and ends,
the contents of a hundred
junk drawers, the flotsam
and jetsam of the ordinary.

The trick in the process
is how to organize
this cultural debris
into a sculptural fantasy.

Using a hot glue gun
and the creative adhesive
of an evolving theme,
humor and irreverence
lead to odd juxtapositions
as vehicles of meaning.

My personal assemblage,
Surf’s Up, Duck!
with its word play title conjuring
Bugs Bunny’s famous quip,
is an homage to the subculture
of surfing, a whimsical tribute
to the aquatic daydreams
of a land-locked, desert dweller.

It’s a comical contrivance,
but beneath the frivolity lies
my genuine invocation
to all things ocean,
an exposure of my dolphin
spirit’s longing for home.

Art as quirky self-portraiture.



Photo: Original Assemblage, “Surf’s Up Duck” by Eve West Bessier

Disclaimer:
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Southwest Word Fiesta™ or its steering committee.

Eve West Bessier

Eve is a poet laureate emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico; and of Davis and Yolo County, California. She served on the steering committee for the Southwest Word Fiesta, and has been a festival presenter. Eve is a retired social scientist, educator, and voice coach. She is a published author, jazz vocalist, photographer and nature enthusiast currently living in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
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We respectfully acknowledge that the entirety of southwestern New Mexico is the traditional territory, since time immemorial, of the Chis-Nde, also known as the people of the Chiricahua Apache Nation. The Chiricahua Apache Nation is recognized as a sovereign Native Nation by the United States in the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Friendship of 1 July 1852 (10 Stat. 979) (Treaty of Santa Fe ratified 23 March 1853 and proclaimed by President Franklin Pierce 25 March 1853).

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Mimbres Press of Western New Mexico University is a traditional academic press that welcomes agented and unagented submissions in the following genres: literary fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, memoir, poetry, children’s books, historical fiction, and academic books. We are particularly interested in academic work and commercial work with a strong social message, including but not limited to works of history, reportage, biography, anthropology, culture, human rights, and the natural world. We will also consider selective works of national and global significance.