Eighteen-year-old Lila Brissette is the first recipient of the Poetry Promise Award, bestowed by Clark County Poet Laureate Bruce Isaacson. She'll read from her work Saturday at 7p at The Beat coffeehouse in Downtown. She was also recently interviewed on KNPR's "State of Nevada."
in the reds and blues there be a youth,
looking toward mountain and sky,
finding the signal there:
the buzz of joshua.
the whisper of the desert pine.
the verse of the desert flower
(not native, but belongs here anyway.)
in the blues there be a bigger truth
call her she, call her me,
call her the cheeks upon which sacred sun
strokes a brush of suppler color
upon the bludgeoned earth:
i, may be she,
pluck my words,
draw my concentrates,
drop them in a pineneedle basket,
let them bleed out.
in the dust of the foreign land,
in the crease of a better hand
in the yellows, the oranges,
most importantly the bluer hues.
the din of muted tunes.
i tap syllables on the basket rim,
they drip, dry
and i hang them upon a clean sheet
over the sunset tones.
from here we live to document