Another poem from EVERYDAY MERMAID

lying on the ground

clouds flowing across the moon
     in rivers of air

my breath sleeps
      feels its shape
      and pulse

the wings of my back
      relax

the light flickers
      from day to night
      and back again
      setting up its own font
      resetting my eyes

my fingers want to touch
       my mouth to taste
       what is so far away

I feel the moisture
        in my bones
        the smile

EVERYDAY MERMAID Poems by Christina Isobel Art by Deidre Scherer

EVERDAY MERMAID is a poetic how-to manual for diving deeply into ordinary moments.  There you find a more primal connection with life. Lyric poems tell the stories during a year. Vivid cut, layered, and stitched textile art holds the words and makes the inner world concrete.

The book has been crafted as an accordion so you can recreate the context of the book depending on whim: pulling out cycles of poems in a day, or moving from day to night, exploring a whole night, or a season. Each different view adds a new slice of luminosity and movement. Each view changes how the poems are seen, adding layers to the experience and deepening the dive.

A poem:

CODA:  OUR BREATH

I walk in the silence of the trees
A journey of the breath
Into the heart
Out to release
Moss growing up my ankles
One step, two
Straight as trunks
Branching from my spine
My legs move
Bark a'cracklin'.

Out the air goes
Through my mouth
Curves in space
Follows currents
Between two worlds
Mending the particular
By connecting to the whole.
Leaves a canopy
'Round my shoulders
Sticking out my ears.
Now I know trees
Are the lungs 
Of this world.

EVERYDAY MERMAID

For a bigger look of the prototype and a picture demo of the book, go to dscherer.com 

EVERYDAY MERMAID

The prototype of EVERYDAY MERMAID is just finished!  It's been in development for 5 years.  The response from writers, book designers, publishing consultants has been beyond our wildest hopes. One was literally speechless. I was told that I simply had to get this book into people's hands. Thank you for all your support.  I am posting this teaser: A partial photo of the book on Deidre Scherer's wall. My poems laid on her cut and stitched textile art. I can't wait until you can see a demo, hold a book in YOUR hands,  play with its accordion design, and enter our world of interactive poetry and art.