Issue 6 • Summer 2003 • Featured Lodestar Writer • Poetry

From Beginning to New Beginning: A Cycle of Poetry

Patricia Nell Warren

Memoirs

A single work published in 1979 in the Ukrainian literary magazine Suchasnist, Munich, West Germany.

Once upon a time, on a dark summer night,
the Lightning looked at me
through my bedroom window,
like a lurking horror, like a zombie,
and I, being a child, trembled in my bed
and almost died of fright.

But many years later, when I was thirty years old,
one dark summer night,
the Lightning came again -- She sat down beside my bed
on a chair that belonged to my greatgrandmother,
and she started reading me stories.

Her long skirt blinded me.
On one finger she wore an ancient yellow diamond.
She gave me gifts -- a fresh branch of holly
and a white female tiger --
she said "Happy birthday" to me
And kissed me.

On the bedroom wall there hung
a great baroque mirror of silver, and in it
I could see all the days of my spirit,
and the days of all my memories
and all my bright terrors,
and all my flaming angels
and all the comrades of my unforgotten dreams.

Happy birthday!
This is my destiny -- to be the lover of the Lightning.
This is my destiny -- to be the Lightning,
to blind myself so I can see.

***

From Beginning to New Beginning: A Cycle of Poetry

Untitled Poem, Case History, Anti-Season, Excerpt from "Some Kind Of Kasida", The Matador's Prayer, Excerpts from "Minimal Poems", Memoirs

Patricia Nell Warren has 40 years' experience in publishing. Starting in 1959 at The Reader's Digest, she rose to book editor, working with a number of prominent authors, till 1980. Her own author career started in 1971, with a first novel from Dial Press. She published bestsellers The Front Runner, Harlan's Race, and Billy's Boy. Today she is co-owner and co-founder, with author/publicist Tyler St. Mark, of Wildcat Press, an independent author imprint. She belongs to The Authors Guild, is active in the ad-hoc group working to launch a gay publishing association, and serves as consultant for a growing number of self-publishing authors.

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