Laura Bayless

Laura Bayless has participated in six Women's Voices poetry readings at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, the Women and Food art and poetry presentations, and was one of six women artists showcased at the Poets & Artists: Words & Colors exhibition at the Pacific Grove Art Center. She is the author of three collections of poetry, The Edge of the Nest, White Streams and Touchstones, and Persistent Dreams. Her poems have appeared in many local and national publications and anthologies, including Dancing on the Brink of the World, selected poems of Point Lobos. Recently Laura began the task of sifting through a considerable number of poems and essays from the last seven years for a new book. She continues to explore creative expression through collage and photography.

E-mail: ctblaura@redshift.com
Web Site: http://www.laurabayless.net

Place setting from 2005 reading, "Fractured Fairy Tales "

Appetite

In the early morning hours
I read
let delectable words
fill my mouth
enter my blood
stream and pulse
through my brain
until
their taste and tempo
and sting
become cellular flesh
muscle and marrow
so much chapter and paragraph
of my body
that vocabulary rises
to my fingertips
grows like new soft hair
on my arms
all devouring of syllable
and wit
lingering somewhere
in the folds and bones

c2005 Laura Bayless