From Peggy McGivern’s Beyond the Iron Curtain, verse by Peter Stravlo, Opening Reception March 20, 5-8pm, Abend Gallery, Colfax and York, Denver, CO. Eastern Folk inspired music by Mark Dudrow and Chipper Thomps

Coming into Transylvania
Tulip heads mounted on trunks of trees
Like vampires in a wagon of novel
Ideas darkening the road
For tourists seeking an infamous castle
In the depths of titillating fears
Where three seductive sister brides drink the blood
Of our gypsy imagination
24 x 48“, Oil

Those Silly Trees
Unusual shapes are disconcerting
Tones slightly different than your comfort zone
Walking under thin branches makes you skittish
Brittle sticks swaying wide and leafless over your head
So open your eyes, your ears, let the foreign air seep into your pores
Step by step, a few blocks, pause to take in the view, reminiscent of a childhood memory
You think the dining room walls would look great in those colors
Now you are in stride
A breeze plays with the branches
Their song stuck in your head
Those Silly Trees will flourish in your backyard

Romanian Haystacks
I want to lose myself in the billowing white clouds, how easy it should be they call to me so.
Scramble up haystacks like a child- surely I do not weigh too much in my imagination- into fairytale
golden-straw towers hosting dreamy trampoline slumber parties overlooking the promised land-scape
so perfect it must be real, with gingerbread houses and sugar-tree cookies and sailboats swimming in
the sky, roller-coaster buggies drawn by merry-go-round horses through almond tasting wind laughing
a meringue patchwork never daring to go gray.