Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Rose Quartz: Poems
    Rose Quartz: Poems
    Rose Quartz: Poems
    Ebook131 pages52 minutes

    Rose Quartz: Poems

    By Sasha taqwšeblu LaPointe

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A wild, seductive debut poetry collection by the author of Red Paint evoking pain, healing, and a spellbinding brew of folklore, movies, music, and ritual.

    “Draw me encircled / in something / other than gasoline.” The poems of Rose Quartz hum with the naked energy of one who has found her way home after a journey rife with difficulty and who has the scars to show for it. In them, Sasha taqwš?blu LaPointe moves from intimate scenes of peril—a car accident, an unwelcome advance at a party, a miscarriage—to the salvific, exhilarating punk scene of the Pacific Northwest and the centering shores of her Coast Salish ancestors. Along the way, she peers into the darker corners of her own search for belonging, and finds there glittering stones dense with meaning and the power to move forward.

    As game to follow a beckoning Laura Palmer into the burning woods as she is to step into the shoes of Little Red Riding Hood as she lays waste to her wolf, LaPointe explores the sublime space between beauty and danger through lush, almost baroque, use of folktale and color. Red, white, blue, and an amalgam that is none of the above—rose—vie for the speaker’s embrace as a mixed-race woman. Here, poems become offerings, rituals, incantations conjured in the name of healing and power.

    Like the stones and cards laid on an altar, Rose Quartz offers a reading at the intersection of identity and myth, trauma and truth, telling the story of past, present, and future.

    “LaPointe conveys with dazzling intensity that while our healing is in our own hands, we need not be alone.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 14, 2023
    ISBN9781571317568
    Rose Quartz: Poems

    Related to Rose Quartz

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lakshmi

      Sep 8, 2022

      Lakshmi
      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Story Pilgrimage

      Jun 8, 2021

      A Story Pilgrimage
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Where We Write

      Feb 9, 2017

      Where We Write
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Queen Of Salt

      Feb 6, 2020

      Queen Of Salt
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Sound Of Bongo

      Oct 2, 2019

      The Sound Of Bongo
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      selections from YOU ARE HERE: POETRY IN THE NATURAL WORLD

      May 1, 2024

      As part of her signature project, You Are Here, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón commissioned fifty-two contemporary American poets to observe and reflect on their place in the natural world. The volume was published by Milkweed Editions in April 2024. O

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What The Magpie Says

      Oct 16, 2022

      What The Magpie Says
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2022

      Five Poems
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      In class, I stared because of the blood going blue.The chalk that coated our fingerly teeth.The way we lapped each other (on the shorewhere the flowering). I gave away our location. Smacked my lips in the coat closet.Sucked at her teeth. We, on all e

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2019

      She grazes in a meadow, sulphur blossoms spillingfrom her jaw.At this moment she seems so calm, she could be holyif what that means is something like beingwholly unaware of the good she gives,how even her rooting tills the soiland even her shitting f

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Crawling Around In The Dark

      Dec 1, 2023

      Crawling Around In The Dark
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      An Interview With Xueyan

      Jun 24, 2023

      An Interview With Xueyan
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Beautiful Unforeseen

      Sep 2, 2022

      The Beautiful Unforeseen
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      IN THE WILDS OF Alaska

      Jun 26, 2018

      IN THE WILDS OF Alaska
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Named After the Animal

      Oct 13, 2020

      Named After the Animal
      18 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In The Wilds Of Alaska

      Jul 26, 2023

      In The Wilds Of Alaska
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reports From Near And Far

      Nov 25, 2021

      susanne paola antonetta MY HOMETOWN of Bellingham, Washington, is a last corner of the continental United States, a final chew of land before the long drink of the Pacific. We’re bound to the west by water, to the east by mountain, and twenty miles t

      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      From Source To Sea

      Oct 4, 2017

      I grew up in a maritime family of surfers, sailors, fishermen and women, at the mouth of the Clarence River in northern NSW. My dad is a ship builder and marine engineer, my brother a boat builder and project manager, my husband a surfer and marketin

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lost In The Woods

      Oct 12, 2023

      Lost In The Woods
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Teaching the Teacher

      Dec 31, 2019

      Teaching the Teacher
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Your Poetry

      Jun 25, 2021

      The music labeled from A to ZI can’t get those sounds out of my headThose 45s are from our lifeSometimes the memories cut like a knife Jukebox Nights have been the bestAll my problems to get off my chestSpent with people I love and have sharedA good

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Oceans

      Mar 15, 2019

      I used to be interested in mountains. They moved at a speed I could deal with. They waited for me to catch up. It was like that all my life. Then we moved to California, and after eight years of earthquakes I began to doubt my ability to put things i

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Rose Quartz

    4.5/5

    5 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Rose Quartz - Sasha taqwšeblu LaPointe

      Red Paint

      all it ever was

      a blanket

      sagging off my shoulders

      in the smoke

      thick night

      her hands

      as they scooped it up

      against the pounding

      of drums

      how they thundered

      my limbs in storm-song

      the four stars

      I counted outside

      the only window

      like ghosts

      the smoke as it escaped

      leaving behind

      its orange glow

      and the dancers

      cedar woven

      my eyes falling heavy

      past three in the morning

      and this is when she tells me

      the red paint

      is for healing

      Teach Me to Say I Love You

      in your language

      I have forgotten how to speak

      something caught in my throat

      a fish bone splintering me

      into something quiet

      muted and starlike

      lost in a sky

      the word for sky

      wasšəqulgʷədxʷ

      teach me to say

      just staystay putstay here

      because I have forgotten

      to be inside my own body

      whatever my body has become

      beneath your tongue

      conquered and ugly

      malformed and mispronounced

      teach me a word

      better than survivor

      something more

      like watching my grandmother

      pour black coffee in the kitchen

      and the stacks of legal pads

      filled up with her words

      I tried to hear

      the word for language

      was       gʷədgʷadad

      teach me to say I love you

      because every time I walk

      into a restaurant to meet a date

      I hesitate I remember

      the trees along Portland Avenue

      in their red bows

      like gifts

      on Christmas morning

      this is to honor

      assault survivors

      how my mother tied each one

      hugging their bark

      in ribbon

      and I think of this

      as he pulls the chair out

      takes my jacket

      pours the wine red

      into the glass

      and asks

      if I am hungry

      red is what I remember

      when I realize he will try

      to take me home and have to learn

      how to unwrap me

      teach me to say I love you

      because what good is a ribbon

      if it cannot hold us together

      where we have been broken

      teach me to speak

      in a language older than words

      not of white men

      whose tongues touch everything

      quiet yourself and listen

      ʔuʔušəbicid čəd

      Ohh-ohh-sha-beet-see chud

      like a sigh I would make

      as a child comfortable and safe

      then the thud of my heart

      as it beats in my chest

      its thrum as it drums

      inside my rib cage

      The Canoe My Grandmother Gave Me

      When my grandmother hit the record button on the cassette recorder, it startled my great-aunt. What is it? What does it do? It’s going to capture the language, my grandmother said, to keep it. My great-aunt thought about this a long while. As a child, she traveled by river, by inland waters to relatives, to bring them fish, to carry the news. She looked down at the cassette recorder and nodded. Ah, she said. This is just a different kind of

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1