Sabrina Lightstone's Open

    Bio: Sabrina Lightstone was born in Montreal and now lives in Toronto, where she explores three realms of art; visual art, poetry and music. She combines these in performance. She attends York College where she is majoring in Creative Writing and English Literature. She performs in and around Toronto.

    Insanity is having to live in a reality
    that is transparent,
    where all equations divide to zero. ( from” Normal”)

    Lightstone pulls through her mind and emotions in first person- a la Walt Whitman. She discovers her nature, others’ personas and glimpses of universal truth in whimsy and playful landscapes of words. There are many places to go with her; though she says she is mostly a prose artist, she experiments with form, repetition and humor as well:

    Even when I thought I’d tell you
    What I thought I’d tell you what I thought
    To tell you
    Even when was
    When it was
    If it were
    Sane enough (from “Lovers Dance”)

    She goes through holidays, relationships, day-to-day existence and sees it in her own way. This is by no means unique: as writers, poets, and artists each have their own voice, she has found hers and kept it light. There is a window shade open where she writes; she can see the positive, the rainbow after the hurricane, and remember.

    Every tea cup gets turned over. The taps are pulled on in the
    kitchen, the refrigerator unplugged. Windows open and heat on...
   ...Memory is present like the pillow. Sometimes it gives a headache.
    But its comfort in the feathers...(from “Daisy and Bonham Experiment with Flowers”)

    Lightstone talks of travel to foreign places and we float with her there on wings, and wait to see what she will see, and where she will land.
    She was enjoyable to read; Not too serious, but as the title states – “open” - to what life brings her. She has not been drowned in cynicism, or fallen so much in love that the sweetness poisons us to her work. She is young yet in many ways, and this brings a freshness to her words, as well as opens her up for what life is to happen next.

Open (or Fighting Ambivalence), Sabrina Lightstone 2005. www.SabrinaLightstone.com, $2.00

copyright 2006 Jack G. Bowman

Jack G. Bowman

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