Stone Soup Servings is a regular series for Oddball Magazine that features upcoming performers at Stone Soup Poetry, the long-running spoken word venue in the Boston area that has partnered with Oddball Magazine. Stone Soup Poetry now meets from 7-9 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. The open mike sign-up at 6:30 p.m.

ON April 11, we have the pleasure of welcoming back Valerie Loveland, past Stone Soup Feature and winner of Third Annual Jack Powers Stone Soup Savor Poetry Prize. Valerie has kept very busy since then with two new chapbook releases. A sample of her more recent work follows below. We hope it’s enough incentive for you to come down this Monday and help us catch up with her.

 

I Teach People How to Put in Contact Lenses

My eye is the star of the eye drop commercials to demonstrate dryness in a desert where there is a dry wind blowing. My eyes are the ones they show to demonstrate how an eye can throw a fit by being allergic and throws a tantrum when I question them about what they are allergic to. It is hopeless to argue with eyes.

I have to tell a blink reflex to chill out. I have to tell an eyelid to back off. An eyelid can have a panic attack.

Nobody taught me. When I was 14, the optometrist’s office just gave me a set of contacts and let me figure it out. She asked me: “How seriously does your eyelid take its solemn protective duty?” “How blink is your reflex?”

I teach people. I draw an eye that is pulled open and held down by 8 fingers that were recently trained as hospital orderlies. I draw a lazy lazy looking eyelid but the lid is actually trying to smother an eye with its “protection.”

A patient told us that there should be a new phrase: cry off your contact lenses. I think this could only happen if you cry as much as a shower or cry as much as a swimming pool. I am 100% positive that someone could cry off their contacts if they cry as much as an ocean.

If you don’t take care of your lenses, they will assassinate your eyes. Every single answer to every single question to the optician’s exam is “swelling of the eye from lens mis-use.”

If your finger is wetter than your eye the contact will develop an infatuation with your finger.