Angela Consolo Mankiewicz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Dragged to California as a teenager, she completed high school in L.A. and got a BA from Cal State Los Angeles in Rhetorical Theory.
Guided away from the academy by her advisor, she spent 20 years in corporate America, lastly as a Manager of Systems Development for a division of Xerox. During those 20 years she also married, divorced, remarried and continued to tinker with plays and stories.
With a lot of effort, stubbornness and some luck, she was able to quit her "day job" and write pretty much full-time. Instead of plays and stories however, she was drawn to poetry, reading and studying on her own and eventually publishing in small press magazines and journals. She writes in traditional forms as well as free verse on both political and personal themes.
Although most of Mankiewicz's writing has been poetry, she has also written children's stories, a full-length play, several 1-acts and monologues, and a novel. She is also collaborating with a composer on an opera for one of her libretti.
In addition, Mankiewicz has been a regional editor and contributing editor, respectively, for the now defunct journals New Press and Mushroom Dreams and has had several reviews and short essays published in small magazines and journals. Her work has also been nominated for a Pushcart.
Her work has appeared in numerous publications including: Presa, Thunder Sandwich, The Temple, Lummox Journal, Blind Man's Rainbow, Outsider Writer, Pemmican, Arsenic Lobster, Chiron Review, Hawaii Review, Comstock Review, Mastodon Dentist, Karamu, Slipstream, Amelia, Cerberus, FlashPoint, Art:Mag, and The Lyric
Heart Attack
He held a moment in his hand and watched it quiver
like the tail of a garden lizard
snapped by the fang of a cat.
The moment lunged, he caught it, clenched it, cupped
it, rocked it,
sang it
lullabies.
He heard his hard breath overrule animal cries;
he clutched the wall.
He felt the spasms pause
and watched
his body slide
beneath him, mourning
but alive.
He pulled his nails out of his palm and listened
to an unfamiliar pattern beating in his chest;
he coated his palm with sweat
and grieved
alone.
(previously published in Poetpouri/Comstock Review)
The Children's Hour
A lonely kid, like most other kids, stuck
inside an omnipresence I didn't know;
always on edge, searching for clues to show
me how the rules work, show me how to make
my self touchable, teach me how to fake
being part of what I was attached to
by a trick of blood. How could they be sure who
I was if I did not remind them, take
them to the bed they gave me? Off a hall-
way, a pentagram of sounds, thick and hard,
a plot to kill, so insignificant
the sounds are swapped like jokes to pass a dull
day among deeded rooms, I am not barred
from or asked to enter. I move my scent
to other space, my chant
unheard. Space is made for me but none is mine.
I look into my eyes and check for signs
I'm here. And when I win
I tell them. I have to. Tell them. If they
forget my name, I will forget it too.
(previously published in Hawaii Review)
From "When the Pain Stopped"
I.
You were fanning your chapped,
airless feet with the hem
of your burka - yes, yes, it was
hot, but surely, you knew
that exposed feet of 12-year-old
females would engender lust
in passing, otherwise pure, males ....
*
After they buried your body
in sand, up to your childish
breasts, how long could you
feel your toes ?
When they stoned your head
how long did it take
for the pain to stop ?
Can you recall how many
rocks cut your eyelids,
pierced your skull,
before the pain stopped ?
How big were the rocks
tearing your lips,
ripping your nostrils ?
Did you hear the cheers
praising the splitting
of your ears ?
Did you hear the cheers
for the biggest rock,
the most jagged,
the best aim ?
When did you stop hearing
anything at all ?
When did you stop tasting
your own blood ?
Child - Do you remember,
can you remember -
When did the pain stop ?
II.
When they started skinning you,
at what point did you not feel
the knife anymore, the knife
sliding down your black back?
At which vertebrae was it?
Or was it at the bony elbow
of your left arm
or your leg - right leg?
*
What was it you did? Crack
your overseer's skull with a crowbar?
look at his wife? walk home
after work, after dark?
When did you become a model
for that figure in Michaelangelo's
Last Judgment? That human skin
held from the head by a finger, no
different from a trophy tiger rug or
the trashed fur from an edible hare.
Did you cry out? Could you?
Did you see those cracker faces laughing
at your agony, goading the skinners on?
Did you see their kids whoop it up
when they strung up your bones?
....
Better than a carnival and didn't cost a cent.
III.
And you, peaches and cream, miniature beauty,
made up and costumed, a baby queen
dancing and singing and smiling.
What happened to you?
Who did such things to you?
You were 6. What did you know?
....
(previously published in Thunder Sandwich)
For updates and poetry links visit Angela Consolo Mankiewicz' Blog.