OK, I’m really in trouble this time…I’ve got too much to share and too many astounding poets to choose from…maybe they’ll give me a couple more inches this month in the paper…
I’ll start at the top with some seriously exciting news…those of you who read this column regularly know I am constantly putting out the invitation to join us on-line for our monthly writers’ group. Well, this month I’m pleased to invite you all to not one, but two in person groups! I don’t know quite how this came about, but I do want to give a big shout out to Sandy, Alicia and everybody down to the Rocky Point Times who stood firm all these years. Yes, years folks while we nurtured along our vision to the point we now have two venues. The second shout out goes to Sally Dalton of Xochitl’s Café in Cholla Bay who hosts the daytime storytelling group and to Laura Rivera who hosts the evening one at Kilombo, on the main Blvd. I’ll put contact info at the bottom as well as times.
Now to our poets of the month, first an amazing woman writing out of New York; Deborah Paredez. Deborah is the author of This Side of Skin (Wings Press, 2002). She teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City. Just read this!
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Change of Address
Rate your pain the physical
therapist instructs and I am trying
not to do what they say
women do lowballing the number
trying hard not to try so hard
to be the good patient scattered
assurances lining the aisles like
dead petals and me left
holding nothing but what’s been
emptied out obviously I am over-
thinking it when I settle on someplace
in the middle six or seven
times a week I walk past the street
vendor on Broadway and say
nothing while eyeing the same
pom-topped hat the physical
therapist asking me now
for the name of that Chinese place
where I sometimes go asking
for the patient just before me
a street vendor in need
of a cheap massage as I lay
the plain wreckage of my shoulders
in the shallow hollows
the street vendor’s body has left
on the padded table in the center
of the story I sometimes read
to my girl a cap seller sleeps
under a tree’s shade waking
to find the monkeys in the
branches above have plundered
his wares he waves his hands shakes
his fists until his rage makes him
throw his cap to the ground and the
monkeys mimic him and down
float his caps his fury finally
fulsome enough to restore
what he’s lost you’ve got to find
another way to move the physical
therapist modeling for me the poses
to mimic assuring her I won’t move
what’s left of the heavy boxes later
unpacking the last of them I learn
about the woman who once lived
here Charlotte who twisted the cap and shook
out the pills Charlotte who swallowed
and slipped into sleep in her last act
of volition here in this bedroom where
the westward windows go on longing
for dawn and I am trying to move in
a new way to pull the mess of sloughed
hair from the bathtub drain to move
in the space of another’s suffering
scrub the caked toothpaste
from the sink make a home
in the space where suffering
may meet its end.
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And since I’ve gone way into the second page here’s:
Juan Felipe Herrera. Juan is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2011 to 2016. This one is short and will knock your socks off.
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Five Directions to my House
1. Go back to the grain yellow hills where the broken speak of elegance
2. Walk up to the canvas door, the short bed stretched against the clouds
3. Beneath the earth, an ant writes with the grace of a governor
4. Blow, blow Red Tail Hawk, your hidden sleeve—your desert secrets
5. You are there, almost, without a name, without a body, go now
6. I said five, said five like a guitar says six.
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Look both of these amazing poets up…like chips, bet you can’t read just one.
Here’s contact and info for the Storytelling Groups
Afterhours at Sally’s-Xochitls Café 382-5283@ 3:00 pm First Monday of each month.
Second Monday Storytelling-Kilombo 638-388-5339 @ 8:00 pm
And of course still please join us for our on-line writers group at m.diane.writeon@gmail.com
