Best of the Net Nomination, 2023: And then

 WWalter, Karen, and Julie chez Christine and Anand, 2010

Thank you Dale Wisely and other editors of Right Hand Pointing for nominating my poem And then for Best of the Net 2023. I am honored. This poem also appears in The Beautiful Leaves.

And then

     How empty his body became

once he’d left it,

his jaw hanging slack, then slacker,

his face emptying, dissolving

into mere parts. Empty of him,

no longer his face. Still his hands.

     I still expected him

to pull away 

from my tugging fingers

when I tied up a bundle of his silver hair 

with a length of thread, 

binding a sheaf

before I cut it off.

right hand pointing/ambidextrous bloodhound productions | Facebook

Poetry In the Marketplace--Literally

 

Fresh herbs are where it's at in the open air market

Chinese or Asian eggplants in the farmers market

Marketplace

 

Thin blondes and their teacup Yorkies yap

next to the baby beets, the bunches of purple basil.

A wannabe-Dylan’s harmonica whines,

but these organic buyers don’t look back.

By the heirloom potatoes, fitful typing chatters

as the Unheard Poet taps out a poem,

free, for anyone who asks, plus a bill or two for Art.

He is taking the Basho challenge on his dusty portable Olivetti.

Hipster skulls twitch on his brown suede sneakers,

and he works his toes as he hunts and pecks his way.

Behind him, a puddle holds a scrap of lettuce

            floating in its mirrored milky sky. 

Rowdy Seniors Close Down Poetry Reading, Get Booted from Bookstore

Signing copies of TBL for Stephanie and for Sherry

McKenna DeLucca, much-tried bookstore manager, and Mark Givens, my esteemed publisher

 Last Saturday, September 9 2023, I threw a book launch party for The Beautiful Leaves at the Claremont Forum's Prison Project Bookstore. The Prison Project sells donated books to fund prisoners' requests for books. (The most requested book? Dictionaries.) It was a great afternoon. Official start time was 2:00, but we kicked off at 2:20 to give people a bit of time to gather and to buy books. Mark Givens, my publisher at Bamboo Dart Press, introduced me warmly (and told me privately that he thought this was a really good collection, and that it gave him ideas for expanding the purview of his press). 

I read five poems. I selected them on the fly, so I could gauge my audience’s response. I found myself avoiding the poems I wrote closest to his death—not really for read-aloud. Nancy Murphy commented that my poems sounded conversational. It’s true that I strive to write the way I talk, which is sometimes conversational, sometimes more elevated and holding forth. Left over from having taught pre-docs, I suppose. It’s also true that I am a fairly experienced reader, so choose poems that read more conversationally. The more intricate poems work better on the page, and that’s where I leave them. It is also true that it takes a lot of craft to sound artless.

Partly because of my age, most of my friends are seniors. The rest comprised friends from all parts of my life:  high school, acupuncturist, voice teacher, psychologists, poetry people, people affiliated with the Cal Poly Chemistry Department whom I met through Walter, friends who are simply friends. People drifted, congregated, saw old friends, talked with new people, milled around. Then the manager received a call—three calls—from Claremont Forum board members. They were ‘concerned’ about people blocking the aisles. It was at this point that I noticed a camera surveying the bookstore. Apparently board members can monitor the feed. The manager apologetically asked me if I could ask my guests to leave those spaces clear, in case some emergency arose and the place had to be evacuated. I thought to myself that the board apparently hadn’t minded people in the aisles before my event started, when the bookstore was so full of people milling around in the center space that I had trouble entering. But anyhow. My guests fitted themselves into a bay, rather the way you arrange yourself in an elevator, talked and sampled refreshments, ventured out of their improvised compound to buy the bookstore’s books. Then the much leaned-upon manager told me that the board was insisting she stop the reading, or else close the bookstore. I read another set, a little grimmer this time. My daughter and friends packed up the refreshments while I chatted with folks and signed some more books. We were out by 4:00 instead of 5:00.

How often do you get to say, “Dude! Raging seniors kicked out for partying too hard! Whoot!” Walter would have been proud.