Poetry Pop Up: Grace Cavalieri

Big Mama Thornton

Credit: Cuffed Frays, 2001, Argonne House Press

Last time I saw her

she wasn’t so big. Actually

she was downright skinny,

singing the final time

in Washington, D.C.

Backstage she drank a

quart of milk

mixed equal parts with

gin—

Seagrams, she told me.

Then she got the idea.

Could I contact the Seagrams

people and then she could

advertise for them and

they’d like her for

drinking a full quart a day—their gin.

I said no, I didn’t

think so, and I didn’t

think the milk people

would like the commercial so much

either. She still felt bad

about Elvis stealing “Hound Dog,”

The way he did, even though

she was much too much of a lady to say so.

Once she talked about it, long ago,

before she started milk with gin.

I guess the drink left a

sweet taste in her mouth.

Grace and friend/photo by Joanna Tillman

Grace Cavalieri is the author of poetry books and chapbooks and several produced plays. Her latest book is Other Voices, Other Lives, a compendium of poetry, plays and interviews (Alan Squire Press). Her most recent play is “ Calico and Lennie” (Theatre for the New City, NYC 2017), one piece of a three-part bill with plays by Langston Hughes and Luigi Pirandello. She celebrates 40 years on public radio in 2017, with “The Poet and The Poem” now recorded at The Library of Congress. She has four children, four grandchildren, and now is a great- grandmother.

Summer Solstice Splendid Wake Poetry Pop-Up

ABANDONED CONSTELLATIONS

by Kim Roberts

Some disappeared as Earth

grew brighter. Some just fell out of favor.

Some were mere flattery:

Louis XIV’s hand and scepter

(proposed by the royal astronomer)

or the crossed swords of Saxony

to honor the German Emperor Leopold.
My favorites among the obsolete
showed off the new technologies,

as if their invention were star-prophesied.

Tubus Herschelii Major,

Sir William Herschel’s largest telescope,

Machina Electrica, stars forming

the cube of an electric generator.

Or the crowded chaos

of Officina Typographica, the printing office.

In the 1801 star atlas Uranographia,
it jobbed up east of Sirius.  Did its noise

keep the neighbors up at night?

Did Canis Minor bark for hours?

And little Pyxis Nautica,

the Mariner’s Compass: did the printer

interrupt its navigation, confusing
its ascension and declination,

pulling barques and schooners

wildly off their course?
Retired rollers and plate cylinders

clang no more.  Monoceros,

the unicorn, lives atop those same stars,

straddles the press with its hind legs.

The stern of Argo Navis covers
the box of movable type.  This section

of the celestial sphere,

previously gerrymandered
by Johann Bode, has returned
to form.  Held in place

by frisket and tympan,

the inky sky fades back to black.

No characters, no ligatures,

no copyright, no authorship.
Gutenberg stands mute.

Silence reigns in space once more.

“Abandoned Constellations” is reprinted from The Scientific Method by Kim Roberts, WordTech Editions, 2017, with permission of the author.

Photo credit: Dan Vera

BIO: Kim Roberts is the author of five books of poems, most recently The Scientific Method (WordTech Editions, 2017). The title poem from that collection was featured on a seven-foot banner at the Poetry Tent at the National March for Science in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Wick Poetry Center’s “Traveling Stanzas” project, and is now touring the US. Roberts co-edits two literary journals, Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the Delaware Poetry Review, and the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes. She is the recipient of fellowships from 17 artist colonies, and has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities DC, and the DC Commission on the Arts. Her website: http://www.kimroberts.org.

Summer Solstice Splendid Wake Poetry Pop-Up

Additional Advice for a Young Poet

by Elisavietta Ritchie                   

      “A writer has nothing to teach and everything to learn, at all times.” --Albert Camus

1.

Only one paper napkin

for those six empty minutes?

Cover it with a poem.

Wipe your face

on the other side.

Between the splotches: write.

2.

Lose your pen?

Try a pencil. When this

breaks, wears out,

charcoal till you're black

as the burnt stick

worn to smudge.

Write with ash

on the sea.

Write on grass,

red ink on flames,

blue on the sky,

white on snow.

When all implements

disappear,

use your blood.

This poem previously appeared: Confrontation 2006; Real Toads, Black Buzzard Press, © 2008 Elisavietta Ritchie; Cormorant Beyond the Compost, Cherry Grove Collections, WordTech Communications, © 2011 Elisavietta Ritchie; The Broadkill Review, Vol. 7, no.1; , The Second Genesis: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry, compiled and edited by Anuraag Sharma.

Elisavietta Ritchie is president emeritus for both poetry and fiction divisions, Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she is the author of over a dozen books, most recently Harbingers! Learn more at www.elisaviettaritchie.com

;

             

Summer Solstice Splendid Wake Poetry Pop-Up

Aftershocks

by J. Howard

“Trauma Keeps Us Standing in the Same Place”

—Marilyn Kallet, Sept. 11 2016

Ghosts keep floating from the screen

though the television has been turned off body

after body like laundry in the wind

Protoplasm writhing in suits from Barney’s bleeding

through chef jackets outfits bought on sale

at Goodwill-- souls blasted out of their

bodies no time to catch a spiritual drop down

mask to lead the way to the other side these ghosts

shot from crumbled and burning legs

torsos ripped away from shoulders  

brains smashed to mud

These souls cling to the warm

electrons of last night's news

and the hand that should have written this poem

hangs over a sheared slice of airplane  

somewhere in Arlington

BIO: J. Howard is a teacher, poet, and coordinator of A Splendid Wake, an organization of poets who work to preserve the history of poetry and poetry movements in the Washington DC Metro area. Her work has been published in Poets and Artists, Abundant Grace (Paycock Press), MiPOesias, On Barcelona, and Winners: A Retrospective of The Washington Prize, among other publications. She was a finalist in the 2016 Moving Words Competition sponsored by Arlington Arts. Howard teaches at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland and is a former technology editor of The Potomac Review.

Summer Solstice Splendid Wake Poetry Pop-Up

Afterwards, You Learn                                                                    

by Judith McCombs

Poetry Northwest

The Habit of Fire: Poems Selected & New

Library of Congress video recording

Afterwards, you learn to say

you were lucky; the last-year’s cubs

stayed safely behind her, breaking

the thickets for berries. Lucky

the wind from the darkening valley

turned cold, and your jacket was heavy,

and zipped to the neck. Lucky

you knew, too late for retreat

in that clearing of downfall and stone,

to drop and go fetal, arm

over neck, playing dead. Lucky

the backpack came off like an arm,

saving most of your arm, and kept her

busy till the grunting cubs

called her back to their feast.

Afterwards you learn to say

that the fault was yours: you were tired,

you were stubborn, making up for lost time

on that summer-growth trail through clearings

and thickets, the wind in your face,

not bothering to sing out or warn

what was there beside you, not waiting

for warnings to reach you.

But sometimes, in sleep, you go back

to that stonefall clearing, that edge

of safety where your scalp hair rises

like hackles for no reason you see,

and there is still enough time to go back

as that dark shape lifts upright

from its tangle of shadow, like a man

in a burly fur suit, peering out,

and you wake with the ghost hairs rising

like fur on your unscarred neck

and perfect right arm.

Judith McCombs grew up nomadic, in a geodetic surveyor’s family. Her poems appear in Delmarva, Potomac & Saranac Reviews, Innisfree, Nimrod (Neruda Award), Poetry, Shenandoah (Graybeal-Gowen Prize); and The Habit of Fire: Poems Selected & New. She is active in Word WorksDC, Federal Poets; and arranges the Kensington Row Bookshop’s Poetry Readings.

Summer Solstice Splendid Wake Poetry Pop-Up

THE WORLD SITUATION

by Karren L. Alenier

from The Anima of Paul Bowles

As the wife fed her cat crab-

meat, the cat that attempted

to walk the ceiling but failed,

the husband tackled the decline

of American civilization—barbarians

populated his tales. If a man cried

out, another lopped off his tongue.

In private, she said TV and

McCarthyism killed the invention

of new games. He just ripped

the caterwauling telephone

from the wall.

                         At a dinner party of all

women except for him, when she

was asked to comment on the world

situation, she excused herself, left

what was tasty and steaming

on the table, curled regally

on a divan like a feline, fell

asleep under an open

window.

                  With its slow white

flakes, snow covered her. Horrified

at her absence, weren’t these women

her friends, he shook her awake—

what game is this? She whispered,

Resistance To Doom. I had to

make room for hope.

Karren LaLonde Alenier is author of seven collections of poetry, including Looking for Divine Transportation (The Bunny and the Crocodile Press), winner of the 2002 Towson University Prize for Literature and her latest collection, The Anima of Paul Bowles (MadHat Press), which was selected as top staff pick by the Grolier Bookshop (Boston) for 2016. Her poetry and fiction have been published in such magazines as: Mississippi Review, Jewish Currents, and Poet Lore. Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, her jazz opera with composer William Banfield and Encompass New Opera Theatre artistic director Nancy Rhodes premiered at New York City’s Symphony Space Leonard Nimoy Thalia in June 2005. More information at Alenier.blogspot.com. 

Summer Solstice Splendid Wake Poetry Pop-Up

Random Headlines

by Jacqueline Jules

In a zoo in Morocco,

a child leans, smiling,

against a fence, to pose

with the elephant

who inexplicably hurls

a rock at her head.

The next day,

a man in Philadelphia

removes a storm drain

and jumps. Sucked

ten feet into a sewer,

he miraculously survives.

Unlike the child in Morocco.

Reading headlines each morning

I can’t decide if the news

defies or declares

a random universe,

one without

predetermined years

allotted each life.

Something to consider

as I stand in a cemetery

talking to a stone

on your birthday,

recall the sound of your voice

in the rustle of a Weeping Cherry

hanging overhead. 

"Random Headlines" appears in Jacqueline's book Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. 

Jacqueline Jules is the author of three chapbooks, Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press), Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications), and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String (Winner, Helen Kay Chapbook Prize 2016). Her work has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com where you will see that she is also the author of 40 books for young readers including the Zapato Power series and Never Say a Mean Word Again.