 This is a celebration of poetry month, hosted by Combs City Montpelier, as well as VCFA and the Rebutter magazine, Hunger Mountain. Issue 23 is available over there if you want to check it out. Some of the assistant editors of myself will be reading poems from the journal to celebrate, and we have one contributed from the journal, re-reading her own poems. If anyone is inspired by all of these readings, feel free to grab a journal and read from it if you wish. Certainly not required, and we haven't done extensive prep or anything. This is really just meant to be a celebration of poetry. So I want to thank the sponsors, and I'm going to tell a little story about the poem that I'm going to read, and then why I chose this one. Palm City is a presentation of the Kellogg Hubbard Library. Made possible by our great sponsors, National Life Group Foundation, Vermont Humanities Council, Hunger Mountain Co-op, the other Hunger Mountain, Poetry Society of Vermont, and, best of all, Vermont College of Fine Arts. So thanks to everyone for making this happen. I'm new to town, as some of you know. I've been here about eight months, and I'm really grateful that such a small town cares so much about the arts in general, and poetry in particular. I was telling Nick that walking around Montpelier, I never once read the same poem on the Palm City broadside, and that thrilled me that there were so many poems available to read, and I would have been happy to read some of them more than once, but then every time I paused, I was exposed to someone's work that was new to me. I'm going to choose to read a poem from someone from home, so I'm coming here from Flagstaff, Arizona, which is right on the border of the Navajo Nation, which takes up a lot of Arizona and New Mexico. And this poet, Jake Skeets, I met at an Indigenous Writers Symposium in Flagstaff, which was a little bit a couple years ago. They gathered a lot of the upcoming and most established Indigenous writers from all over the nation in Flagstaff. There were panels and readings, and my first exposure to Jake Skeets was at the end of it all. He asked the people who'd been part of the festival, he had just been an observer. What does it feel like to be in Flagstaff? I think the colleagues were expecting me to say, like, lovely, we're so happy to be here, it's so awesome. And that's not what they said. A lot of the women said, you know, I'm nervous walking alone at night. So people said, this really feels like a border town. It feels really divided between the white community and the Indigenous community. And someone said, yeah, you know, I have a beer here, but I'm really nervous about wearing a second beer. People think some straight up typical thoughts about me and my alcohol consumption. And it was not something anyone in the room was expecting. But I'm from Flagstaff, I was born and raised. And so that felt really familiar to me, the complications of my hometown. And I was like, who's that guy that asked the question and knew what the answer would be and wanted that answer to get into the room. So I went over and kind of introduced myself and have been friends with Jake Skeets ever since. He's an up-and-coming poet that's not up-and-coming anymore. His book is just out for milkweed or just about to be out for milkweed. And was that September? Okay, thank you Sam. I love that you always love. He's re-ordered campaign and I already re-ordered. Awesome. So I ran into Jake at the most recent AWP conference, which is in Portland, Oregon. We were just talking about Portland, Maine. And the color of his book is about the main character in the poem that I'm going to read as well, his uncle. So do you see the pre-order? The person who's being spoken about here is the cutter of Jake's book. So I'm grateful to him for just the things that he's taught me and then I'm grateful that he gets to be in the pages upon your mountain. So if people like to follow along, I am going to read Drifter from 19. The next poem that he has with us, Red Red and the Towaters, is equally gorgeous, but a lot of it's in Dine, and Dine Talk, the language of the Navajo Nation, which I won't read because I would not do so with him the way it deserves to be read. So this is Drifter by Jake Skeets. The epigraph is After Benson James Drifter, Route 66, Gallup, New Mexico, 1979, by Richard Avedon. Drift. To drift is to be carried by current of air or water, but men are not the teeth of their verbs. They pry mouths open with a felt buckle to take a sip. Drifter. A Drifter carried by a current of air or water makes his way from one place to another. Sea vagabond, sea transient, sea drunk. See a man with shoulder length hair, dollar bills fisted, standing before a white screen. See his lips, how still, how horizon, how sunset, a train passing through. I tried to hug him through the spine. Left on the white space, his face becomes a mirror. If I stare long enough, my face charcoal, pursed, squinting at the camera. Train horn, punch, patterns, the mirror. Freeze him from the page. My uncle leaps from that. If you haven't been following that on, your poem just ends. Leaps from the, you don't know what. This is one by Paul Tran. It was incredible. I don't know if they have a collection now, I think they just finished their MFA. It's hopefully it's worth coming, because they're really excellent. When I saw this poem land in my email inbox, in the Bawa magazine, I love it. It's called The Real House, by the Orange County. And there's a dedication at the end of the poem. It says from Catherine Q. Catherine Q is a familiar story, for familiar with the story, Fuller and Ababit. She was arrested in 2011 for aggravated assault against her husband in a snap. She was convicted in 2013 and is serving a life sentence in prison. The story that the court told is that she was an aggressive, angry woman who was out for vain revenge against her husband, because he had the audacity to file for divorce against this woman. And the reality is that she was subjected to violence and abuse and molestation as a child of Vietnam. And then later in her marriage to the man who's known only as Glen, his identity is protected in all the court records. So, this is the poem for Catherine Q. He forked a cube of tofu and stuck it in his pretty mouth, the sound of him chewing, clink of metal against the ceramic I later cleaned, have always cleaned, can already see me cleaning like the good wife I am. I listened to the ceiling fan loud, then soft, then loud again above us. Its blades clinked hot June air. Air so dry and mad that it ignited everything it touched. He'll remember this, his hand slamming down like a gavel when I said, his friend can't stay with us. When he said divorce, when I said no, when he shoved himself away from the table, lifted his body full of kindling and want for smoke into the heat threatening the hills, casting its glare on little houses like ours and went to bed because he needed to lie down. And I, still sitting where I was where I've been all my life as a woman thought the only part of everything he says is true. Lie down? No, my husband needed a lie. So, I emptied his plate. I ran the hot water. I poured dish soap onto the sponge of work, holding mother, blessed virgin. I waited for the ambient to kick in for his ragged, roaring snores to disrupt my silent devotion and then, only then, did I wash my hands. The judge said I was a callous, calculated, cold. Like my husband, he only got some of it correct. I'm not callous. It was too hot to be cold. Calculated? Indeed. I counted. Each yard and a rope, each knot I tied and then I tied the knot once more. I'm careful. Men don't appreciate that shit. Men like words like bench, cunt. They say, honey, I'm home immediately. A doll runs stupid, breathless to their feet, licking the muck off their shoes. Did the prosecutor think about that when he demanded me for me a life sentence? No. My husband woke. I removed his pants. I took a ten-inch knife and hacked off his dick. I carried it into the kitchen. I almost kissed it goodbye. I remembered each time he forced it in me. Men who learn to be men from men never learn. You want me, man. You want whole. He'll hold for you. I turned it on. There was blood and skin and what sounded like a throat opening, choking, but of course you don't come. There's hardly ever any. Pity. I should have known all those years ago when I mistook union for love and love for someone willing to push my hair away from my face in the dark when we turned back into animals. The marriage would be just that. Two animals in a cage starved for the others who meet. Death. I have been born twice. First is Kweong. Second is Catherine. Saint of Alexandria. Saint of the wheel. Saint imprisoned and scoured until the streets ran red as my hands. I wiped my hands and re-entered our bedroom. There he was. Crying. He cried the whole night. He'll never be whole again. I'm going to read the poem. I'm still getting over a cold. It's a real honor to read his work. Not only for what he does as a writer, but for what he does over at Waxwing and Aaron and our other professor, Justin. Thank you for everyone for being here and for Poem City. I read CNF for this issue and it was a real honor to be able to see the talent that's submitted. I'll quickly say that a couple of other things going on this week is the Poem City celebration at Down Home Kitchen from 7 to 9. There's going to be an open mic. If you're listening now, you're going to read some of your own work tomorrow. You can do that. Also, this Thursday from 6 to 8 at North Branch Cafe we'll be doing our monthly reading series. There's also a chance there to not only hear the work of some current students, but to read some of your own work and write in response to a writing prompt. Maybe you're submitting it to issue 24 whose theme is patterns. We're very excited about that. That opens on May 1st. After we wrap up Poem City send in your poems. I'm going to read from top. This isn't my work, so I hope I do an honor and if I do mess up, we'll just get through. This first one is on page 11 and it's called Force's Mouths. I want to read it because of what it's doing with Poem and not only if you follow along but hopefully how I read it, so here we go. When the army brought us to the stables on our way to internment they warned us about talking to the animals. We crowded into the stalls at night and listened to the force explain the difference between sugar and blue. The weight of flour and tarp the jango spurs against bear flank their mains sizzled blue electric as they told us about silver riding the lone ranger who drove back from the dead about manual war out racing death. They told us about Comanche who survived the battle of little bit corn and then survived America and we shuddered. Outside the forces hurled across the landscape from sea to shining shoreline then back across the badlands. Pegasus stirred the windstorm with ancient wings so Lefner struck lightning as the prairie. Bahama broke a cobalt sky with Chinese fire while we hid our faces under thin blankets. The horses sang low songs for us the blues for animals who were more than animals the horses used our voices because the words did not fit in their mouths. When the horses were gone the trucks took us to the internment camp. Question What did the horses say? A. Horses belong to the world B. There are no horses just smells of horses C. We should not speak about these things. I really like that I'll confess that's something I'm trying to do on a piece of mind so that's why I want to spend a little time with it. I hope I did okay with some of that pronunciation but it was nice to read it and then the next one I'm going to read the last one is on page 8 and it's in cupboards a form that I like too it's all the things that make heaven and earth the soil of the livestock our memories of the war everything flourishing before it vanishes breath severed clean from our bodies, our shadows sunset deepened and woven with dirt whole family trees succumb to the blight my grandfather returns to life that's still bent by history's quiet yoke his memories of camp like forever decaying into the tiny garden behind my house where my father's death is the soil where silence blossoms now all year round where the soil is my grandfather eating darkness the spectral memory of camp the peace upon my father and his father, me and my son there are no such things as ghosts I tell my son this every evening he gazes up the dark stairwell towards his room what will be waiting for us when my boy is old enough to ask where he comes from what will we find in our memories of camp finally mulling back into the ground so my name is Rebecca and I was lucky enough to be one of the assistant poetry editors for this issue and the poet I'm about to read her name is Ji Young Yoon and we tried no less than six times to get her poems into this issue but she was doing so well she had simultaneously submitted for work and they kept getting snapped up before we could say yes and actually get them in so finally we sent her this frantic email after she had told us that her final poem she had submitted had been snapped up and she sent us this one which I think is one of her best and delighted that we finally got her to publish her in this issue so this is by Ji Young Yoon and it's called Ben Addiction as Distained give me now what skulls and reeks give me chilies and garlic raw give me dropwort and chosanthemum greens buckwheat and tea the bite of a well-brained let me wrap my feet in what others mistake let me unearth months old jar as a ponytail radish turned just so and bless rice with its sunny give me that funk and meju punch give me fried pervina that stares vacuous as I eat it's mouth-blowing the egg sap nestled inside give me that pouch of possibility multitude and sweet so crisp the oil-puffed dorsal fins the tail fins how good the flesh off the cheeks the grease off blistered scales give me now what disgusts grilled tongue and entrails fat with what you call digestive gunk and I call fiery chicken feet with the nails that be trimmed minutiae of bum spit and keep eating give me stink give me pig skin dip in powdered grain give me krill and pickled octopus blood-hewed suckers up and gaiting food that makes you honor what was killed vein of the cod row blistered hair of the intact cock evidence of bodies carved from what makes you clasp your palms to your nose is the bell that calls in my hunger I don't care anymore what you think give me sesame oil in fact give me bloodied and raw the white raw of salmon food food made to last to transform with the seasons to survive other nations give me all I avoided so long for your sake give me my heritage back let me refuse and I'll think it worthy let me suck meat off the shell of every animal you won't eat everybody reading along that's what I always wish for in a poetry, it's something to hear but it's also something to hear and read at the same time and I'm really excited to hear Lizzie Fox read her poems next I have two short poems for you by two different poets the first one is a poem by Amelia Martin it's on the silent side on page 20 and this particular poet she lives with her family in Kentucky and she wrote in her note when she submitted that this poem and others in the series has come out of her walks walking their two children to elementary school each day they look about half a mile away and so they walk them to and from and so this is sort of to inspire me because the poems can come out of just walking around they can come from conversations or a blade of grass so morning walk September 11th, 2018 because you are five I say airplanes crashed and you say where is our flag and I say look at those roses and little mouths on our walk to school you scuff and work out the equation if airplanes crashed on a surface like this you drag the concrete then there would be fire yes and now I walk through a curtain of printer paper a flock of fallen paper people arms spread yes I say there was fire and I mean is the other one I just really love for the imagery there's like those haunting haunting images going through there anyways kind of that lingers this is on the power side of PG-18 the poet is named Jade Herger and with chrysalis a snake in the middle of the night to whippers an angel shivers beside me translucent a shadow it vomits a chrysalis into my hand sticky and green it's red eyes ripple like holes where are the others but the room contains only this small shadow infinite in its softness the mirror gluts with moon if an angel dies the silence becomes absolute I tuck the angel inside my body its sickness is first a claw in my gut then a dull pearl inside the chrysalis a tiny bell grows wings thank you so passionate about what you do I've done an amazing job with this journal as a man's knowledge grows and his power increases the road he takes grows ever narrower until at last he does only and holy what he must first of all bone bloodstream esophagus coughing fits apologies laughter and vocal cords and a current of air a lamp sits on the table plug it into the wall put it on unplug it reconnect be careful you don't see the current moving a circuit you see a wire a glimmer of light a backlit lamp shape a friend once gave a shadow puppet show in his living room the paper cut out scissors snip precise and delicate intricacies intended to channel the light exactly where he wanted it to shine eye socket patterned shirt strands of hair high notes in the dark sometimes we are back again take a heart as example where shock pads and monitors were just the sound of a voice you don't see the current moving but you know it's there a connection to tend to harness to extend outward you see the bodies you were given its intricacies intended to channel the light exactly you must no you'll cast a shadow look over what's next? Colin I was on Facebook and we had interesting articles and when we read them they become cause so part of my process but I was talking about how in 1860 when the skirts were becoming popular in fashion there was this really terrifying pretty catastrophic combination of lighter fabrics for the first time air underneath skirt right without all the many layers of petticoats and oil lamps being the name method of lighting up homes so according to this article roughly 3,000 women were burned alive in the United States thinking about all the ways that that might happen fashion 1860 ballerinas were particularly vulnerable the Tarleton and cause but all girls with lights like chimney fires the bells of their hollow skirt following air up the legs in the days of fireplaces and gas stage lamps don't dance so close 3,000 women burned that year catching a hen tipping a candle the fabrics were spider webs and angels gowns the women dried out Christmas trees needles dropping the four household electricity but mass produced badminton every girl could leap like emerald and green see them at their mirrors pretending thinking pouty expressions with eyelashes spread the slightest misgesture led to death ballerinas skirts were longer than and light made to look like serifs everything was white or lavender or buttercup and paid for by old male patrons championing his girls on top of the playbill once a whole row lit in formation the one on the end too close to the lamp the other too close to the girl beside her a new dance began the same dance but one sister rushed to the fireplace to put the other out the trouble with hoop skirts was that women could move their legs they burned down brown stones apartment buildings leaders lost icons lead dancers soft paces those long carved wings she was waiting for a casting call stressed a cigarette had just gotten the tobacco lit with the approach she'd insisted on warming the house with her husband gone to work and the children away she needed the candle to find her men chambers brought it right into the room and cast light on her smile her bodice her undone button she was facing the wall about to breathe in turned and tapped the flame quickly behind her back so he wouldn't see you could almost hear the suck of air pulling inside she brought the candle to her own bedside insisted on doing things alone had the audacity to dance was trying to help her sister and I should have said before that Emma livery whose reference in that wall was a famous ballerina of the time who was referred on stage perfect manner so we can't have something like that not in the book but it will be on the websites so I thought I would read it as well and most should definitely put it around top of work check that out on your mountain top because I believe there's going to be several cases going up in video form which is really exciting now we're taking that step this is how to make art even when I'm sick when I feel the bone of a sore throat prick my right tonsil and I pervert through a stuffed nose while I dream of spilling my coffee because I'm stumbling through the house without opening my eyes because I can't open my eyes because I'm still dreaming and I can't wait for work I hear the robin's circular whistle winter is always even when the weather won't stand still when it throws my body into vile confusion with snow storms and hail storms and 60 degree winds all in one week the robin is building the nest the robin has work to do Lucy has a poem on the size of the magazine and then I heard Lizzie read that last poem and then I invited her to submit to the magazine and she did, I couldn't not hear her voice in my head with that last poem so I was like can we please put that on line and have two in the journal and then I was like can we put all three on mine so as we start putting print things from the print issue up on our online magazine we're going to start with Lizzie and so you're going to be able to hear her read all three of those poems and then once a week we'll start putting up pieces from the print issue online and thanks for following along if anyone wants to read from the issue you certainly may and if you want to take an issue home with you they're $12 and you can come see any of the editors to take one of those with Yay Poetry, Yay April, Yay to that robin that persistent, persistent robin who gives me confidence and hope and thanks for being here tonight Office made to the University of Missouri and when I told them and when I told them I was moving to Vermont he said, oh you should check out Hungerman he was finishing his Ph.D. and I was teaching in the journalism department I was teaching multimedia so when I saw this poem in here I was really excited John Diaz Long Dash the first five days red and yellow against the window shade the water pressure barely knew its way through the pipes we accordioned the hours on a damp queen with pale green sheets it was always morning the dew was always just leaving again for the sky no one named us no one spent a measure of breath trying to reach inside 30 minutes from here our lives went on without us most of our clothes only hangers only drawer space the lock firmly keeping the door the air switching itself on and off there though here though the starlings the world the world here though the starlings the wordless way sick