 Good evening. Welcome to this poem city event. I'm Tom McCone, executive director of the Kellogg Hubbard Library It's great to have you with us. We have 35 events this month 35 poetry events around town and this evening. We're very pleased to have two fine poets with us Fran set Siruli and Jamie Gage Jamie's poetry has been published in numerous journals including Main Street Rag, Inkwell, Out of Line, and Mountain Gazette and his new book, True if Destroyed was published just in two months ago, February. Yeah Fran Siruli has also been published in numerous journals and she's the author of The Spirit's Need to Eat Fran's poetry has been read on National Public Radio and Garrison Keillers Writer's Almanac So I heard that and I thought well, that's pretty cool to get you to have Garrison Keillers read your poetry on National Public Radio, and then I went to the Writer's Almanac website and he's read your poetry at least four times three Maybe you missed one because he's got four on the website I don't know either. I can never send him my book. I don't know how he got my book. I thought it was a joke. Well, I've got no I think we'll start with Jamie. How about that? Would you please welcome Jamie Gage? Thank you very much. It might have been Peter Holmes Maybe Peter? And thank you, Tom, very much and thank you to everyone here who's who Are involved with Poem City. It's a fantastic event. I got involved with it a few years ago and Really very excited by it. I'm excited that it moves people to write poetry. We need words now more than ever And I think this is one of the most unique events In the United States, I don't believe that this is done anywhere else still at this point Which is very cool to see all these broadsides all around town is really neat And it really pushes us all and it pushed me personally And it's engendered other movements like Poem town Randolph where I'm from that started three years ago. There's a poem town Sarinac Lake Norwich University I think there may be there was one other town and then poems across Vermont in the welcome centers Which is a very cool thing. I got involved with that a few years ago as well Which is very cool to have people be able to stop and when they get to a rest area See what we think what Vermonters Feel and believe in the form of poetry, which is great words matter So thank you for pushing this don't ever stop. This is a very cool thing And I'm always very happy to to see these broadsides around town in my own town now In fact, you know, that's really what pushed me a little bit forward to write More and to get these poems out. These are mostly older poems, but it kind of propelled me to start sending things out and this collection was sent out to a Chapo competition and it was awarded a semi-finalist Prize and then they offered to publish it for no cost, which was fantastic So thank you again The other thing That really propelled me About 15 years ago to start writing poetry was, you know Current events and world events poets against the war in 2002 and three really Moved a lot of people and so That's when I think I first started writing was kind of a catharsis And that's kind of what my poetry is about is kind of a I got to get this out You know, it's got to be put down on paper and it's a it's a good process for me personally So this first poem was written about that About that time and carries with it the theme of Current events and war It's called archipelago and it starts with an epigraph To do evil a human being must first believe that what he is doing is good Alexander solchin eatson Torture is a word with more than four letters, but of course there are worse Words like earlobe or gulag or bagram air base places. You hoped your concealment might keep you from seeing It has been 12 years since Alexander returned to the taiga 12 years since he left us for dusk and the world is the same now, but different The appeals have grown louder The court has drawn down its heavyweight robes and butterflies are trapped in their vestments The bailiff keeps checking his watch Still the old man in the back stairs stalwart Leon Beard spilling from his eyes like silver talings from a mine. He is quiet There is too much to say and he's already said it Bellowed from the hemlocks and his solitary cells Against the fear and the hate for the hope and the love Without raising his voice without raising his hand Through ribbiting birch the snow hums down like an iron branding on skin a voice rings out and then fades swallowed by a silence that spreads like an ink blot and Every poet needs an editor. I want to acknowledge that my wife Encourage me to drop another line that was previously ending that poem years ago and made that poem and and Made it what it was. So thank you. She's in the back with my two little ones This next one is a relatively new. It's probably one of the newest poems. I've written just a couple months ago Malague 1901 Not even so much the wind or the cliffs, but the musk of the air when it's calm Bommi you can taste it the sweet smoked cells of the Gulf Stream and the peat meeting sea Down current from the south that rolls over your eyes peer through pinched lids and then finally tear up And that's when the malt runs the gullet so well When the waterfalls empty glaciers onto fossilized bones Before the mammoths and the ungulates The hairy uprights with their brows pressed and hunched over so proud above their new open flame This is another relatively new one crush The oristano's in 84 Phil and Isn't it strange how I can't remember her name But boy wasn't she something to look at a real bespectacled beauty and didn't I dream of gently removing those broad rimmed frames to Reveal her as your eye gaze returning the love. I hope so much to impart on her this gorgeous somehow other man's wife. I Was 14 at the time and it may have been the first first occasion of many in my life when I had wondered incredulously What the hell is she doing with that guy? Phil indeed After all she was the sculptor and the sculpted Amuse and a maker both fueling my Saturday forward through this coffee cup still endowing my name 30 years later Jamie's mug and enriching my memory rose huge such as it is and why not? My father taught her to ski and her goatee husband, too. I was just a spectator then drinking it in Mostly I remember her clear skin and blue eyes tempered by those thick glasses as if to reflect my own crush back Or keep it safely at bay I Recall her in a one-piece ski suit making wedge turns between the rock walls of the wasatch looking especially fine And where is she now? In my mind I picture her own Saturday morning in a suburb of some city not far away Still wearing her nightgown and drinking coffee from a cup that she made with her hands Gene I remember now her name was Jean As I mentioned most of the poems in in this collection are between 10 and 10 and 20 years old There's only a few that are less than 10 years old. This is an old one Probably closer to 20 Abundance and it's the first one in the collection Abundance There is something that happens when we lie down with each other that is beyond even my best recollection of ourselves Beyond this rush of salt air through the trucks open window or the unsettled haze settled over the bay Unseasonal haze settled over the bay It's October and you're as clear in my mind as you've ever been as Beautiful as words that I don't need to say because you are near and because I have gazed for so long through the shade of your orbit The fact is I have no words for this love. It is an entity unto itself Like the clang call of an ocean buoy or your ink stained unwavering eyes This one is uh One of the newer ones in this collection Um, and it's dedicated to the two, uh, blonde children in the back It's called Children of the Woods When she hands me an Oakley for a fistful of needles for the fourth time this morning I'm struck by how much my daughter resembles her brother His summer brown skin and half curled grin The other half level with earnestness As we round a bend in the root strewn trail that we began clearing last weekend I can hear Aidan seesaw cadence call out from behind a thicket of spruce He's singing one of his favorites old mcdonald And when he comes to the line that he is made up about his pig dog friend with the upturned snout I can hear him howling and grunt barking And his sister laughing through the cone-bearing boughs This is the morning I've dreamed of that I have forever wanted to live These Children of the Woods are trees of their own Above all else I have known this one is um dedicated And came about because of my father. He was a kind of a unique Old carmajian very stubborn Did his own thing and a lot of sort of uh, what we consider unique for monies idiosyncrasies And stubborn right to the end he passed five years ago and and he kind of maintained that attitude All those years right up until the end Or tried to He was 83 It's called my father last night My father last night stoked the wood fire drank the cold draft ate the t-bone ignored the doc's calls Cursed the ex-pres read the good book gazed at the sky limped up the stairs Popped all the pills cranked up the brass oiled down the steel fell through the chair dropped the left eye and drove the storm home drove the storm home a good friend of mine um in those days of the iraq war um was He was a gulf war veteran and he became a great teacher of media reform in english and in uh harwood in Waitsfield or duxbury and uh He was very involved in the anti-war movement as was I to some extent and anyway We went down to washington on october of 2002 six months in advance of the eventual iraq war That we got into as part of a protest movement We went down on a bus And this uh, this poem came out of that experience. It was also a very heady time with The patriot act and rison being sent to the senate You know senators offices and a lot of terror going on Uh a couple guys were driving around and shooting people if you remember that anonymously And uh, so it's a pretty pretty heady time So this uh, this was some catharsis for sure in this uh This poem it's called safe passage In the clipped half light between the highway and glass I met death yet again Yet again as though I'd always met death right here on this bus Always this night with a still moon on the wane over wellstone and other historical ghosts only recently passed All of them moving through us on this slow roll to washington to meet democracy by morning I'll say this I haven't missed this rain where I've forgotten now what it could possibly mean Weak need slack job my neck a burnt piece of sausage the slap slap of wipers against the windshield It's just that now upon waking it feels different this dream this death Feels better than I ever remembered it It feels like this night surrounded by friends whose names I don't know but whose cores I imagine my own core to be Without malice laid open clean The way humans can be when they're able to choose But there was this also lust a going in and a coming out but bloodless a kind of throughway like this road to the petomic Further among the children of the ghost dance pass in their red yellow bus Further among the fear in the suburbs and yet that fear fades because we make it fade We are all after all in death as in life waltzing the rain. We are dancing with ghosts I'll say this I would die for my country I would die for my country if it would live up to me this last poem in the collection is uh Takes its name for the from the bramont state bird Which is the hermit thrush It also starts with an epigraph This one by john updike, which I thought was really Really encapsulated the theme And it's probably better than the poem itself It reads the essence of the super rich is absence They're always demonstrating they can afford to be someplace else again, it was john updike hermit thrush I always enjoy the dream where the small birds defend us Lightning troves of hermit thrush in a line above us as we climb lincoln peak The dream begins where our feet leave off Off the dim granite edge and into the dark The cat tracks we follow lead to heliodor mansions now gouged into the hills Ringed by rock walls and stone-pillared gates Nobody's home so we go inside Guilt edged mirrors lie in the great halls birdly boutique floors and glass chandeliers Claw-footed tubs adorn the boudoir And yet the place is still empty Still empty and still I'm hungry you tell me and when I glance in the mirror I can see that we've both sprouted talons We've grown ourselves wings When you turn toward the window the moon glints off your beak They'll never miss these you tell me as you row a dozen swiss chocolates under your wing But we've got to do something i'm yelling the river is ruined The mountain's been mined Relax you laugh drilling crystal through your black sequined feathers Don't worry the ruins And remember We'll be here long after they're gone so in when I was asked to When rachel and and tom had approached me about reading You know they pair a lot of folks together For these readings obviously and suggested that I have a somebody read with me And the first person that sprung to mine was francerily And I had first matt fran Through a mutual friend peter home who was the book designer on her book the spirits needy which she's going to share some Fantastic work from I was writing book reviews at the time in southern vermont and I did a two-part Review and interview series for a magazine down there called the vermont review Um, and I loved the book. I loved the the work was very Very similar to mine in terms of some catharsis some personal Mining really digging which is so important and so so valuable and Number of poems that really struck me and I wanted to read one From the collection and and friend so that would be okay. She wouldn't read That particular poem It kind of encapsulates The need to really mine some of those unpleasant topics. We don't want to talk about That we need to you know that we need to kind of go after and dig in And and observe this isn't a dark poem at all, but it just it's one of those moments that you need to kind of look at Um A lot of poetry that fran writes is is similar to this This one's called grace and it ends the first section of her book Grace We must not turn on the lights in our houses until the sun has been down for one hour We must sit here at the window or there on the porch or just around the kitchen table Wherever it catches us and watch it leave We must remember the time when we had nothing against the dark We must remember the easy grace of letting darkness fall Thank you Thank you I have to thank jamie. He sort of dragged me out of retirement Thank you And also, uh, I'd like to thank poem city It's just gotten bigger and bigger every year. It's so beautiful Um, and rachel first starting it. I just think it's amazing Um, I really was ready. Um, I did have a list and I still have a list Um, but my daughter's here and I wasn't sure she was going to be here So I'm going to add a poem for her As we get into it One of the first things that jamie mentioned was how important words are And, uh, the first poem I'd like to read Is about that very thing It's called son in mourning And I wrote it from the point of view of my father Who came home from the church after his mother Had died and talked about her funeral and how Piss he was at the priest Um, so this is in the voice of my father Son in mourning The priest chews gum And says words over my mother that are supposed to sound like grief I look at him and wonder he is somewhere else. He is not even trying to step into my skin for a moment He didn't even ask for the stories If he did I would have told him how she wore a hat with a blue feather The same blue as that dress How she sat on a stool to do the ironing If he had asked I would have told him how we love to pick her up and carry her around when we finally got big But I would not tell him about the bread dough How when she was done kneading it and it was resting on the table She would let me cup my hand over it just for a minute The little mound of dough was warm and softly blistering and I was starting to wonder about girls And just as I was about to keel over from pleasure This woman my mother would laugh and give me a whack on the rump and tell me to go out and play I would maybe maybe tell him about the dress and maybe the hat with the blue feather But no not even that because now as I look at him and wonder and watch him saying those words that don't touch skin I want to scream at him. Don't you know we live by the word Don't you know that words leave one body to enter another? That the word hot makes us jump Stubbed makes our big toe hurt and when we hear cut we smell disinfectant So I sit here not believing it. I watch in wonder as he flings words out of his mouth without loving them first Amazed I watch the words jump out of his blood in terror Loud and dry and not one of them the one I've been waiting for I turn away in wonder and start to listen for one quiet word Soak it patiently for months in this roar of sad blood I hefted in my hand bring it to my mouth taste comfort and salt I would like to read um I usually read lots of poems for my daughters, but this time reading through my Poems in this book. I realized that I wrote a number of poems for my son And many of them He was at the age that my grandsons are now So I'm going to read a lot of poems about boys But I like to read one for zephyr because she's here and she is the mother of one of those boys So um This is called a valentine for zephyr age 12 The night before valentines are due. I take you to the movie about Vincent whose paintings you love Too late. I realize it's a mistake You knew about his ear and you know the definition of prostitute But neither one of us was ready to see him cut himself until he bled See him in the brothel with his rotten teeth and his real women On the way home in the starry night. We hold hands Wonder what his parents must have been like What cruelty may have happened to him and you show me the belt of orion Clean and shining and always in place Remember this forever then I cannot imagine not loving you even when this body is gone So if I ever die Look up into the dark and find me hundreds of times there Each place you can faintly imagine a line tracing the shape of a valentine And zephyr always cries at my readings and I love that I love it. It's such a gift It's such a gift to me um But this this poem that I wrote for my son tovar um The event described in it happened around The age that zephyr's son arie is now He's my youngest grandson And arie has kind of the same kind of mind This is this the kind of thing that my grandson would say So i'm going to read it's called kinds of murder for tovar and arie um And it's about a fairy tale called ali baba and the 40 thieves which i'm sure you all know Walking to the market for milk. I question my son casually about the persian fairy tale He liked it. Okay. He says Speaking from this cool new england hill in summer Instructing my young son. I shudder properly and remind him of all the violence there Of morgueanna pouring hot oil onto the 40 thieves Blistering them to death one by one as they slept in their man-sized oil jars awaiting dawn But she had to do that. He says there weren't any police back then I can see he's back there without me now Roaming through the baked ali's in the stinking heat smelling sugared almonds curry honeyed seed cakes Pertinent facts start coming back to me that ali baba bought the girl in the marketplace That her beauty would have made her a prostitute except for this man Who made her his daughter and loved her in that way only? That they were both lucky and they knew it That the money for her freedom did indeed come from the thieves cave and without their permission But it was also their habit to cut people into bits for taking just one piece of gold Then string the flesh up to dry in the hot wind I think of 40 men with swords sleeping in my little backyard and metal oil drums overnight The lids slightly tilted for breathing waiting to hack us apart in the cool vermont morning They are dreaming of mistakes. My father made years ago The authorities would never believe me Stumbling I check my supply of cooking oil Line up my largest pots on the counter It's the curse I'm blessing to of having an imagination and This is called birthday. It's also for my son, but it could very well be for my grandson Gabriel who's now Just turned 15 called birthday 14 years ago. He slid from me a squeaking little thing A boy He needed pushing and pulling to make him uncurl and brave the light Again, I see it's all happening too fast for him His arm and leg bones lengthening by the day His shoulders giant coat hangers barely disguised and skin and muscle His new body keeps trying to curl up on him go out of alignment until he despairs and asks me how to stand up straight I tell him to pretend there is a string coming out of the top of his head Holding it up and that everything else will just fall into line He tries it and laughs He anticipates that every once in a while the string will pull a little too tight and he will be walking in the air And this is another poem I wrote for tovar called son at 17, but it could be for my 17 year old grandson avarie It's weird how these things happen called son at 17 my son An expert by overexposure Recognizes the song before I do the best one of the year about how sex is good for everybody This large man who was a boy a year ago Cranks up the radio till the car is a bulging capsule of sound heavy on the base As he drives he sings every word loudly with cellular belief He will have it all give it all in his time probably soon My heart begins to vibrate dangerously at the lowest frequencies Tonight I feel old enough to be mother to a man I mime my fear to him my hand on my chest my eyes wide I can feel it in my chest. I scream He stopped singing long enough to nod Delighted that I have noticed it gets better. He yells And the next two poems I'd like to read are um in honor of spring I do not like april It's really hard for me to get through and there's lovely woman in the audience who also hates april And I just I had decided to read a poem for her and here she she came I I think it's so exciting The first one though is about hanging clothes up on the line and the first time I read this poem in public Many people came up to me and said I thought I was the only one who did that. Thank you so much for writing about this Crazy woman hanging out clothes So here I am hanging out clothes as the sun goes down I always miss time that last laundry load So i'm sending it out on the line into the dark I look like a crazy woman doing this people hang clothes out in the morning I know this But alone on the back porch hanging up clothes in the dark. I reason with myself out loud What can happen to clothes in the dark air that we are afraid to leave them out overnight Will they be gone in the morning because we let the dark have them Will the dark cling to our clothes like vapors making us do unpredictable things when we wear them I decide i'm past the worrying point I'm standing here in the dark hanging up clothes talking to myself About whether hanging up clothes in the dark is going to make me do insane things I look at all the things i've hung up so far And figure they could be made whiter than white with the light from the stars But why we stole that darkness? I have a blue shirt that faded a bit the last time it was washed I hang it up last I figure it will soak up a little midnight and be really stunning by the time the sun comes up And this is For diane swan Is called how diane sent the purple finch and the purple finches have just started coming back. They're incredible So how diane sent the purple finch for diane swan? You call her to check on a fact But the fact is you've been stuck in the same gray groove for a month You tell her expecting sympathy, but she's no nonsense with the instructions You need to get outside take a long walk in the woods the spring beauties are out trailing our beauties too While she's talking a flash at the feeder You think at first it must be a mistake after the bird's skimpy winter of browns and greys He's red like someone poured paint on his head Fading down to white except for the rosy rump Of course, she'd be the one to send him She has that coat like a red winged black bird and that hair No matter how often you see it's turned white. You still remember it red And of course she'll deny having anything to do with it As she keeps pulling them out of that deep hat and lets them fly one by one Scarlet surprises she can't see but we can a long string of red songs woman trailing beauties And Diane is just an amazing poet. Oh my god I'm so glad you have a nice fact book now And springtime is is hard because just springtime is hard, but it's extra hard for me since my stepdaughter died in 2005 And in fact, um, I have written very little since then and um, I'd like to read three The three poems that I've written for my stepdaughter since then Being stepmother to a child who has died is really weird You don't know quite what your place is And I've spoken to another stepmother whose child died and she said yes Stepmothers are not supposed to have feelings. They're not allowed to have feelings And there was a very strange way in which I felt invisible after We lost Eta So I've struggled with that And these poems are about Eta Looking for Eta And I wrote this in 2005 Shortly after Eta died The trouble with modern times is too many choices We don't even know where to think the dead go Some say a girl ends when her body does Some say she flies above Others that she rests below Some say the soul wanders for exactly 49 days They tell me to check the local papers for birth announcements in seven weeks And keep track of any likely sounding babies They might be my lost stepdaughter trying to get in touch I do not check the birth announcements What would I do with a so-called likely sounding baby Peek in windows of strangers' houses at newborns and risk arrest Follow baby strollers down the street Maybe next time she would come back as a boy anyway Which broadens the field considerably I have been listening hard though I hear very little Above her father's crying Just one dream A wispy sense of her confusion At all the people gathered at our house Where is that girl? I yell after a couple of months It's time for her to come home for a visit At least she could call us Finally something to mourn This nothingness Then the small empty pair inside me Where I wish she'd been planted But she doesn't want me to be the one to find her She is waiting for her real mother The one who kept leaving Eta sits folded in the dark somewhere Nibbling on pomegranate seeds The only food she likes This is called looking for Eta too Cranberries were small until today Hardly worth looking into Do such light and bouncy fruits Deserve the name Once out of the bag They're bound to roll off the counter Dodge across the kitchen floor And squat in the farthest corners Quivering and sour Waiting to be teased out With ridiculous instruments like the melon baller We never use But muffins Your father wants muffins Not that he said so What he said was he thought he would make some Cranberry And the baking tin he dragged Hopefully from the cupboard Sat empty for days Like he did for months After you, his only child So tired, a girl Finally dared to say it So tired Lay down on your couch That too late afternoon To finally rest Your father young lady Hates leaving things half done This half started project screams You left him half hearted But muffins he says He wants So I wash and corral the little Bothers in a bowl Cut them in half so they won't roll Look these rascals Have four chambers Lucky them Their inner walls are white And tough All their red used up on skin Leaving none for bleeding In These really do have four chambers Just like your heart I didn't know it until I did until I made those damn muffins Edda talks to me two years after her death The clothesline's talking to me again Over two years I've avoided it Since that day One week after my stepdaughter died A mere rope made me sin Against grief I thought it was reflux But my heart lifted Watching those sheets fight the line In early May Their bellies filling with wind Just a puny week after a child died After only seven days Of dragging cement feet How could such joy be allowed? How else to explain it Then some days The ambulance driver carries death And others Throws candy in the parade Though I wasn't allowed sugar I stole this sweet Hit it away some place I forgot But last night she told me Eat every bit Those poles on the line Those squeakings and yankings Were only my soul tugging free And this is a really bad poem I'm sorry It's just a really bad poem I wrote it I wrote it I wrote it I wrote it I wrote it Six years after Ed had died From my husband On Father's Day It's about my children Who love him dearly And who he loves back Father's Day 2011 For Mick You have all these stepkids Six counting spouses Who now, thanks to God Are in their own houses They are not your seed But I've seen you Clothe, feed Hector and lecture Until they take heed Your world fell apart And you let them enfold you You let all those kid arms Rock you and hold you So don't be surprised When they have a hug for you Duh dear Mickey They clearly adore you So stand up They pound at the doors They are not your seed But you've made them all yours It's just a doggerel It's a doggerel poem, but it was Yeah, he liked it And this is pretty recent 2015 Well, what we're supposed to do When we get to be this age is You know what, we gotta get used to the idea We're gonna die I just wrote this little poem If this were My final moment in this life The last thing I would see Is that orange sitting On the cutting board Zest grated off into a pie We're not so different The orange and I Brains slightly dry From having been around a while But still able to add That little extra It wouldn't be bad to go just now This second But please have my husband Come up from the barn soon To find me croaked Before the timer goes off And that pie burns And The last poem I would like to Read is from my friend Patricia Lyons Surrey Who Died in January On her bike out in Tucson In the middle of her bliss She was hit by a car And died instantly And I really have not had A time, a chance To do anything In her memory Except go to a party To celebrate her life But I really wanted to say goodbye And The last, one of the last Things that Pat posted On Facebook from her vacation Was I love hiking alone And there were other people On occasion She was hiking out In the saguaro national park On the Hugh Norris trail Near Tucson And this poem is by A wonderful poet named Fred Marchand from a Collection called Tipping Point You can tell it's all rippled I've had it for a long time It's a little moldy This is the last poem in his book It's called The Afterlife On Squaw Peak No matter the machines With their silent flywheels And strange swinging on It's weird Let me start again No matter the machines With their silent flywheels And strange swinging on cables That helped you get here The masts of measurement and reason Which the earnest have strapped To the summit There is still the terrible Loneliness of the next Valley over to convince You with its quartz And granite flashing like Ice and its meadow Emptied of the human Flower blossoms Little trumpets of delight Shutter at your feet The shale you stand on Is splattered with bright Likens You join them by laying low Out of the wind to look up The flower's name Scarlet Penstemon And you have that small But significant human pleasure Of finally knowing This high You have trouble breathing And feeling sleepy You find a place without thorns Your eyelids tighten And the wind carries voices That seem shaken As if assembled at your sick bed When you wake You note how little seems changed You perhaps wonder Where you came from and why You want to take off your clothes And mark where you have lain Now the wind Sounds out clearly And says this is the mountain Of forgiveness And that the work will be Across the empty spaces with meaning If those you love Glimpse you It will be in the form of a red tail Fox crossing at dusk Into the wood stand And because they have loved you They will watch as long As you let them They will not harm you So swears the wind Not this close to heaven Thank you