Showing posts with label poets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poets. Show all posts
Professors of Other MFA Students Rock.
This poem was shared with me by my fellow EWU MFA-er Laura Ender. You can read it by clicking here. Enjoy!
Sandra Cisneros: Poem 0
Full Moon & You're Not Here
Useless moon,
Too beautiful to waste.
But you, my Cinderella,
have the midnight curfew,
a son waiting to be picked up from his den meeting,
and the fractured marriage weighing on your head
like a crown of thorns.
Oh my beauty,
it’s not polite
to keep me waiting.
To send me reeling in a spiral
and then to say good night.
I smoke a cigar,
play a tango,
gulp my gin and tonic.
Goddamn you.
Full moon and you’re not here.
I take off the silk slip,
the silver bangels.
You’re in love with my mind.
But, sometimes, sweetheart,
a woman needs a man
who loves her ass
Useless moon,
Too beautiful to waste.
But you, my Cinderella,
have the midnight curfew,
a son waiting to be picked up from his den meeting,
and the fractured marriage weighing on your head
like a crown of thorns.
Oh my beauty,
it’s not polite
to keep me waiting.
To send me reeling in a spiral
and then to say good night.
I smoke a cigar,
play a tango,
gulp my gin and tonic.
Goddamn you.
Full moon and you’re not here.
I take off the silk slip,
the silver bangels.
You’re in love with my mind.
But, sometimes, sweetheart,
a woman needs a man
who loves her ass
New Jon Sands Poem
The Fishermen
for J.V. C.H. A.F. E.H. E.M.
Sometimes you dance slow
with your best friend,
while a woman you love
differently than you love Etta James
sings At Last into a karaoke machine
like she wrote it in the bathroom.
Sometimes every person you know is drunk enough
it becomes a new definition for sober.
There is a bar on the west side of Brooklyn
the fishermen call home,
(or they used to, when Brooklyn had fishermen)
like a siren carrying them back to their whiskey.
Sometimes there is tonight, and we are six people.
If we made footsteps that never disappeared,
can you imagine the lines we would have carved out to get here?
There are people who have called us their homes.
Tonight, there is family in the oxygen.
Sometimes, two people is its own person.
It has a lifespan, it gets hungry, it too, can lie underneath its sheets
and wonder how it can still feel alone—
Sometimes it is more.
There is a phone booth in the bar that seats one,
as six of us scramble inside,
we crawl up the walls until even our drinks fit,
and our bodies are rediscovering what it is to be possible.
It is one night when the clocks on a bar in Brooklyn
begin to spill backwards, then stop.
The bartender—still as a stalagmite,
and the perfect pour stays perfect.
The couple at the corner table held like
popsicle sticks in a freezer—
the ovvvvvvvv from I lovvve you suspended in the air
like a vibrating chandelier.
And we, with our slow dances
we with our songs
we with our smiles—
which on any other day are the downswing on a jump rope.
We are the last to go.
We are the last to go.
We are the last to go.
for J.V. C.H. A.F. E.H. E.M.
Sometimes you dance slow
with your best friend,
while a woman you love
differently than you love Etta James
sings At Last into a karaoke machine
like she wrote it in the bathroom.
Sometimes every person you know is drunk enough
it becomes a new definition for sober.
There is a bar on the west side of Brooklyn
the fishermen call home,
(or they used to, when Brooklyn had fishermen)
like a siren carrying them back to their whiskey.
Sometimes there is tonight, and we are six people.
If we made footsteps that never disappeared,
can you imagine the lines we would have carved out to get here?
There are people who have called us their homes.
Tonight, there is family in the oxygen.
Sometimes, two people is its own person.
It has a lifespan, it gets hungry, it too, can lie underneath its sheets
and wonder how it can still feel alone—
Sometimes it is more.
There is a phone booth in the bar that seats one,
as six of us scramble inside,
we crawl up the walls until even our drinks fit,
and our bodies are rediscovering what it is to be possible.
It is one night when the clocks on a bar in Brooklyn
begin to spill backwards, then stop.
The bartender—still as a stalagmite,
and the perfect pour stays perfect.
The couple at the corner table held like
popsicle sticks in a freezer—
the ovvvvvvvv from I lovvve you suspended in the air
like a vibrating chandelier.
And we, with our slow dances
we with our songs
we with our smiles—
which on any other day are the downswing on a jump rope.
We are the last to go.
We are the last to go.
We are the last to go.
Best Spokane Local Music Venue in Trouble
(Photo from thebackkitchen.blogspot.com)
The Empyrean is a place I thought I would NEVER see in Spokane. I mean...EVER. I thought that places like this were only found in bigger, better and cooler cities like Seattle, Portland or Austin. But then I went to The Empyrean and was blown away.
They serve coffee and beer? Check.
They have a cool venue space? Check.
They have cool bands to fill said space. Check.
All ages shows? Check.
It is the place my little brother has for music and poetry that I never had at his young age of 17 and I want it to stay.
This wonderful Spokane gem is in danger of closing due to new Spokane regulations. They need a $20,000 sprinkler system installed. Whitworth alum Kyle Pflug has posted a great summary of info and details here. Please read and get involved if you can.
I know I have many uber cool peeps moving to town to join me at EWU to earn our MFA's in Creative Writing. This venue will be the place we will hold the readings for Writers in the Community, it is the home of the Spokane Poetry Slam and is the place we will want to get together to hang out, relax and write to our hearts content.
I am all in to help. Are you?
Jon Sands Awesomeness
This is Jon Sands.
He is awesome.
As is this pic of him with the characters from
Where the Wild Things Are.
.He is awesome.
As is this pic of him with the characters from
Where the Wild Things Are.
(Photo by Jon Sands)His poetry and videos of him performing his poetry can be found here, here and here.
Google him if you need more.
I know you will.
p.s. In other slightly related news, a Where the Wild Things Are movie is in the works with Dave Eggers and Spike Jones at the helm (if you haven't already heard) and the recently released movie Away We Go was written (in part) by Dave Eggers as well.
I don't know if being way into Eggers and what he and his fellow Hysterical Realists are about ruins my street cred or not, but then,
I don't think I had any to begin with.
A person likes what they like...
and if you don't like something...
then you don't.
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