This weekend (Sunday, April 7, 2013, 4 PM), the Commonwealth Reading Series continues at Gulu-Gulu Cafe.
The series features Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellows/Finalists in literature. Here: a brief sampling of work by Sunday’s featured writers and poets…
July, air thick as soup but clear as cold water, I step hard on a spade’s edge and push it into Iowa’s rich black dirt. Setting a tetherball court will be tougher than I thought.
To dig a hole, you build a hill.
From Iowa Black Dirt by Perry Glasser
I slept all night my hands open like two
unblinking eyes or white empty saucers.
From Before we left the room by Carrie Bennett
Across from the toilet is a basin where people brush their teeth and wash their hands, their clothes, their hair. There is a limited amount of water, which soon runs dry. The wash basin is dirty, and there is no soap. I carry with me a bottle of Purel even though I don’t believe it works. I’m aware of my hands. I’m aware of the pathogens they carry.
From Flush by Michelle Lanzoni
When you were five & your gargantuan mother
held you trembling over the side for stealing apples
& your little heart bounced in its casing, did she know
what would follow? She might just as well have dropped you.
From Redemption or a Canoe by Rodney Wittwer
La rentrée. Owen’s dictionary had translated it as “re-entrance; reappearance; reopening…” It was all of those things. Paris was emptying its paunch of the summer tourists – the German youths with sandals and socks, the American families looking for comfort in a McDo – and was now gorging herself with her own.
From In and Out of Paris by Bud Jennings
Image (l to r): Perry Glasser (photo by Rod Kessler), cover art for BIOGRAPHY OF WATER by Carrie Bennett, Bud Jennings, cover art for A NATURAL HISTORY OF NOW, which includes an essay by Michelle Lanzoni, and Rodney Wittwer (photo by Gary Ottley).
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