Desert City Poetry Series

[Ken Rumble <rumblek AT bellsouth.net>]

Please spread far and wide.....

Who:  Joseph Donahue, author of _Incidental Eclipse_, the just
published _In This Paradise_ out from Carolina Wren Press, and _Terra
Lucida_, Duke English professor and collector of left-handed
chainsaws.

Who:  James Brasfield, winner of the PEN Award in Translation in
2000 for his work on _The Selected Poems of Oleh Lysheha_, NEA Fellow,
Fullbright Scholar, undisputed holder of the spaghetti eating world's
record for twenty years.

What: Desert City Poetry Series' 04/05 season, Oh yeah.

When:  this Saturday, September 18th, 8pm, 2004.

Where: Internationalist Books, 405 W. Main Street, Chapel Hill, NC,
919-942-1740.

Why:  "Children will read about the letters / that spell the
world: fire & water, earth & air ... Every true image / continues
the creation."  "Knock your head against the ice. / Before
it's too late / break through, look / you will see a miraculous
world."  

See you there.........

*Internationalist Books: 
http://www.internationalistbooks.org

*Desert City Poetry Series:
http://desertcity.blogspot.com

*James Brasfield:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LYSCOL.html
and 
https://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/2002/56-lysheha.html

*Joseph Donahue:  
http://versemag.blogspot.com/2004/08/new-joseph-donahue-poem.html
http://www.constantcritic.com/archive.cgi?rev=Jordan_Davis&name=Incidental%20Eclipse

Contact the DCPS:  Ken Rumble: rumblek at bellsouth dot net

"THE ANATOMY OF NOSTALGIA"
by James Brasfield
  
The gray light that is dusk, the mist 
that gathers at the end of August,
the sudden drop of warmth in the coming dark,
the stillness of an arclight over the dim road,
and farther still, lamplight at a window,
 
the curtains drawn--there, a woman 
puts a small supper at the table, pours 
flavored water from a crystal carafe, 
an heirloom like a root toward the river.
The stewed apple slices have darkened from days 
of floating in the green jar.  
 
And the man pours himself a vodka, 
the first of many, and cuts the bread.  
Tomorrow remains so far off.  
Its burdens are as yesterday’s.  

I know these things 
from sitting at the table, 
from walking the road.  I know them 
from a train passing through a town at night, 
the wet streets, the dim station, 
the streets again and another house  
 
outside of town, the darkness everywhere 
filling in the impossible space 
a light is assigned, yet always a road 
at dusk, the mist, the arclight 
a hundred yards before the next, 
 
and the road to a path through the forest, 
a light at a window as if only 
a light burned among the trees--    
a candle on the chest of a corpse, at nightfall.


from In This Paradise
by Joseph Donahue

XXVIII
 
 
Are you the one whose 
error has required you to be 
 
a billow of moths, a sprig of gold 
in the garden of a witch
 
a cut  finger at the banquet,
the jewel forming from the blood
 
or the eel who says to the astonished boy
I feel myself pierced and dispersed. 
 
Any minute, you could be 
the stag leading the lost soul,
 
or a spatter along a rail crying 
out to your sister: here I am.
 
Any minute you could be a lost spoon 
or bones murmuring in the flowers:
 
Some of us are in disguise,
& some of us have been eaten.
 
Some of us are touched by beauty 
& cannot control our thoughts . . .
 
Or ice glittering in the trees. 
Or a gold leaf. Or a king walking 
 
At evening through a blue orchard.
A moment ago, you were an old woman
 
with a fever, the ground opening at your feet,
hidden corridors aglow with torches.
 
Just now, you’re a child hiding 
in a house of murderers . . .
 
And do you glory in what you may yet be,
a hungry crow, a wisp of silk,
 
a cloud less than breath in a chill,
a village caked in volcanic ash?
 
Are you the whitening sky?
Are you robins at rest in a tree?
 
(They could be the wounds of Christ.)
Are your consonants a ring of clouds?
 
Are your vowels the dark hollows
where you look for  your twin?
 
Are you the one locked inside
the tower of an evil will?
 
Are you the drunk suitor with 
a blank map, set adrift in a boat?
 
Are you the true bride,
weeping in your collar of nettles?
 
If you break a branch, fall asleep in a tree,
will you be a snake until a beggar
 
cups water to your lips?
If you burn a gossamer veil, 
 
or stain a peach-colored shawl, 
or scatter the ashes in the ravine, 
 
will you be a seed in a wind
flying across a desert?