POETSWEDNESDAY & More

The Carriage House Poetry Series Tenth Anniversary Anthology

The Carriage House Poetry Series Tenth Anniversary Anthology

Muse-Pie Press, Publisher
ISBN: 978-0-918453-22-8
Perfect Bound
$12.00 + $4.80 Priority Shipping

To order email: [email protected]

 

Poems by: Renée Ashley, Amanda Berry, Laura Boss, Robert Carnevale, Catherine Doty, Stephen Dunn, D. M. Dutcher, Martin Jude Farawell, Adam Fitzgerald, Sondra Gash, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Therése Halscheid, Lois Marie Harrod, Penny Harter, William J. Higginson, David Keller, Adele Kenny, Gina Larkin, Deborah LaVeglia, Diane Lockward, John McDermott, Peter E. Murphy, Priscilla Orr, Alicia Ostriker, Rev. Alex D. Pinto, Tom Plante, R. G. Rader, Linda Radice, Christine Redman-Waldeyer, Susanna Rich, Edwin Romond, Gwen Samuels, Nancy Scott, Gerald Stern, Carole Stone, Madeline Tiger, BJ Ward, Joe Weil, Jack Wiler, Gretna Wilkinson, and Sander Zulauf

 

Directions to Barron Arts Center

http://www.twp.woodbridge.nj.us/Departments/BarronArtsCenter/BarronArtsCenterDirections/tabid/754/Default.aspx

Blackbird: an online journal of literature & the arts VCU Dept. of English

 

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v7n2/index.htm

Poetry Workshop

Our poetry workshop will begin at 7:00 PM.

I look forward to seeing everyone there.

Interrogation by Maggie Schwed

MAGGIE SCHWED

Interrogation

Once, there was.  
Ahead, steer now, confession.

The man’s voice, quiet as snow. 
Dressed like bridegrooms, the waiters
Bending in with insignificants: Pepper, Monsieur?
Madame? 

He chose the room: a crate of cooing doves,
The armor of a lemon pyramid, a sheltered view. 
The room filling. All the excuses made
For simple hunger. 

This is a beautiful place, I say, unfolding a napkin.
Not meaning for him to suffer.  

We sat at that expensive table
As at the nineteenth century. My father never said
The name I knew. The good blanks he left
Leave room to see: yet another story of a woman and a man. 

Not unspeakable; unsayable. 
I wanted him to know I understood the difference.
Maybe he thought, what occasion offered a man
He’d have been a fool not to take.

This was years ago. It was possible.
It is, still. 
 
So many questions.
We’ll need a chair, strong light. 

Maggie Schwed

Maggie Peters Schwed’s work appears in such journals as Raritan, Nimrod, River Oak Review, Rattapallax, Ekphrasis, and Commonweal, and in the anthologies, Chance of a Ghost (Helicon Nine, 2005) and Letters to the World (forthcoming from Red Hen and the WOM-PO poetry group online).  Her online publications include NYCBigCityLit.com and RealPoetikBlog.com. Schwed’s book reviews appear in Pleiades and on Greekworks.com.

[email protected]

Susan Settlemyre Williams

is the author of Possession (Finishing Line Press, 2007), which was a runner-up in the Tupelo Press Snowbound Competition. Her poetry has appeared in Mississippi Review, 42opus, Shenandoah, Sycamore Review, and diode, among other journals. Her Poem "Lighter" won the 2006 Diner Poetry Contest and was selected for Best New Poets 2006. She is book review editor and associate literary editor of Blackbird and lives in Richmond, Virginia.

[email protected]

http://www.mmminc.org/mmm_press_new/Ashes/REVIEWS.htm

See her Poem "Albuquerque, Your Ashes In Midair" in the "Poems" section.

Albuquerque, Your Ashes In Midair by Susan Settlemyre Williams

Your brown empty city. The desert's out

of flower. Nothing holds it, grain

on grain. Light as sky in my palm,

in a blue ice cream carton, I hold the gray

soft feathers of your ash. Which will be set

in the brass pan against the other brass pan

that holds the feather of truth. Weighing,

nothing on nothing--I'm wrong, it's the heart

that's weighed. Your dust doesn't balance

anything; it hangs a long time in the heat,

lifts on an updraft. In storm season once

I flew through desert thunderheads rising

in giant chimneys, miles above

the plane.  I don't understand weightlessness

or perfect balance, the boy hired to take out

my half-uprooted, leaning pine, how

he roped himself to it, walked upright its tilting

height.  Left-handed, he chain-sawed

a branch on the left, then right-handed, one

on the other side, stood on their stumps and slashed

limbs, one hand and one hand, and balanced

on those stumps, and the dust

didn't fall at all, it seemed, sand-colored,

only hover and lift, until I couldn't watch him

step onto sky, how he swung himself

out on his rope and glided to earth, in three

strokes brought down the armless trunk.

The sky had no clouds, and the limbs

were slow and brown, but the ground shuddered

each time one came down on the tattered

chrysanthemums.  The boy hung in the air

like his weight was nothing up there.

I don't understand how the body can be burnt

into nothing, this little plume I let go.

When I dreamed of Suzanne come back,

she had no more weight than you, but she glowed

and her milk-blind eyes had turned

to aquamarines. I want you radiant like her,

not dust hovering in brown summer air.

PoetsWednesay

I've received some concerned e-mails over the weekend that state that I have resigned from PoetsWednesday. This is NOT TRUE. I am still the director and have no plans to resign. I have simply asked Linda Radice to assist me with the reading. She has graciously agreed to help out. I hope that clears things up.

Sincerely,

Deborah