CUSHING STREET POETRY



JOHN SPAULDING & JEFFERSON CARTER
Tuesday, October 9, 8pm
 

at Cushing Street Bar & Restaurant

on the patio
198 W. Cushing Street
just south of Tucson Convention Center
1 block east of Main Street
admission is FREE
 

The Cushing Street Poetry Series is sponsored by

Chax Press

Cushing Street Bar & Restaurant

&

POG

 

 

part of an ongoing "second Tuesday of the month" series
 

 

coming up:

 

November 13: Roberto Bedoya, Stephen Vincent, Laynie Browne

 

John Spaulding has published three poetry titles, including Walking In Stone (Wesleyan Poetry Series) and The Roses of Starvation (Riverstone), and his work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, The Iowa Review, APR, The Canadian Forum and many more journals. His most recent book, The White Train (Lousiana State Univ. Press), was a National Poetry Series winner in 2003. He earned a master's in creative writing from Boston University.

“The White Train takes a scintillating journey from scene to finely wrought scene. John Spaulding has an instinct for the telling detail as he looks into photographs, and even when addressing events of a past century he writes with an emotional edge relevant in our own time. With each sure flourish of visual imagery, he presents his subjects compassionately, translating their circumstances into language that is luminous and as pleasing to the senses as it is sobering to our notions of everyday history.”­David Chorlton

 

Jefferson Carter directs the Writing and Literature Program, and teaches developmental composition and poetry writing at Pima Community College, Downtown Campus.  His seven books of poetry include Litter Box (Spork Press) and, most recently, Sentimental Blue (Chax Press).He has lived in Tucson, Arizona, since 1954.  He has won a Tucson/Pima Arts Council Literary Arts Fellowship, and his poems have appeared in such journals and e-zines as Carolina Quarterly, CrossConnect, 2River View, and Barrow Street.  His chapbook Tough Love won the Riverstone Poetry Press Award.

A CLOCK FROM ANOTHER TIME

There is a sense in which
we come to feel at home in the world,
in our bodies, in our lives.
This never happened to me.
As each year of my life passes
I feel more and more of an alien,
more and more the unlikely choice.
Alone here, inside my body,
I continue to watch and wonder,
as the distance grows
between the world and me,
like a clock from another time.
As a child watches other children
to learn how to behave, so
I watch other people from my window,
their perfect bodies,
their beautiful hair, their lives
unfolding like flowers.
I cover my mouth when I speak.
Keep my eyes on the ground when I walk
as though a quick line were drawn
around all my faults.
Who would want such painful shyness?
Embarrassed by my own life,
I have invented a new normality,
a standard of one
in a world you never see,
where silence is king and I am queen.
For who could think of anything to say
when there is everything to say,
and who would want to say anything at all
when to say everything is not enough.
Look for me there,
ask for me in that world,
where everyone is welcome,
on the other side of shyness.

by John Spaulding, published in The White Train: Poems by John Spaulding. Copyright © 2004 by John Spaulding. All rights reserved.


THE MUMMY

Wrapped in my blue & white striped
100% Egyptian cotton bed sheet
I skulk in the vestibule.  What a word–
ves.ti.bule, the last syllable
like breathing on a mirror.  I overheard
two girls laughing about their teacher
arrested taking out the garbage
in his underwear.  I say more power
to him.  I’ll say to those girls the night
I catch them, have a little mercy.
Mercy, a word that sounds
like someone swallowing flowers.

by Jefferson Carter, published in Sentimental Blue. Copyright ©2007 by Jefferson Carter. All rights reserved.

 

Cushing Street 2007-08:

 

coming up:

 

November 13: Roberto Bedoya, Stephen Vincent, Laynie Browne

 

finito:

 

September 6: Grenier, Larkin, Salerno