October 9

Jefferson Carter & John Spaulding

November 13

Roberto Bedoya, Stephen Vincent, Laynie Browne

FALL BEGINS EARLY FOR CHAX PRESS & POG: Cushing Street poetry reading THURSDAY, September 6, 8pm. Free. Please remember -- while Cushing St. readings are generally the second Tuesday of the month, THIS ONE IS ON THE FIRST THURSDAY OF SEPTEMBER. This is the only Thursday Cushing St. reading scheduled this fall, and there will be no reading on the second Tuesday of September. Regular "second Tuesday" readings will resume on October 9, 2007, at 8pm with a reading by Jefferson Carter and John Spaulding, and continue on November 13, 2007, at 8pm, with a reading by Roberto Bedoya, Stephen Vincent, & Laynie Browne. Also get ready: POG will present, on Sunday, September 23, a reading by Michael Kelleher and Tyrone Williams (location & time to be announced later).


POG & CHAX PRESS events are sponsored in part by grants from the Tucson/Pima Arts Council, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Please call Chax Press at 520-620-1626, or email chax@theriver.com, for more information.
 
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Arpine Konyalian Grenier holds graduate degrees from the American University of Beirut and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, New York. Her work has appeared in How2, Columbia Poetry Review, Sulfur, The Iowa Review, Phoebe, Fence, Verse, Big Bridge and elsewhere, including several anthologies. She has repeatedly been chosen as finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Greg Grummer Award Competitions, has authored two volumes of poetry, and a chapbook is forthcoming from NeOpp Pepper Press. 
 
Maryrose Larkin lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works as a freelance researcher. She is the author of Inverse (nine muses books),
Whimsy Daybook 2007 (FLASH+CARD), and  The Book of Ocean  (i.e. press). Maryrose is part of Spare Room, a group of people who organize  readings and other events in Portland and is co-editor, with Sarah Mangold, of FLASH+CARD, a chapbook and ephemera poetry press. Her blog is at maryroselarkin.blogspot.com

Mark Salerno is the author of Hate (96 Tears Press), Method (The Figures) and So One Could Have (Red Hen Press). Method was a Finalist in the National Poetry Series. From 1993 to 1999, he edited Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, First Intensity and Talisman. He is the recipient of a Fund for Poetry award. His most recent book is Odalisque (SALT 2007), about which Michael Davidson has written, "Salernos tightly wrought poems probe the interstices between seeming and being, between Hollywood and the stars, between desire and attendant clamor. If Ingres had placed his Odalisque on the Sunset Strip, she might be looking at us through these poems. This is a completely original work by a serious, important poet."

 
 
from The staving (by Arpine Grenier)
 
tonight is differently regulated
though our horns level the horse
the rider blackened 
and no - names are not available 
for the return to ascii
in morning light
the orchestra laid up
in compressed print sequence
disclaiming title for soldiers
inverted and lisping
with boredom

 

(by Maryrose Larkin)

The pressure of facing the why section   when I wanted horizon  the
pressure  dropped winter angle faced  and spring 50%   pushed yolk 
throat  green replacing  grey from the top and patchy  chaos
      no  winter   or          late winter      
                                   shiver cover some can never
Late  one  in whirl no opposite morning a cross  struck pink 
change   insoluble starling atmosphere  east facing   mothering under  but not
mother not cinders weather  mocking  pushed into wings                                                           
Late suffer other petal synoptic  the surface shadow and 50% strata no 30%  no 30 pansies
      silver light on the fence    rain the written 




Finale  (from Odalisque, by Mark Salerno)

To be without believing or just forget the dream

as when a former odalisque too late to get lucky

settles on a set table in a dingy outlying suburb

she told her soul to leave her alone and it did so

chastened by the memory of true life in the far west

and a little roughed up in consequence of feeling

when giving up becomes one way of staying alive

I was M. dilatory in my wanderings and a lost man

hustled by a cutie girl and drenched in flop sweat

for my anxiety to know the really real or breathe air

between seeming and being of the way she said couple-y

along with all the other beauty school graduates

cooped up and portioned out running gags and shtick

to save a fairy tale as I have scrupled to aver.