Blas Falconer and Albert Flynn DeSilver
Monday April 15, 2013 at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street at Sacramento Poetry Center
Host: Tim Kahl
Blas Falconer is the author of The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, 2013) and A Question of Gravity and Light and a coeditor of two essay collections, The Other Latino: Writing Against a Singular Identity and Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange and a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant, his poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and Puerto del Sol. He is the Coordinator for the Creative Writing Program at Austin Peay State University and the poetry editor at Zone 3 Journal / Zone 3 Press.
Proof
This yard is sacred. My son
reaches into the sky and cups the moon to his mouth.
When I close my eyes, the color makes
me think of his blanket, the great cosmos.
Before the Big Bang, the void ate light,
matter, time–there was no limit to that hunger.
Turned under the streetlamp, the rock’s bright specks
look infinite. In a multiverse, he is here,
holding his small hand to his face, and he
is not here. Beyond one edge, a new world
imagines itself expanding in air.
We lean back in the damp grass. The leap
is cold and dark. The lungs open and open again.
Albert Flynn DeSilver is a poet, author, artist, publisher, speaker. He served as Marin County’s very first poet laureate from 2008-2010. Albert has published several books and hundreds of individual poems in literary journals worldwide including ZYZZYVA, New American Writing, Van Gogh’s Ear, Jubilat, Hanging Loose, and many others. His latest book is Beamish Boy: A Memoir (June 2012). He taught with California Poets in the Schools for many years, and presents at workshops, conferences, and institutions throughout the United States.
Jollier
Oh jolly, jolly me. Happiness is the species buried deep beneath me. Got shovel? Till I start counting breaths like tips, my life is forever belabored by the laps my mind runs around regret. I’m hostess to the most grasping of doubts. Doubts bobbing around in my blood like an armada of Coast Guard boats lounging heavy in the White House kitty pool. Currently I’m pooling my resources together for a new birthday suit—wanna swap skins? Wink wink, goes my piggy bank, oink oink goes the hollow echo of emptiness trapped between my ears. My confusion, a carousel I carry under arm. My role was in payroll, calculating my unraveling. All these words of frustration add up to wasabi peanuts. Optimistically speaking, I did just finally get laid—off, that is. My severance pay is the severed head of my latest boss.
