Carol Louise Moon, Cathy Love Murphy, and Patricia L. Nichol
Monday Sept. 8 at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street
Host: Bethanie Humphries
Carol Louise Moon, award-winning poet and Simulated Client Actor has been published in Convergence Online, Late Peaches, Suisun Valley Review, Song of the San Joaquin and is a regular contributor to MEDUSA’s KITCHEN Blogspot. She is the Managing Editor of POETRY NOW, and also the editor of DADs DESK Large Print Poetry Journal. Carol Louise was named Ohio Poetry Assn’s POET OF THE MONTH, Aug. 2009 and has been published in their 2013 anthology EVERYTHING STOPS AND LISTENS.
Black Orchid
She recalled to me the night her father died
upstairs in the old two-story house,
and how three men came to take his body
and dropped it midway in the stairwell,
and how she always resented the memory–
the clumsiness of the men;
resented her own ears for having heard the thud.
Cathy Love Murphy has been playing with poetry for five years or so, fueled by a scholarship to Summer Fishtrap in eastern Oregon and two fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center. She escapes from her daily life as an elementary school teacher by being a Den Mom at the Imnaha Writer’s Retreat during spring breaks and running off to Summer Fishtrap in July, and has been known to frequent the Tuesday night poetry workshops sponsored by SPC. She studied biology at Humboldt State University, and followed this with a teaching credential through Chapman University. Lately, she’s been spotted poetry-bombing Samuel Kennedy Elementary School in South Sacramento.
Black Lab’s Two-Line Poem
dog facing left, recently removed
from a stick-chasing swim
head begins the spin, slowly at first
until the ears engage and the tags begin
their rhythmic click-clack
speed increasing as the rotation
continues along the length of his body
silvery lines of water fly from his black carriage
metallic keys on an Underwood #5
until they reach his carriage-return tail
and the rotation is re-sent, back to the left
where the course resumes
one second line through
to the end of his poem
Patricia L. Nichol has been writing fiction and poetry for more than thirty years. She has a master’s degree in English, a certificate in Creative Writing from the University of California at Davis, and taught for thirty plus years. Her passions are literature, writing, and music. She has a son (also a writer) and a grandchild. Pat has published prose, both nonfiction and fiction, in Writing Our Way out of the Dark and Sambatyon: River of Inspiration: A Journal of Jewish Writing. She has also published poetry in a number of publications, including Rattlesnake Review, Tiger’s Eye, Poetry Depth Quarterly, and Poets’ Forum Magazine.
Lorca’s Lament
I stroke words as the moon ascends
in the summer sky, remembering Jimenez
who was not always himself, but who
always loved his poems which were like
his wife: intense, lovely, lovely . . .
Then she died.
I stroke the handle of the shovel as I dig
near the olive tree; I am digging my grave.
The night is dark and hot, and one
of the others who is to die is already weeping.
Unripe olives above my head: green, green . . .
