Emily Hughes and Lauren Cole Norton
Monday, Jan. 9 at 7:30 PM
Sacramento Poetry Center at 1719 25th Street
Host: Emmanuel Sigauke
Lauren Cole Norton Emily Hughes
Emily W. Hughes is a poet, educator, and backpacker from Sonoma, California. Recent work has been published in the Sacramento News & Review. She has been featured on “Dr. Andy Jones’ Poetry & Technology Hour” on KDVS. Her blog, thealleysoflife.blogspot.com features posts on day trips, hiking, and recipes. Emily received an M.A. in Creative Writing from UC Davis, and teaches English at American River College and Cosumnes River College.
Love Poem
I love you like the moon loves the sun.
Maybe that’s a cliché. I don’t care.
Here, in the coffee shop, I sit across a couple playing cribbage.
There’s a Bob Dylan song on.
I look past them, and see us—hips and hands
nearly touching.
We are the sun and the moon.
Our conversation brings animal and element.
Yours—eagle wings and flame.
Mine—tiled pools and clay.
Bring me an eclipse.
I will open
a new home—it will be our
windowed space.
— Emily W. Hughes
Lauren Norton is a writer and musician from rural Ireland. In 2011 she was named one of the Over the Edge New Writers of the Year and was a recipient of the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. Poems from her first collection Wink and Elbow have appeared in The Attic, Ropes, Bray Arts Journal, Poetry Bus Magazine and Poetry Ireland Review.
Spherical
Before my brother discovered online poker
he would spend whole days kicking a ball
against the side of our house.
Persistent, methodical as a clock
the grout-freeing bang of the ball
hitting the blank face between windowpanes.
He could do this for hours, my mother
going out at intervals to yell at him
when he left prints on the windows
in thin hexagonals of mud. Last night
I bought three cantaloupes, their little round
seams starbursting with ripeness.
I lined them up in the parking lot
of my lover’s apartment complex
and launched each one at the stucco
with a belt of my right foot.
The melons exploded in a cruciform
around the door, seeds and gizzards
fusing with terracotta paint. Swatches
of skin fell to the ground. They looked
delicious.
