Hugh Behm-Steinberg and James Maughn
Monday, June 24 at 7:30 PM
Sacramento Poetry Center at 1719 25th Street
Host: Tim Kahl
Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s published work includes The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press), Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books) and Sorcery (Dusie Chapbook Kollektiv) as well as two different chapbooks titled Good Morning! (Deconstructed Artichoke Press and Dusie Chapbook Kollektiv). His poems have appeared in such places as Crowd, VeRT, Volt, Spork, em, esque, Thrush, Forge, Cue, Slope, Aught, Fence, Swerve, dirt, Nap, ditch, Zeek and Sweet, as well as a few places with more than one syllable. In 2012 his libretto for a children’s opera, The Clever Wife, commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera for its Opera to Go program, was performed in Houston area elementary schools. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and NEA creative writing fellowship recipient, he teaches writing at California College of the Arts, where he edits the journal Eleven Eleven.
Night and Day/ Birds Again
Staying up late, wearing headphones, being poor. But not tired, you are spread out
and you want to. Your mom says until you were named you filled up space
but you weren’t anyone and you were very hard to see. The ocean, full of fish,
held onto you too, little swimmer. Ships moved above you slowly
with their cargo and their crew. Divinity pervades even the slightest of acts.
Therefore such radiance, with light pollen on your upper lip and smoke in your
purse, and the saltwater marsh, tidal pools, and you see birds again you let
yourself see birds again and your mind lets the birds in and the music
starts when they come.
James Maughn lives in Santa Cruz, California, where he curates A New Cadence Poetry Series, a reading series dedicated to innovative poetries. He serves as the poetry co-editor of Ping•Pong, the international journal of arts and letters published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, CA. He is the author of two collections of poetry Kata (BlazeVox, 2009) and The Arakaki Permutations (Black Radish, 2011) and These Peripheries (Otoliths, 2013).
Chinto
squared off and away in a headlong throttle
breakneck set on the dial
to drive through
arguments shorn first of finery and then wouldn’t you know
the launch is official : the victor
spoils
timelapse shows the gaps
dashed
on
arrival
current skips the circuit coils
at the root
and flares across the boards fire
balances
at the break —
if it’s not
on the map it’s
yours
net the proceeds with approximate territory
