James Benton, Peggy Kincaid and Kevin Mims
Monday, Sept. 5 at 7:30 PM
Crossroads for the Arts at 1719 25th Street
Host: Bob Stanley
James Benton lives in Sacramento with his wife of 35 years. He received his BA from Eastern Oregon University, and his MA in creative writing at Cal State Sacramento, where he received four Dominic J. Bazzanella Literary awards. Poetry, short fiction, memoir, and reviews have appeared in cold-drill, Oregon East, Calaveras Station, Convergence: An On-Line Journal of Poetry and Art, Raintown Review, Word Riot, Ragazine.cc, Flatmancrooked, Poetry Now, and RATTLE. New York Quarterly promises to publish poetry eventually. At various times, he has been a sailor, electrician, a retail clerk, a janitor, a professional musician, a bill collector, a nuclear engineer, a bank manager, and a fraud investigator, in roughly descending order of personal dignity. With fresh new learning under his belt, he has recently found the good Voodoo of gainful employment teaching writing, film, and literature. Come see him before he departs for a new job at Eastern Washington University.
Karachi
All the dust between your limbless birth
And the marketplace has settled in your weave,
A bundle of rags left
On the street near a door You
Bowl of coins: you
Loose-wrapped wad, you
Cotton shard. You
Kicked from the road, the sweat
On a donkey’s hide, you
Burnt bed of woven rope lit by
Amber ropes of light.
The dye bakes from bright red to gray,
To burnt gray from yellow brocade.
The husk of the sun rouses even this
Living bag of laundry someone
Carries daily to the street when
Morning is coolest and foot traffic highest
Past the chipped bowl. We
Leave you to your verbless life,
Those flint eyes blinking
From behind their mask of rags, you torso—
Collecting the day beside a bowl of coins.
—James Benton
Peggy Kincaid’s poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming in Santa Clara Review, Calaveras Station, American River Review, and the Vacaville Reporter.
Kevin Mims is a Sacramento freelance writer. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in venues as various as The Threepenny Review, The Mississippi Review, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The New York Times, NPR’s Morning Edition Program, and Salon.com. He writes monthly columns for a Sacramento neighborhood publication called Inside The City and for The Vocabula Review, an internet magazine of language and linguistics.
