John Bowman and Marcene Gandolfo
Monday, November 11, at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street
Host: Bob Stanley
John Bowman is a retired journalist. He has studied poetry with Bob Stanley at the SPC. He and his wife Valerie, have an editing business. They also teach writing classes in Auburn, CA, where they live with their Tibetan terrier, Ziggy. This Could be the House I Die In by Finishing Line Press, is his first published chapbook. Bowman’s other interests are high school and college basketball, walking the many trails in the area and Non-Violent Communication. He writes a twice-monthly guest column for the Auburn Journal.
This Could Be the House I Die In
this could be the house I die in,
the place where sons and daughters,
sisters and friends will come —
pots of pumpkin soup and loaves
of warm bread passing into the
kitchen, Ray Charles and KD Lang
playing in the background,
candles flickering here and there,
people occasionally reading
Jane Hirschfield and Donald Hall.
remember our friend Nancy,
how her place was so alive
in those last days, people coming
and going, me delivering her
hot cocoa with whipped cream
from Peets each morning? this
could be the house I die in and
if I can just hear old friends sitting
on the couch, voices like hymns,
as I drift off for another afternoon dream,
that will be good enough for me.
–John Joseph Bowman
Marcene Gandolfo’s forthcoming book, Angles of Departure, (Cherry Grove Collections, February 2014) was a finalist for the Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize and the Patricia Bibby First Book Award and a semi-finalist for the Washington Prize. Her poems have recently appeared in numerous journals, including Poet Lore, The Café Review, DMQ Review, Bayou, and Harpur Palate. She has taught writing and literature at Sacramento City College and other northern California colleges. She lives in Elk Grove, California with her husband, daughter and three cats.
Missed
Memory is a missing shoe in a frostbitten city. Someone changed
the exits on the interstate. You enter
an anonymous lane. In the distance, a white house with blue shutters.
No one knows
you love the boy who cries in the house down the lane. Tonight you miss
the turn that would lead you to him.
Ice on the shutters. Frost on the lane. Roads close because of weather.
No one hears the cry.
Memory’s illustration of night as frostbitten city: misery is a missing
shoe off the shoulder
of the interstate, down a frozen lane, outside a white house. Shuttered.
In a frostbitten city. One lonesome foot.
