Lauren Camp and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet
Monday, September 29 at 7:30 PM
SPC at 1719 25th Street
Host: Tim Kahl
Lauren Camp is the author of two volumes of poetry, most recently The Dailiness (Edwin E. Smith, 2013), winner of the National Federation of Presswomen 2014 Poetry Book Prize and a World Literature Today “Editor’s Pick.” Her third book, One Hundred Hungers, was selected by David Wojahn for the Dorset Prize, and will be published by Tupelo Press. Her poems have appeared in Brilliant Corners, Beloit Poetry Journal, Linebreak, Nimrod, J Journal, and elsewhere. She hosts “Audio Saucepan,” a global music/poetry program on Santa Fe Public Radio, and writes the blog Which Silk Shirt. http://www.laurencamp.com
Out Walking
Out walking as I have each night this week
— 20 minutes to dusk
it’s coming on summer
chamisa not yet in flower but the heat rising 84 degrees
the beginning of night fueled by last moments of day
time is calmer
fringed with heat and the first wordless promise
of breeze
the sun still pricks my skin but the mountain stands by
ready to catch it
and now I understand how you can tell me stage 4 inoperable cancer
without choking on fear
because dark will come on as it does
every night
so let it
Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet’s The Greenhouse was awarded the 2014 Frost Place Prize and published by Bull City Press in August 2014. Her first book, Tulips, Water, Ash, was selected for the Morse Poetry Prize and published by University Press of New England. Her poems have been awarded a Javits fellowship and a Phelan Award, and have appeared in journals including The Kenyon Review, Cream City Review, At Length, Quarterly West, Blackbird, The Iowa Review, 32 Poems, and Third Coast and in the anthologies Best New Poets and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. She writes, edits, and teaches in Oakland, California. http://www.lisagluskinstonestreet.com
CHIMERA
Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in
an organism… cells containing the male Y chromosome were found circulating
in the blood of women after pregnancy.
I want them out. I want
to be myself, my self
again. My old untethered,
young untied. I lie: I want
nothing more—or want
no more the point.
Dendritic, en-
twined, signed on
for the duration. Bright
tangle, snaking line
of fire. The crucible
does not ask
for want. Is. Tied in,
shot through. Fired.
