Mary Mackey and Michael Spurgeon
Monday, Nov. 26 at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street
Host: Tim Kahl
Mary Mackey was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. After receiving her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, she moved to California to become Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). She is married to Angus Wright, CSUS Emeritus Professor of Environmental Studies, with whom she frequently travels to Brazil. Mackey’s published works include six volumes of poetry (Split Ends, One Night Stand, Skin Deep, The Dear Dance of Eros, Breaking the Fever, and Sugar Zone); a short novel (Immersion—the first novel published by a Second Wave feminist press); and twelve other novels (McCarthy’s List, Doubleday; The Last Warrior Queen, Putnam; A Grand Passion, Simon & Schuster; Season of Shadows, Bantam; The Kindness of Strangers, Simon & Schuster;The Year The Horses Came, Harper San Francisco; The Horses at the Gate, Harper San Francisco; The Fires of Spring, Penguin, The Stand In, Kensington Books; Sweet Revenge, Kensington Books; The Notorious Mrs. Winston, Berkley Books; andThe Widow’s War, Berkley Books.) Her two comic novels (The Stand In and Sweet Revenge) were written under the pen name “Kate Clemens.” Mackey, an Emeritus Professor of English, retired from California State University in 2008.
Walking Upside Down on the Other Side of the World
Quando falamos nesta cidade perdida
when we speak in this lost city
our words bubble out of our mouths
like the orações/prayers of drowned children
through air so hot and green it holds us
in suspension like bottled glass
here perto deste grande rio/ near this great river
on the edge of this great forest of stumps
anaconda clouds glide over us like sinuous birds
and the throats of lovers fill with mud and black water
here you can get anyone killed for $50
by the jagunços in cowboy boots and aviator glasses
who sit in the bars nursing cold beers
here iron ore is sucked out of
the earth like blood and a section
of bamboo filled with
gold dust will buy you a quick death
in this Anopheles democracy of sudden disasters
mosquitoes spread malaria equally to everyone
garimpeiros, caboclos, assassins,
colonels who ride in air conditioned cars
babies who sleep in hammocks
here the dead speak the words
the living are afraid to utter
and each kiss given in fear
is as swift as the tongue of a bat
probing a flower.
Michael Spurgeon has authored two chapbooks of poetry, Valente’s Delicate Wrist and Prosthetic Breath & Other Poems. His poems have appeared in journals such as The North American Review, Sonora Review, The Packinghouse Review, and several others. He has lived and traveled extensively in Mexico and was residing in Chiapas during the 1994 Zapatista uprising. Set against the dramatic events of that conflict, his first novel, Compadres, is currently under consideration with several publishers. A tenured professor at American River College, Michael is the faculty adviser to the American River Review, American River College’s highly acclaimed undergraduate literary and art magazine.
