Poetry from the Writers at the New Folsom Prison Workshop
with
Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Shawn Pittard, Kevin Jones, JoAnn Anglin, Coco Blossom, Tim Kahl
Poems from these poets as well as poets from New Folsom Prison (California State Prison-Sacramento)
Special guest: Jim Carlson, painter and prison arts facilitator.
Monday, April 2, 2012 at 7:30 PM
Hosts: Bob Stanley and Alexa Mergen.
The reading will feature volunteers and students who participated in the New Folsom Project, a year-long exchange between poets on “the outside” and “the inside.”
Eulogy 3 from Four Eulogies (For Pat Nolan)
Far north
beyond wooded mountains
Where the land slips
Back into the sea
Rugged baylines and
Frigid pale gray coasts
Of Old World faces,
The shimmer of town lights
On the inlet waters
Like blue and yellow stars,
Cold mornings turning
Stony cheekbones red,
The frosted breath
As steel skates slide;
Well-dressed poorboys
Hustling Toronto,
Whores and needles and
Chopped-tooth grins,
Tears of ice weeping
From the downtown Mission eaves,
Swords of Damocles
Above the shivering sidewalk damned.But he
Is in a far country
Where it’s not so sad to die
But to die so far from home;
The words are the same
But strange
On the alien southern tongue.
Fifteen years
And twenty different tombs
Of sterile gray
As the North turns its back
On its native, singing son
Until even the grave
Of the mother he loves
No longer speaks.
– Marty Williams, CSP-SAC
