Monday, October 12th: 7:15-8:30
SPC Monday Night Socially Distant Verse, hosted by Bob Stanley & Stuart Canton
Featuring Mary Eichbaum & Linda Collins.
Join Zoom at 7:15 pm, reading starts at 7:30https://us04web.zoom.us/j/7638733462/ Password: spcsdv2020
Born in New York City, Mary Ellen Eichbauer graduated in the first class of women at Caltech, where she majored in Literature. She later earned an M.A. and a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature at UCLA and taught Humanities at UCLA and CSU Long Beach, and English and Women’s Studies at Pitzer College. Aside from poetry, her obsessions include French culture, classical music, libraries, art history, film, and opera. She has published a book about the poetry of John Ashbery, and Random Lane Press published her collection After the Opera, in 2020.
Apricot Jam
With a little pop
the metal lid pries off.
Warm fruit scent,
deep and sweet
in the back of my throat
before I take a bite.
These days
we live in empty rooms,
far apart,
mired in our own thoughts,
longing for connection.
Remember the brush
of fingers on a wrist,
a cheek that rests for a second
against our own?
Or handing a cup of tea across a table
without flinching from someone’s breath?
I dip the spoon deep.
The orange trail across my bread
tells me that there is still connection.
A friend leaves a jar at the door,
full of sun, and fruit,
and long-gone summers.
I open it,
I breathe in,
and I remember.
Foxtails & Crystals
Winter
We meet at the top,
take turns on your Flexible Flyer.
My mom waves her warnings
as we barrel downhill,
beanie fringe blowing
like storm-battered birds.
This is some kind of daring.
Past the woodpile we plod
to a marshmallow drift. Inside
our snow-cave fort — pine cone décor,
mitten-smoothed walls —
we suck icicle spikes.
Crystals prickle our lips.
We speak in serious clouds.
Our words dissolve by dusk.
Summer
We meet in your back yard,
skin already sticky, t-shirts damp.
We slide down the bank to the water’s edge,
then hop rocks to the other side
where we’ve built a ramshackle fort:
plywood walls, cracked plastic roof.
Foxtails tickle our legs
while we sip ritual water
from a shared tin cup.
We take turns on my purple Sears Spyder.
Your mom shouts in Russian,
scattershot scolding I can’t understand.
Handlebar fringe flying,
we hurtle downhill
toward some kind of reckoning.
Tues., October 13th: 7:30-9 pm
SPC Tuesday night workshop, hosted by Danyen Powell. Bring a poem for critique.
Contact mostoycoff@gmail.com for availability and Zoom info.
Wed., October 14th: 6-8pm
MarieWriters – Write to prompts and share poems in a supportive group, led by
Len Germinara. https://zoom.us/j/671443996
Fri., October 16th: 4 pm
Writing from the Inside Out, weekly prompt writing course facilitated by Nick LeForce, Register and receive a weekly writing prompt on Monday and then join a read-around group on Fridays at 4 to share your work. To register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/upwkde-opjkpnyQECAVBKolY4hKCdl61uA
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing zoom instructions.
Friday, October 16th: 6pm
Susan Kelly De-Witt reading from her latest book, Gravitational Tug, published in 2020,
hosted by Lynn Belzer.
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/7638733462
Meeting ID: 763 873 3462/Password: spcsdv2020
Susan Kelly-DeWitt is the author of a new book of poetry from Main Street Rag this September, Gravitational Tug. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the author of Spider Season(2016), The Fortunate Islands 2008) and nine previous collections, Kelly-DeWitt is one of the most talented and accomplished poets of the Sacramento Valley. Her work also appears in many anthologies, and in print and online journals at home and abroad. She has been a reviewer for Library Journal, editor of the online journal Perihelion, Program Director for the Sacramento Poetry Center and the Women’s Wisdom Arts Program, a Poet in the Schools and in the Prisons, a blogger for Coal Hill Review, and an instructor for UC Davis Continuing Education. She is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Northern California Book Reviewers Association and a contributing editor for Poetry Flash.
Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a poet who finds the marvelous in the everyday, who finds in our silent moments a music, who finds wisdom in our fears and passions, and teaches us to slow down and see ourselves in ourselves. I love her work.
~Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa
InGravitational Tug Susan Kelly DeWitt gives us fifty-one exquisitely crafted, lyrical poems which are part Buddhist, part Pagan, and part Christian, yet which reach beyond conventional religious categories to create a living Nature that stares back at us as we look at it. There is nothing sentimental in this collection, no wasted words, no excess. These poems move quickly, escaping the tug of gravity like a sudden flight of birds.
~Mary Mackey, author of The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, winner of the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for best book published by a small press
