Tom Meschery and Hannah Stein
Monday, March 10, 2014 at 7 :30 PM
1719 25th Street
Host: Bob Stanley
Tom Meschery is the author of three books of poetry, Over the Rim, Nothing We Lose Can Be Replaced, and Some Men. Tom played NBA basketball for the Golden State Warriors and the Seattle Supersonics from 1961 to 1971. After earning his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa, he taught literature and creative writing for 25 years. His new collection, Sweat, will be released from Black Rock Press this Spring.
Tom lives in Sacramento with his wife Melanie.
A Literary Memoir
for Morton Marcus
Is this where poetry starts, Mort,
with a jab and a right cross, uncle
in your corner, trainer and cut-man,
Jewish Mafia gunned down,
and all the intervening years
you tell me about fighting with words?
Some wins, some draws, few losses
but enough to cost you friends and family.
I have no problem seeing you in the ring,
a welter weight with quick hands,
jabs that keep your opponent off balance,
no dancing, moving straight forward,
accepting two punches for one,
what you believe it takes to write.
You got to get bloody, you say.
We are sitting together a month
before your death. We have done this before
talking late about sports and poetry,
sometimes forgetting there’s a difference,
your punches, my hook shots,
a game I played that you admired,
a poem you wrote that knocked me out.
-Tom Meschery
Hannah Stein, widely-published Davis poet, has had her work appear in many national journals including Nimrod, the American Literary Review, The Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her most recent publication is a chapbook, A Broken Music, with Finishing Line Press. Other books include a collection, Earthlight, and chapbooks Schools of Flying Fish and Greatest Hits.
BRISTLECONE PINE
Rancid-eyed snail-shanked
yanked knocked awry
in that alkaline dust
that tundra air
roots claw
the caustic scree
hoard the few spatters of rain
each blanched summer
thrust out a few more
sulky needles
A thousand years old
and how they swirl their silks
wild women of the mountains
their furls of bleached
wood littering the ground
lettering the past,
letting our probes
violate their cambium (a hundred
dry years to a satiny inch)
back into time’s core.
We try to re-tune
our carbon calendars
faulty with half life
while they whirl
motionless,
cling to eternity
by the root hairs
—Hannah Stein
