Today you can read "Hometown" in RockPaperPoem literary magazine -- I wrote it when translator Tony Hao, a resident artist here with Catamount Arts, suggested ways to write about our home towns, and I realized I didn't have one. Where I grew up is so different from where I live now, and my roots are confused. See what you think: https://rockpaperpoem.com/current-issue/
I'll be at the St. Johnsbury PoemTown reading at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum on Saturday April 11, at 4 pm -- my two poems displayed downtown for this year's Poem Town are "Voices in the Night" (at Momentum Business Solutions at the intersection of Eastern Avenue and Railroad Street), and "Revolution" at Caledonia Plant Shop (nearby at 18 Eastern Ave). I'll post photos of them soon, but you can stroll the town and read these, along with many other wonderful insights.
I'll be at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier on Sunday April 26, 4:30 pm, along with other Northeast Kingdom writers including Judith Janoo and S.J. (Steve) Cahill, as well as my old friend Garret Keizer and long-ago Kingdom Books ally Chard deNiord, and others.
Last but not least, on April 27 there will be four of us reading online with the Vermont Jewish Poets -- if that's meaningful to you, do look into it.
Watch for a BIG announcement about my poetry collection THRESHOLDS later this week.
So ... am I working hard enough?
After all that, you've earned a bit of a poem, right? This is from "Voices in the Night":
Here, the language of trauma (reddened, sore)
and the language of regret (tender apology for a path not seen) mingle,
soft balm to burned fingers. We always wanted to hear each other,
didn’t we? But accent and origin, animal nature, our canine, feline,
equine coughs of distress fell like rough echoes. What you say at night
your voice uncovering, discovering, slicing, even scarring: I hear you
with an organ centered just below my beating heart.BK
