Courage: A Poem by Carolina Dominguez

Here's Carolina reading aloud her poem, Courage.

On a Sunday Afternoon  

by Chris 

In a restaurant

I hear a mother going over grades

With her daughter

A high schooler

wearing a black fedora

trimmed with a multi-colored band above the rim,

Wire rimmed glasses perched on her nose

And a stuffed animal necklace around her neck

One ear bud in her ear

Questions about points and averages

She needs to get that A

She nods and only begins to speak

But the conversation is so fast

No one is listening

It changes

She turns and gets lost in her phone

Moving away from a conversation

She was never having.

At another table

A man tells his eight year old daughter

That she has to set up at the table

He is lost in his paper and

She is laying on the bench

Did he notice her because

She has kicked him

With her foot

She gets up and walks away

Then returns to grab his phone

Trying so hard to engage

A father who is so far away from her 

But right next to her.

Not together

But at a distance

Far apart

What a wonderful day

It would be

If they could laugh together. 

On Being Broken by Carolina Dominguez

Here's Carolina reading aloud her poem, On Being Broken.

On a June Day
by Chris

It's raining.
I'm going 
out
to
dance.
I am already
wrinkled.
I can get
as
wet
as
I want!

halfway around the world the bombs are falling

On the dedication page of her 2007 updated collection of Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima states: The REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS are dedicated to Bob Dylan; and to my grandfather, Domenico Mallozzi, friend of the great anarchist dreamers of his time, who read me Dante at the age of four & named my mother after Emma Goldman.” The next 160 pages introduce the reader to this lover of freedom and gadfly of power. Revolutionary Letters began in the late Sixties and circulated through various underground newspapers. Subsequent editions added new poems so that the book represents a decades-long portrait of an engaged poet and critical citizen.

In Letter #32, di Prima critiques not just western civilization, but civilization in toto and affirms that we have to kill
“the white man in each of us, killing the desire
for brocade, for gold, for champagne brandy, which sends
people out of the sun and out of their lives to create
COMMODITY for our pleasure…”

For Lily

Before you left
I snuck a tiny book
into your purse,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
So you would
read
and know
that your life
is a
poem
too!

August 2014

Library Pick-me-up

After an invigorating brainstorming visit with Courtney Barrett at Kayak's

I headed home down Lindell then remembered I had books to pick up

Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics and Twayne's revised edition of Allen Ginsberg

Waiting for me at Pius XII Library

At the circulation desk I noticed the young man had been reading a book
(The Book of Mev  in fact)
To get some insight, Ted Stewart-Hester told me, because
His friend Tanya Mukherji is a Puleo Scholar in Nicaragua right now

Summer Writing Course: Walking Together without Fear: Reading and Writing with Alice Walke

Author of many books, most famously The Color Purple, Alice Walker is one of the most renowned  writers who came of age during the 1960s in this country. Now in her early seventies, she continues to produce creative work and interfere with injustice as a global citizen in people's movements.  

In this summer course we will read and write responses to  many of Walker’s recent poems (as well as to our own experiences) and discuss her short essays on her activist life.

You and Monseñor

You and Monseñor are alike in two obvious respects
To me anyway

You both have expansive hearts for the people
You may say

“But you know many people with big hearts”
That’s true

But the other respect
I don’t know anyone else

In my circles of life
Like you

From Carolina's Notebook