SPRING BACKROAD CHALKIE ~

 

Backroad Chalkie

Spring 2025

LEYLA MCCALLA TONIGHT ~

 

      Smithsonian Folkways

STALKING THE ATOMIC CITY ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Astra House 2022

DARRYL PINCKNEY ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Farrar Straus Giroux

    2019

JOHN FARRIS ~

 

Skunk

The pot I'm

smoking now

smells like

Armpits after sex (

not with you

of course). You

always tell me

to go to hell. (this

may be the

last time we

see each other.) Where

I will lie is where

I say I loved

you more than this.

Verse

some-

thing's out

there—aft (her

the uni-

verse). The verse

is yet.

Call It

Tobacco

cotton

sugar in

Louisiana

shirts

made of gingham

and slaves

after

and the crack

of what twang of what

tight strings what

on earth under

the sun nothing mugs

but time

for the

load coffee

is like that double

time to

the old swing

No Joke

dragging myself

through 3rd street

& across avenues

depends on the kindness

pf strangers, cars, trucks, bicycles

refuse to run me over. The other

day a bus stopped just short

of a crutch at a curb I was

hanging precariously from

& swung out to miss me, it was

an old man who

was getting on that alerted

the driver & a young hoodie

that grabbed my pack: i

thought he was going to run, but he didn't.

"Watch out pop!" he said, solicitously, &

never asked me for

a quarter. Maybe more

people should be crippled: even cops.

_____________________

John Farris

Last Poems

Archway Editions 2025

DON'T WORRY BABY (BRIAN WILSON) ~

 

B R I A N   W I L S O N

June 20, 1942, in Inglewood, Calif., ~ 2025

TONIGHT SOLO MONK ~

 

   1964

ELAINE EQUI ~

Weather Vane

If only I had one,

I'd keep it for a pet.

Let it perch on the roof

tethered in the wind,

warbling a tinny,

whirring song.

Let the body of the house

sag beneath its talons,

go limp as it lifts,

it and us up — up.

Gilded bird,

crowing at midnight,

pecking at the grain

of stars.

________________

Elaine Equi

Out of the Blank

Coffee House Press, 2025

THE MAKING OF SYLVIA PLATH ~

 

R E A D   M E

      University Press of Mississippi

      2024

THE WHITE LADDER ~

NIMS PURJA CLIMBED  THE FOURTEEN EIGHT-THOUSANDERS IN THE WORLD

IN SIX MONTHS AND SIX DAYS

R  E  A  D    M E 

    Norton  2025

SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW ~

 

S  O  M  E  T  H  I  N  G

am En

ROBERT NIGHTHAWK ~

 

STEVE CROPPER TONIGHT ~

 

Stax Music

Booker T & the MGs

etc.

Thiago Ávila ~ Madleen, the Freedom Flotilla ship sailing to Gaza ~

 

      Democracy NOW!

HOW THE WORLD FAILED TO STOP THE DESTRUCTION OF GAZA~

 

Language is damaged when demands to stop killing civilians are 'antisematic', when an army that dehumanizes its enemies is 'moral', when an enterprise of obliteration is a 'riposte', when a military operation openly conducted against Palestinian civilians is the 'Israel-Hamas war'. Thinking is suffocated when debates are prevented, lectures banned and exhibitions cancelled, when the police enter institutions of higher education and prosecutors are imposed to ensure orthodoxy. An oppressive atmosphere of suspicion and accusation has endangered freedom of speech.

— Didier Fassin 

R E A D   M E

    Verso, 2025

JANINE POMMY VEGA WAY! ~

Be there live with these links ~

Facebook event

Youtube event

THE LOVES OF MY LIFE SAYETH EDMUND WHITE ~

 

R E A D   M E

       Bloomsbury 2025

THE HOUSE OF WOLFE ~

 

R E A D   M E

     The Mysterious Press

      2015

ROCK FLIGHT ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Giramondo Poetry

      New Directions Publishing

STEINBERG, ALL IN LINE ~

R E A D   M E 

    New York Review of Books

    2024

WHEN I GO AWAY (MAVIS STAPLES/LEVON HELM) ~

 

Recorded at Levon Helm Studios June 3rd, 2011

BARBARA DANE ~

 

HOW BIRDS FLY ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Firefly Books

    2024

RON PADGETT ~

from  Pink Dust

          ________________

I shovel a path

from the porch to the truck

and another around the house

to the back door, stopping

to see if I'm one

of those geezers

who have heart attacks

while shoveling snow,

and when I'm finished

I'm not. Look

at all that snow out there

going down the hill

as far as the eye can see.

=

In my sleep I caressed you

and when I woke up

I caressed the memory

of the dream.

I never caressed you

in "real life."

I never even wanted to

though I was close

to liking the idea of caressing you.

If I had caressed you

I would remember it,

which is what I did last night.

=

I almost feel sorry

for the human thumb,

off to the side, alone,

and not looking much like

its four nrothers and sisters—

the real fingers.

They invite the thumb

to help them when they need it,

but otherwise keep their distance.

Just across the way, though,

there's another thumb.

In the old days

the two used to twiddle.

Now they're happy enough

just knowing they're both there.

=

It's satisfying to eat

exactly the right amount

of, say, French toast

and then stop,

for you have just

achieved a moral victory

in the middle

of the flow of time,

and though it slows away,

this victory,

you have its aftertaste,

along with butter

and genuine Vermont maple syrup

from a tree not far down the road.

=

A haiku went up into a tree

and sat there on a limb

it had just made up.

__________________________

Ron Padgett

Pink Dust

New York Review of Books, 2025

AGOTA KRISTOF ~

R E A D   M E 

     New Directions, 2023

NGUGI WA THIONG'O

 

NGUGI WA THIONG'O

Richard Perry

CZESLAW MILOSZ ~

Notebook: Bons By Lake Leman

Red beeches, shining poplars

And steep spruce behind October fog.

In the valley the lake steams. There is snow

Already on the hillsides of the other shore.

Of life, what remains? Only this light

So that the eyes blink in the sunny noon

Of such a season. People say: this is,

And no capacity, no artfulness

Can reach beyond what is.

And memory, useless, loses its power.

Kegs smell of cider. The vicar mixes lime

With a spade in front of the school.

My son runs there on the path. Boys carry

Sacks of chestnuts gathered on the slope.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,

Says the prophet, let my right hand wither.

Underground tremors shake what is.

Mountains crack and forests break.

Touched by what was and what will be,

All that is crumbles into dust.

Violent, clean, the world is again in ferment

And neither ambition nor memory ceases.

Autumnal skies, the same in childhood,

In adulthood and old age. I won't

Stare at you. And you, landscapes,

Nourishing our hearts with mild warmth,

What poison dwells in you that you seal our lips,

Makes us sit with folded arms and the look

Of sleepy animals? Whoever finds order,

Peace, and an eternal moment in what is

Will vanish without a trace. Do you agree then

To abolish what is, and pluck from movement

The eternal moment as a gleam

On the current of the black river? I do.

— Bons, 1953

____________________________

Czeslaw Milosz

Poet in the New World

Poems, 1946-1953

TRANSLATED BY ROBERT HASS AND DAVID FRICK

Ecco, 2025

I DREAM OF JONI (MITCHELL) ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Gallery Books

      2025

FARID MATUK ~

 

Redolent

I'm alone, I'm told,

And decorated in English script

With eyes available, with no claim to the words

But with flowers on flowers shipped

From Bogota's savanna

Helping me talk as one of a people

With occasions to mark, viscously rolling

About each other, having forgotten

The mannered European flower code,

The local eucalyptus,

Or bright dogs that range at night,

The ground floor of my position

Holds no dictionary or science

That can really name the flowers

I'm not pointing

Because they're so obviously opening

Even then, trying to stop

Being these people

I'm not along saying

Back something like "dark

of flowers" or "stones to swallow"

We're not inside the words

No interviews

____________________

Farid Matuk

Moon Mirrored Indivisible

University of Chicago Press, 2025