City Lights Bookstore, Sunday June 14 - Byer and Krawiec Reading - You are invited!

Kathryn Byer & Richard Krawiec Joint Poetry Reading--City Lights Bookstore

Former North Carolina Poet Laureate Kathryn Byer and Richard Krawiec will be reading from their new collections of poetry on Sunday, June 14th at 1 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore. 

Kathryn’s new chapbook from Jacar Press, The Vishnu Bird,  a finalist in the 2014 Frost Place chapbook contest, "is both a memorial and memoir in lyric poetry. This clean-spoken, deeply-felt chapbook remembers the poet’s dear friend by tracing his vocation of anthropology, and honoring his spiritual depth through vignettes from the speaker’s own past."  David Baker, contest judge. 

 

Richard Krawiec will read from Women Who Love Me Despite. Krawiec is the author of two other collections of poetry, two novels, short story collection and four plays. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and twice with the North Carolina Arts Council.  He is the editor of Jacar Press in Durham, NC. 

A wine and appetizers reception will follow the reading. 

 We invite you to come spend your Sunday afternoon with us.  

                                                      ***************

Listen

The crows wake up early,

claiming the day

with their black wings

and hungry beaks.

Dare you walk out

to claim your own morning?

Shield the sunflower sprouts

from their pillage?

What in the garden

is yours?  What in the forest?

If only, you say,

you could pitch your tent

amid green shoots

and blue shadows,

renounce the roots

holding you fast. 

Why do you let

the crows taunt you?

Throw down your toothbrush.

Let fall your nightgown

and walk out the back door. 

The grass blades will never

again feel so whetted, 

the earth underfoot so forgiving.

from The Vishnu Bird                                                                

                                               (cover painting, Suffusions, by Elizabeth Ellison)

moorings

 
                        


 
                         


                          


 
                         

                          cool air flowing through the screen


 
                         

                          a curious cardinal tipping its head


 
                         

                          at me from the empty feeder


 
                         

                          as if to moor me to this day, as if aware 


 
                         

                          that I drift still in that day our kisses


 
                         

                          slid us down the grassy bank 


 
                         

                          towards the reflection of a sky 


 
                         

                          we didn’t feel we had to embrace


 
                         

                          to own those breeze-rippled clouds


 
                         

                          swaths of bright blue descended


 
                         

                          to surface yes love there are things


 
                         

                          we can’t claim a familiar table


 
                         

                          with years of scars drawers


 
                         

                          where my socks might hide beneath


 
                         

                          your black lace underwear mindless


 
                         

                          routines of coffee-making rubbish


 
                         

                          but look at the heron circling


 
                         

                          its wings bent in gray-blue welcome


 
                         

                          landing in the shallows by the shaded bank


 
                         

                          look at those clouds rising with the sun


 
                         

                          from the shoreline to cover us like a quilt


 
                         

                          look at how our fingers and mouths find 


 
                         

                          ways to craft tightly what we do have


 
                         

                          this boat drifting away from all moorings


 
                         

                          


 
                         

                          


 
                         

                          


 
                         

                          


 
                         

                          


 
                         

                          from 
                          Women Who Loved Me Despite
                         

 

www.kathrynstriplingbyer.com