Well, the Good Luck Bar never disappoints, does it? The red and tasseled lanterns are BIG, which is an extremely smart decorating move as they make an instant impression when you trip over the threshold into the semi-seamy (but not really) sparkle-darkness of one of the coolest bars in town. Rhapsodomancy, under the astute eye of Wendy Ortiz, comes on in and turns the bar’s faux opium den into a poetry reading den and it works, it all just works and magic takes over and everyone chats with people they’ve never met before and listens well as they sip their drinks, all cozy on the lounge-like (vaguely tasseled) seating. It’s the sort of bar that transports you into a time you enjoy not actually placing. At least, that’s what happens to me in there. You go on, now, go and see for yourself in April, at the next reading.

I read this poem, among others. It’s one of my favorites, one of the first I wrote coming out of my fog of sleepless motherdom. Askew Poetry Journal first published it. All hail Phil Taggart and Marsha de la O, editors–a truly creative duo.

Run

Sun the fog’s ball snagged by a suburban barrier
of giraffe-necked palms. My lawn in recess: churched
(this formal stillness, fog-tuned).
My lawn is Winter’s readied bride, her chill-
wrap tight over tips, her delicate sweat.
Here, the deciduous
mutter off their leaves by the evening’s folding light
as I watch 2 boys chasing impulse
in cold separating the fog, setting the moon
risen so early in her hypocrisy of flaws
(O pocked resilience).
Run, run.
Their rocket gasps, blood-worked,
tidal energy
pushed the length of my yard’s
walls of safe. I search for comfort
in time-traveling domesticity and grippable
martyrs: books I resented others
owning until I arrived
in this pocket of breathy Eden, clueless.
Cold frills the air. I watch
the Cyclops bent on counter-
clockwise logic, its eye’s glass-cuts
old trickery I won’t translate. Won’t.
Run. Run.
Sun shatters into anemone sky.
My speck-titans so suddenly famous:
they in their sweet hides, I in my cloak-bane,
howling with half-sight, knocked (I get: you),
ever on the chase.

hee hee