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Featured
Poet:
Eloise Klein Healey—The distinguished Ms. Healey is the author of five books of poetry. Her work ha been
widely anthologized in collections including The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave, The Geography of Home: California’s
Poetry of Place; Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and animals; Grand Passion Poets:
Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond and
Another City: Writing From Los Angeles.
She
is the Founding Chair of the world-class MFA in Creative Writing Program at
Antioch University Los Angeles.
LIVING HERE NOW
My father’s dying
resembles nothing so much
as a small village
building itself
In the mind of a traveler
who reads about it
and thinks to go there.
The journey is imagined
in a way not even felt
as when years ago
I knew my father would die someday.
The idea came up as fast
as a curve in a road
which opens out
to an unexpected vista,
and now in this journey
the road gravel crunches
under my tires. I miss
some of the streets,
Get lost, get lost.
I find I’m no longer a tourist anymore
and settle into the oldest human
assignment.
Bury your father and live forever
as a stranger in that town.
***
POWDER BLUE/ THE T
HIRD TO THE LAST MAN I EVER DATED
He let me drive his new powder blue MGB
Home from the dealer
While he was following behind in my
car.
This was not a generous act
Or a kind of seduction.
Instead he was afraid of what he wanted.
I was more of a man than he was
And
a better fastball pitcher too.
***
THE DEAD
The dead use up
all those free preview tickets
we can’t take because we know
someone who works in the tv industry.
They lineup for hours ahead of the shows
Because well, what are t hey doing
anyway?
All that canned laughter? The dead.
Those pans of the audience? The dead
in their final outfits.
Remember Ed Sullivan? The dead
started out by watching him.
When the sound stage shut down
for the night and the parking lots empty
out into Burbank, the dead
drive over to
where the waitresses know them
and what they order for dessert.
***
The Roofer
The sun beats down,
sweat stains her denim shirt,
her size-four feet are shod in
high-topped shoes.
Her hammer’s swing the shingles
imbricate.
Uncaring that this isn’t woman’s
work
Now freed from
laundress mite or sitters fate.
So celebrate this young
Now freed of
laundress’s mite or sitter’s fate.
John R. Guthrie
The
Chickasaw
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