A day of Music, Art, Poetry and Literature

When? Saturday, Oct. 8, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

Where? Corner of Tremont St. and Wisconsin

Come join as A Word with You Press celebrates its first anniversary as the hub for writers and artists in Oceanside

Live jazz band, author readings, poetry slam, art show, bbq, raffle; all to benefit our free children’s and young adult’s writing program

Kid Expression

“Every Kid has a story.  Let’s help them tell it”

Sponsored by A Word with You Press, Publishers and Purveyors of Fine Stories

More information for the event at www.awordwithyoupress.com

TRADE THIS INVITATION FOR ONE ADDITIONAL RAFFLE TICKET THE DAY OF THE EVENT!

By Kristin Laurel

Who shall set a law to lovers? Love is a greater law into itself.

– Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

Like October poplars that are first
to drop their leaves, I often find myself unprotected, exposed.
The one I love is more reserved,
like the Bur Oak that clings
to its leaves, perhaps there is a gentle sacredness
in not giving everything away.

We hold hands on the narrow path
while squirrels scuttle to bury
their hoarded treasure.
I read once, that they find only ten percent of the nuts
they hide; the rest go to seed and give rise
to trees. I stop to pick up
an acorn, press it between my thumb and forefinger.
It smells of musky earth, a trace of permanence.

Two joggers approach—
we quickly drop hands.
A few red maples glare, against a pale-blue sky.
And I am ashamed.
It’s the same when I cut a hug—
short, hide my tears
when I greet her at the airport,
or cover up our held hands with the bucket
of popcorn at the theatre.
We look around again.
No people. It’s safe.

My God, it is strange
how perfectly our clasped hands fit,
how this is the closest thing to God’s love I’ve known,
how other’s see this as wrong.

Sometimes, it feels like I was abducted
from the nice white straight world
and came back queer-colored and green.
She says, “In public turn up the friendship and turn down the love,”
but I say, “Why should we contain love?”

She treads lightly, doesn’t disrupt the forest floor.
I drag my feet and kick up leaves,
tearing them like tissue paper.
I let my shoes sling mud—

This morning, on Good Morning America,
they showed members of Westboro Baptist Church,
picketing at a dead vet’s funeral, holding their signs:
Thank God For Dead Soldiers
God Hates Fags
Jews Killed Jesus

Listen. I’m not here to preach.
I’ve been no saint.
I remember how, in college, I shared an apartment with Tammy
whose father was a pastor; how distraught, she confided in me:
“I want to get married, go to church and have kids,” she said,
“But I’m attracted to women.”
I moved out as fast as I could.

And I remember how once, in 5^th grade,
at Hesperia Christian, I called a kid a faggot.
Even though I didn’t know what the word meant,
Mrs. Thompson made me put my hands
on the wall and spanked my ass

with a holy paddle.

I have a few friends still “praying for my soul.”
And let them pray; I need all the help I can get.
My godmother is coming around
but I haven’t spoken to my father since I fell in love;
he drinks too much, and calls me a dyke.
Yet, I’ve had it easy.
I wasn’t court-martialed by the US military.
I wasn’t put on the stand to defend
my career and myself as a human being
for associating with gays like my friend Maria was, a decade ago.
I wasn’t disowned by my Christian family, like Donnie,
my mom’s cousin, who died alone of AIDS, back in the 80s.

Yes, I have a lot to be thankful for.
The people I now call family
support me and the one I love.
And yes, I’ve been in love with a man, and a woman,
so in case you are curious, let me tell you, love is love.
Sex is sex.
“But,” people ask, “what about the kids?”
Children have a way of seeing things
for what they are. I hold my daughter’s hand
sometimes when we’re watching TV. I hold my youngest
son’s hand, my mother’s, my sister’s, my grandpa’s—
my oldest son won’t let me hold his, but he’s nearly sixteen.
My kids love me, and they love my partner.
And yet I know what my mother fears. It has nothing
to do with what goes on

in my home. Maybe we all need to shut off the news,
and get close to a person with a label
we have nothing in common with.
Are we really a nation divided?
Don’t most of us all care about the same things at the core,
our kids, our spouses, our aging parents?
Maybe we all need to just take a walk in the woods.

In the safety of the car we head home, holding hands.
Tomorrow, she will leave, and we will be separated by
Minnesota prairie and North Carolina mountaintops.
I still have my little acorn. I twirl it around in my other hand.
It is face-less, and race-less; an oval shaped head, wearing a hat,
enclosing a single seed.
As a child, I wanted to plant an acorn,
but I was told, “You’ll be dead before it ever grows up to be anything.”

I’m going to give it to her before she goes,
have her plant it in some fresh, red clayed, Appalachian soil.

Editor’s note: Kristin Laurel is a divorced mother of three teenagers, employed as a nurse, who unexpectedly fell in love with a woman three years ago. She graduated this January from a poetry apprenticeship at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and has recently been published in Calyx, Main Street Rag, Hospital drive, Talking Stick, Prose Poem Project, Grey Sparrow Review and other journals. “God Hates Fags” is from her first collection of poetry, Giving Them all Away.

That is not to suggest that the University of California San Diego Distinguished Professor of Materials Science has not also written weighty academic papers on such esoterica as nanocrystalline materials, but, as Meyers said in a recent interview, “I was going to write a novel, hell or high water.” And that is just what he has done — two of them: Mayan Mars, published in 2005, and Chechnya Jihad, in 2010. He has also published a collection of poetry begun during his childhood in Brazil, Abscission/Implosion.

“I struggled,” Meyers said. “I learned the craft. I’m still learning the craft. I used my experience as a professor, with the environment, and my travels, and science … but [the novels] are not science fiction; they could be maybe science fiction thriller.”

Regardless of the genre in which Meyers’ novels might be categorized — his ability to conceptualize at the nano-level could produce countless subgenre options — Meyers’ writing is both a challenge and a joy for him.

“My background in engineering is not the best for writing,” he explained. “You have doctors write and lawyers write, but very few engineers write. And I see how my colleagues struggle to write. They huff and they puff. But for me, it is easier. It’s a burden and an honor.”

It might also be a reflection of the chaos Meyers experienced, living under a brutal military junta in Brazil, where oppression and intrigue were the norm. The son of immigrants from Luxembourg, Meyers lived a fairly privileged life until college. “It was a dangerous time, and I had written a couple poems making fun of the military,” Meyers recalled. “If they think you have connections to terrorist organizations, they would beat you up to get names of other people. Then they go after those names, and then those names. I was scared and I got the hell out of Brazil as soon as I could, and I came to the United States.”

Meyers’ exposure to oppression is present in the themes he has addressed in his novels, the plights of the Chechnyans and indigenous peoples of South America. “I am with the underdog, because of the soul,” Meyers said. “My parents are from a small country, Luxembourg, that has been stepped on by many others. Then I come from a small town in Brazil. I developed appreciation for this type of people — the simple people. The Brazilians have a way to look down on the lower classes, that I never really appreciated too much.”

A natural storyteller, Meyers then launched into a tale.

“I feel for the Indians because I saw the plight of the Indians in the Amazon. … I traveled to Bolivia once, when I was 18 years of age, just when they struck Che Guevara. I was on a bus. It was very crowded, and there was this gentleman who stood up and he said, ‘Ah you’re from Brazil!’ He went over to one of the Indians, and he said, ‘Get up to give a place to the señor.’ I said, ‘No, no.’ But the man took the wife and slapped her right in the face. ‘You, Indian, get up and let our señor sit.’ I was a coward; I didn’t know what to do. But I saw how these people were treated by the descendents of the Spaniards.”

The compassion born of such experiences is one of many ingredients in Meyers’ novels, and through his writing he has learned it is never too late to right a wrong. As he described in an autobiographical piece, “By writing I can penetrate into unknown worlds, redress wrongs, create beauty and justice, free of the impediments of action and the difficulties and strictures of science. It is a magical wand through which I can transform reality by recreating it. And thus I march on, toward the end of my days, a lady on each arm. On my left, Musa, fun, fickle, and flirtatious. On the right, Scienta, solid, serious, and strong.”

………….

Author’s website: marcmeyers.org

2011 San Diego Poetry Annual Launch Reading

August 10, 2011

Café des Artistes
103 S. Main Street, Fallbrook, CA

5:30 Doors open, supper menu available
6:00 The Poets of the 2011 San Diego Poetry Annual, followed by open mic

Now in its fifth year of publication, the 2010-2011 San Diego Poetry Annual features the work of English and Spanish language poets from throughout San Diego County, including 235 poems by 154 poets, including featured poet Steve Kowit and Marge Piercy.

Published by author Bill Harding, the 2010-2011 Annual was edited by Brandon Cesmat, Olga Garcia, Edith Jonsson-Devillers, Seretta Martin, Robt O’Sullivan Schleith, Terrence Spohn, Megan Webster and Jon Wesick.

The Annual is now part of the permanent collections of every college and university library in San Diego County, the San Diego City and County library systems, and the libraries of independent cities from Oceanside to Chula Vista, El Cajon to Escondido.

Copies of the Annual will be available for sale and signing by the poets reading on the 10^th. Come celebrate the region’s talent with us!

For more information, contact Kit-Bacon at kbgressitt@gmail.com or 760-522-1064.

Text message

Don’t wear shoes — to support kids who don’t have shoes. That’s the new thing.

On male haberdashery

Italian mother: You look like a safe
Italian son: Huh?
Italian mother: Only you know the combination.

On poetry, because it’s still National Poetry Month

Fallbrook needs poetry about cunnilingus.

– Kate Gressitt-Diaz

Read more Fallbrookisms…

Clete and Juanita Celebrate Their Anniversary

A Short Story by Dan McClenaghan

“Lobster would be lovely,” Juanita said to her husband, Clete, when he suggested a night on the town to celebrate their thirty years of wedded bliss.

“Indeed,” said Clete, as his anus puckered at the prospect of the price of those damned things — as opposed to a taco/enchilada combo at Jose’s, in the strip mall up by the Home Depot, which is what he’d had in mind.

But in Anniversary Celebration Land, it’s usually the woman who wins. So there they were, with expensive seafood on their minds, Clete looking like poor relations in his ill-fitting 20-year-old suit, Juanita resplendent in a long black gown and chic and shiny new bouffant (that, fresh out of Betty’s Beauty Nook, smelled to Clete’s nose like the stale gasoline he poured into the lawnmower, though he was wise enough not to say so), awaiting the arrival of the guy with the pencil-thin mustache, the poofy pompadour and the crisp tuxedo to escort them to their spot in the white tablecloths and candle-lit bistro down by the shore in Loma Alta’s renovated downtown.

“This way, please,” the man nodded to the couple, and led the way, appearing to Clete — and this he whispered to Juanita — “Old boy’s a little light in the loafers, eh?” And then Clete mimicked and exaggerated the man’s light-stepping gait, unaware that his foil caught a glimpse of his boorish act in one of the restaurant’s wall-mounted mirrors.
Juanita, embarrassed at her husband’s mean-spirited display, punched Clete in the arm, hard.

Clete said, “OUCH!”

The maître d’ ignored the shenanigans going on behind his back, found the Johnson’s table and held out Juanita’s chair for her. And when the couple ordered lobster, he used his pull in the kitchen — he was the object of the desire of the sous chef, Henri — to get Clete’s crustacean specially prepared.

The Maine lobsters at the Bistro Loma Alta are chilled to thirty-two degrees, inducing a metabolic torpor without causing death; but Henri had found out early on in his culinary career — a good deal of wine and an afterhours kitchen party had been involved here — that forty-five seconds in a microwave would enliven the beasts to the point of friskiness and agitation.
Clete’s dinner was delivered in such a state.

“What the hell—?” Clete proclaimed, standing up to back off as his dinner waved an antenna his way, and then he screamed like a woman in deep distress as the lobster reached out and grabbed a clawful of his crotch.

Clete’s trousers this night were of the pleated-front variety. The lobster had latched onto mere cloth. But in his shocked state Clete thought perhaps a numbing effect of immediate trauma was at play and the pain of pinched nether parts was on it way, as he continued his high-pitched and panicked vocalizations and spun into a roving pirouette that had him veering across the dining room — his lobster attached to his zipper, it horizontally-aligned body rising and falling like a carnival ride — out onto Pacific Coast Highway, where passing traffic swooped and swerved around them, horns blaring in the night.

“Perhaps, Madam,” said the maître d’ to Juanita, “Your husband would prefer a nice filet mignon?”

Juanita tied her apron about her neck, picked up her nutcracker and said, “Perhaps he’d like a nice kick in the ass,” to which the maître d’ smiled and nodded his assent.

Three Haiku More by David Allee

The Mystery Writer

At the Café meet
A writer steps into
The sound of mystery

A seasonal rain
Bringing nameless rivers
Fear which has no name

Yellowed pages
The remains of killers’
Exquisite schemes

Note: Lobster label image from the Library of Congress.

By Eszter Delgado

Leaves on the ground,

Bolting forward I force my

Heavy foot forward into the weightless pile on

The

tan     tan     ground.

Leaves float   in mid-afternoon

Slow

Motion

Sweltering

Haze.

In these parts children still ride schwinn bikes.

Handlebars sawed off,

Seats lowered to the frame.

If you are cool,

The tires hum

Soft songs

On

Speeding streets.

In this neighborhood

It is the sound of the spokes

Firecrackers explode in metal trashcans.

The sounds of sirens blow back and fourth

Echoing inside hollow clothesline poles—

Where wasps begin to build long and extensive housing for their Kind.
The foot drives down in

Into

Deeper Places.

♦    ♦    ♦    ♦    ♦

Eszter Delgado was brought up just east of Los Angeles in a family of seven children. “When you grow up in a neighborhood that is rooted in gang life, you become part of it, even if your parents are the best.” After graduating from high school, Eszter attended college in Humboldt County. She was the first in her family to earn a college degree, a B.A. in Art. She subsequently returned to a lively arts community in Echo Park and downtown L.A., and then went on to Claremont Graduate School and earning her M.F.A. in Art. Eszter now lives in Fallbrook, California, with her husband, two children and four dogs. She is a contracted Artist in the Schools, and soon to be, Poet in the Schools.

A Poem by Mike Croghan

I first came to know Natasha Trethewey’s work while doing research for a novel I am writing. Native Guard is a collection of her poems about a regiment of African American troops who garrisoned a fort off the Louisiana coast during the Civil War. Her poems of those men and those times took me there, conjured scenes and conversations I used in my depictions of Civil War times and events.

Another of Trethewey’s collections is Domestic Work. Reading this book was, for me, like watching a series of videotaped scenes taken of my wife and her family during my wife’s growing years. Scenes and interpretations of those years are depicted most clearly in her poem of the same name.

Domestic Work is repeated below, with Trethewey’s permission. Inspired — no, taken away! — by her work, I wrote the poem that follows, Natasha’s Photos of Dot. I thank Natasha for her imagery and try to create my own.                                                                                                              – Mike

Domestic Work, 1937

by Natasha Trethewey

All week she’s cleaned
Someone else’s house,
Stared down her own face
In the shine of copper-bottomed pots, polished
Wood, toilets she’d pull the lid to – that look saying

Let’s make a change, girl.

But Sunday mornings are hers —
Church clothes starched
And hanging — a record spinning
on the console, the whole house
dancing.  She raises the shades,
washes the rooms in light,
Buckets of water, Octagon soap.

Cleanliness is next to godliness . . .

Windows and doors flung wide,
Curtains two stepping
Forward and back, neck bones
Bumping in the pot, a choir
Of clothes clapping on the line.

Nearer my god to Thee . . .

She beats time on the rugs,
Blows dust from the broom
Like dandelion spores, each one
A wish for something better.

Natasha’s Photos of Dot

by Mike Croghan

Through your poetry
I see her in the photos.
Flashing hands leathered by work and heat
Thousands of plucks
Of the cotton balls
Daily done
Begun at dawn.

I see her in your photopoems, Natasha.
Hands plying
Calloused tough
Dancing fingers
Pinching suckers
Snatching worms
Weaving string
Across the thick stems
And long poles
Of tobacco leafs.

Your imagery, Natasha, so clear.
I see the beads of sweat
Drip down her steely countenance
Her grace and poise,
Soaking her clothes.
Such a burden for a young girl,
A burden
Shrinking her tenacity
Weighing down her determination
Slowing her production

Not one iota.

The photo you took, Natasha
Is the photo I’ve longed to have.
One taken when she was young
More than half a century ago
In the fields
In their homes
She and hers had no brownie
Making me wait this half century
To see photos of her
In your poetry.

Worth the wait.
You must know Natasha,
Worth the wait.

Thursday 13 January:
Novelist Ann Patchett at the Grand Tradition is sold out!

Friday 14 January:
Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet Rae Armantrout at Café des Artistes

Fallbrook’s new county library is scheduled to open January 16, but the innovative project is already attracting booklovers — and writers. Six award-winning authors will celebrate in the days leading up to the grand opening with a series of presentations, AUTHORS SPEAK! A FALLBROOK LIBRARY CELEBRATION. The public is invited to the free series, which runs from January 9 through 14 in the Café des Artistes at Fallbrook Art Center.

A collaboration between the Friends of the Fallbrook Library and Fallbrook’s Writers Read, AUTHORS SPEAK! features authors with roots of one sort or another in the local area. They will talk about writing, take questions from the audience, and read from their books, which will be available for purchase and signing by the authors.

Kicking off the series, bestselling crime novelist T. Jefferson Parker will read Sunday, January 9 at 6 p.m. A Fallbrook resident, Parker has used Fallbrook and San Diego County settings in several of his 18 books, two of which have won Edgar Awards for Best Novel. The newest in his popular Charlie Hood series, The Border Lords, will be released the week of the author series.

Parker will be followed by Laura McNeal on Monday, January 10 at 7 p.m. McNeal is an award-winning author of young adult fiction and a National Book Award finalist for her most recent novel, Dark Water, a haunting coming-of-age story set in Fallbrook during the 2007 wildfires.

On Tuesday, January 11, at 7 p.m., award-winning journalist and San Diego-based author Sue Diaz will speak about her book, Minefields of the Heart: A Mother’s Stories of a Son at War, a collection of tender and sorrowful tales of Diaz’ son’s two deployments to the Iraq War and their effects on him and his family.

On Wednesday, January 12, at 7 p.m., Debra Ginsberg, novelist and memoirist, and her son Blaze Ginsberg, also a memoirist, will talk about their writing and autism activism. Debra’s new novel, The Neighbors Are Watching, is set in the 2007 wildfires. Blaze will read from his memoir Episodes: My Life as I See It.

The Thursday, January 13 event is a luncheon sponsored by the Rotary Club of Fallbrook, featuring a presentation by bestselling novelist Ann Patchett, whose family lives in Fallbrook. The event will be at the Grand Tradition, and lunch is $20. Advance reservations are required. Contact Doug Clements at 760-728-8577 or chertiq@yahoo.com.

Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet Rae Armantrout, a writing professor at the University of California San Diego, will conclude the AUTHORS SPEAK! series on Friday, January 14, at 7 p.m. at the Café des Artistes. She will read from her 2010 winning collection Versed and her new collection to be released by Wesleyan University Press in December, Money Shot.

The Café des Artistes and Fallbrook Art Center are at 103 S. Main Street in Fallbrook. Entrance to the Café is from the rear parking lot off Alvarado at Main. Seating at the Café events is on a first come, first serve basis.

Special thanks to Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, in San Diego, for providing books for the series.

For more information, contact Kit-Bacon Gressitt at 760-522-1064 or kbgressitt@gmail.com.

Two Poems by Paul Colaluca

The Card

She remembered his day.
Taped to the bathroom mirror
her words said everything
he so wanted to hear.

Blinking, his throat tightened.
She said they described him,
had always been true for her.
He loved her like no other.

She’d thanked him for the years,
said it was time to live his life.
He smiled, turned away content.
Then back again, unsure.

Suddenly it read differently.
Was it saying something else?
Had she tired of his forgetfulness,
and never being early?

She was his calm rock.
Was she saying it was over?
As sureness turned to fear,
a child looked back at him.

The one he’d left far behind,
now stared with lonely eyes.
It was late, she was asleep.
He’d ask in the morning.

Touching Her

The slowly moving fan
pushes summer air down
on their languid bodies,
spent and just breathing.

She lies close to him
under warm rumpled sheets,
her curving silhouette
calls mutely to his need

for passion’s close embrace
of flashing hot urges,
that erase all thoughts
except for luscious lust.

What is she in his life,
a vampire of the heart,
or savior of the soul?
The question wanders off.

As she stirs with a sigh
content in her release,
he reaches to caress
the center of his world.

Closing the space between
he cups her warmth gently
to a small trusting moan,
and answers amble back.

She draws him to a mirror,
as though touching her
clears his life’s reflection,
making him known to himself.

♦    ♦    ♦    ♦    ♦

Paul Colaluca writes: “I am a poet-at-heart … feeling things softly and seeking ways to share them with words. My hope is to create a space of possibility, where gentleness and compassion can be expressed and experienced.”

Image by Greg Westfall via a Creative Commons license.