An announcement
Every Tuesdays Nights Amateur Talent Night
Open To Performing Artists including: Musicians, Poets, Singers, Dancers, Stand Up Comedians, Actors, Or Anybody Who Thinks They Have A Talent.  Etc…
Fan Favorite will win a prepaid Credit Card.
Free Admission       8pm-12am
Come Early & Sign Up
Limited Seating Available
THURSDAY NIGHT OPEN MIC

Art Expressions has the pleasure to present in there Open [...]

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A note from Stan
Daniel García Ordáz, aka The Poet Mariachi, appeared on Channel 23 News to promote his reading series this weekend in McAllen. Take a look.

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KÚZA-NÁMA

LIX
Listen again. One Evening at the Close
Of Ramazán, ere the better Moon arose,
In that old Potter’s Shop I stood alone
With the clay Population round in Rows.
LX
And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
And suddenly one more impatient cried-
‘Who is the Potter, pray, and who is the Pot?’
LXI
Then said another-‘Surely not [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Munseetown

Father, that winter when your death descended
Upon the conversation of your friends,
We prayed you grace to see you easy ended
Since grace denied that we should mark you mended;
Beyond our pale you pilgrimed undefended
In your hard death forsaken, unattended.

Father, what hast Thou wrought that unattended
On this feast-day the dark of [...]

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Announcements from Virginia Gause

******    ******

If I were Dr. Seuss and wrote children’s books, I would get Carl Vestweber to illustrate them.  So when I heard Carl was having his first solo show “New Stuff by Carl Vestweber” at Manichaus on Friday, July 11, I cancelled all my other social plans to be there.
[...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…a bargain, the gallon of water in convenience stores, $1.29, beats the sodas and sports drinks …. I love tipping the plastic jug to my mouth ….
…and the turtles, all over the roads, maybe the rain, and most do not make it across, and are crushed; I picked one up on 281 [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…and how rare is it, rain, a lot in Brownsville, rain since early Friday, much like snow in the North when cabin-fever hits, especially in early February; here, in early July, with about seven deep weeks of summer to go, the rain is like snow, cabin-fever time …. But I go out: bike [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…smoky, smoky enough for choking, the grills, the barbecue grills, some with charcoal, some with wood, some with gas …
…always men, little boys to old men, circling the smoke, women away, unless one comes by to ask an unwelcomed question …
…the smoke, so thick, the men, shadows in the smoke, the fires dim, [...]

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- Y -

It may be all movements through time are like dance
steps, but sometimes the tempi,
The patterns seem random, seem to us frantic,
confuse us and lose us
In rhythms that stutter and stumble, carry us off
of our footing.
Fitting that you, then, pentultimate letter, occasion
reflection.
Slow down the score to molto adagio, make the mood
pensive.
X in proximity’s like [...]

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A poem by Michael Stewart

Fling me around if you like. You’ll find that I’m able
To land on two feet, like a bipedal cat.
I’m steadier than you are, more stable,
But you can count on little more than that.
For I am not a cat, at least I’m often not.
I’m like the headless, tailless quadruped
That even thoughtful Dr. [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook

…out in the Oklahoma Panhandle, almost 50 years ago, I was moving some hay bales that had wintered under snow and rain.
Two other men were working with me, one out of Alabama called “Heavy,” and the other out of Texas called Bob. I was out of Miami’s suburbs, out of college and on [...]

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A reminder

A note to writers and those who appreciate the written and spoken word that the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center Writers Forum  will meet at 7 pm tomorrow night at the center, 225 E. Stenger St., in San Benito. Attendance may be light as it is the travel season, but previous experience says that [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…along 281, one of my favorite roads, highway of dreams and development and movement, I love it ….
…linemen stringing power lines for BISD High School Six, and I stop and say, “Hey! US electric needs will double in 20 years! Will there be enough power?”
A lineman, he on the ground, says, “Sure! Wind [...]

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A reminder
The Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center Writers’ Forum meets Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 7 pm at the NMCAC.
All interested in literature and the spoken word are invited to attend. Writers and readers are allowed a slot of up to ten minutes to present their material. You could be regaled by a story from [...]

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from Gene’s Notebook
“Go shake the peach tree. There’s one more up high,
and I can’t reach it.”
I go outside, shake the branch and leaf-thick tree,
and the last peach falls to cracked earth and rotted (they ripen fast) peaches.
I pick up the fuzzy oval, bump into a branch, go inside, give it to her and she bites [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

And there to lie down in the lap of the late autumn evening
homey small-kissing on some crazy quilt mother made me
how is it with you when you go and our lives go unbraided
my heart go torn with the old wild grief
how is it you rise and I rise [...]

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Wherein the Poet Relates a Visitation and Elucidates His Theme
XL
You know, my Friends, how long since in my House
For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
XLI

For ‘Is’ and ‘Is-not’ though with Rule and Line,
And ‘Up-and-down’ without, I could define,
I yet in [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

BUBBLES THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, led
to believe her concrete block demesne
surrounded by barker and cagéd cat
was of her natural habitat
unchanging and forever green,
is dead.  Beloved, she fell asleep,
o.d.’ed like a teen-ager in the park
she slipped into the surrounding darkness
deaf to the midway midgets’ weeping,
the sorrow of keepers who [...]

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A Poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

(for Joseph Satterwhite)

I

If at the whole year’s nooning and the noon
Of days, at the still daylight hour I am begot
Of fleshéd bones, death, darknesses, of doom
The which I pray Thou sparest me, what-not:
If at the whole day’s nooning and the year’s
Day, and the bright hour [...]

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Poems by Michael Stewart
Elemeno

The way you used to stand among your peers,
Tetrasyllabic, vaguely Arabic, not Greek,
No commonplace like i, j, k would do
But only elemeno, sonorant, significant.
Of what, of course I never knew
I thought you were involved (still do)
With pimento, an exotic fruit
Suitable for stuffing olives with.
Hence olive oil and fig trees,
Date palms, caravans,
Silken tents [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

(For Carol and Jerry Kasparek)

Amasis was in Egypt king
(Whose dwelling ran a measured mile)
The upper and the lower Nile
Long ago
Whose women when he bade them sang:
The desert boogied, heaven rang,
The painted women and their men
Congoed kickshaws then and ran
In circles to the throne again
(An awesome sight
All [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

The wolf-wind howling down the steppes
Balloons the market-bound babushka,
Mottles the cheeks of malchiks slipping
Past the pale of teacher’s rozha;
Fast the western evening fades
On car, on sledge, the nation’s freight.
It is the vulkov wind that chills you,
Ivan. I have no wish to kill you.
Ivan, at your evening’s [...]

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Poetry by Michael Sterwart

— F —

F has few friends, occurring as it does,
In fornicate and California.
It has been much feared, no fault of its own,
By those who take a fright at a fact
Or even of Florida. I, at least,
Will think of you kindly, my friend. I’ll say
That F is a flag perpetually fanned
By warm western [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

When Luisa Tetrazzini and Nellie Melba met
There occurred the sort of precious set-to we ought not forget:
Both were booked at Covent Garden for a summer’s season; fame
Had not yet ruined Luisa nor was Nellie yet a Dame;
And neither of them threw things, and neither showed her claws,
Although [...]

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Poems by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

1

Immanuel Kant
Would occasionally rant
At things historical
Which seemed uncategorical.

2

Fenimore Cooper
Did not make a trooper,
But did write some novels
About hovels.

3

W. B. Yeats
Believed in the fates,
But sometimes on Sunday
In Spiritus Mundi

4

Dame Edith Sitwell,
Whose clothes did not fit well,
Caused a social upheaval
In robes medieval

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