A lyric from Stan
There’s a hurricane coming:
Everything’s up in the air.
Alice says she’s got to be going;
Sonda says she doesn’t care.
The lights are going down:
We’re whispering in the dark.
There’s no need for running,
You know we’d only get caught.
You said it doesn’t really matter
I didn’t break your heart.
But there’s a hurricane coming;
Something’s bound to start.
There’s a [...]

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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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Announcements from Virginia Gause

The Poet Mariachi Daniel Garcia Ordaz performs his original poems July 17 at 7 – 9 pm at South Texas College - Pecan Campus Library (2nd Floor Rainbow Room)
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Blues musician Seth Walker performs at Cine El Rey July 19 at 9 pm as part of [...]

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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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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Munseetown

At the seventh hour when the children rise
(The river has risen) they go about bagging
Tons for the feast; as they blitzen and donder
She turns from the window and curses in thunder.
Her rage is their wonder.
At four o’clock daylight, December’s fagging
Middle begins as the buses are hooting;
Teachers go mad sending [...]

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Announcements from Virginia Gause

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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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The South Texas College Library will be hosting open mike poetry readings this month at the Starr County, MidValley, and Pecan Campuses.

We’re looking for poets & performers to share their talents at a brief open mike before a presentation by special guest Daniel García Ordaz, THE POET MARIACHI!

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Announcements from Virginia Gause

Art Expressions
301 N Main Suite 2 Corner with Cedar St
McAllen, Texas|78501

Calendar of Events
Tuesday Jul 8th           at 8:00 pm
Art Awakenings has the pleasure to present a wonder evenings with our special
Guest & Host Veronica AKA ” Lady Mariposa”
Come and share your poetry with us, in this special night
Free Admission

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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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A poem by Michael Stewart

U is father of this trinity.
It suffered under Roman hands, became a V,
Then re-emerged, when Roman power was through,
Increased twofold in strength as W.
Now inasmuch as W, this same,
Still bears the parent letter’s name,
Still bears stigmata of the letter V,
Let W, in one, be sign for three,
And let the sign for [...]

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A poem by Michael Stewart
- T -
I for one do not appreciate the joke
Of those who say that Tau is just a bull.
Note how the horizontal stroke
Runs parallel to earth, arrests the upward pull.
Of aspiration, drags us down. What son of man
Among us dares to cast this frightful yoke?
I think the letter T
Leaves little room [...]

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A poem by Michael Stewart
— S —

S is more or less what C would be
When c is not in Church
Or not being k.
Ever since its sinuosity
Slithered through the garden,
Man has leaned to speak
In conspiratorial whispers.

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A poem by Michael Stewart
- R -

When Alexander, Ares pride, detumefied,
Old Ares made his move across the sea.
There in his Roman home his modest rho
Changed into the sort of prurient P
You see in EAPLY LAPIDAPY LATIN.
Later, on its own two legs, R never let Mars rest.
It raped its way across the Rubicon with him
To Ireland, [...]

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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 Stan Raines

At seven years
The world was a whirl of trees,
Houses, stones, and fields.
Moving objects, alive,
Tumbling in the head.

The world needed fixing.
Summer paced it out.
Young hands drew it down.
Along the creek bed,
Between the houses,
Ancient blood in young veins
Marked the tread
Of flowing waters.

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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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