Our New Chapbook Competition Winner—Sean Nevin

Nevin describes his chapbook of poems as an exploration of "the way the mind works through the fogged lens of Alzheimer's disease...the way we perceive and misperceive ourselves, our loved ones and our own histories; and how we learn to survive inside these strange and fluid worlds." Nevin is a teacher of creative writing at Arizona State University, where he serves as the assistant director of ASU's Young Writer's Program and outreach coordinator for The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.

 

APRIL CELEBRATE NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

OUR THIRD WEDNESDAY
READING SERIES CONTINUES

SEE CALENDAR FOR INFO

Sunday, April 2. David Tucker with Ron Slate at The Hudson Valley Writers' Center, Philipse Manor Train Station, Sleepy Hollow, NY

Friday, April 21. Sean Nevin and Open Mike at The Hudson Valley Writers' Center, Philipse Manor Train Station, Sleepy Hollow, NY

Saturday, April 22, 3 PM. Sean Nevin, Margo Stever, Suzanne Cleary, David Tucker, Cindy Beer-Fouhy, Ellen Goldsmith and Susan H. Case, The Ear Inn, 326 Spring Street, New York, NY.

David Tucker's poem "The Dancer" will be reprinted in Ted Kooser's syndicated column, "American Life in Poetry," which appears in 134 newspapers.

Rachel Loden's chapbook, The Richard Nixon Snow Globe, has been published by Wild Honey Press

Suzanne Cleary's chapbook, Blue Cloth, has been published by Hill-Stead Museum.

Susan H. Case's chapbook, Anthropologist in Ohio, has been published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company.

Ann Lauinger's PERSUASIONS OF FALL, University of Utah, won the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry.

 

Losing Solomon from Sean Nevin's A House That Falls

We estimate a man by how much he remembers. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Things seem to take on a sudden shimmer
before vanishing: the polished black loafers
he wore yesterday, the reason for climbing
the stairs, even the names of his own children

are swallowed like spent stars against the dark
vault of memory. Today the toaster gives up
its silver purpose in his hands, becomes a radio,
an old Philco blaring a ball game from the 40's
with Jackie Robinson squaring up to the plate.

For now, it's simple; he thinks he is young again,
maybe nineteen, alone in a kitchen. He is staring
through his own reflection in the luster and hoping
against hope that Robinson will clear the bases
with a ball knocked so far over the stadium wall
it becomes a pigeon winging up into the brilliance.

And perhaps, in one last act of alchemy,
as Jackie sails around third, he will transform
everything, even the strange and forgotten face
glaring back from the chrome, into something
familiar, something Solomon could know as his own.