Purely Medicinal (2)

A bit late to the post on this one, but still worth sharing. The first weekend of this month was Medicine Ball. One thing I was struck by this time around was just how good the directors and actors were in interpreting the poetry. This is something that's become more evident as years have gone on. We have many actors and directors who return year after year to be part of this project. I had multiple poets approach me post-show with a "holy shit" look on their face, and we already have a cadre of poets who want to write for it again.
An example:


This was just one of the pieces that I thought the actors and director (Dan Tarker) interacted and interpreted in a way that transcended what a poet reading their own work would be able to do.
We'll be doing this again next week, all likelihood.

Between now and then I plan to curate exactly zero literary events.

When I'm not working, I'm working: Three New Roughs.

these are all recent musings I may work with more in the future. The second is from a prompt by Lindsey Walker, the third from a prompt by Ryan Johnson.

daily mundane #425

in a bleachstained black shirt
i work in due to unseasonable
february sun, the snapdown impractical.

bills go out, bills come in.
the smiles and swinging arms
down fourth avenue come
earlier every year, turn
to dust. I should buy

new clothes for work for money
to buy new clothes to work in so I can
get money that I use to pay for clothes
that are appropriate for--

you get the picture. the barista
dances to the Beatles in his
fedora and somehow I am not
annoyed.

_____________________

Transiberian Express

(the prompt was to write about a place I'd never been) 

Frozen in place and loaded onto a train
leaving from the last city at the edge of the
world, a whole greyscale cliffscape of others

frozen in place, and you begin the thaw.
The next nine days, split between the soup

and the shiver, the ice crawls up your
legs at the moment of sleep, the snow
rushing past years of punishment-wilderness,
a place whose name itself evoked terror,

starvation, disappearance. By the time you
get to Moscow, you'e frozen and thawed
and frozen again, a lifetime of gruel in
your veins. Step out into the first city
at the edge of two worlds and hold cap
but don't lose it. You'll need it. You'll need it.

_____________________________

Trump Plaza

At the end of Napoleon, there was a drawn out sigh. This much I know from genghis khan international airport. The longer it goes, atrocities are forgotten, only glory remains. I'm eating an eclair. Watching one building fall to be danced on by another. The glass warbles and so many coiffed handbags. Despite my classy pastry, I am especially ugly today, as Stalin must have looked to those he was sentencing. I have done all my sentencing already, just waiting for the execution. Frosting gets on my cheek.

Do buildings fantasize about power? The power wielded in them? Stay up late thinking about orders given? Of course not, don't be silly. They just wish they were fields or vineyards. The crowd becomes too much. I leave, the frosting on my cheek.