Scott Ferry & Daniel McGinn will read from their new book of dialogue poems, "Fill Me With Birds" (Meat for Tea Press 2024) as well as other poems on June 23, 4:30 pm at Bolton Hall Museum.
Two
segments of open mic will be available and refreshments will
be served. Suggested donation $5 per person for the cost of refreshments
and to
donate to the Little Landers Society that manages the Bolton Hall
Museum, 10110 Commerce Ave, Tujunga, CA 91040. Bolton Hall is a Los
Angeles Historical Landmark built in 1913.Extra parking at the Elks Lodge across the street (10137 Commerce Ave)
Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as an RN in the Seattle area. Ferry's eighth book of poetry, Each Imaginary Arrow, is now available from Impspired Press. His book of prose poems, Sapphires on the Graves, is upcoming from Glass Lyre Press in spring 2024. Besides his collaboration with Daniel McGinnon Fill Me with Birds, he has also published Midnight Glossolalia(Meat for Tea Press) with Lillian Nećakov and Lauren Scharhag. Ferry is also an accomplished photographer. More of his poetry can be found at ferrypoetry.com.
THREE POEMS BY SCOTT FERRY
i ask
the ferryman for a map
of the underworld
he seems too busy
(wait, why am i in this boat?)
he turns back to me for a moment
and unzips the blistered seed of his face
and inside the endosperm
roots and batlungs flutter
his uvula buzzes
like a nest of wet wasps
and in the opening there is a light
which undoes light
i know now it is too late for
bargaining
the best i can manage
is obsolescence—
a few broken memories
signless streets faceless coins—
i enter gracefully
into the unbodied throat
as it sings off all of my
skin
i remember watching this documentary
on kirlian photography
when i was 8 or so
they took an electromagnetic
image of a leaf
and then cut off a section of it
shot another photo
and the second picture showed the mass
missing but the warm lightning
surrounding the amputation
still brilliant and connecting
the whole body in a string
of light
i didn’t know what to do with
this information which poured
out of the television
like a long lost song
i just knew it showed the grace
of our ghosts
even if broken still glorious
even if absent still
singing
Published in the journal A Thin Slice of Anxiety
poem written with eyes closed
flickers of light like a jesus face in a window
face of light the rest dark plumbing
pipes and wires in the walls of the body
not a bird but a cough braying in my throat
after the flu when i lie down i cough as if possessed
my son shines a light in my face like a priest
like a doctor forgiving the illness of age
he checks all of my openings with a flash
a night diver seeking gold in a drowned cathedral
he says you try and i impersonate a healer
then i tell him it is time to close his eyes
and i hear the pipes and wires of his body
reach toward the last flicker of light and curl
into a deep filamented shadow of blood orange
i see the window and him inside
his enclosures but the ghosts trickle
through his walls like birds
and he breathes a tide
through a poem
god
Published in the journal A Thin Slice of Anxiety
Daniel McGinn’s work has appeared in Meat For Tea, Silver Birch Press, The MacGuffin, Nerve Cowboy, Spillway, Misfit, and Anti-Heroin Chic along with numerous other magazines and anthologies. His chapbook, Drowning the Boy, won the James Tate Poetry Prize for 2021 and was published by SurVision in Dublin Ireland. Fill Me With Birds: a free verse conversation written with Scott Ferry was published by Meat For Tea in February, 2024. He has been married to the poet and painter Lori McGinn 47 years, and he received an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts at the age of 61.
THREE POEMS BY DANIEL MCGINN
Death by chocolate
He wanted to talk about the future
He took Death out for a cup of coffee
I assume you like yours black
He said to Death
Death said no
I’ll have a white chocolate mocha
with little marshmallows
floating on the top
Is that for here
the barista asked
Death said no
He’ll take it to go
Published in the chapbook Drowning the Boy (SurVision)
The Visitor
When you said soup was time I agreed. It is soup weather and I already made some.I was grateful that I had a stove and pan. I was grateful for the roof over our heads.When you told me you saw the sun begin to laugh as it shredded the trees, I looked out the kitchen window at the clouds and the rain and the leaf bodies decomposing on the lawn. I wish I had seen the sun laugh. I would love to be astonished. The clouds over arctic wind blew the birds away. It’s no accident that snow arrives in stacks. It piles silence upon silence on my picnic table and deck chairs. It looks beautiful. I pushed my hands into it and it stung me. I like the kind of silence I can keep to myself, but I grow weary of snow. It’s the kind of beauty that makes me feel numb. It's good you’re here. I made soup. It’s soup time. Sit down, eat, tell me about your day.
Published in Fill Me With Birds
Faces in the Cliffs
Some people don’t have regrets. I can’t relate
to those people. I never could. I regret mistakes
I made yesterday. I disappeared into rooming
houses and hitchhiked for a few years. My past
didn’t know where I was. I hoped it wouldn’t
find me. The past didn’t care about me. I was
grateful for whatever drugs fell into my hands.
I would take them all. There was a time when
I didn’t trust people who didn’t do drugs. I didn’t
trust people. I became narcissistic like church
people. Everything said to me was run through
a filter of belief and disbelief and if I had
swallowed too much I’d remind myself this was
only for the moment. I’d taken a drug and chose
to allow it to take me. There was a time when I
couldn’t function. I’m okay now. When you talk
about faces in the cliffs, it reminds me of voices
in my walls. When they were loud, mine was just
a whisper. I saw a lot of things and then I broke.
I walked off the job at the sandwich shop. I couldn’t
stop crying. I took a psychic break. It’s never been
easy to write about this. People who have never
been there tried to define it for me. What do they
know? They weren’t there. I can tell you I’m sober
now, in this moment. I’m a different person, having
children changed me. I’m grateful for that. Look
how fragile we are. Look how beautiful.
Published in the journal, Anti-Heroin Chic and Fill Me With Birds (Meat for Tea Press)
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