Frank Dixon Graham, Lawrence Dinkins, Rebecca Morrison

Frank Graham, Lawrence Dinkins, Rebecca Morrison

 

Monday, Oct. 12 at 7:30 PM

SPC at 1719 25th Street

Host: Bob Stanley

fdg

Currently the Editor-in-Chief of Tule Review, and a poetry editor for Pitkin Review, Frank Dixon Graham has organized poetry events and workshops all over Northern California. An activist for Social Justice, Frank has been a force in the Sacramento poetry community for many years. He leads a popular poetry class at McClatchy Library, and has published a number of chapbooks, including Out on the Reach, (2011). Frank earned an MFA in poetry from Goddard College in Washington State. He and his wife Kym live in Sacramento.

Magnolia Blossom

You read to your child, poems,

picture books, the way the scent

of a magnolia blossom fills the room.

Midnight the fountain is alight,

swans curl around the water.

The long neck of the mother

tells stories to her cygnets –

each page a drop, each book a pond.

Your hand around her hand,

her head upon your chest,

a life outside your lives never exists.

There is no other imagined place.

Poet NSAA

Lawrence Dinkins (NSAA) is one of Sacramento’s finest poets and performers of poetry, as well as one of our region’s most active citizens when it comes to supporting poetry programs. NSAA hosts third Wednesdays at Mahogany Urban Poets at Queen Sheba Restaurant; he co-hosts the Third Thursday Poetry event (with Mary Zeppa) at the Central Library, and he has fostered numerous creative programs, such as Coffee and Poets at The Naked Lounge, a podcast interview of and by local poets, and Poet vs. Band at the North Laguna Library. Poetry in Davis called him a “dynamic and expressive Sacramento poet whose poems attack injustice and inhumanity.” One of his recent collections is a combination of poetry and art, published by little m press, called Open Mic Sketchbook.

 

The Gospel of Gun

Adam Lanza kills 20 school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, 

Connecticut Friday Dec, 14, 2012

 

Behold an American gospel

 

Bullets are the Holy Spirit

Guns are Jesus

Gun-makers are God

 

Bullets fly through the air, meant to be felt not seen

Spewing from guns like sermons

Delivered like Moses’ stone tablets from the mount

 

Delivered into the hands of disgruntled, mal-adjusted

Prophets–who lay waste to common places like

John the Baptist wondering through the wilderness

 

We worship the trinity as one

Bullets, guns, gun-makers

We dare not blaspheme

 

It is an old church

A church of old white men

The Order of Obsession of Protection

 

Protection of land from uprising immigrants

Protection from hooded black boys

Protection of unspoken, between-the-lines rights

 

The innocent that are chosen in blood

Should count themselves lucky

To hear the cry of God themselves in the flesh

 

“From these cold dead hands”

An evangelist warns from the pulpit

Of the convocation of rifles

 

How dare politicians try to

Crucify Christ anew

By taking his steel flesh away from us

 

It is our right to hold Jesus close

In gun holsters, on hips, unconcealed

Where the holy spirit awaits ready to split the red sea

 

Why not spread this gospel to inner-cities

Why not to the home front

Why not to other countries drowning in violence

—cheaply like Gideon bibles

 

All should hear of its nine-miller-meter good news

All should hold its semi-automatic wonder

All should feel free to reload

imgres

Rebecca Morrison is the editor of eskimopie.net, publishing poetry, art and prose since 2002. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of California. She divides her time between France and California. She curates the Literary Lectures series at the Sacramento Poetry Center and will soon open an art gallery in France which will feature shows and readings by American and French artists and poets. She has published six chapbooks including her most recent book of haikus about France, 92 Berrichon Haiku, which is available on Amazon.com and will be available at the reading for $5.

The Women of Putah Creek

to Break into

the night

with a handful of women

pushing down the fence

dredging up the past

at Putah Creek

flooded our eyes

with her story

alive.

We saw

the creek split past

the family of her body

the town of her eyes

filled with living ghosts

as a bat circled by.

At twilight

we could almost see

the funeral pyre

mother and child

just beneath

the empty reservoir.

Patwin bones

lining the labyrinth of the past

this maze of time

flowing like the creek

across the valley

as night settled

like the Spanish ranchers

(I like this place,

I think I’ll stay)

on the oak-studded land.

We poets,

the Chinese laborers,

dig with our shovels

in the sand,

unveiling ghosts

to make new paths

for the flow of humanity

which rushes by

incessantly

like a freeway

into the night.

Previous post:

Next post: