Mary Mackey and Sharon Coleman
Mon. Nov. 28 at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street
Host: Tim Kahl
Mary Mackey was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. After receiving her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, she moved to California to become Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). She is married to Angus Wright, CSUS Emeritus Professor of Environmental Studies, with whom she frequently travels to Brazil. Mackey’s published works include six volumes of poetry (Split Ends, One Night Stand, Skin Deep, The Dear Dance of Eros, Breaking the Fever, and Sugar Zone); a short novel (Immersion—the first novel published by a Second Wave feminist press); and twelve other novels (McCarthy’s List, Doubleday; The Last Warrior Queen, Putnam; A Grand Passion, Simon & Schuster; Season of Shadows, Bantam; The Kindness of Strangers, Simon & Schuster;The Year The Horses Came, Harper San Francisco; The Horses at the Gate, Harper San Francisco; The Fires of Spring, Penguin, The Stand In, Kensington Books; Sweet Revenge, Kensington Books; The Notorious Mrs. Winston, Berkley Books; andThe Widow’s War, Berkley books.) Her two comic novels (The Stand In and Sweet Revenge) were written under the pen name “Kate Clemens.” Mackey, an Emeritus Professor of English, retired from California State University in 2008.
Sugar Zone
Sempre me amedrontou I have always
been afraid tankers strung out along the horizon
like a necklace of black
seeds a idéia de ter um filho of the idea
of having a child let’s get drunk
on cachaça forget her outstretched
hands her face the delicate angle of her nose
her children selling candy roses cor de pedras
color of stones amethyst, emerald, diamond
all day the tankers come and go the mill grinds
barefoot men and women cut
and cut
for a whole week I missed Solange
Durante uma semana mes equeci
then clarity for three days
limpeza limpeza
they sleep on the
black and white tiles that wind beneath our feet
steal the food off our plates
We eat behind fences
the ticks drop off the
trees and settle between our cold beer
and cashews plastic straws blow down the beach
like transparent wands a ciudade só voltarava a existir
depois de 20 de janeiro (this city has only existed
since the 20th of January) for twenty minutes we
stood in the deserted street
figuei olhando looking
for something
no longer
there
Sharon Coleman‘s poetry has appeared in Caesura, Criminal Class Review, SPARKLE BLINK, Try!, The Walrus, Syllogism, Berkeley Poetry Review, Ghost Town/Pacific Review, North Coast Literary Review, Blink Ink, Folio, and online at Full of Crow and Dark Sky Magazine. She’s a contributing editor at Poetry Flash. She teaches poetry writing and composition at Berkeley City College. She is also a co-curator with MK Chavez and Tomas Moniz of the reading series Lyrics & Dirges in Berkeley. She has also been a member of the Northern California Book Reviews since 2005.
Year of the Horse
Your hip, a heavy-bodied arch in moonlight,
my arms pass over, press to this bare chest.
I slide over the curve, eyes round, ears alert.
By noon our hands thicken working wild
soil into our dusk of a chosen domesticity—
your hip, a heavy-bodied arch in moonlight,
By dawn our throats thirst for tea steaming
from mint leaves that escape blackberry roots.
I slide from your curve, eyes round, ears alert.
Now far from fields veined in clay and human ash,
we leave a thought in each shoot we plant—
your hip, a heavy-bodied arch in daylight,
An army manual warns that for every ten percent
of a people killed, seventy years of grief. I slide
over our curve of time, eyes round, ears alert.
This year we plant raspberries, and wonder
what it could mean to predate the wheel.
Your hip, an unharnessed arch in moonlight,
I slide over your curve, eyes round, ears alert.
