Note: These are not the better lines, but the thoughts that were part of the poems.
In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.
Jeffrey DeLotto, Texas Wesleyan University
“Geckos on the Bathroom Screen”
Each summer they come…
moth
soft-bellied fly
quiet
claws hooked
leans forward and lashes back
“Ebb Tide Quiet”
an old gray…
egrets
sank into the sand
a child upon his knee
braving the march of days
unnumbered ties
nibbling mice
Two modern versions of dramatic monologue…
Can I show him how to catch a fish, guaranteed?
always got a bucket on the boat
magic soup
heavy squall
down in the Keys
Hatteras hole there
built the superstructure on site
I was in the bottle more than not.
I saw Jean.
I quit the bottle. She didn’t tell me to. She just looked so disappointed.
Don’t make it happen. It will, in its time.
Jean told me about the cancer.
Smiling like she knew something.
Canadian Club. See these hands? They were clocks.
2300 hours.
That bottle still looking at me.
I came to see that day…
smell the hand of God in everything.
Jean was right.
flashing by in the night
words of feeling
Another one of my marina dramatic monologues
“Gilbert”
flat plastic box, saffron like gold
boiling water, smell the steam rising
sloop–them your kids?
Catalina
mince shallots real fine
I was trained. Culinary school with a sous chef…
braised asparagus
just working in town, she thinks she can say whatever
fixed his action… Then they put me in for a while.
You see these thick eyes?
Deglaze the stock.
Strain it through this old tee shirt.
smell that saffron
Corbin Lockmiller, Tarrant County College NE; UT Arlington
apologize for the delay– You would think it would be easier to get around in a building shaped like a box.
Began with a recitation of TS Eliot.
filled with fancies
men in bits of paper
world by the cold wind
in and out of unwholesome lungs
Three Strings
songs of the fate as they are sewing
unbind them
sewers sing
needles stitching in between the lines
romance
remember Marlowe
through brine, fire, and sleepless weather
stretching everywhere
youth and all
himself I saw
tows the lines together
pass the bottle
Conrad dead
dreamt I climbed a ladder
how much farther?
spat fire
spittle slipped from his chin
pillaring flames
scraping claw
burning the fate of lines
blood said burn
Questions:
Where did you get that?
JD- had a sabbatical, wanted my wife to go with me, we sold the house, took our two young children
CL- reading Conrad
commonality in both poems
Brother Ray (JD) phoenix of his own sort