Two Poems in Poetry Quarterly

The Spring 2012 issue of Poetry Quarterly has been posted on-line, and two of my poems are in it:  "Outside the Abundant Life Chapel" and "The Food Truck." 

The Abundant Life Chapel is located in Charleston, West Virginia.  I was in Charleston in 2010 for a conference.  I was giving a workshop on a Sunday afternoon, and since I had no conference-related activities in the morning, I decided to attend meeting for worship at the Charleston Friends Meeting.  I arrived at the meetinghouse early, so decided to walk around a bit until others arrived to open the meetinghouse.  As I walked past the Abundant Life Chapel, the sound of gospel music flowed through the walls and the closed doors.  The bass was thumping a lively beat and it sounded like the congregation was rocking.  The impression stuck with me through the day; by that evening, I was writing out the words of the poem.

"The Food Truck" was inspired by the Hispanic food trucks that have appeared along the Route 1 corridor in Howard County, Maryland, where I live.  No doubt, they are elsewhere.  They can be found in industrial park parking lots, on the side of the road, and any location where Latinos may gather to eat, socialize, wait for work. I wanted to write something about them, but I was having trouble identifying the specific theme.  The reality of farmers in Mexico and Central America being forced out of farming by the flood of cheap American corn seemed the perfect backdrop for the poem, and the food truck operator became a farmer who had left his farm for better economic prospects in America.

The Spring 2012 issue of Poetry Quarterly is available at http://poetryquarterly.com/?page_id=7

Enjoy!

Up by Four More in the First Quarter

Well, the first quarter of 2012 has gone well!  In addition to the three poems published in The Copperfield Review, I just got word that I'll have two poems in issue # 4 of Symmetry Pebbles-- "Walking Along the River Fuji, the Poet Basho Finds a Child Abandoned by Its Parents" and "Patuxent River Story."  Although the word "river" in each poem's title suggests some symmetry, the two are quite different.  "Walking Along the River Fuji," consists of two tankas, with the whole poem inspired by a passage in Basho's "Records of a Weather-exposed Skeleton" in which Basho and his traveling companion come along a small child abandoned by its parents.  I've read Basho's book a couple times, but what struck me this last time was the matter-of-factness with which Basho leaves the child behind rather than taking it with him.  "Patuxent River Story" is from my U.S. Route 1 series, and is about the prostitutes that are pushed from one county to another in the Laurel, MD area.

I've also got two poems that will appear in an upcoming issue of Poetry Quarterly-- "The Food Truck," which also is part of my U.S. Route 1 series, and "Outside the Abundant Life Chapel," which draws upon a brief moment when I stopped outside the Abundant Life Chapel in Charleston, WV while walking to the Charleston Friends' (Quakers') Meeting.  Given how clearly I could hear the thumping bass while standing on the sidewalk, I can only imagine the amplitude of spirit that must have been present in the chapel.

You can find these poems here on my blog.  I'll post the links when the journals are published.

THE FOOD TRUCK

[Published in Poetry Quarterly, Spring 2012]

THE FOOD TRUCK


The immigrant in his food truck,
parked at the edge of the lot,
sells reminders of home--
pupusas, tamales, tortillas--
to hungry laborers coming off shifts,
or waiting for work in the morning light;
to men whose families wait back home
for the monthly remittance,
or the fee for the coyotes to bring them North.

His foods remind him
of the land he farmed
and the corn he grew,
like his ancestors,
long before the Spanish,
and before the flood
of cheap corn from America.

His farm is now a memory;
views of his fields replaced by
parking lots, construction sites,
and the faces of men like him,
looking for something to take them back home.

OUTSIDE THE ABUNDANT LIFE CHAPEL

[Published in Poetry Quarterly, Spring 2012]

OUTSIDE THE ABUNDANT LIFE CHAPEL


The congregants were rocking
in the spirit of the Lord
in the Abundant Life Chapel.

The Holy Ghost thudded out on the bass;
the Spirit thumped its saving grace,
out to the sidewalk
for all who have ears to hear.

And this poor sinner, passing by,
stopped, and was cleansed
in the sound waves of Glory,

before continuing down the road
to the meetinghouse
where the Quakers sat in worship,
silence slipping out to the street.

And the Spirit was there, too,
walking quietly in the morning Light.