The Papalote Travelling Poetry Circus

Had a little trouble streaming with WMP (Microsoft spelled backwards spells dog) had to switch over to more blotware, Quicktime. Anyway, streamed Frieda’s reading to most of Aztlan and then some. I heard from some people that the video stream was like two feet faster than the speed of light, and then others said, “Where the hell is it?”

For you Austin poetry affected-aniados Frieda will be reading this coming Saturday night at Koko’s Koffee Kshop, just a few blocks from Mt. Bonnell.
She looks hot in those leather pants, no, no, she looks hot in those leather pants. Mr. Bones fell all over her, no, no, I mean he fell all over her, he tripped on the stage, the big dumby. Frieda was embarrassed for him, somebody had to be! Also, be forewarned, Mr. Bones, Henry, me and my new girlfriend, Miss Betty Hass (picture later) will be taking the buckboard up to Austin. Expect delays on I35, you crazy Austin drivers---we’ll be in the fast lane going twenty. Here’s a poem by Frieda.
Birds

The poet as a penguin
Sat in his snow-cold, nursing
The egg his wife had left him.

There it was, born of them both,
Like it or not. Rounded in words,
And cracking open its shell for a voice.

In the blizzard,
Beaten up from the arctic flats
Were the audience.
From the glass extensions
Of their eyes, they watched
The skuas rise on the updraft,

Every snap of their beaks
Like the tick of a knitting needle,
Hitching a stitch in the wait

For a rolling head.

copyright by Frieda Hughes.

Also reading will be the elusive but fantastic Chicana Poet Rebecca Gonzales(she’s a knockout!). Read em and weep, you creeps!

Withholding Evidence

Like a probing jealous lover,
x-rays drill through my pelvis.

I hold my breath.
withholding pictures
of you taking root in me,
you and me in every conceivable way.

In a second it finds me innocent,
shows me smug evidence,
black-and-white absolute:
nothing but held-together bones,
not even touching in spaces
that are a hollow cry.

I smile a quiet victory,
knowing it isn’t always so.

copyright by Rebecca Gonzales
from the book Slow Work To The
Rhythm Of Cicadas.