By james art 
The Louisiana Book Festival is held every October. Last weekend the festival celebrated its 20th anniversaryth year. I have been invited several times to present my poetry. Festival organizers make authors feel special by throwing them a party at the state library the night before the book festival, which features hundreds of panels and presentations. Events are held at the state capitol building in Baton Rouge, the state library and in tents on the mall grounds. There’s something so fun, almost mischievous, about throwing a library party with food, drinks, and a jazz band. Authors and guests take over the place with plates of shrimp and bamboo shoots and wine glasses in hand and mingle among the piles.
Thanks to poet Gina Ferrara, I had the pleasure of reading at the New Orleans Poetry Buffet, a series as old as the Louisiana Book Festival. I first read at the Poetry Buffet series 12 years ago with poet Kelly Harris-DeBerry. Kelly now has an 11-year-old daughter who is an author herself. The middle schooler wrote a picture book, My father needs a presentfor her father in need of a kidney transplant. One day the young author may become a transplantologist and I can boast that I knew her before she was born.
While next week brings something to hopefully end the election anxiety I’ve been feeling, it also brings more local poetry in the form of the Blue Whale series, featuring two past poet laureates: Emma Trelles and Enid Osborne in Wednesday, November 13 and the Poetry Aloud Competition in Santa Maria on the 14thth. November is also my birthday. In addition to my poetry duties, you can find me singing, dancing and playing music. On Saturday I will be playing guitar songs with the Ladies Social Strumming Club at the Farmers Market at 11am. Come and say hello.
Upcoming poetry events:
Nov. 10, Poetry Zone Open Mic in Karpeles Manuscript Library Backyard, 1:30 p.m.
Nov. 13, Blue Whale Series, Enid Osborne and Emma Trelles, Santa Barbara Unity Chapel, 227 E. Arellaga Street, 5:30 p.m.
Nov. 14, Poetry Out Loud, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., Joseph Centeno Beteravia Government Administration Building, Santa Maria.
November 14, Poetry Book Club, discussion by Claudia Rankin Don’t let me be lonely at Timbre Books in Ventura, 1910 E. Main Street, 6:30-7:30 p.m.
November 16, Writing in the Galleries Poet and UC Santa Barbara professor Rick Benjamin leads the poetry workshop at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2-3:30 p.m.
This week’s Poetry Connection poems are from Santa Barbara-based poet Susan Chiavelli.
Susan Chiavelli is the recipient of the Chattahoochee Review Lamar York Non-Fiction Award for “Death, Another Side” aka Notable Essay by The Best American Essays. Her award-winning prose and poetry have been published in The Los Angeles Review, SALT, Miramar, San Pedro River Review, The Packinghouse Reviewseveral Voices from the Shoreline anthologies and elsewhere. Susan was born and raised in Seattle and now lives on the edge of Rattlesnake Canyon in Santa Barbara.
Wild turkeys from Las Canoas
By Susan Chiavelli
After you cross the stone bridge
around the overhanging sycamore trees
the bend where the old mule hangs
his big brown head—mounted
trophy with sad eyes.
This is where the turkeys go
so often there must be a sign.
Crossing Turkey.
Imagine it there next to the oak tree.
Stop for the cat and his chickens
and their Jakes and Jennies.
Wait for the whole shining band
to pass as they staggered to the creek
and what do they remember – acorns and lizards
and berries, maybe some golden corn
if the owner of the mule is feeling nice.
No matter how fast you are, be grateful
for a reason to delay. Be grateful
for a reason to stop. Look in the eyes
to something else, something ancient.
See how iridescent feathers are reflected
their story – the brown of the acorn,
the green of a lizard, the red of a berry.
Fall under the spell and give thanks.
This poem first appeared in San Pedro Rover Review, Vol. 10 No. 2, Fall 2018
I need a poem for my mother’s funeral
By Susan Chiavelli
“although I still dream of it someday
we will be together again in one body’
— The Sonnets of Hades, Edward Hirsch
Mother, since your sudden death I have been traveling
back to the mythical place
from my childhood, in search of the unspoken.
Here the lake light casts its silver net
of memory—grabs me in and out of time.
You’re the ghost, but I haunt these places.
I came in search of comfort – the names
on familiar streets, presence of crying
hemlock and cedar, the sight of homes
in which we once lived, now dream houses painted
the wrong colors and full of offenders.
Our old department store — now a bookstore.
The same escalator I used to ride in my teenage years
lifts me up through a remembered light
and now I’m falling, falling up
through a rabbit hole where time dissolves
where all my girlish dreams appear as curiosity –
tainted by endless desire.
Here, in a reincarnated bookstore, I see
the past lives of wearing dummies
the fashion of my youth—vintage now.
Mother, you were just on this street cooking dinner,
boiling potatoes, beating heart, blurring steam
the kitchen window turned into a mist you couldn’t see out of
my future to the end, he couldn’t see me lost
in a maze of bestsellers and self-help –
lost in my own mythology, hidden from you.
In this space, I once tried on prom dresses
I couldn’t afford it and I can still see my reflection
in the three-sided mirror they disappear into infinity.
On the other side of the mirror I find
poetry. The tower of bookshelves and the light
is dim and hushed like a church.
There, a thin black spine.
There is no reason for this book to be caught
my eye among the brighter covers,
but it shines. I choose it or it chooses
I in the ancient art of bibliomancy.
Remove the darkness.
The pages open to the sonnets of Hades,
and we read together – my younger self and I,
her reflection in blue satin tripled in the mirrors.
The poem speaks the language of grief –
crushed pomegranates, plucked poppies,
wild, gushing hearts.
Mother, you couldn’t save me
of the broken silver cord,
from the darkness that consumes us all.
