Now Back to Your Irregularly Scheduled Poetry News (Awards Season, continued)

Fantastic news for two dynamic, genre-busting artists.

Congratulations to the 2008 Whiting Writers Awards. I know the work of two of the winners, playwright Dael Orlandersmith (her play Yellowman), and fiction writer Manuel Muñoz, whose beautiful and moving short story collection The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue was a finalist for last year's Lambda Literary Award.

Especial congratulations, however, to my friend Doug Kearney (I'm using a blurry 'action photo' of DK on purpose here, because he and his work truly has to be seen/experienced to be fully appreciated). This well deserved award is the perfect end to a somewhat difficult year for him. Happy, Happy/Joy Joy, boy-ee

Three poems by Doug with must hear mp3 audio from Mipoesias

Good news also for Poet and sound collagest Latasha Natasha Nevada Diggs, who has recently recived an Individual Artist Grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She, also is an artist who needs to be seen and heard to be fully appreciated (Hear her Live at the Knitting Factory here). Both are doing fantastic work that pushes the envelope of sound and poetry both on the page and in performance. It's a thrill to see them getting much deserved support.


Shadowboxer On The Lookout
(Doug Kearney)

they wait for me to turn my back
leave something open they’ll climb in
sooty fingerprints staining drums
push past my dead bolts window
bars chain raise heavy fists
make my home tremble
* * * *
sunday a woman screams
loud enough to stun a cab someone
runs in the street his voice
a flare undershirt blood
his woman all over his hands
it could have been me both of them
* * * *
smoke on the corner
shadows on the porch
niggers in the street
* * * *
. . . broke into a million pieces luck already
bad as it can get now’s no time to stare at
mirrors they’re out there I better . . .
* * * *
nigger eyes rifle through me like some wallet
war drums batter their radios ribcages
swollen with nicotine tough talk I cross

the street

(from Fear, Some, Red Hen Press, 2006)



blank cassette
(Latasha Nevada Diggs)

you showcase the worst of summer
by noon the forest details your scorch
I taste the battery from your match alone, I chase the hum of helicopters. make a melody from the evoke of hum
alone, I sing blue lakes’ dinleave me a rock with some seed. leave me a drop or more.
my name is whyI am here in pink carpenters and ashy palms
while rain purees the soot
I pelican from couch to window

make a melody from the evoke of hum

leave me rocks with some seed. leave me a drop or more
my name is whythe creek keeps me in pulse an elegy for peppery char
I whisper leave me something something
the volcanic rocks are everywhere.

my terrain dead soon newborns.leave me rocks with some seed. leave me a drop or more
my name is whyyou last whispered a sorrel refrain
I forgot to press record

first published in Semantikon, Vol 3, Version 4, March 2005, reprinted (with audio) on the glorious From The Fishouse