Poet To Speak in Erie

Oh, the things I do when people ask! Listen up literate citizens of Erie:  the poet Yuyutsu Sharma is coming to give a reading at the Poets' Hall tomorrow (I don't know) at 3 p.m. The other reading will be 7 p.m. Tuesday at Gannon University.

I would go if I lived in Erie, but my lifelong goal was to leave, so. I do encourage you to go, however. You can read more in the Erie Reader interview with Sharma, who is oddly my friend on Facebook. ? 

A poem of his, to close with:  

Temple, London (For Maggie Hindley)

Wind howled

like the trumpet of a fierce Kali

rushed in through 

the Temple Tube Station 

to slap my face

to smother the flame 

of my breath

and blind my vision 

as I soared

floating up the steely slope

of the escalators

in spirit of reaching 

a hillside shrine

that our goddesses

always prefer to live on.

Once up

out of the Station

in the freezing cold 

as I exerted to push 

my overcoat up 

my shaking frame 

I saw her there

on the wet pavement 

out alone in the open 

with a swollen black eye

and an issue of The Big Issue 

held like a trophy, 

a sacrificial rooster

against her sagging breast.