The Houston Poetry Festival was a great event. This festival is the brain-child of Robert Clark. He and the steering committee did a great job of organizing the event. The only organizational difficulty was presented by Mother Nature. Some areas of Houston received as much as 7 inches of rain last Sunday, the last day of the Festival. So, it took some very determined and hardy souls to make it downtown to the Willow Street Pump Station for the reading.
I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the works of my fellow poets, although I had to leave early in order not to drive back in both a rainstorm and darkness. These poets included: Adamarie Fuller, Lillian Susan Thomas, and Maria Illich. If they have Websites, I have not been able to find them to link to them, but I encourage you to dig around and try to find works by these women. Also reading that afternoon were: Bradley Earl Hoge, Christopher Carmona, Angélique Fuller, and Garrett Middaugh.
The Festival produces an anthology each year with one poem by each of the participating poets. The anthology included the poem below that I wrote in 2010. This poem has also been published in Red River Review.
ON LEARNING MY SISTER HAS CANCER
I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the works of my fellow poets, although I had to leave early in order not to drive back in both a rainstorm and darkness. These poets included: Adamarie Fuller, Lillian Susan Thomas, and Maria Illich. If they have Websites, I have not been able to find them to link to them, but I encourage you to dig around and try to find works by these women. Also reading that afternoon were: Bradley Earl Hoge, Christopher Carmona, Angélique Fuller, and Garrett Middaugh.
The Festival produces an anthology each year with one poem by each of the participating poets. The anthology included the poem below that I wrote in 2010. This poem has also been published in Red River Review.
ON LEARNING MY SISTER HAS CANCER
The winter sun
illuminates the dead grass
paints the elm’s branches
onto the cottage wall
tumors discovered
Bird song—somewhere—
rises into the morning air.
Are the feathered ones as
glad as I am to see the snow
has gone?
not just colon
also
liver
We used to look out
our father’s study window
at the birds who came to
the ancient linden tree:
oriole, tanager, jay
anemia, the tumor bleeds,
and, in the lab, the blood speaks
for the lesioned liver
There were no grackles there,
no shiny trick birds with
iridescent feathers whose
sound rasped against the ear,
but they roost here now, close,
in my own yard
we have promised
each other
prayer, hope, a
shared battle
There was Light then, working
its way through linden leaves,
window panes and onto
young faces looking out.
There is Light now. Even the
grackles know this and
croak their praise.
*******
Copyright Ysabel de la Rosa, All rights reserved.
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