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The DitchRider's Blog – November 2009 Archive (5)

The Sunday Poem: Jessica Lopez... Custody

It is a nicer restaurant: tablecloths & steak knives. Over in the corner, a couple and their daughter sit quietly.

Jessica Helen Lopez is a Poetry and Creative Writing Teacher/NM History Instructor at Robert F. Kennedy Charter High School. She is a former member of 2006 and 2007 City of Albuquerque Slam Team and the 2008 National Champion UNM Lobo Slam Team. She is currently a member of the writing collective and performance troupe… Continue

Added by The DitchRider on November 29, 2009 at 8:00am — 15 Comments

The Sunday Poem: Todd Moore... instructions

A gun barrel, 70 words, 37 lines. This skinny poem looks like a coffin nail, a phallic gesture, a rush to death, or the passage of Time itself. But along its narrow length are 37 little framed pictures clicking by as you drop down the page.

"When I read a poem I want it to be something that could scalp me and leave me for dead. I want it to be suffused with the beauty of language and the power of murder. I want it to own me every time I… Continue

Added by The DitchRider on November 22, 2009 at 7:33am — 5 Comments

The Sunday Poem: Lisa Gill... Red as a Lotus: Letters to a Dead Trappist, XVI & XIX

In his Seeds of Contemplation, Catholic monk Thomas Merton wrote, "The purpose of a book of meditations is to teach you how to think and not to do your thinking for you." Living alone in a trailer next to an alfalfa field, Lisa Gill wrote back. Red as a Lotus consists of 100 poems dedicated to Merton, who died in 1968.

Like life,… Continue

Added by The DitchRider on November 15, 2009 at 7:00am — 8 Comments

The Sunday Poem: Merimee Moffitt... The Seco Bar, 1973

It takes a special kind of poet to write a great poem about a bar. The only other ones that come to mind are The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Face on the Barroom Floor. Hang on to your hats and ponytails! And watch out for flying shot glasses! For you… Continue

Added by The DitchRider on November 8, 2009 at 8:00am — 11 Comments

The Sunday Poem: Rich Boucher... Please have Pity on these People; They are From the Past

Irony and humor are not the tools of every poet. But here Rich Boucher wears them like six-guns in this look into American history and how it is viewed.

A past member of five national poetry slam teams (Team Worcester, MA 1995 & 1996, Team Washington, DC in 2001, Team Wilmington, DE in 2007 and Team Albuquerque, NM in 2008), Rich has published four chapbooks of poetry and for seven years hosted an open reading and slam in Newark,… Continue

Added by The DitchRider on November 1, 2009 at 7:30am — 15 Comments