LIVE
Linda Scheller and Gary Thomas
Saturday September 10 at 4:00 PM
The Library of Musiclandria
1219 S Street
Sacramento, CA
Linda Scheller is the author of two books of poetry, Fierce Light (FutureCycle Press, 2017) and Wind and Children (Main Street Rag, 2022) as well as a chapbook, Halcyon. Her poetry, plays, and book reviews are published in more than 80 international journals and anthologies including Colorado Review, Poem, On the Seawall, Notre Dame Review, Terrain, Poetry East, Wisconsin Review, Plays, and Hawai’i Pacific Review. Recent honors include prizes in the Catherine Cushman Leach Poetry Competition and the California Federation of Chapparal Poets Contest, finalist for the Barrow Street Book Award and the Word Works Washington Prize, Editor’s Choice Award from Arkana, and nominations for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize. Her website is lindascheller.com.
The Examination
Heads bent over papers,
my students sit hunched and silent
like a cloud of butterflies
forced to earth. Their music
is stilled, faces pulled down
in unnatural gravity as if
the premonition of age
had visited them,
coating their wings.
Gary Thomas taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven —— sharing and discussing at least one poem every day with his students. He has presented poetry workshops for statewide organizations, festivals, and conferences. He has had poems published in In the Grove and The Comstock Review, among others, and in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is currently vice president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, a member of the Curriculum Study Commission and of the local writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.
All the Thinking Is About (after Robert Hass’ “Meditations at Lagunitas”)
All the old thinking is about the night
you figured you would not outlive,
that shame you would never put right,
the damage beyond any dawn’s darning.
All the next thinking is about amends
you feared to make to those who might
not forgive, might stare into you and see
who you were, but you know you must try.
All the thinking in this instant is about
what is needed: barely more than breath,
not quite clever enough yet to form full
sentences, but willing, and without regret.