Curator:
Corporeal Poetry Exhibit, National Poetry Month 2024
Cindy Ellen Hill
Assistant Curator:
Olivia Dumont
Design and Installation Team:
Nora Swan
Bianca Zanella
Leigh Harder
Dan Close
Poetry Society of Vermont Executive Council 2024-2025:
Executive Officers:
President: Robyn Joy
Vice President/Recording Secretary: Maggie Eaton
Executive Secretary: David Hartnett
Treasurer: Buffy Aakaash
Web Manager/Archivist: Elizabeth McCarthy
Appointed Officers:
Membership/Subscription Chair: Jennifer Brown
Editor of The Mountain Troubadour: Erika Nichols-Frazer
Contests Co-Chairs: Juliana Anderson & Kristine Korman
Past President: Bianca Amira Zanella
Poetry Society of Vermont
https://poetrysocietyofvermont.org
Welcome
Welcome to the 2024 Poetry Society of Vermont’s Corporeal Poetry Exhibit. This exhibit may be the first of its kind in the world a celebration of the exact point of intersection between poetry and art.
The exhibit came into being through the entanglement of three threads:
The first thread was the observation that the urge to embody, transform, and express experiences and emotions as "art" is a pan-genre phenomenon. So many of my friends are writer/artists, writer/musicians, musician/artists, or all three.
The second thread was the thought that our urge to merge lyric with art, much like the merger of lyric with music, creates a fusion which is both greater than the separate entities object and word and closer to its point of origin, both within the artist/poet's being, and within the the story of humanity and communication. Our words grow from a much older wordlessness within us, a place in which humans lived so close to one another that words were not necessary. The image and essence of our ideas sprout first, and only then do we attach the bloom of words to them. Corporeal poetry reifies that process.
The the third thread was as a pressure valve for my rebellious, anti-establishment nature. I am very much a Luddite. The more I am pressured to accept digital technology, social media, corporate algorithms, AI, three-ring-circus politics, war, climate change, extinction, and the inescapable onslaught of plastic which has saturated our blood and our breastmilk the more I want, need, crave, authentic, one-of-a-kind, handmade art and literature produced by real people who I can talk to in person.
I noticed how many fellow Vermont poets were exercising creativity in this authentic one-of-a-kind mode: poems on birchbark, in paintings, in embroidery. I did a straw poll on the Vermont Poets Facebook page as to what we should call this kind of poem-object fusion. The name “Corporeal Poetry” won. Once we had named and recognized this form, I knew I had to put out a call for us to come together, share, and explore. I trust you will agree with me that it was all worthwhile.
Cindy Hill, Curator Poetry Society of Vermont Corporeal Poetry Exhibit 2024B.AMORE
West Rutland, Vermont/Boston, Massachusetts ****
B. Amore is an artist, writer and founder of the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center. She has spent her life between Italy and the America. Awards include Fulbright and Mellon Fellowships, public art commissions in US and Japan, and the Lifeline exhibit at Ellis Island. Her books include Journeys on the Wheel published by Bordighera Press, An Italian American Odyssey: Through Ellis Island and Beyond, Art by Mexican Farmworkers in Vermont, Carving Out a Dream. Art and poetry reviews appear in Sculpture magazine, Art New England, and various journals. Her art and writing reflect her interest in migration, transnationalism and globalization. Website: www.bamore.com
Gallery Affiliations: Atlantic Works Gallery, Boston Sculptors Gallery, SOHO20 Gallery
Holding Life: found glove archivally preserved, branch, acrylic, wood, poem
My current art work and writing explore memory, the layered nature of existence and the relationship between human perception and history, both in the near and distant past. I work with what I find on the street combined with found gloves which I am cold casting in bronze with patina. I often integrate these with faces printed on silk, which I’ve photographed on street corners in different cities around the globe. My work celebrates the connections between us. We are one human family. In both the private work and public commissions, my hope is to affirm this spirit.
CINSE BONINO
Middlebury, Vermont
Cinse, a former professor with a background in the psychology of human learning, writes nonstop, and is addicted to capturing the human experience in words. She also makes art with all kinds of markers and found objects, sometimes combining her images with poetry to invite others to explore the weirdness of our shared human condition. cinse.bonino@gmail.com
Rubbing Me the Wrong Way
This piece speaks to how some people offer us gifts or even profess affection as they try to seduce us into acting the way they want us to, instead of encouraging us to be our authentic selves. Sometimes the “roses” offered to us have “thorns” we don’t notice.
ANNA CAREY
South Burlington, Vermont
Anna Carey lives in Burlington and loves the collaboration of poetry and collage: its multiple possibilities for overlap of sounds, colors, interpretations. She coordinates a monthly poetry workshop for close readings of contemporary poets at http://nereadersandwriters.com/ Her leavening agents are her two sons and 3 year old grandson.
Throughout my life I have been drawn to drawing ‘things’ together. As a family doctor I have coordinated mind and body to enhance one’s health. In my collaboration of collage and poetry, I overlap and synthesize colors, textures, shapes and angles to enhance word images, sounds and interpretations.
DAN CLOSE
South Burlington, Vermont
Lines Written Upon A Strip of White Birchbark and La Barque are the result of a visit from my friend Dave Hough, an artist from St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. The two of us were wandering at the verge of the woods in my backyard where a recent windstorm had left some scattered peelings of birchbark. Dave picked one up. So did I. Both poems are the results of that day's pickin's.
Dan Close lives and writes poetry and prose from his home in South Burlington. He is a member of the Poetry Society of Vermont and the South Burlington Public Library Poetry Group. His latest book of poetry is entitled "The Night the Moon Went Sailing..". In 2014, his historical novel The Glory of the Kings, set in Ethiopia in 1896, received the 2014 Best In Fiction award from Peace Corps Writers. His other books include Song of Quebec, The Bold MacGregor, What the Abenaki Say About Dogs, and A Year on the Bus.
The Secret is a bit of a mystery – as well it’s meant to be.
RALPH CULVER
South Burlington, Vermont
The framed broadside of Ralph Culver's poem Signed Self-portrait: February is hand-set letterpress by Chickadee Chaps & Broads at May Day Studio in Montpelier and printed in 2013; it is illustrated by Vermont artist Gabriel Tempesta. The piece was the first in a series of Chickadee poetry broadsides, and Culver's poem was selected through a competition judged by Vermont emeritus poet laureate Sydney Lea. The broadside was issued in a limited-edition set of 60 prints, each numbered and signed by the poet.
Ralph Culver arrived in Vermont in 1970 from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to do his undergraduate studies at Goddard College, and then pretty much stayed. His most recent poetry collection is A Passable Man (2021), and he expects to have a new book in 2024. He lives in South Burlington.
VESNA DYE
Burlington, Vermont/Croatia
Images of My Homeland hand-dyed fabric, paper
JULIA FONTE
Poultney, Vermont
Julia H. Fonte met poetry on a recent winter afternoon, her passion emerging without warning. She lives with her husband on old Vermont farmland and finds inspiration in the wildness surrounding her home as well as from her experiences as a nurse. Her work is forthcoming in The Mountain Troubadour.
This poem was inspired by my husband’s favorite pastime – being outdoors, especially in the woods, which he has a deep attachment to. I began thinking about our need to own what has been in this natural world way before we came along and will remain long after we leave. I wrote this for him.
I wanted this corporeal piece to be quite small, with the poem blended into it, not standing out, so I chose to place the poem in the “meadow” that the woods “mingle” with. This results in the reader having to be right up close to pick the poem, like wildflowers, out of the meadow. For those who may have difficulty with this, here is the typed version:
My Woods
sing with streams, mingle with meadows and surround a marsh with silence.
Understory still sleeps in the earth’s attic beneath a quilt of soggy leaves.
My woodland is nurtured by whatever the skies bestow and by what it sucks through its roots, like a child with a straw, as I saunter on paths worn over two hundred years. Before that, this lushness was pathless, though light feet may have passed through without a thought of ownership.
My woods are not mine after all. They are ancient and independent, allowing me to live exactly as I wish.
JANET GREEN
Burlington, Vermont
Janet E. Green born May 9, 1942 in the old Mary Fletcher Hospital, went to Adams School and BHS on South Union St, then Smith College and Emory University. She lived in Alacant, Spain from 1972-1987 and have lived in Burlington and Colchester since then. She has been writing poetry since 1999 and drawing or painting for many years.
My husband, John G. Morden, died August 31, 2020 of complications from a broken hip. In spite of COVID regulations, I was able to spend the last 3 days of his life with him at Burlington Health and Rehab and felt I had to remember how he looked those last days. I did sketches of him during those days and finished the drawings from a few photos I took. I wrote the poems off and on during those last days. Shortly after John died, I decided to put the poems and drawings together. I taped the poems to the drawings with surgical tape, the same kind of tape that attached tubes to his body.
LEIGH HARDER
East Middlebury, Vermont
Leigh Gavin Harder lives in Middlebury, VT where she writes poetry and makes art. She is an avid gardener and outdoors person who finds inspiration in the world around her. Themes of light, energy and impermanence surface in much of her written and visual work. She recently completed a poetry manuscript and has had several pieces published locally. Her visual art is in collections throughout the U.S. and in England. If you are interested in learning more please contact her at Leighsgh@gmail.com
In the Year of the Wood Dragon is a combination of written word and visual art, created as a collage. The poem captures a sense of the unveiling as winter shifts to early spring. The poem was written near the time of the Chinese New Year and references the Year of the Wood Dragon, an auspicious year which may bring good luck our way! The collage is created out of mosaic like pieces of alcohol ink paintings, pieced together to create a feeling of spring's softness. The black limbs of suggested tree branches are an allusion to the beauty and minimalism of Asian watercolors. There are ghost leaves made of vellum on those branches, suggesting what may come but is not yet visible.
KATHLEEN MCKINLEY HARRIS
Charlotte, Vermont
Kathleen McKinley Harris is author of the poetry chapbook Earth Striders (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and the picture book The Wonderful Hay Tumble (Morris and Sons, 1988). Her poem Bear Fear won the 1999 Ralph Nading Hill, Jr. Literary Award. Her poems have been published in Vermont Ink, Snowy Egret, Potato Eyes, Willard & Maple VIII, SCBWI Bulletin, PSOV The Mountain Troubadour, Vermont Life, Blueline, Avocet, PoemCity. She writes historical articles; has taught kindergarten and high school, and co-published/coedited a newspaper, The Champlain Courier, covering Charlotte, Ferrisburgh, and Vergennes, Vermont.
I am Guilty
A friend told me one of the new residents in our area has had a male cardinal pecking relentlessly at his reflection in the window. Bob showed the man last week my drawings of the owls which made the cardinal cease pecking.
CINDY HILL Middlebury, Vermont
Cindy Ellen Hill has authored two sonnet chapbooks, Wild Earth (Antrim Press 2021) and Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022) Her poetry collections Mosaic: Poems and Essays from Travels in Italy (Wild Dog Press) will appear in 2024, and Love in a Time of Climate Change (Finishing Line Press) will appear in 2025. Her poetry has been included in Treehouse Literary Review, Flint Hills Review, Anacapa Review, Measure, and The Lyric. She twice won the Vermont Writer’s Prize (formerly the Ralph Nading Hill award). She gardens and plays fiddle in Middlebury, Vermont. https://www.cindyellenhill.com/
Woven Words: My grandmother taught me to knit and sew as a kid, setting off a life-long fascination with textiles. When I spin yarn, weave, or knit, I notice that colors change, taking on different hues and varied emotional tones depending on what other colors and textures they are placed adjacent or perpendicular to. I decided to experiment with interweaving poetry lines, repeating phrases and words as if were runs of color on the warp and weft yarns. I like the way it draws the eye to different phrases and creates an overall impression of the entire piece the same way we see the whole cloth and not the individual threads that make it up.
Field Guide to Rome: I did a winter 2024 residency abroad in Rome as part of my MFA in Writing program at VCFA. One of our tasks was to create a “Field Guide”. This one has notes, ephemera, sketches, and lots of poems and some essays I wrote while there. The poems and essays form part of the book I have coming out in September from Wild Dog Press, Mosaic: Poems and Essays from Travel in Italy.
LILY HINRICHSEN
Bristol, Vermont
Lily Hinrichsen is an artist, poet, and keen observer of nature. She resides in Bristol Vermont where the clouds form haiku, every river is a poem, and every unturned stone holds a bit of gossip.
W: lilyhinrichsen.com
FB: @LilyHinrichsenArtStudio
Poetry is a recent venture of self-expression, one that challenges my vulnerability in its directness. Calls me out of the dark corners of inhibition and into the light of shared experience.
Embroidered poems:
What a delightful alchemy - threads of thought emerging from threads of floss. Trailing out poetry on this unlikely medium of cloth. I take pleasure in seeing and reading poetry out of its usual context. Instead, etched into a sidewalk or stones in the woods, painted on a building or litter-strewn alley reminds me of its universality takes it off its customary position on the page, and puts it smack dab in my path ready for a conversation.
Pencil colored poems:
These small pieces are created from repeating a line of one of my poems over and over again, rotating the paper as I go. They are mantra-like in their repetition. Mandelic even. One could appreciate their colors and patterns from afar, or trace a word up close and personal.
RAY HUDSON
Middlebury, Vermont
Dream Song
woodcut print and mixed media
I will go riding upon a great horse put feet in the stirrups and ride until dawn and ride until dawn comes out of the east with dreams for stirrups will I go riding
Ray Hudson lives in Middlebury, where he writes poetry when he is not researching or writing nonfiction dealing with the Aleutian Islands.
ANNA JENNINGS
West Townshend, Vermont
Anna N. Jennings grew up in rural Georgia. She now lives in southern Vermont where she writes poetry and creates handbound journals in her home studio. Anna also assists at her community’s pottery studio.
CANDACE JENSEN
Westminster, Vermont
Books:
These books were produced while in residency at the Vermont Studio Center in tandem with the poets Stephanie Adams-Santos and Amanda Galvan-Hyunh. We designed and bound the books together, I handwrote each of the poems for an edition of 3 books for each of us.
Spoilt Beauty
Japanese stab binding, hand lettered poem on mixed art papers hand marbled cover 2019
Candace Jensen is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, calligrapher, curator and community organizer. Her work is grounded in animism, deep ecology, and building creative community. Jensen is cofounder and Programming Director of In Situ Polyculture Commons, an arts residency and regenerative culture catalyst. She also serves as Letterpress Director at Ruth Stone House in Goshen, VT and Art Editor for their poetry & art quarterly, Iterant Magazine. www.candacejensen.com / www.insitupolyculture.org / ruthstonehouse.org / iterant.org
Broadsides:
I have been a letterpress printer for 10 years after learning at the San Francisco Center for the Book. I love lead type and old wood type, and the near-exact science of fudging the details on the brilliant letterpress machines we have inherited from a former era. Its tactile, its haptic, its material. Typesetting poetry gives one the chance to really sit with a poem letter by letter and word by word, so each one that I produce as a broadside receives an elevated attention.
Risograph is also brilliant and challenging and quirky as a print medium, and its character is receiving the same revival treatment that letterpress enjoys, thankfully.
ROLF PARKER-HOUGHTON
Brattleboro, Vermont
Hope
Rolf Parker-Houghton lives with Cynthia ParkerHoughton in Southern Vermont, where they run "The University of Brattleboro," a street theater company that creates free community events (including the excavation of fake UFO crash sites and free annual writing contests). His poems have been published in venues such as Vita Poetica, The Lyric, and The Road Not Taken: The Journal of Formal Poetry. In 2023, he was shortlisted for the O'Bheal International Five Words Poetry Contest, where the judge called his work “wild, brilliant and exciting… a reminder of what poems can do and how often the best ones move beyond our perceptions of what a poem can be."
Materials: Purple heart poplar, other unknow hardwood, Archival ink Poem published in Vita Poetica 2023.
The poems came first, and then the vithis is the first attempt to marry poem to axe. I was inspired by an ultra-realist painter, one who successfully attempted to create works of art in the style of the Dutch Masters. I am not claiming her proficiency. I am trying to say that part of what impressed me most about her painting was not her astonishing technique, but rather her composition. From far away, all that was apparent was the majesty, the confidence and beauty of this very regal young woman. But as you drew close to the painting you saw soldiers, tiny soldiers, all around her feet, dying and killing, for her. Here, I wanted the viewer of this poem to mistake the eventual Hope, to experience how willing Norwegian warrior culture was to wreck and ruin other people’s bodies and lives. The Vikings were not just violent and vile pirates. According to the latest archeological evidence, practitioners of vigorous imperialist death cult. Things get better. This is my first attempt and I plan on re-working this poem-object until both poem and object are fully worthy of each other.
Phi Plus Two = 3.618033988: An Invitation To Tranquility
This is a true story. There is order and beauty in the universe, and one never knows when one is going to come upon it.
Saving A Ramirez Guitar
I played guitar and that helped me right out of a depression. I had been kicked out of PhD program in neuroanatomy. That was hard. I found a Ramirez guitar that someone had slammed and cracked open. My friend taught me about the magic of wood glue, and sandpaper, and I was hooked on sanding wood and playing guitar. We brought that guitar back and I found my will to fully live, and to be on the look out for souls. Sadly, I loved that guitar so much, I would play it so as to get to sleep. One night it slipped out of my sleeping arms and to the floor, and my tired and totally innocent wife stepped on it. I kept the parts, and you see one of them here, as the back drop to this poem, that was published in The Journal of Formal Poetry.
A Mile Into The Birches
This is another Terzanelle, which is a form invented by Lewis Turco, whom I would much like to meet. If anyone knows Lewis Turco, I would like to meet him, and show him all the terzanelles I have lying around my house, sort of the way some people have guns and have them stored all over the house. This one was published in The Lyric, which is run out of Jericho, Vermont.
ASHLEY ANN STROBRIDGE
Astrobridge Artistry
Montpelier Vermont
A social justice- & eco-activist w/ an academic & career background in, & deeply established family history in, Environmental Policy: Ashley Ann Strobridge is an Artist, Poet, Photographer, Writer, Performer, & Musician who is Maverick in Gender; & a vegetarian, disabled, FATabulous Woman on a mission to illuminate the Bridge between Nature, Spiritualism, Science, Justice, History, Ecology, Creativity, Literature, Magic, Psychology, & Art, as all are linked in the fabric of the Universe. Much of her work is whimsical & impactful Nature photography & poetry, with literature, justice, science, fantasy, and history tie-ins, & also including paintings & music, available in prints, greetings cards, bookmarks, books, & more.
www.astrobridge-artistry.com
Matilda’s Roses:
I took these photos of David Austen roses in my mother’s rose garden in South Royalton, VT. Roses were the Progressive Suffragette Leader Matilda Joslyn Gage’s favorite flower. I wrote Matilda’s Roses in honor of Matilda’s monumental work for Women’s Rights, & the rights of all those oppressed, in the hopes of getting the word out about all she has done in the name of justice & freedom for all. Her work has been hidden for far too long! I am working on a book to tell the story of Matilda’s life, overlayed with Wizard of Oz themes. You can follow along with my progress, & if you so choose, support the creation of the book, on my patreon account here: www.patreon.com/AstrobridgeArtistry/About . To support, navigate to the membership tab on the website after you read about the project itself on the About page, linked above, or with the below QR code! You will NOT be automatically charged just by following these links or QR codes.
The following QR code will take you to the Patreon About page for my Matilda Project: You can also buy your own copy of my Matilda’s Roses poem, the one featured in this exhibit, in a Greeting Card on my Store page on my regular website, here: https://astrobridgeartistry.com/shop/ A portion of the sale of every sale of this card will be donated to the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Upstate New York.
Ode to Joy and Freedom for Ukraine:
The flowers featured in this piece are sunflowers, from seeds planted by birds that I fed in the winter & spring, & that I grew in pots in my “Magic Garden in the Sky,” on my balcony, in Downtown Montpelier, VT, summer of 2021. The following year, 2022, these sunflowers would grow to symbolize the enduring strength of the Ukrainian people, as they continue to fight for their land & sovereignty against Russia. I wrote this poem, inspired both by the Ukrainian people, & by the piece of music closest to my heart, which symbolizes finding joy evening in the darkest of times: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” which is the anthem of the European Union & the Council of Europe, & was performed for & by the people of Ukraine at the beginning of this horrific struggle that never should have been.
This poem with the photos, & a space on the back for a long message, or supportive or petition signatures, are available in a greeting card on my website at: https://astrobridge-artistry.com/shop/
A portion from every sale of this card will be donated to World Central Kitchen for the Ukrainian People.
Fairy Rings of Truth:
This piece is a melding of fantasy with ecoactivism, where Dryads (Tree Spirits), & Fairies (can you see my Light Fairy in one of the photos in the piece?), advocate for conservation through poetry & appeals to empathy, scientific knowledge, & common sense! With a degree in Environmental & Sustainability Studies, & having interned under the Climate Change Communication Advisor to President Obama & worked for VT Forestry & VT Fish & Wildlife, & coming from a family of higher ups in the environmental policy field, but also with a heart meant for artistic creation, this piece gets to the roots of who I am & where I come from.
NORA SWAN
Ripton, Vermont
Publish or Perish! Poetic diorama with felted mice
These erudite mice are raising their family surrounded by poetry. In fact, you could say their house is made of poetry. This is what happens to words left in the dark too long. We think the essence of poetry is language and meaning but physically it exists on paper or in even more ephemeral media like old floppy disks or “the cloud”. Most of the words written today will never venture into corporeality at all, so what will the discerning mice of the future learn to nest in?
Nora Swan is a fiber artist, sometime milliner, obsessive forager and (mostly) unpublished poet nesting among her creations in Ripton VT.
SHARON WEBSTER Burlington, Vermont
Philosopher/playwright, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote
“…(the poet) has a silent contact with words… in touching them, testing them, fingering them, s/he discovers in them a slight luminosity of their own and a particular affinity with the earth, the sky, the water and all created things…” As a poet and tactilelyoriented visual artist, I was fascinated and intrigued by this quote. I chose the sensual qualities of a shimmering blouse as a backdrop to emphasize the luminosity of writing and creating. Since the creative process includes lots of “unsilent” things for me too, I stitched “lots of noise” in for balance. The colored letters represent the unformed material that the poet works with.
Sharon Webster creates visual art and poems in Burlington, Vermont. Her work combines love of form, texture, intimacy and the beauty of everyday things. Webster’s new collection of poems, O Song, will be published by Salmon Poetry in Ireland in 2024.
JESSICA WOLFORD
Manitoba, Canada
nbvbbbh
Jess Woolford is a writer, critic and editor whose poetry appears in #BeHereWinnipeg, the museum of americana, Book of Matches, Text Power Telling Magazine, The Ecological Citizen, Prairie Fire Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The Winnipeg Free Press and elsewhere. Raised in Vermont, Woolford now lives and writes on Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
I created coronation in an attempt to communicate a particular experience of bereavement.
The project allowed me to give voice to grief, to consider transformation, and to reflect upon moving forward after monumental loss.
BIANCA ZANELLA
Rutland, Vermont
Police Report
Bianca Amira Zanella (she/they) is a queer Vermont-based performance poet, multidisciplinary artist, and poetic medicine healer. Zanella serves the community using poetry as a path to wholeness as The Paper Poet, designing experiences to decrease hardship while increasing heartship. Her poems have appeared in Writing by Heart, The Artful Mind, and The Mountain Troubadour. She received the Corrine Eastman Davis Memorial Award and Arthur Wallace Peach Memorial Award. Zanella’s experimental poem-films, interactive sculptural poems, and poem-paintings have been on exhibit with PoemCity Montpelier, Merwin Gallery, and Stone Valley Arts.
thepaperpoet.com
@thepoetbianca
Mixed media: birch bark ribbon spiral, marker, wire
Step into the center of the spiral, spin clockwise to read; you are now standing inside the memory.
October 6th, 2012. Whitingham is 38 degrees. Injury. No explanation yet; needs review. To the scene, Trooper Genevra Cushman. State Police. Take daily, may not go down smoothly, but it will take effect quickly: Brattleboro barracks in a bottle. Little skeletal residents of the road wait for Grandmother and granddaughter. 61 and 16 approach, smaller than expected. Seatbelts worn. 61 is driving. 2010 Subaru Forester: fresh paint, no scratches. Saturday. The green numbers on the console read 88.9 for the station and 1:58 for the time. Only sometimes are they mistaken for the other, each number glowing as twins.
Going north on 112. Sports utility vehicle drives beyond the curve. 112 cuts into 8A like a dull knife picking at clean bones. Neither route is taken. With a jolt, a different radio station beeps on: 92.7. Hits ready to soundtrack the paving of a new road with metal and rock & roll and classic glass. SUV crashes into the brook– the brook– their deepest river. Every safety switch now an obstacle to safety. No one is thinking. 61 can breathe, but 16 year old lungs haven’t learned to breathe water.
Sports utility vehicle is flooding. Brook bangs both chests cold, then numb. 16 is losing something–time? The current asks for more before it can collapse. Sleep is non-life threatening in a bed. Life flashes– stunted– awake. They’re not in a bed. Windham County Sheriff’s Department. Life on the brink of threatening. Whitingham Fire. Life altering. Whitingham Rescue. All respond, rushing like water. Lights race 61 and 16 for treatment. Medical Center. Some saviour with a number writes an incident report, a MVA. Person summary: two adults, functioning. Property summary: one vehicle, totaled; miscellaneous articles. Numbers give no reason. Reviewed, still without explanation.
How does the SUV drive away from the static? Comfortable. In warm radio.
About the Poetry Society of Vermont
The Poetry Society of Vermont, founded in 1947, is an association of poets and friends of poetry who join in promoting enthusiasm for poetry through workshops, readings, contests, and contributions to TheMountain Troubadour,the PSOV literary journal. We welcome all appreciative writers and readers, as well as high school and college students.
PSOV is devoted to nurturing the poetic talents of its membership by creating an environment that fosters excellence in writing through workshops, readings, contests, and publishing the written word.
PSOV strives to create an outstanding poetic environment throughout Vermont where the love of excellent poetry honors the past and fosters new partnerships.
Please join us!
https://poetrysocietyofvermont.org/