PXP 2013: Schedule of Events

THERMOS’s editors will all be in New Orleans Nov. 7-9 to host the second annual Poetry Exchange Project Symposium at Tulane University and at other locations in the city. All events are free and open to the public. If you’re in the area, please stop by. — AS

Friday, Nov. 8 (Tulane campus, St. Charles Ave. side)

11:30am: PXP presentations, Norman Mayer Hall, Rm. 125
            Students from Tulane, University of Georgia, and University of the Arts deliver
            presentations of completed PXP projects.

1:00 pm: Panel A: Poetry Beyond the Classroom (Norman Mayer Hall, Rm. 200B)
            Moderator: Dan Rosenberg
            Panelists: Nik De Dominic, Melissa Dickey, Anne Marie Rooney, Jay Thompson
1:00 pm: Panel B: Poetic Lineage (Norman Mayer Hall, Rm. 125)
            Moderator: Andy Stallings
            Panelists: Peter Cooley, Robert Fernandez, Carolyn Hembree, Laura Walker

2:00 pm: Panel C: The Life of Contemporary Poetry (Norman Mayer Hall, Rm. 200B)
            Moderator: Zach Savich
            Panelists: Matt Hart, Mary Hickman, Paul Killebrew, Teresa Villa-Ignacio

3:30 pm: Ian Zelazny Memorial All-City Student Reading (Norman Mayer Hall Rm. 200B)
            25-30 students from schools and universities around the city and region read poems.

6:00 pm: PXP Keynote Reading (Rogers Memorial Chapel)
            Robert Fernandez, Matt Hart, Mary Hickman, Paul Killebrew, Anne Marie Rooney and Laura
            Walker read new poetry.

9:30 pm: Party and Concert (2433 St. Claude Ave., Entrance on Music St., byob)
            Students and symposium participants are all invited!

Saturday, Nov. 9 (Buddhist Community Center, 623 N. Rendon St.)

12:00 pm: Hunter Deely Memorial Reading
            Brief readings by Carroll Beauvais, Megan Burns, Carrie Chappell, Peter Cooley, Nik De
            Dominic, Melissa Dickey, Cassandra Donish, Maia Elgin, Rebecca Morgan Frank,
            Elizabeth Gross, Michael Jeffrey Lee, Kay Murphy, Brad Richard, Dan Rosenberg,
            Zach Savich, Shelly Taylor, Jay Thompson, Afton Wilky, Mark Yakich

THERMOS 6: Carolyn Hembree

Another terrific New Orleans poet, Carolyn Hembree’s first book of poems, Skinny, came out with Kore Press in 2012. She is the poetry editor for Bayou, the literary journal produced by the University of New Orleans, where she teaches. The poems that follow are from the sequence that closes Skinny. — AS

from The Venus de Milo Tree

               ~I’ve always been fascinated by the secret life of horses….~

you see for once everything one                 eye on the fence
one on the horizon jump               your abdomen and front               legs swimming
jump on                              tiptoe your shadow           does not show you           tremor
               jump       gimme a minute jump                your ears pinned back fly
throw your head                                             to the side keep the tree               limb in
focus the wooden                        beam slams your ribcage                the fence posts
going to pieces half boards splinters flying fifteen feet or more behind as if they
were detonated from underneath                           your gums pulling back begin
getting dry          the hock joint under a bunch of boards               crisscrossed on
your side
                                                                           heave                      heave

               ~Time and Space Collapse! (as our narrator and soldier battle the elements)~

A soldier in my dream:
a puffed-up knuckle
through them driving gloves
driving a scraper
over the windshield,
dumping a bucket,
driving a scraper,
the drifts hither and yon….
Us jimmying [rupture] a truck handle.

First killing frost
you can’t with a brogan
with a steel toe
with a spade–
hell no!–
break.

               ~Intermission: (you know Mamie was always the toast of every evening)~

The chain spread-eagle, the briolette’s million faces making little lights on the walls–

A fistful of bone meal won’t help. It won’t help us, Venus.

There’s a spot I carved you’ll never spot!

At her throat (where the briolette would go) twist and pin a rosette.

Gentle Reader, what are ladies’ hands for? Why, for playing gospel and setting spit curls!

Don’t wire and drape a tree to look like a god and a woman.

Hands too for handing down handmade heirlooms and for keeping faces soft and new (buttercream is best).

Don’t try and put a head on nature.

A briolette, a mind on the wing–

Lost you lost in this lost that you see that you got that you and that you in that

               ~Details for Fortifying a Winter Tree~

November, use 10-gage galvanized steel to wire Venus from tree-rats, inch your way up from the roots to make it last until the north side where the bark’s gone thick and if it’s damn cold get an old sheet to drape it.

               ~Mamie daydreams of springtime~

Mamie’s face gone
                                               from babyish to serious, minuscule under her comforter.
Weeks now the right one (her side that works) sliding around under the comforter,
crinkling in the bed pad. Were she to grab the dresser to stagger up.

Draw it on the sawmill walls. A circle, five feet in diameter, of skin and liquid on
the linoleum. Our roan under a blanket spins and spins on its side to stagger up.
Pulls the glove off by your teeth run your fingers over the spotty coat, the spine, the
sacroiliac joint, hip joint, all jutting. The leg’s broke. Fast, get under it. Gripping
the cabinet door for leverage. The roan’s throat on our jeans, its skin pulled shiny,
mouthing like it were bitted, Who’s the martyr here?

                                 There’s a nest in the lowest branch of the Venus de Milo tree.