Sheila Black and Charles E. Wright

July 8th brought about another attentive and somewhat boisterous audience in Rock Creek Park by Miller’s Cabin. We’ve been very fortunate with the weather this year, with just our June 10th reading held inside due to a whopper of a thunderstorm. In any case, it was an impressive turnout of poetry lovers.

We were very happy to have Sheila Black as one of our featured readers, visiting all the way from Las Cruces, New Mexico. Sheila is author of House of Bone (CustomWords Press, 2007) and the chapbook How to be a Maquiladora (Main Street Rag, 2006). Her second full-length collection, Love/Iraq, is forthcoming in 2008. The immediacy and imagination in her poems, such as “Barcelona” and “What You Mourn” held the audience captive and left us all wanting more!


Our second featured reader of the evening was Charles E. Wright. His musings on schwa and the infield fly rule kept us all attentive and entertained. In introducing him, I stole (with permission, of course) a favorite short poem of his:





Salad Days

These ribbons
of carrots

were medallions
in my youth.

And I learned something new, talking with Charles. Wallace Stevens’ wife was the model for the Mercury dime! There's got to be a poem in that somewhere!

What a great evening!