Catherine Rankovic Featured Reader at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, May 21

Catherine Rankovic will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, May 21.

Also featured will be Gabriel Fried and Eileen G'Sell.

Musical guest will be Michael Coleman.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Catherine Rankovic’s books include Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis (Penultimate, 2010), Island Universe: Essays and Entertainments (WingSpan, 2007); Fierce Consent and Other Poems (WingSpan, 2005) and Guilty Pleasures: Indulgences, Addictions, and Obsessions (Andrews McMeel, 2003).

She received her M.F.A. from Washington University, where she has taught writing since 1989; she also teaches poetry and creative nonfiction in the new online M.F.A. program at Lindenwood University.

Her essays and poems have appeared in The Missouri Review, St. Louis Magazine, The Iowa Review, Boulevard, River Styx, Umbrella, Garbanzo, Bad Shoe, The Progressive, Natural Bridge, Gulf Coast, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and other journals and anthologies.

Her awards include the Missouri Biennial Award for essay writing, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and an Academy of American Poets award. She recently produced "Giving Voice," collecting and writing the score for a choral reading of works by 20 St. Louis poets. She is a professional book editor and her website is BookEval.com.

Babushka

Flap of cotton or fine black wool
spun to a sheen, magenta and yellow
cabbage-roses printed on phantasmagorical
greenery, or aerial maps of operatic
paisley, colors bilious, choleric, sanguine;
square of fabric folded, corners
knotted once beneath the chin

instantly estranges and ages,
says, when the foreign face turns away, “I show you
the garden you believe it is impossible I am.”

-- Catherine Rankovic

(Originally published in UCity Review #1.)

Eileen G'Sell Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, May 21

Eileen G'Sell will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, May 21.

Also featured will be Gabriel Fried and Catherine Rankovic.

Musical guest will be Michael Coleman.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Eileen G’Sell’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as the American Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Sonora Review, and Harp & Altar. She received an MA from the University of Rochester in 2003 and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006, where she currently lectures English and serves as assistant editor of publications at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. In 2011 she was recognized by the Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club for Outstanding Service to Mentor St. Louis at Farragut Elementary School.

WHITNEY HOUSTON PRONOUNCED DEAD AT 48
[Young nun latest to self-immolate in Tibet]

Cloud as profile, profile as cloud, so
lovely that even the 1980s glow
like a girl on detox.

Song as skeletal
bathtub treasure, a boy I know, I dream of.
What is it then to be on fire, to rocket

lucky forward? You were sexless
(almost) but when you weren’t
the whole sky sighed soprano.

Body as bureaucracy, body as scandal.
Stay in our arms if you dare.
Your sweat, your smile, your always always

never, all at once.

-- Eileen G'Sell

Gabriel Fried Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, May 21

Gabriel Fried will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, May 21.

Also featured will be Eileen G'Sell and Catherine Rankovic.

Musical guest will be Michael Coleman.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Gabriel Fried is poetry editor at Persea Books and author of Making the New Lamb Take, which was named a top ten poetry collection of 2007 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He currently teaches courses on poetry and publishing at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Boy Bites Dog

This small animal is mine, this son
who will not stop himself from biting my dog.

He bites her like a dog bites a rabbit:
tender, lethal, shaking with laughter

when he twists her neck as if to break it.
He loves to fill his mouth with her

instead of air, relishing the gag
of fur it takes to keep her. Muscled

and tall, she could defend herself—
upend him or sink her own teeth in.

But I smell the gamey scent she gets
before a storm as if it’s slaughter.

She can’t move him. And I am just a man.

-- Gabriel Fried

(Originally published in Lumberyard #4.)

Dwight Bitikofer Featured Reader at April Reading at Duff's

Photo by Sam Davis

Dwight Bitikover, accompanied by Raven Wolf, was one of three featured readers at the April 30 reading at Duff's.

The other featured readers were Dwight Bitikover and Will Kyle.

Marcel Toussaint, Dennis Corcoran, Chelse Williams, Steve Werner, Dennis Corcoran, and Chris Parr stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic.

In celebration of National Poetry Month and Poetry Magazine's 100th Anniversary, Tony Renner and Sam Davis each read a poem from the April issue of Poetry Magazine.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, May 21.

Featured readers will be Gabriel Fried, Eileen G'Sell, and Catherine Rankovic. Musical guest will be Michael Coleman.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Christy Callahan Featured Reader at April Reading at Duff's

Photo by Sam Davis

Christy Callahan was one of three featured readers at the April 30 reading at Duff's.

The other featured readers were Dwight Bitikover and Will Kyle.

Marcel Toussaint, Dennis Corcoran, Chelse Williams, Steve Werner, Dennis Corcoran, and Chris Parr stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic.

In celebration of National Poetry Month and Poetry Magazine's 100th Anniversary, Tony Renner and Sam Davis each read a poem from the April issue of Poetry Magazine.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, May 21.

Featured readers will be Gabriel Fried, Eileen G'Sell, and Catherine Rankovic. Musical guest will be Michael Coleman.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

"Sandra Lee Scheuer" by Gary Geddes

The award-winning Canadian poet Gary Geddes was one of three featured readers at the April 4, 2011, reading at Duff's, where he read his poem commemorating the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings.

Sandra Lee Scheuer

(Killed at Kent State University, May 4, 1970
by the Ohio National Guard)

You might have met her on a Saturday night,
cutting precise circles, clockwise, at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, or walking with quick step

between the campus and a green two-storey house,
where the room was always tidy, the bed made,
the books in confraternity on the shelves.

She did not throw stones, major in philosophy
or set fire to buildings, though acquaintances say
she hated war, had heard of Cambodia.

In truth she wore a modicum of make-up, a brassiere,
and could no doubt more easily have married a guardsman
than cursed or put a flower in his rifle barrel.

While the armouries burned, she studied,
bent low over notes, speech therapy books, pages
open at sections on impairment, physiology.

And while they milled and shouted on the commons,
she helped a boy named Billy with his lisp, saying
Hiss, Billy, like a snake. That’s it, SSSSSSSS,

tongue well up and back behind your teeth.
Now buzz, Billy, like a bee. Feel the air
vibrating in my windpipe as I breathe?

As she walked in sunlight through the parking-lot
at noon, feeling the world a passing lovely place,
a young guardsman, who had his sights on her,

was going down on one knee, as if he might propose.
His declaration, unmistakable, articulate,
flowered within her, passed through her neck,

severed her trachea, taking her breath away.
Now who will burn the midnight oil for Billy,
ensure the perilous freedom of his speech;

and who will see her skating at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, the eight small wooden wheels
making their countless revolutions on the floor?

-- Gary Geddes